Children and Families Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have been tempted into the Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, who asked if I would put my name to her amendment. I was very glad to do so.

To begin, I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, made some very telling points in her speech. I often wish that we had never had the internet invented but the fact is that it is there, it cannot be uninvented and it has brought a new dimension to the lives of young people—a dimension with which they find it exceptionally difficult to grapple. The noble Baroness was very right to underline that.

Many years ago, because I have been in this building for 43 years, I was a schoolmaster for 10 years. When I talk to my grandchildren—three granddaughters and a grandson, ranging in ages from eight to 16—I realise what a very different world they are growing up into. The challenges and moral dilemmas they face are so different from those of the relatively simple and stable society when I taught in a Church of England school in the early 1960s. Perhaps the biggest problem we had to deal with was the odd Woodbine behind the bicycle shed. Now our young people, almost all of whom are computer literate and equipped with mobile phones—of a very advanced nature in many cases—have their privacy invaded and eroded in a way that most of them are not emotionally able to tackle.

I am not a believer in censorship. I never thought I would hear myself saying this in either House of Parliament but I am afraid that I have come to the conclusion that we must censor this heavy pornographic material which pollutes minds, distorts lives and destroys them, often even before they have properly begun. If that means being very tough with the purveyors of this filth, and denying adults access to it, so be it. Not a single life is enhanced by the filth and degrading material that we know about and read about. In Parliament, we must be adult enough and give leadership to provoke our Ministers and political leaders in all parties into accepting that we cannot solve these problems by pussy-footing around.

I am wholly with the noble Baroness in what she sought to say in referring to her amendment. I suggest to my noble friend the Minister that it would be no bad thing if he and the Secretary of State convened a meeting of Members of both Houses of Parliament to discuss ways and means of tackling this appalling problem. It must be Members from all political persuasions because this is not, in any sense, an issue where party should raise its head for a moment.

Now, I pass back to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, which I was very glad to sign. I am delighted that she has survived her encounter with a New York pavement. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, did, I congratulate her on her very cogent presentation of an amendment that is in fact a statement of common sense. That is why I strongly support it.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, knows, because he has been good enough to see me on a number of occasions since the debate on citizenship, that I have a passionate interest in that. I have been able to convene a group of Members of your Lordships’ House from all parties and the Cross Benches, and we met with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, just three weeks ago to discuss our desire to see citizenship playing a much more important part in the curriculum. We would like to think that all young people, before they leave school have the opportunity to participate in their local communities in one way or another. The noble Lords, Lord Clarke of Hampstead and Lord Ramsbotham, talked about bodies such as the National Trust, which wish to engage the services of young people. It does not matter whether their interest is in helping the elderly or the young, or engaging in heritage or environmental projects. Each young person is a member of his or her community and should recognise that that brings with it obligations as well as rights. We have suggested to the Minister that we would like to see every young person, having engaged in community service, having the opportunity to have a citizenship certificate. That is not a cataloguing of academic achievement, but recognition of their participation in the community. We base this on the citizenship ceremony, which was denigrated before it happened. People who become British citizens go through this, and many of them think it is a wonderful rite of passage, which it would also be for our young people to have something similar. That was one reason, when I saw the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, why I was so glad to add my name to it.

There are other reasons. The noble Baroness talks in the preamble about:

“Duty of schools to promote the academic, spiritual, cultural, mental and physical development of children”.

That spiritual dimension is, sadly, all too often neglected. Without vision, they say, the people perish. Without a spiritual dimension, young people—all people—are impoverished. There should be this opportunity, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, is so right to highlight that in bold letters at the beginning of her new clause. Following on from that, the pastoral care, about which she talked movingly, really ought to be at the core of any good school’s being. You do not know a pupil unless you know his or her home and social background, just as a doctor who only sees people in a surgery and never at home has a one-dimensional view. How many of the awful, dreadful things that have happened in recent years may not have happened if there had been a greater degree of pastoral care and real knowledge on the part of the school? The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, is so right to emphasise:

“focused on the safety and well being of pupils and which, where appropriate, works in conjunction with support systems”.

I would also say, “works in conjunction with”—if they have a religious faith—“the priest”, or “the imam”, or whoever. It is very important indeed.

--- Later in debate ---

In conclusion, the best people to help schools deal with changing technology are, in our view, the experts. Our SRE guidance directs schools to draw on the up-to-date advice produced by experts for use in sex and relationship education. SRE is a sensitive area, in which expert organisations and professionals have an essential role to play, but in our view that does not require the Government to revise existing guidance. We consider that publishing the information set out in the current school information regulations and academy funding agreements is the best way for parents to have access to the key information. Teachers should be given more freedom, not less, to decide the content of the curriculum. However, we do not disagree at all about what we are trying to achieve here. I would like to reinforce that point: we do not disagree at all, it is just a question of methodology. I would be happy to discuss further all the points raised today but I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Cormack]

Will my noble friend amplify that point? He very kindly said that he would be glad to convene a meeting to discuss this appalling problem of the internet. Could he give reasonable notice of that meeting and try to convene it as soon as is reasonably possible?

[Baroness Warnock (CB)]

Can the Minister answer the point made by my noble friend Lord Listowel about the ways in which teacher training could concentrate on this area that I roughly think of as moral teaching? There is no requirement that this should be taught in any particular way. I quite agree with the noble Lord about the futility of making lists but the point is that teacher training does not concentrate sufficiently on it simply because it is not part of the national curriculum. Can he say what he thinks about my noble friend’s point?