English Language Classes for Women

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my local government interest. This is not an interest as such, but I also inform the House that my wife spent her working career teaching English as a second language, very often to Muslim women, although to lots of other people as well.

This latest controversy seems to be part of a growing number of statements and discussions by persons in prominent positions in public life and the media in which there is an increasing use of what I would call fast-and-loose and dangerous language. For example, the Prime Minister, who really ought to know better, talked some time ago about “swarms” of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Yesterday, he talked about a “bunch of migrants” at Calais. On this particular issue, he associated Muslim women’s isolation with extremism. This is all part and parcel of a wider tendency that includes the obsession with the niqab and stories about red doors and red, white and blue wristbands for seekers of asylum. This all reflects, it seems to me, a lack of knowledge and understanding by people in prominent positions of communities different from theirs and a lack of respect for other people—not for other Muslims, other women or whatever, but for other people—and a lack of the ability to empathise with people and to respect them before talking about them.

The proposal mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, to test women on spousal visas after two and a half years, with a not-very-hidden threat of removal if they have not improved their English, is quite extraordinary. Someone coming over to get married or to live with their husband will have other things to do in the first two years than to spend a lot of time improving their English. They will be setting up their home and will probably be having their first child, and perhaps their second. Under those circumstances, to then threaten people with removal from the country—I do not know whether they are threatening to remove the children as well—is just extraordinary. It seems almost inconceivable that this would ever happen, but to talk about it has such an effect, and is seen as such a threat, that it is ridiculous.

As noble Lords will know, I live in Pendle, where there have been very successful schemes for more than 40 years specifically targeted at teaching English, originally to Asian ladies, although more recently it has spread to people from other parts of the world. Throughout this time, people have not discovered a reluctance to learn English: people know they need to learn English and they want to learn it. However, over that time, and particularly perhaps in the last 10 years, services have been run down, weakened or abolished. Skilled teachers have gone to get other jobs, sometimes in other places in other parts of the world. There has been a loss of expertise and a loss of the local knowledge of the communities, and the people who these classes are being offered to, which comes with provision of that kind. The main problem now is not that people do not want to learn English but the lack of adequate, professionally provided classes and other provision.

My final point is that the original teaching that took place 40 or 45 years ago was based on home tuition. A whole range of volunteers was found and trained to go and teach English in people’s homes. Then classes outside the home were developed. That resulted in personal friendships which still endure today, yet that is all being swept away.