Careers Service (Young People)

Debate between Eric Joyce and Stephen Twigg

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)]

On the subject of complementary services, my hon. Friend will be aware that the Labour Government and my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) explored the possibility of using social media as a complementary way of introducing kids at school to people who have the same interests. Does he think that we might take that idea forward in the future?

[Stephen Twigg]

Absolutely; my hon. Friend makes an important point. Face-to-face advice is vital, and that is why the motion is about that, but it is not enough on its own. We need other initiatives, whether they use information technology or networks of alumni, as Future First does.

Future First started as a project in London state secondary schools. It was founded by a team of graduates from state schools, who were motivated by their own experience. It seeks to improve the support offered to young people at school as soon as they start considering their future. It is now supported by a wide range of organisations, including the Sutton Trust. It is looking to extend its excellent practice beyond London to other parts of the country. Recently, I had the opportunity to introduce Future First to Liverpool Vision, with a view to opening opportunities for it to take its programmes to Liverpool. It will be meeting shortly with head teachers and business leaders in the city of Liverpool.

Future First’s study, “Social Mobility, Careers Advice and Alumni Networks”, to which my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State referred, makes the point that was made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) about the contrast between what happens in private schools and state schools. When asked how they rated their careers service, just 31% of young people in state schools said “good” or “very good”, yet in private schools the figure was almost double that at 57%. The figures from the independent sector and those from the state sector show a very significant contrast, which highlights the scale of the challenges that we face.

In-school services must get better. Schools need to improve them, but they cannot do that on their own; they need partners, and organisations such as Future First provide ideal partners for that excellent work. I therefore urge the Government, following tonight’s debate, not only to guarantee face-to-face careers advice as set out in the motion, but to go beyond that, and support and encourage excellent programmes such as the one at Cardinal Heenan school in my constituency and the ones that Future First has promoted in London. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Education Secretary said, Opposition Members will work with the Government if they genuinely seek to advance that vital instrument in the fight for a more socially mobile country.

David Kato

Debate between Eric Joyce and Stephen Twigg

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)]

In late January, millions of people around the world were deeply saddened to receive news of the horrific murder of David Kisule, better known as David Kato, the prominent human rights activist best known for his brave campaigning on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. David had been beaten to death in his home near Kampala. The shock at the killing was felt in this House particularly by colleagues such as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (David Cairns), who is not able to be here today. He had met David Kato in his celebrated campaigning role for Sexual Minorities Uganda just before his death.

Since then, the Ugandan police have made a number of arrests and one individual has been charged with the murder; in fact, the trial begins tomorrow. However, the trial must not signal an end to David Kato’s case and all that it stands for, as some in Ugandan public life would, frankly, like. That is because the wider cultural and political backdrop in present-day Uganda is characterised by open and often vile homophobia. Uganda is hardly the only place where that is the case, but it is a country which, for the best part of a couple of decades, has had a broadly positive trajectory on democracy and human rights. It has not been perfect, and in some years people might have said that President Museveni had taken his foot off the pedal somewhat, but it is unquestionably the case that Uganda has been one of the better success stories in Africa.

When countries, particularly developing countries, skew their developmental trajectories, we should sit up and take careful notice, particularly when it is a country such as Uganda—there are others—of which, on the whole, we have had a good view. I have a personal record of involvement with politicians in Uganda. It is places such as Uganda that catch our eye. And so it is with human rights: we know which countries routinely abuse human rights and have done so for many years, and we try to do our best through campaigning, relationships with other countries and so on to change that, but when a country does not on the whole have a reputation for treating its population badly, it worries us when the quality of governance suddenly slips back.

The essence of the problem in Uganda, which David Kato’s death has thrown into sharp relief, is that some people in Ugandan public life—politicians, journalists, business people and others—have for some time been seeking personal gain through pandering to and even encouraging homophobia. Prominent among them is David Bahati, the Ugandan MP, who tabled a private Member’s Bill calling for homosexuals to face the death penalty. His name is ironic: I understand that “Bahati” means “peace.” He wants peace for most people, but he wants to kill those who are gay. The Bill whipped up a fervour of enthusiasm among some newspapers, and the oddly named Rolling Stone—a new newspaper, not the famous American counterpart, I do not hesitate to add—eventually published pictures of known members and campaigners in the LGBT communities and urged people to kill them. Not that long afterwards, and perhaps tragically unsurprisingly, David Kato was killed.

David Bahati and Rolling Stone are both a disgrace, of course, but even more worrying at the time was the slow initial response of the Ugandan Government. Some Members and politicians stoked the fire with gusto. Bahati’s private Member’s Bill proposed, among other things, a widening of the definition of homosexual acts and a toughening up of penalties. It called for fines or imprisonment for anyone found to be promoting homosexuality, and the death penalty as punishment for serial homosexuality—the mind boggles.

Some agencies in the developed world chose to view the debate that raged around Bahati’s Bill as providing an opportunity to present Africa through an African prism. In a sense, that is a noble, sound journalistic intent, but they used completely the wrong subject—again, the mind boggles. The BBC asked on its discussion forum whether homosexuals should face execution. That lent international legitimacy to the many people in Uganda and elsewhere who think that the answer is yes. I was reading the responses on my iPhone in the Chamber as they came out, and I was struck by the fact that no one who put a comment on the board was from Uganda. In effect, the BBC had stimulated a debate about whether homosexuals in the UK should be executed. There were people who said, “It is up to Uganda what is done in Uganda but we should probably do that here.” That was the level of debate that that completely insane question stoked. It was most unfortunate, and I subsequently spoke to the head of World Service-Africa. I believe there is an understanding that that question and that particular treatment should not be repeated.

That said, the forum was an indicator of how people sometimes confuse a perfectly noble intent to understand developing world countries and say, “It is not for us to impose our values”—we all know about the tricky relationship that we sometimes have with China in respect of democratic values and so on—with what was, in this case, a universal value. I believe we can all accept that what David Bahati is doing is entirely monstrous.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that proposed measures such as David Bahati’s Bill and some of the public and media debate in Uganda to which he referred provide exactly the right environment for people to be physically attacked and, in the most extreme cases, murdered?

[Eric Joyce]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point. I believe that everyone I have spoken to in all parts of the House would agree with that. It behoves everyone in the media to reflect on the BBC example, and to separate forcing a post-imperialistic, unacceptable perspective on a developing country from what is actually a perfectly reasonable, universally held value. In this case, the judgment was straightforward. That is something that not just journalists but everyone needs to reflect on when they think about such issues. We are not exercising some kind of imperialistic hegemony just by saying, “Don’t execute homosexuals.”