Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I share some of the disappointment expressed by my noble friend Lady Brown about the definition of a university, but I take great comfort from a significant step forward which may have escaped the attention of some members of the public. I am extremely grateful to both the Minister in the other place, Jo Johnson, and the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, for having listened to those who have expressed significant concern about the inroads into freedom of speech in our universities and the growth of the most unpleasant racism expressed in the widespread extent of anti-Semitic activity.

I am sure that all Members of the House will support me in expressing gratitude to the two Ministers for having understood that and addressed it, albeit off the face of the Bill. Universities’ obligations relating to freedom of speech have been extended and all universities have been reminded by Jo Johnson of the definition of anti-Semitism that has been adopted internationally. That is a great step forward towards repairing the reputation of our universities, which has suffered internally if not internationally.

I also take some comfort from the fact that the last president of the National Union of Students, Malia Bouattia, has not been re-elected—in part, I believe, because some consider that some of her remarks have been racist. I believe that we are moving into a new era as far as that is concerned.

I also take this opportunity to salute Sir Eric Pickles, the Government’s envoy for post-Holocaust issues, who joined in the fight to preserve freedom of speech and to stop anti-Semitism. This is very good news. We will miss him sorely.

Finally, it has been evident in the discussions about this Bill just how much expertise there is in this House, especially on these Benches, on higher education. Chancellors, vice-chancellors, administrators and professors have all joined in and we have eventually been listened to. That goes to establish the value of the expertise accumulated in this House. Some of it may be very elderly, but there is a great deal of expertise in higher education, and it has in the end shone through.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my declaration of interests in the register. It is not my intention to repeat the excellent contributions that have already been made, but I want to put on record my commendation for Chris Husbands, the vice-chancellor of what some unwisely call the university in which I am involved “the other university in Sheffield”. Chris Husbands’ work is of an excellent quality and I hope that we will be able to build on it in the years to come.

However, I will repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said in relation to what happens after the general election and ensuring that nothing is done, particularly in relation to the evaluation and the ratings, that damages in any way the enormous contribution of the higher education sector in this country both to the well-being of students and to our economy and our standing in the world. There can be no doubt after the considerable debates that we have had that there is a deep commitment on the part of the Minister in this House to improving teaching and to recognising the critical role of the teaching excellence framework in ensuring that comparator with the research excellence framework.

It is worth putting on the record at this very late stage that there is still a major tendency to value what will pull in major grants for research, even when the research may be of doubtful value, rather than to balance the commitment to high-quality teaching and learning with the REF. That is why I have expressed to Jo Johnson, the Minister in the Commons, what I repeat today, which is my support for the endeavour to put teaching very much at the top of the agenda.

I commend the Government on having listened. This Bill has been an exemplar of how we can work across the political divide both in this House and beyond. I will refer now to speculation in the more reliable media. I hope that no one will be punished in any way for having been prepared to listen and to debate. The idea that a Minister should not be able to express a view internally within the Government is a disgrace. I do not wish to bring in party-political matters, but I know that some MPs are thought to call the Prime Minister “Mummy”. I remember Mummy telling me that she had heard me once, heard me twice and did not want to hear me again—but you cannot conduct government on that basis. Therefore, whatever happens on 8 June, I hope that we will move forward on the understanding that a spirit of co-operation creates better legislation that is more easily implementable and receives a wider welcome than would otherwise be the case, and thus achieves its objective.

I thank the noble Viscount the Minister for repeating the words of Jo Johnson in relation to the move as rapidly as possible to subject rather than institutional comparators. This is an important part of what we were debating on what was Amendment 72, which morphed into Amendment 23 and is back with us in a different form today.

I also want to say, as a new Member of this House, how impressed I have been by the Cross-Bench contributions. I will echo the commendations made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, rather than go through them again. Ministers and civil servants on this Bill have shown that they are of the highest possible calibre by being prepared to listen and respond, and I thank them for that.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may associate these Benches with the eloquent words we have already heard. It is inevitable that there will be a measure of disappointment that not all of your Lordships’ wisdom has been accepted unequivocally by the other House, but I think we can all agree that we have made immense strides in this Bill, and we are deeply appreciative of the way in which Ministers have listened and come forward with proposals. Perhaps I may pick up one thing about which we are particularly pleased, which is that there will be a delay in implementing this while a review is carried out. Some really key measures set out in the Bill need more reflection to see whether they are actually the right path to tread, so we appreciate the fact that the delay has been built in. Again, we appreciate the measures that the Government have taken to come towards us on these issues.

Education: Nursery and Early Years

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, leaving aside the tragic demise of the Sure Start local programmes, can the Minister comment on how we can implement better the report by Sense, the organisation for deafblind men, women and children, which was published last year, in terms of early years settings and the training not just of professional staff but of volunteers, which is absolutely crucial in ensuring that those with the severest disabilities have the best possible start in life?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord in this regard. I am not familiar with that report but I will look at it and, I hope, have the opportunity to discuss it with him.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Wellington (Con)]

My Lords, I realise that this does not have quite the interest of yesterday’s debate on the withdrawal from the European Union. I declare, as always, my interest as a former chairman of King’s College London.

Clause 26 deals with the quality of teaching in our universities. All universities—and, I am sure, all noble Lords—accept the objective of wishing to continue to raise the standard of teaching in our universities, but the question is whether the metrics or the rating system will achieve that. The purpose of this amendment is simply to delete from the Bill the word “rating”. The teaching excellence framework is under way and will classify each university as gold, silver or bronze.

Times Higher Education recently published a table of universities with the highest international reputation in the world, and in the top 20 are 10 British universities: Imperial College London, Oxford, Cambridge, University College London, the London School of Economics, King’s College London, Edinburgh, Warwick, Glasgow and Manchester. The irony is that, when the ill-named Office for Students publishes its new classifications and some of these very same universities, as expected, are graded silver or bronze—in other words, graded as second or third-class universities—this will be despite their well-deserved reputation in this country and abroad.

The teaching excellence framework, as currently designed, will use ratings and, because Clause 26 requires the use of ratings, it will be legally necessary to continue with them until the next higher education Bill in 20 or 30 years’ time. However, if we change “rating” to “assessment”, a future Minister or “Office for Higher Education”, which I believe would be a better name, will have the option not to use a ratings system. Many noble Lords have voiced concerns and doubts about the gold, silver and bronze grades—as have many involved in, or interested in, higher education.

Ministers argue—indeed, on Monday my noble friend Lord Younger proudly announced—that 299 providers have joined the teaching excellence framework and that it has near-unanimous support. But in fact these providers had no choice. On the website of the University of Warwick, with which I have no connection, the vice-chancellor says that,

“we agree with the fundamental proposition that universities should provide high quality teaching, we don’t believe that TEF will measure that”.

He goes on to say that,

“the Government has us over a barrel. It has linked TEF to fees and potentially our ability to recruit international students. The risks are too high”.

So the Government must understand that there are grave concerns about the teaching excellence framework, about the metrics and about the gold, silver and bronze scheme. My amendment would allow, in the future, a different system of assessing teaching, and I very much hope that the Government will accept it. It is designed to be helpful. I beg to move.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I shall speak to Amendment 72 in my name and in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden and Lady Wolf. I thank them for their support and for the work that they have done on the Bill. This is the first time in my life that I have been wedged between a duke and a viscount, and it is appropriate to know my place as a baron in your Lordships’ House.

My interest in the Bill is both as someone who benefited greatly from higher education as a mature student and as someone who has taught and still teaches in higher education and has had a long-standing interest in quality as Secretary of State and beyond. I put on the record that I think that all of us in this House agree that it is right that we drive forward and drive up the quality of teaching and learning in our university sector. It has long been neglected, and the driving force of the research excellence framework has to be matched so that the experience in the classroom, in the lecture theatre and in tutorials can be properly evaluated and given the rating that it really deserves. That brings me to the nub of the Bill.

As the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said, there are real issues about the nature of the metrics being used. The teaching excellence framework could well be undermined by a simple lack of confidence on the part of those who are crucially involved in it, both in teaching and as students receiving that teaching.

I have not spent as much time on this Bill in your Lordships’ House as I would have liked, although I have spoken on a number of occasions. However, I pay tribute to those who have spent and will continue to spend an enormous amount of time on it. I give credit to the Government for the way in which they have listened, reflected on and responded to suggestions so far, which has made a great difference to the quality of the Bill. My noble friend Lord Stevenson and other colleagues have spent hours not only in the Chamber but outside working on the Bill, and liaising and negotiating with the Government and colleagues. That has made a tremendous contribution and I hope that, whatever the irritations of the moment about the capacity of the House of Lords to bring about change in legislation, the Government will continue to want to listen and learn, in particular in relation to the metrics of the TEF.

I have a great deal of time for Chris Husbands, the vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University. He is reviewing the trial of TEF 2, as I understand it is now called, and no doubt he will bring forward positive proposals for change. But if there is no proper way of taking forward that change, what guarantees does anyone have that the process will have a satisfactory outcome? Changing the nature of the way in which the TEF is being taken forward by the Government at the moment, and dealing with concerns about the narrowness of the metrics and about the process of how future change will be dealt with, explains why the amendment includes references to the role of Ministers and of this House and the House of Commons through statutory instruments. Providing for proper transparency and accountability is important; that is why we should have a continuing interest in and concern about what is taking place.

The nub of the amendment is that change must take place in the lecture theatre and through the process of learning, not from outside. It has to be driven by, and created and expanded from, what is taking place, and from spreading best practice in higher education generally. There is a great deal of good practice as well as some extremely shoddy and unacceptable teaching. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said in our debate on Monday, it is based on the presumption that this is about students. If it is about students, you would expect student bodies to be in favour of the proposals—but they are not. You would expect universities to be universally in favour of them—but they are not.

I just want to refer to the Faustian deal that Universities UK and the old HE body appear to have made with the Government. I have no idea how it came about. Much of what is in the letter sent out last week is highly commendable, but the timing and its presumption that the deal has been done are unworthy of those with the highest academic standards at their fingertips and the best interests of the sector at heart. So let us presume that we have made great progress, although a great deal can still be done. Let us hope that Ministers have the confidence to continue listening and reflecting so that they can bring to bear the wisdom that has been evident both in this House and beyond, and will be prepared to adjust and to deliver something that we all want to see: considerable improvement not only now but in the future so that we can provide the kind of support for teaching that has been evident for research for so long.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blunkett]

72: Clause 26, leave out Clause 26 and insert the following new Clause—
“Scheme to provide information about the quality of higher education and higher education teaching
(1) The Secretary of State must by order bring forward a scheme to assess and provide consistent and reliable information about the quality of education and teaching at English higher education providers and at higher education providers in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland which apply to participate in such a scheme.(2) The scheme must be wholly or mainly based on the systems in place in higher education providers which ensure that the courses offered are taught to a high standard.(3) The Secretary of State, or that body designated by the Secretary of State to develop such a scheme, must, before such a scheme is introduced, and on a regular basis thereafter, obtain independent evaluations, including an evaluation from the Office for National Statistics, of the validity of any data or metrics included in such a scheme.(4) Any scheme introduced must evaluate and report on whether an institution meets expectations or fails to meet expectations on quality measures, but must not be used to create a single composite ranking of English higher education providers.(5) The Secretary of State’s power to make an order under subsection (1) is exercisable by statutory instrument, a draft of which must be laid before, and approved by, a resolution of each House of Parliament.”

[Lord Blunkett]

In light of the Minister’s response and, with respect, the fact that things have got worse rather than better with the words “ineligible for a teaching excellence award”, it would be wise to test the view of the House and give the Government time to think again.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all the points that have been made. I shall speak on one narrow issue. I was surprised to learn that an apprenticeship is not an approved form of learning. I assume that, when the Institute for Apprenticeships recognises these apprenticeships, they will automatically be an approved form of learning along with all the others. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will cover whether an apprenticeship is an approved form of learning and whether, when the Institute for Apprenticeships recognises the range of apprenticeships, they will come into that category.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. It would be very useful if the Minister were prepared to meet separately with my colleagues to see whether a solution could be found. I want to reinforce a point about the challenge of transport costs for apprentices. They can be extremely irksome and difficult for them. The proportion of a very small income going on getting to and from work can be way beyond anything that we, as adults, have experienced.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

I, too, support the amendment. Like other noble Lords, I recognise that this is not something that is easily in the Minister’s gift, but it is a major issue and has been for some time.

Apprentices are employees and they should be employees, so they are different from full-time students, but it is also important to recognise that they are not skilled workers, which is why they are apprentices. That is why it is also important that there is an apprenticeship wage, but that apprenticeship wage is very low. This is a major issue and has been a major issue for a while, but, curiously enough, the improvement in the quality of vocational training and the drive to improve vocational training and to make sure that young people go into apprenticeships rather than into some form of quasi, not-real apprenticeship has made the problem worse, because more parents are now faced with the situation in which they tell their children, “I can’t afford for you to take the apprenticeship”.

This is a major issue, and it cannot be beyond our capacity to do something about it. I add my voice to those urging the Minister to see what can be done to prevent young people from the most deprived families feeling that there is a serious barrier to them taking up an apprenticeship.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, of course. I reassure the noble Baroness that I will add her points and I will look at Hansard again closely on the issues that she has raised and address them.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Would the Minister be kind enough to ask his staff to include me in his letters? Although I have not spoken in this debate, I would be very grateful if he could include me in the communication.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

That is easy to answer and of course I will include the noble Lord in my reply.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I shall address the point about part-time and lifelong learning, and speak from my own experience. When I qualified as a chartered accountant, with a degree from India, and with a law degree from Cambridge, I thought that I had had enough education for ever. Then I was introduced to lifelong learning by going to business school and engaging in executive education, which I have since done at Cranfield School of Management, the London Business School and the Harvard Business School. I remember President Clinton saying, “The more you learn, the more you earn”, and one can try to vouch for that.

The encouragement of lifelong learning is so important—it does not stop. Then there is access to lifelong learning for those who missed out on it, for whatever reason. I was the youngest university chancellor in the country when I was made chancellor of Thames Valley University, now the University of West London. At that university, which is one of the modern universities, a huge proportion of the students were mature students and learning part-time. You cannot equate a university such as that with an Oxford or a Cambridge. It is a completely different model, offering access and focusing on—and promoting the concept of—lifelong learning, mature students and part-time learning. Sadly, the funding for part-time learning needs to be looked at, but it is not a matter for this Bill.

At the other extreme, at the traditional universities, we have MBAs—masters in business administration—which are very popular around the world, but nowadays we also have executive MBAs. The executive MBA programme is getting more and more popular at top business schools around the world, including in our country —I am the chair of the Cambridge Judge Business School. It is part-time learning at the highest level.

I hope that the Bill will address this and encourage part-time learning and learning throughout one’s lifetime. Amendment 41 refers to,

“including access to part-time study and lifelong learning”.

In fact, I would encourage it; it is crucial.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I welcome this brief debate. It is crucial that we should turn our attention to different forms of access and to lifelong learning in its widest sense. The publication from the four years that I was Education and Employment Secretary that I remain most proud of is The Learning Age Green Paper. I am proud of the commitment of the then Government to the whole range of opportunities for lifelong learning.

I deeply regret that universities as a whole in this country countenanced the demise of their extramural outreach at a time when more utilitarian delivery was uppermost in people’s minds. I pay tribute to Sheffield Hallam University for its outreach, embracing those from a whole range of disadvantaged backgrounds. I declare an interest: I have a close relationship with the University of Sheffield, where I hopefully deliver some pearls of wisdom and experience from a lifetime engaged in education, and I welcome its renewed commitment to lifelong learning. However, universities using resources, expertise and facilities to reach out is still in embryo.

Digital platforms now allow us to communicate at a distance. Over past decades, the Open University has been able to link that effectively to collective study and engagement; that is a crucial part of a rounded education that we can all welcome. I hope that when the Minister responds, he will, in a wider sense than just this Bill, encourage and support universities to use those resources to reach out and become essential parts of their own community, as well reaching out internationally.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness’s amendment. This is a particularly important issue which, regrettably, has been repeatedly neglected in this House, except by my noble friend Lady Bakewell and a few others who have, from time to time, tried to cudgel the Government in debates that perhaps do not have quite so much impact as this major debate on higher education today. I have an interest as chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University which, together with the University of Sheffield, has transformed Sheffield and its workforce in the last 15 years. Many of the people who have transformed that place have of course been those who have come in part-time.

I do not want to repeat what I said in the previous sitting on Monday, but I pointed out—during the Tube strike—that we are going to have to look at driverless trains and at automation, which will happen right across the whole of industry. It has been calculated by some people that perhaps as many as nine out of 10 of the workforce will be out of their current work in the next decade. I am not quite certain whether the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, in moving her amendment, pointed out that a large proportion of the people who undertake part-time degrees are over the age of 30 and under the age of 60. We need to be skilling people as they grow older because we are now living longer. We need to ensure that that middle-aged group is educated. It is important to recognise that as long as we learn, we are useful. It is vital to support learning in an ageing society.

I wish to relate a personal story about a PhD student who I met at Imperial College last year. I asked her about the subject of her further degree as she was undertaking a very intricate project on global warming, looking at rare earth radioisotopes two miles below the seabed. She was tracking sea movements from 50 million years ago and providing crucial information on climate change using the most sensitive instruments. I thought that she must have the most splendid degree from one of the Russell group universities. When I asked her where she had taken her first degree, she said, “I was in an office and started an Open University course, which led directly to this PhD studentship”. We need to ensure that we fully support people who have the capacity to contribute to our society intellectually. At the moment, that is not happening enough.

Grammar Schools

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Andrews on securing this debate and declare a registered interest—an interest that goes back throughout my life, including when I had the privilege of being the Secretary of State for Education and Employment from 1997. That, of course, included piloting through the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998, which included a block on any further extension of selection, but also a range of measures intended to accelerate and build on previous progress on improving the life chances of children in every school, in whichever part of the country they were and whatever type of school they went to. Our mantra was “standards not structure”.

That is why—with, it has to be said, the support of my party and its conference—we chose not to abolish the 11-plus in those areas that chose to continue it, although we did have a cack-handed referendum clause, which never worked. Referendums rarely work, and this one certainly did not. The reason we chose not to go for direction from the centre was because we believed that it would have been a complete diversion of time, energy and focus away from raising standards in schools across the country. What we are presented with in this consultation paper is, once again, a diversion away from raising standards and towards structures.

It is 40 years ago this month since the former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan made his notable speech at Ruskin College, Oxford, on education. It was about a philosophy of modernisation and a change in the era from the 1944 Butler Act. That Act was implemented, it has to be said, by Ellen Wilkinson and Chuter Ede, but in a very different climate that did not require the majority of young people to progress to an academic level that would enable them to engage with the kind of economy that Jim Callaghan foresaw, back in the 1970s, and which we have very clearly reached today.

Callaghan’s philosophy was that it was wrong to rely on a social and economic policy that believed that if you educated the few very well, the benefit they gained would trickle down to the rest and they would then be enabled to succeed in employment and the future building of their family. Clearly, we are out of that era, if we were ever in it. Forty years on, we are also addressing the philosophy of Jim Callaghan that, in liberating the talent of every child, whichever school they go to has to succeed at the highest possible level.

I usually agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, but I say to him today that if this consultation paper were implemented, the imposition would take place of grammar schools where others had chosen not to go down that route. In the system that we have at the moment—and I am proud to support and take part in making a success of a multi-academy trust—the sponsor could determine that they were going to bid for a new grammar school. The existing multi-academy trust system would then allow for the allocation or transfer of an existing school to a selective model. Therefore, it would be imposed without any requirement for consultation or deliberation by other schools or parents in the area.

It was a German Chancellor who once said that the problem with some on the political right is that they promise to the many what they know they will be able to deliver only to the few. Grammar schools do just that. If one is imposed on an area or a transfer takes place to make an existing school selective, the parents and their children who would have expected to go to that school, who would have had an expectation of high-quality education for themselves or their child, will find themselves excluded by some form of examination. It is morally wrong, philosophically wrong and practically impossible to implement. I pray the Government will think again and place emphasis on raising standards for all, not for the privileged few.

Academies: Sponsors

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

We constantly try to encourage local authorities to take greater financial oversight of their schools. However, when we find local authority schools failing, they are often failing both financially and educationally; as I mentioned earlier, we have turned many of these schools into sponsored academies.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare a non-pecuniary interest as the chair of a multi-academy trust. I will attempt to cool the atmosphere. Can we and the Minister agree that, in whatever sector and in whatever form we deal with here, whether multi-academy trusts, free-standing academies or local authority oversight, we are dealing with the issue of probity, and that the greater the transparency, the greater the confidence? This includes the allocation of large sums of money, such as £18 million for investment in improvement in the north of England that is being given to the Dixons Academies Trust. All of us have an interest in getting this right, because it is about the benefit that accrues to the children we serve.

Schools: Religious Education

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with my noble friend.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Will the Minister agree that what might combine both an understanding of the role of science and of religion in the world is good teaching of citizenship in schools so that young people can develop critical thinking skills in a way that enables them to apply them to their life and to the well-being of the community around them?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord. The same could be said of PSHE and character education. We are looking at what more can be done to strengthen the curriculum to further prepare pupils for life in modern Britain through citizenship, PSHE, character education and other matters.

Education and Adoption Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, on my way into the House this morning, I heard someone say that there was going to be an important speech in the Palace of Westminster, and it took me a second or two to realise that it was the President of the People’s Republic of China and not my maiden speech that they were referring to, so I am particularly gratified that so many noble Lords have attended this afternoon. I thank all those who have been providing help, advice and guidance to me; to close colleagues and friends; to the staff in all parts of the House who have provided enormous assistance, for which I am grateful; and for the humbling warmth of the welcome that I have received in this House from all sides. In fact, at one point I thought I had gone to heaven, but I am going to take advice from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely as to whether I shall receive an equally warm welcome when my spirit is elevated to an even higher place than your Lordships’ House.

I hope to learn from, as well as contribute to, the deliberations of this House; to contribute to organic reform rather than revolution; to celebrate the unique role of your Lordships’ House in our constitution, in revising and challenging but not seeking to override the elected House where it has a clear mandate from the people; and to retain a constitutional balance but also a social and geographic balance in our Parliament. In my case, I shall reflect my roots, as well as my love for and commitment to the city of Sheffield, to Yorkshire and to the north of England in the highly London-centric environment in which we currently operate.

What pleasure it has given me over the last week, after five years of losing vote after vote in the House of Commons, to find that I contributed to winning the first vote I had in this House, which seems to be continuing. I do not know how long this will last, but at least it is a good omen. It seems to me that we have a unique opportunity in this Parliament carefully to be able to revise and to try to protect the interests of the most vulnerable.

My life has been transformed by education and the opportunity it has given me to succeed against the odds, but first I should declare my present interests, which are on the register. I have the honour of a chair in politics in practice at the University of Sheffield—working on the political understanding of politics at the Crick Centre—and chairing the board of the University of Law. In the charitable sector, I chair the David Ross Education Trust and, with a little friendly competition from the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, try to demonstrate, along with the best local authorities in England, how collaboration can work best. “Education, education, education” was the mantra when I first became Secretary of State and it is still my mantra today. Young people are our future, which is why I am a board member of the National Citizen Service and president of the Association for Citizenship Teaching. A rounded education is critical to our future. However, young people helping young people and commitment to volunteering has also been part of my life. City Year, which offers a year of service to young people, working with young people in schools in London and Birmingham, and now Manchester, is another example of that commitment.

My own life—from night school and day release to Secretary of State, from council estate to council chamber, and now to your Lordships’ House—gives me a belief that the determinists, the geneticists and the psychologists who believe that it is preordained how a child will progress, are completely wrong. It is the inspiration that can be given from teachers, head teachers and parents who believe in the aspiration that we want for our children that will transform their lives.

I had the pleasure—well, sometimes it was not a pleasure—of being Home Secretary, an important role which I shared in the ministerial team with my noble friend Lady Hughes. I also had the pleasure of being the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions but that was as nothing compared with being the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, which I also shared with my noble friends Lady Morris and Lady Corston who assisted me greatly.

It seems to me that when we passed the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 we were seeking to put standards before structures. We sought to demand that all schools delivered a high standard of education for every child, and we had the introduction of Sure Start and early years provision, and the literacy and numeracy programmes through to the widening of access to higher education. Incidentally, none of that would have been possible had we not been committed wholeheartedly to putting education at the top of the agenda.

I would not have been there had it not been for my noble friend Lord Kinnock. He had the courage to put me on the Front Bench in Opposition way back in 1988, when my noble friend Lord Hattersley—who is currently on his way to watch Sheffield Wednesday play Queens Park Rangers—had his considerable doubts about my future.

I was responsible for the policy paper that the Minister referred to and that was taken forward by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. Like Excellence in Cities and, in due course, the London Challenge, it was intended to ensure that schools in difficulties and coasting schools were given the support they needed. I am sure the Minister will agree that the best programmes for all schools, whether within local authorities or within multi-academy trusts, are the ones in which schools work together and share best practice—where standardisation of best practice, rather than isolation and atomisation, takes place so that the clustering and partnering of schools and the sharing of best practice can take precedence.

Support to schools and between schools is crucial, but so is support to parents—including those adopting children, which we are debating this afternoon—and so is support for special needs and the most vulnerable, who are at greatest risk with such rapid change. I also emphasise the importance of the voluntary sector in specific areas of special needs, including charities such as Sense, which works with children who are blind and deaf and their families, and which is currently consulting on play and early years policy.

If your Lordships’ House will forgive me, I shall conclude my remarks with two very quick appreciations of the lives of two of your most outstanding former colleagues, Lord Howe and Lord Healey. Ten years ago, at a very difficult time in my life, Lord Howe and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, invited me to lunch at their home, a gesture which I have always appreciated. However, I knew Lord Healey best. Back in 1978, in a by-election for what was then the Penistone constituency in South Yorkshire, I was speaking at a meeting at which the then Chancellor of the Exchequer was to be the main guest. I spoke and I spoke and I spoke for about 45 minutes. I said to the congregated gathering, “I really hope the Chancellor arrives shortly, as I have run out of things to say”, and at my elbow a voice—one which noble Lords will remember and recognise—said, “I’ve been here 20 minutes and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it”. I think on this occasion another of my noble friends is at my elbow, telling me that my time is up.