Children: Secure Children’s Homes

Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia]

It is a great honour to rise for the first time and speak in your Lordships’ House. I would like to thank your Lordships for the quality and the depth of the welcome I have received from all sides of your Lordships’ House. It has, for me, been a very sharp learning curve. Indeed, I was so ignorant that when mention of another place was made I assumed that this was heaven. It is only since joining your Lordships’ House that I have been amazed by how hard and diligently your Lordships work. In particular, I thank my sponsors, the noble Lords, Lord Harris of Peckham and Lord Sassoon, and my mentor, the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, all of whom give an immense amount of their time freely to this House and to the community, and yet have spared time to assist me. I also thank all the dedicated staff who serve your Lordships’ House. The friendly nod and wink from the doorkeepers has been invaluable in navigating me in the right direction and helping me to avoid the many pitfalls awaiting a newcomer.

My great-grandfather arrived from Russia almost penniless. He started work in the East End, sifting rags. My grandfather left school when he was 16 and my father, having won an exhibition to Cambridge, was the first member of his family to attend university. My mother’s family had arrived a few generations before and was already successful by the time my parents met. My parents both worked hard, my father in his chosen career and my mother devoting herself to him, the family and numerous charitable causes. That was the example that they set. Education was of paramount importance at home and doing one’s best was the gold standard.

I was fortunate that there was no gender discrimination and it was expected that I would strive to become self-sufficient in the same way as my two brothers. At 12, I was sent to boarding school. I was not an especially good student and felt that some of the existing customs were rather strange and capable of improvement. One of these was the way our day was managed. The whole community was controlled by the almost Pavlovian ringing of bells to get up, start and stop eating, begin and finish lessons and go to sleep. My year group occupied some prefab classrooms and one day, together with a more nimble friend, we tape-recorded the school bell and then blocked the real bell at the end of the corridor. For a blissful week we got away with operating the tape recorder and cutting five minutes off each lesson, until the truth was out. In January this year, when I was woken at 3.43 am by the Division Bell in this House, I thought of the irony of the by then familiar noise that now regulated my life.

I was inspired at school by my headmistress, who taught law. I recognised that, used effectively, it was a means that enabled people to protect others. I subsequently obtained a disappointing law degree from Exeter University but managed to get a sought-after place to do my articles in the City, at the firm Herbert Smith. It was there that I had the good fortune to work among hugely talented people, one of whom is my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hart of Chilton, who sits on the Benches opposite and was then in charge of the articled clerks. He encouraged me and inspired me to keep going and make my career in law. So much of life is luck, and I have been blessed with people who can see light at the end of the tunnel when it is not always obvious that there is any there.

During my articles I shared a room with a legal executive, Stanley Grant, who had had little formal education but who knew everything that was worth knowing about divorce law. That was where my career as a divorce lawyer began. By far the most important aspect of early promotion to partnership at the age of 25 was that, when my children arrived some years later, I could afford proper childcare and could delegate some of my work in the office to capable assistants to enable me to be physically with my children at the beginning and end of each day.

I am grateful for this opportunity to make my maiden speech in today’s debate on budget cuts for secure children’s homes and reducing children’s reoffending rates. It is a topic of great importance that touches on the work that I do. I have three points to make: first, the importance of a stable home life; secondly, the importance of education; and thirdly, the important role of teachers as carers, educators and inspirers. Nothing that we do in policy-making should detract from these important principles, all of which can both diminish the risk of offending in the first place and assist in rehabilitation when it occurs. Children are frequently the innocent victims of a breakdown of the family unit, be it a cohabitation, a marriage or a civil partnership. Without any feeling of belonging, they are the most vulnerable to offending. It is my belief that prevention is better than cure, and this is the way to seek to cut the cost of these problems.

As he retired, the parting message of Lord Jakobovits, not only to the Jewish community but to the British people, was that marriage and family life had to be learnt but that if necessary we should have classes for young people, teaching them the importance of family life and how to bring up children, how to discipline them kindly but firmly and how to instil the sense of moral law within them.

I express my gratitude to my own family, my grandparents and parents, for their example of hard work and fun and their unblemished record of staying together, and to my husband and children for their understanding and tolerance, without which I doubt I could deal with the things that are, sometimes literally, thrown at me. It has been a long journey but I hope very much that over time I will be able to make a proper contribution to your Lordships’ House. I feel proud and humble to be a Member.