Children with Autism (Education)

Debate between Mark Hendrick and Gordon Birtwistle

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Birtwistle]

I am grateful for the intervention. I am trying to explain that people with autism are born with autism. I am trying to find a reason why, in education, we cannot accept this—as a disease or an illness—and work with the families and the children who suffer from this appalling disease. I have met the head of a school not in my constituency, but close by, called Rossendale school. The head said that he could resolve the problem and he has proved that. He has a way of doing that. Unfortunately, Lancashire county council—the hon. Gentleman says that I should not be having a go at it—does not accept that and will not work with the school, which I find pretty hideous, because it needs to do things like that.

[Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that Lancashire county council has 1,435 children and young people suffering from autism spectrum disorder and, as he will hear in my speech, does an excellent job. He omitted from his remarks the fact that Rossendale is a private school and that the council provides excellent state facilities, with specialist experts, and can make that provision available, but he—I am sure that he will expand on this later—is insisting on private education when public education is adequate.

[Gordon Birtwistle]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks, but the families of the children I am talking about would totally disagree—they will no doubt be happy to meet him later to explain the serious problems they are having. I am not pushing for private education. Rossendale might well be a private school, and so too might one or two others. All I am saying is that if Rossendale can provide it, why can Lancashire county council not do the same through the state system? Why can the council not be just as good as Rossendale? I do not want to promote a private school; I want to promote extremely good education for my constituents.

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[Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) on securing this important debate on an issue that is close to the hearts of many Members who are in the Chamber.

Although the hon. Gentleman might not have intended for his speech to be seen as an attack on Lancashire county council, he made many serious accusations against it. As the council is not here in any capacity to defend itself, I think it is important that I respond, as somebody who has spoken to people from the area and county councillors about some of the matters that he has raised.

In Lancashire, 1,435 children and young people have autism spectrum disorder, which is commonly referred to as ASD. Of those children, 1,129 have a statement and 306 are on School Action Plus. Some 698 of those children are placed in mainstream primary and secondary schools, 596 are placed in maintained special schools and 141 are placed in independent, non-maintained special schools. As one can tell from those figures, the three cases that the hon. Gentleman mentioned are very much in a minority and could not, through any statistical analysis, be considered to be indicative of the type of treatment that is going on across Lancashire county council.

[Gordon Birtwistle]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the minority should just be left? Surely all children should receive the same. Is he saying that Lancashire county council has delivered for a lot of people, but not for a minority of people? Should that minority just be left on the scrap heap? Surely he is not suggesting that.

[Mark Hendrick]

Of course I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting that everybody should have the best possible treatment. I want the three cases that the hon. Gentleman presented to be seen not as the norm, but as the exception. All children deserve the best that Lancashire county council can possibly give them. However, given that Lancashire county council has 1,435 children and young people with autism, I would not want three to be considered to be the norm.

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[Mark Hendrick]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I will go on to speak about the work that Lancashire county council is doing in that area. I would be grateful to hear about his experiences in Liverpool if he makes a contribution later.

Lancashire county council also makes provision for short breaks for children with ASD. It has commissioned more than £182,000 of short breaks provision from local specialist autism services, to provide activities for children during evenings, weekends and school holidays, while also providing their parents and carers with breaks from caring. The most recent attainment data at the end of key stage 2 show that 73% of children with ASD made two levels of progress in English, compared with 94% of all pupils, and that 69% of children with ASD made two levels of progress in mathematics, compared with 93% of all pupils. Given those pupils’ conditions, that is a tremendous achievement. Of children who are statemented with ASD and took GCSEs in mainstream schools between 2011 and 2013, 75% gained five A to C grades, including English and maths, which is well above the national average of 60.8% for all children during the same period.

Lancashire schools have access to considerable expertise on autism provided by specialist advisory teachers and educational psychologists. That is supplemented by rapidly developing school-to-school support, where centres of expertise based at special schools provide an increasing range of guidance and support to their colleagues in primary and secondary schools.

For children and young people with more complex autism, Lancashire’s special schools have developed much greater expertise. All special schools for generic learning difficulties are funded to meet as wide a range of special educational needs as possible. They are all able to provide for pupils with autism, and several have chosen to specialise in autism by developing staff training programmes and allocating substantially increased resources to that specialism. In several cases that has been recognised by Ofsted inspectors.

The hon. Member for Burnley raised issues on behalf of three of his constituents where parents are seeking what is effectively private school education for their children who have autism. The council has identified provision in at least two of our maintained special schools, which are judged by Ofsted to be good and outstanding. In those cases, parents have appealed to the first and upper tier tribunals, which have found in favour of the council—he made that point—and directed that the children go to the maintained special schools. The outcome of a further appeal to the upper tribunal by one of the families is awaited.

All Lancashire’s special schools for learning difficulties —23 in total—are rated as good or better by Ofsted. I fully appreciate that parents, particularly of the three children involved, want to fight for what they see as the best opportunities and outcomes for their children—the hon. Gentleman would want that, as would I. However, the recent behaviour, language and actions of those involved—by that I am referring to the hon. Gentleman—has caused considerable anxiety for many families, while also conveying a partial view of the provision made by the council. For schools that are doing a great deal of good work in this area, the constant bombardment by him in the Lancashire press about those schools and the county council is causing considerable anxiety, not only among staff at those special schools, but among many of the parents of children who go to them. It is one thing to represent parents who are concerned about their children—he is entitled to do that—but that also has an effect, rightly or wrongly, on children and parents in other schools where the council is providing good teaching and provision.

On a number of occasions the hon. Gentleman also suggested that Lancashire county council officers have not been completely truthful about their approach to considering parents’ expressions of preference for special educational placements in independent non-maintained special schools, but the council refutes those allegations.

On the specific examples outlined by the hon. Gentleman, the case of Chloe Wold is a tragedy. Nobody looking at the record could say anything other than that. I concur completely with him about her situation. She has been in this condition for some time and is on suicide watch, and I sympathise totally with the parents in this case.

[Gordon Birtwistle]

I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying. He has obviously been well briefed by the county council and is answering the debate on its behalf. However, this debate is on autism in schools. I do not understand where he is coming from. I do not really want him to answer on behalf of the county council. I want to listen to his solutions to the problems that my constituents are suffering.

[Mark Hendrick]

The hon. Gentleman made some fairly serious allegations against the county council and I have received information from the county council that refutes those allegations. If he does not want to listen to that, that is a matter for him. If he wishes to leave the Chamber that is up to him, but I have every right to make these points.

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[Mark Hendrick]

rose—

[Gordon Birtwistle]

No, I will not give way. I believe that the parents represented in this place today will express some concern about what is going on with the staff of Lancashire county council. I certainly have a right to say that because, as I said—

[Mark Hendrick]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister has just mentioned the fact that this is an adversarial system. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman who has raised the debate today not to mention the fact that his daughter-in-law is the speech therapist in one of the cases that he has dealt with?

Jobs and Business

Debate between Mark Hendrick and Gordon Birtwistle

Friday 10th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to make a contribution to the debate on the Gracious Speech, which was delivered earlier in the week. I want to talk about the economy, particularly in relation to apprenticeships and trainees.

I intervened on the shadow Secretary of State about rebalancing the economy, and he accepted that we have to do that. He did not comment when I asked him why the previous Government reduced the 22% of GDP that came from manufacturing to 9%, and how they managed to do that. Rebalancing our economy is vital to get this country out of the financial mess we are in, because we cannot rely on the City and the service sector to pull us out. We came into government three years ago with the manufacturing sector representing, as I said, 9% of GDP. Thankfully, that proportion is now growing.

Unfortunately, we do not have enough people in this country to do the jobs that the manufacturing sector is going to need. It is anticipated that over the next 20 years the civil aerospace sector will be ordering $7 trillion to $9 trillion-worth of new aeroplanes. Many of the parts and engines for those aeroplanes are manufactured in the UK. That will almost double the aerospace industry in the UK, but as things stand we will not have the skills to deliver those products to the industry. That is a big problem.

[Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman will know that Barnoldswick, which is not very far from his constituency, has a major manufacturer of aerospace blades for Rolls-Royce engines. Why do not Rolls-Royce and other similar companies working in the aerospace sector take on and train more apprentices to meet the demand he is talking about?

[Gordon Birtwistle]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I was pleased to visit the Rolls-Royce training facility in Derby only a couple of weeks ago, and I was delighted to see the millions of pounds of investment being put into it. Rolls-Royce has picked up the story and is getting on with it.

There has been a lack of apprenticeships and training, certainly in engineering, in which I have been involved all my life, for the past 20 years. We cannot have someone who is an apprentice today assembling aeroplane engines tomorrow. It is a long process. The Government have started that process with the apprenticeships scheme, and over the next few years we will be able to deliver on this. It is very difficult to train apprentices to become skilled people who can deliver what is needed for $9 trillion-worth of aeroplanes over the next 20 years, but we must get on with it. Thankfully, we have made a start, although we are not moving fast enough.

We quickly need to resolve the situation with the national aerospace supply chain centre, which has been agreed by the Government but for some reason is stuck in the Whitehall mandarins division. Having been here for three years, my view of what goes on behind the scenes with the mandarins is that it seems like “Yes, Prime Minister”. I watched that series on television and thought, “No, it can’t be like that”, but actually it is. We come here and listen to all the statements about what we are doing, and then it is still being done 12 months down the line. Setting up the national aerospace supply chain centre must be a priority, and I hope that it is located at the Samlesbury site of BAE Systems. I hope that the proposed national skills centre will be set up at the same site. That centre will train 600 apprentices a year for the aerospace industry, for United Utilities, and for the shale gas industry—another industry coming through in the north-west that will need skilled people.

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[Mark Hendrick]

We do not need caveats. The Labour Government will not take responsibility for the housing market in the US. The Minister says that we blamed international factors, but the current Government try to blame the eurozone for the current deficit, which is absolutely ludicrous. The policies they introduced when they came to power in 2010 were such that a second dip was likely. We told them a second dip was likely, and that is what happened. We have nearly had a third dip.

The 1 million jobs in the private sector that the Government keep bragging about are low-paid jobs, many are part time, and they are doing nothing to contribute to growth in this country. As we can see, growth is flatlining.

The Government talk about the growth of more than 100,000 apprenticeships. The hon. Member for Burnley was perfectly correct on the excellent apprenticeships offered by companies such as BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and many other good companies up and down the country. When I was an apprentice—I am sure he was an apprentice in his day—apprenticeships generally took three or four years, and apprentices had to gather lots of skills and relevant qualifications. Some of the so-called apprenticeships that the Government label as such are weak and involve very little in the way of qualifications. Some apprenticeships are in things such as cake decoration or hairdressing. We need hard skills in high-tech, high added-value industries to get this country back in growth and back to being a power in the industrial world, but they are not the skills involved in what the Government label the 100,000-plus apprenticeships.

[Gordon Birtwistle]

Yes, I was an apprentice engineer, and apprentices then did three or four years, but I have friends who are apprentice hairdressers and a relation who was an apprentice baker. It is wrong to decry the skills available. It might not take three or four years to learn them because of technology, but people work hard for those skills and deliver a service with them afterwards.

[Mark Hendrick]

I would go along with that, but we are not comparing like with like. I am saying that an apprenticeship over four years that leads to a highly skilled job with well respected qualifications is very different from what is on offer. In the past, those positions have not traditionally been called apprenticeships.

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[Mark Hendrick]

The 3 million figure comes from the European Commission and many other respected and independent bodies. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman, from a sedentary position, wishes to challenge that figure. Can he give me a figure and substantiate it? Voting no in the referendum will have a serious impact. We can argue about whether it will affect hundreds of thousands of jobs or up to 1 million jobs, but it will have a serious impact on employment and our ability to trade.

Many people are saying that due to globalisation we are trading more with countries such as China and India. That is welcome, but is no substitute for the market we have on our doorstep—the EU. Any future trade with the EU, should we choose to leave, will be conducted on terms dictated by the remaining members of the EU, not a British Government. That will have a big impact on jobs and a bigger impact on the prosperity of this country.

[Gordon Birtwistle]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous. Does he agree with the protestations of some Members that if we pull out of Europe Mercedes will still be delighted to deal with us? My concern is whether the people of Germany will still be delighted to deal with Jaguar Land Rover when we are no longer a member and tariff barriers are introduced.

Military Aviation Industry

Debate between Mark Hendrick and Gordon Birtwistle

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Birtwistle]

All military aircraft go out of fashion. By the time the Eurofighter was developed, the countries that would potentially be our enemies were already developing systems to combat it. We have to accept that, as it has gone on for ever. I remember the TSR2—not many people in this Chamber will remember that—which got almost to the point of taking off when the then Labour Government cancelled it. This has nothing to do with politics, really—it has to do with collaboration between countries across the world in developing the fighters.

One thing that I want quickly to mention is the link between military aircraft and commercial aircraft. Modern aeroplanes, such as the Airbus, are built around the technology that has been developed over many years in military aircraft. The fly-by-wire in the Airbus was initially developed in the early stages of the English Electric Lightning aircraft and was developed further for commercial aircraft. Military aircraft sales in this country are very high—I accept that—but they pale into insignificance when they are linked to the sales of commercial airliners.

Rolls-Royce is one of the manufacturers, and much is built in Burnley—the thrust reversers are built at Aircelle. The contracts for the Trent engine and the Airbus wings all involve products that have been developed from old military technology.

[Mark Hendrick]

I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman. As a young engineer, I trained at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment. Liquid crystal was one of the products that was developed there for military use. As we know, that has formed the basis of television sets sold in millions around the world. That is a technology that we developed and that we are not exploiting as a nation because the sets are made in other countries in the far east. The loss of any industry in the north-west would mean that we would lose the spin-off industry, as well as the direct industries that he talks about.

[Gordon Birtwistle]

Yes, that is another industry that developed from military aircraft. My link is from military to commercial and concerns the potential for sales of commercial equipment—that is, the new Trent XWB Rolls-Royce engine that we hope will power the new family of single-aisle aircraft after the Boeing 737s and A320s have finished their lives. All that technology starts in the military field because commercial companies cannot afford to develop the technology. They live off what they get from the Government to develop technologies to power military aircraft, and that spins off into commercial aircraft. When the Government order military aircraft, they might—indeed, I am sure they do—contribute to the development of commercial airliners and engines in this country. Thousands of people work in that industry and we are world leaders in it. We probably produce the best aircraft wings ever built and Boeing is certainly a big customer of many manufacturers in this country, particularly Rolls-Royce, whose Trent engine powers the new Dreamliner, the 777, most of the Boeing 737s and the majority of the Airbus aeroplanes. Hon. Members will know that the new A380 is powered by the new Trent 900 engine.

It is important to keep military aircraft going, but it is also important to keep a focus on the cost of doing so and the cost of developing those aircraft. I understand that Eurofighters cost about £20 million apiece. It is important to link all that together and consider the development of commercial equipment that spins off from military equipment. As I have said, military equipment comes and goes—in my life, I have seen some aircraft cancelled and some that are developed go on to be very successful—but it is important to focus on what we can get from the development of military equipment into commercial equipment, as that is where all the money is made by companies that work in that industry.