Poverty

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for securing this debate. Clearly, the impact of his personality and talent outside this House will be mirrored by a similar impact within the House, and we look forward to that over the years.

I also congratulate my good noble friend Lady Sharp on her farewell speech. It summed up much of what we value in the contribution she has made to this place. Over the years we have often marched in the same direction, just occasionally varying but not in any dramatic sense. I wish the noble Baroness well in the years to come.

We have heard one or two very influential, important and informative stories. The story I will now tell does not have the drama of the background of the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, but I want noble Lords to imagine an eight year-old boy in 1949 backing out of the door of his council house into two pints of milk, which met their nemesis with a crash and a tinkle. In the terms of the day, I deserved a clip on the ear, but did not get one: there was no crying over spilt milk. However, nearly 70 years later, the words are seared in my memory, “That’s one and tuppence”. To younger Members of the House, that is 6p in new money. It was a great source of distress to my mother because one and tuppence counted in her weekly budget to look after her husband and two sons. That is an abiding memory for me.

Not everyone who is the subject of this debate is in the land of poverty, but very often they are on the margins, and they are there now. We must turn our mind to protecting those on the margins. The distress that my mother felt was real, and many families now have a similar risk of falling on the wrong side of the line. Happily, we did not, but we had some support. This relates to the point that has been raised about central government. I am not a great fan of central government, but by 1949 we had the National Health Service. We had public sector housing, and we lived in such a house, and I attended a very good state primary school. All these services require the input of big government. Many other things are required to tackle poverty, but the role of big government is fundamental in each of those three services. I cannot help also just mentioning a service that resulted from 19th-century charity—namely, the Sir John Anderson library, which was a rich treasure trove which my brother and I cherished and used.

As many others have said, education is one of the fundamental ways in which we can try to deal systematically with the issues of those who are deprived, in poverty, or certainly less fortunate than any of us in this House. I want the Minister to reassure me that he will take this point to the Secretary of State for Education, but that is a bit difficult because that position is a moving target at the moment. I suspect that the issue will be addressed by a letter sent to, ‘‘The Secretary of State whomsoever”. However, I want the reassurance that in the years to come—starting tomorrow, with the new Government that we will have—we will pursue some of the existing initiatives which are making a practical difference. They are not huge ideas, such as the initial founding of free primary school education, to which reference has properly been made, but they are things happening now in our education system as a result of government initiatives over the last 15 years. I will simply itemise some of these.

For example, the Government have initiated very strong pressure on ensuring that numeracy and literacy are at the core of education provision, as was said earlier. I shall give only one statistic in this speech: 50% of adult males in prison are either illiterate or innumerate. That is a walking disaster area and must be dealt with—though I have to say, I believe that successive Governments are focusing on this and trying to do something about it.

There are other things happening in education that are perhaps slightly more innovative. The Government have promised, as the other political parties also did at the last general election—I am a good Cross- Bencher—that early education will have an injection of support and funds. That is critical, because those from so-called deprived homes often start school two years behind those who are more fortunate. Early education has been shown to be a significant factor in dealing with that and moving people up the ratings, therefore enabling them to benefit from the education that is available.

Lastly—it is time for me to stop—I will mention educational innovation, of two sorts. One is technical education and I commend and admire the work of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the late Lord Dearing in creating university technical colleges; it is a benchmark of what can be done in technical education. I was discussing this with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, yesterday and he said, “Poor white boys—this is the thing that is actually helping them”, and we have the evidence for that.

Secondly, to revert to a point already made by my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox, there is a technology available that is not being adequately used in education—I declare an interest as a non-executive chairman of a company called Frog Education. One of the schools in central Birmingham, which is privileged, is using our technology to identify those young people all over Birmingham who could benefit from particular kinds of educational help. I simply ask that the Government use all these means and more to ensure that we deal properly with the causes of poverty.