Children and Families Bill

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister on his legislative debut, and say how much those of us who hope to make a contribution to this important Bill appreciate that, in line with his predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, whose performance was so widely admired on all sides of the House, he has already made himself so readily available to us. I also say how much I admire the way that the Minister for Children and Families, Mr Edward Timpson, took the Bill through the other place, and appreciate that he also makes himself readily available. In supporting the general thrust of the Bill, I am glad that Part 3 in particular received such intense scrutiny in the other place.

I declare two interests and one advantage, plus my experience as Chief Inspector of Prisons. First, I chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Speech and Language Difficulties, which earlier this year published a report on the link between social disadvantage and speech, language and communication needs. Secondly, I chair the Criminal Justice and Acquired Brain Injury Interest Group, the founder of which, Professor Huw Williams of Exeter University, has published much valuable research on the number of sufferers who are in the hands of the criminal justice system. My advantage is that I have the pleasure and privilege of sharing an office with my noble friend Lord Rix, who fights so tenaciously for the best interests of those with learning disabilities. Exploiting his vast experience, we often discuss the absence of difference in the process of assessing and treating those with learning disabilities and difficulties. That leads me to the first of my three pleas to the Minister, namely that the birth-to- 25 pathways mentioned in the Bill should not be confined to those with SEN but should be developed as a universal tool to be used with and for every child in the country, to ensure that no possible impediment to learning is missed.

I say that because I believe very strongly that SEN is too narrow a qualification for the continuous programme of assessment and treatment that makes up both the Healthy Child programme, one part of which is speech and language, and the proposed pathways. There is growing evidence that language competence is critical scaffolding for a readiness to learn, and that well developed communication and word skills are fundamental to a good start in the early years at school. In researching for our report, we learnt of some excellent work being done now in different parts of the country to enable every child to engage with appropriate stages of education, an intention that appears to be clearly at the heart of Part 3. I therefore welcome the flexibility inherent in pathways that consist of assessment followed by local offers of individual education, health and care plans, because that is a framework that can accommodate those with speech, language and communication needs as well as SEN, should they be added, as I hope that they will, as a result of amendments to be tabled in Committee.

My second plea, included in our report, goes way beyond the Minister’s pay grade. How do the Government expect a junior Minister in the Department for Education, even one as able as Edward Timpson, to co-ordinate the essential contributions of the Department of Health, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Justice and of course the Treasury to his department’s Bill? Because the Bill affects every child in the country, I would have thought it sensible to consider co-ordination responsibility being held by a Cabinet Office Minister.

I turn to those who enter custody, either, as now, with unidentified special educational or special learning and communications needs or, in future, following assessment and with an existing education, health and care plan. During my inspections of young offender institutions, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, I learnt that more than 60% of detained children and young people had what are described as neuro-disabilities in an excellent report just published by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Youth Justice Board, entitled Healthcare Standards for Children and Young People in Secure Settings. In other words, they have traumatic brain injury, special speech, language and communication needs, ADHD, learning disabilities and educational needs and the autistic spectrum disorder. Yet Clause 70 of the Bill is headed, quite starkly, “Part does not apply to detained children and young people”. It goes on to say:

“Nothing in or made under this Part applies to a child or young person who is detained in pursuance of … an order made by a court, or … an order of recall made by the Secretary of State”.

I am sure that noble Lords will agree that this means that Part 3 of the Bill does not apply to young people in custody. Unable to believe that the Department for Education could knowingly publish legislation that ran counter to the recently announced intent of the Ministry of Justice to put education at the heart of custodial provision, I immediately wrote to the Minister for Prisons, presuming that he would be seeking to have the clause removed from the Bill. I received a courteous but thoroughly unconvincing explanation from the Minister for Children, saying that the clause is intended to prevent conflict with Sections 18 and 562 of the Education Act 1996, which put the duty to deliver education and support in custody on to local authorities, inserted by the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, by ensuring that local authorities are not put in the impossible position of having to implement rights and protections for those in custody that may not be appropriate to their circumstances. I would have thought that the issue was far better covered by Clause 25(1)(b)(i) and (ii) of the Bill, which says:

“A local authority in England must exercise its functions under this Part … where it thinks that this would … improve the quality of special educational provision … made in its area for children or young people who have special educational needs, or … made outside its area for children or young people for whom it is responsible who have special educational needs”.

Bearing in mind that the Ministry of Justice consultation was set in train because local authority provision was not working, I hope that the Minister will withdraw the clause before Committee, otherwise I give notice that I shall table an amendment that it does not stand part of the Bill.

Those are my three pleas, and I look forward to pursuing them in Committee. I am of course interested in Part 5 and the role of the Children’s Commissioner but, because it affects every child and therefore the future of our great country, I hope to contribute particularly to Part 3.