Equality Act 2010: Children from Disadvantaged Backgrounds

Debate between Vicky Ford and Ben Bradley

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) on securing this really important debate. As he knows, ensuring equality of opportunity is a topic that is close to my heart. I feel privileged to be part of a Government that holds this important issue as a real priority.

The Equality Act provides protection to all children, as well as to adults. We must get away from the perception that protected characteristics in the Act are there only to protect certain groups and exclude others. For example, a white boy at school is covered by the Act in the same way, and to the same extent, as his BAME classmates or schoolgirls of any race. If a white boy from a disadvantaged background feels he has been treated less fairly in educational work compared with his female or BAME peers, he has a means of redress available to him, initially through informal routes, but ultimately at a tribunal if it is felt to be necessary.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield asked about the elements of the Act that relate to positive action. The Act enables positive action to help to ensure that all groups of society are fairly represented, but that is not the same as positive discrimination, where one group might be unfairly favoured over another. Positive action is designed to enable the promotion of a level playing field. An example of positive action is when an employer wants to address the fact that it does not have any disabled apprentices; the employer can favour the recruitment of a disabled applicant over a non-disabled one, provided that their applications are broadly of equal merit. That is positive action.

Positive discrimination is unlawful under the Equality Act, however. If people have evidence of positive discrimination, they should take such cases to the courts or tribunals and call out breaches, to help to ensure that the positive action provisions are used only as intended. The provisions were supported across Parliament when the legislation was brought in in 2010. We support them as a means of levelling up the playing field for disadvantaged groups, but it is really important that the public and private sectors understand the lawful use of positive action. The code of practice and guidance exist for that purpose.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield also asked, most perceptively, about the socioeconomic provisions in the Act. Social status is not one of the characteristics protected by the Act, and we need to be careful not to use it as a vehicle for social engineering rather than as a shield against discrimination. A duty of that kind would more likely result in public bodies trying to retrofit a levelling-down agenda, rather than offering better opportunities for all disadvantaged groups and levelling up.

[Ben Bradley]

I do not mean to try to catch the Minister out here, but can she explain to me the difference between social engineering and positive action?

[Vicky Ford]

Positive action is designed to enable opportunities to be given, as opposed to positive discrimination, which is unlawful. That is why it is so important that the guidance is clear on the subject. We need to promote the level playing field and enable levelling up, and not encourage behaviour that could constitute levelling down.

We need to avoid taking a tick-box approach. Amending part 1 of the Equality Act would not necessarily lead to what my hon. Friend seeks, because there is a real danger that it could create a tick-box mentality, which might be seen as an acceptable substitute for meaningful action. We want to avoid such distractions and concentrate on real help. I assure him that the action he has taken today has ensured that the Government will keep both the legislation and the guidance under review.

We are also improving our approach to equalities. We are reshaping the Government Equalities Office, bringing it closer together with the race disparity unit and the disability unit to create an equality hub. We need to move away from the idea that we are simply dealing with groups that already enjoy Equality Act protection, and instead ensure that we are looking at individuals across the country and identifying those who are most in need, what their biggest barriers to success are and where there is unequal delivery of public services. We want to examine issues such as geography, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) mentioned, where communities in certain areas risk being held back. We also should be focusing on analysing the data, looking closely at individual dignity and opportunity and also at areas such as income and background, so that we have a more holistic view.

We understand, however, that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, including boys, may face greater challenges at every stage of education. We are committed to addressing those challenges, levelling up education standards and improving outcomes.

[Vicky Ford]

Absolutely. One of my passions is the early years of development, and too many children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are falling behind in those early years. It is then so hard to close the gaps once they have emerged, and evidence shows us that what happens in a child’s pre-school years—those very early years—are the most important and have a huge influence on later outcomes. That is why the Government have been making record investments in early education, including 15 hours of free education for all disadvantaged two-year-olds as well as three and four-year-olds. It is also why we have doubled the amount of free childcare available to three and four-year-olds for working parents.

These investments have led to a real improvement. The latest early years foundation profile shows that the proportion of all children reaching a good stage of development by the time they start school—year 1—has gone up from 51%, or one in two children, in 2013 to nearly 72%, or two in three children, in 2019. Furthermore, over the same period, the gap between the children who are eligible for free school meals and their peers at age five has narrowed from 19 percentage points to just under 18 percentage points. Indeed, the same is true in school: because of the education reforms that were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), 86% of schools are now judged to be good or outstanding, compared with only 68% of schools in 2010. As a result, the disadvantage attainment gap has narrowed by 13% at age 11 and by 9% at age 16, and it has narrowed at every stage from early years to age 16 since 2011. However, we know there are still issues in other areas, so we have committed an extra £18 million to the £72 million opportunity areas programme to transform the life chances of young people in 12 of the most disadvantaged areas of the country—those with particularly low social mobility.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South also mentioned the very important issue of exclusions. It used to be the case that looked-after children—children in care—had the very highest rates of permanent exclusion, and we are making sure that those children in care, who often have the worst life outcomes, are supported to succeed in education. For example, we have put in place virtual school heads, designated teachers for looked-after children, and extra funding through the pupil premium plus for this group. The virtual school heads, in particular, have made a significant impact since they were introduced in 2014. Data shows progress across maths, reading and writing for looked-after children, and today, looked-after children are less likely to be permanently excluded from school than all other children. Interventions of this nature are making a real impact on some really disadvantaged groups.

However, we know that the disadvantage gap is at risk of widening because of the pandemic. Lack of digital access is of particular concern, and that is why we have committed over £160 million to support remote education access and provided nearly half a million laptops and tablets to those most in need. We have also announced the £1 billion covid catch-up fund, of which £350 million is going into the national tutoring programme. That will particularly focus support from high-quality tutors on disadvantaged and vulnerable children who are most at risk of falling further behind. The first group of tutors starts on 1 November, and I strongly urge all my hon. Friends to ensure that schools in their constituencies are aware of that element of the catch-up programme and ensure that the vulnerable students in their area receive support.

[Ben Bradley]

I do not expect an answer to this, but I want to highlight a challenge. The poorest school in my constituency in the poorest catchment is very keen to access support for IT, tutoring and everything else, but 25% of parents within the school are illiterate and they do not want to take laptops home because they fear that the laptops will be stolen, or that they will targeted by gangs involved in drugs on the estate where they live. There are children on free school meals, and then there is another group of children who have this huge disadvantage. Will the Government consider that group, who will not be able to engage with laptops and tutors? Is there something else we can do to help them?

[Vicky Ford]

My hon. Friend raises an excellent point. This is why the national tutoring programme will bring extra resources into schools to help young people. That will be on top of the £650 million catch-up fund that has gone to all schools. It will provide extra tutoring and support—one on one, or in small groups—for those individuals, for whom it is so important. This is a deeply challenging time, and we absolutely understand that we need to make sure that the attainment gap does not unnecessarily widen any more. We have spent a decade trying to close it, and we need to make sure that it does not spring apart again, particularly for the cohorts of children that my hon. Friend mentions.

I am enormously grateful for my hon. Friend’s support for this agenda. He has raised important concerns. I particularly note his questions, which we will take up with the Equalities Office. I hope I have helped to explain the difference between positive action, which is allowed, and positive discrimination, which is not. I point him again to the need for continual work on the guidance on this subject, and I will make sure that I continue to raise these points with the Minister for Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch). I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield is happy that the Government’s response today echoes his concerns. We have taken steps to underline the importance of supporting the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, and to make sure that all children from all backgrounds, including the most disadvantaged, have the best opportunities in life.

Question put and agreed to.

Synthetic Cannabinoids: Reclassification

Debate between Vicky Ford and Ben Bradley

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention: he is absolutely right. In the wake of an Adjournment debate that I held in July, 20 police and crime commissioners wrote to this Minister about the issue, stressing exactly what I am saying this morning: unless these drugs are taken seriously and prioritised by police forces in the way class A drugs are, the police will continue to struggle to deal with them at local level.

The point of reclassification is not to criminalise vulnerable users, but to prevent those users from being exploited by drug dealers and to get them the help that they need. The health Green Paper, announced only yesterday in an initial policy paper entitled “Prevention is better than cure”, is a welcome development. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said, focusing on the responsibilities of patients is not about penalising people, but about helping them to make better choices.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend gets too much into the issue of patients, may I bring him back to the issue of policing? My local police have been doing a phenomenal bit of work cracking down on drug activity, and they made a number of arrests last week. They are concerned that there is not strong enough sentencing for the drug barons at the top, who too often are let off, basically scot-free. Does my hon. Friend agree that reclassification should be coupled with stronger sentencing for those peddling these drugs?

[Ben Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention: she is right. The challenge in many cases is that there do not seem to be significant repercussions for dealing in and manufacturing these products. Later I will touch on local examples of people who have gone round and round the judicial system, with a weak sentence for this and eight weeks for that. Not only are the drugs often more available in prison than they are on the streets, but there is no long-term repercussion for continuing to flout the laws, and people just go round and round the system.

[Vicky Ford]

I visited my local prison last Friday. It, too, is doing great work dealing with the drugs there, but the prison governor asked for stronger sentences for the people who commit crimes, especially violent crimes, in prison and said that those should be additional, not concurrent, sentences. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Ben Bradley]

I think that that is a fair point, so I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I for one would like to see drug dealers and manufacturers removed from our streets for as long as possible, so I absolutely concur.

As part of my constituency work, I have focused heavily in the last year or so on homelessness in Mansfield and Warsop. To return to the health funding aspect, I think that we can use this week’s announcement by the Health Secretary and the funding that will be available for our NHS in the coming years to explore ways in which we can put in place community and primary care services for homeless and other vulnerable people and, for these drugs, preventive services. The preventive aspect is exactly what is needed from that funding and what could make a big impact. As I said at the outset, reclassification is not a silver bullet—it is not the only answer. It comes with a need for preventive services in our communities. They are two sides of the same coin when it comes to delivering for my constituents on this issue.

Mansfield District Council and the local police have done everything they can under the current framework to help users, and I commend them for their hard work and dedication. Alongside a local charity called Framework, the council and the police have launched a joint operation to tackle antisocial behaviour relating to the use of Mamba. In the town centre alone, one sergeant, six constables and six police community support officers are working closely with the council’s neighbourhood wardens and antisocial behaviour officers to deal with the problem; that is in addition to CCTV. That demonstrates the enormity of the issue. There are more police officers working in the town centre than perhaps ever before, but the police are still being stretched by this problem. Some kind of drug-related episode, whether it is someone passing out or causing another kind of issue for residents, is still a daily occurrence.

We should not automatically assume that all homeless people are taking these drugs. Of course they are not, but because of the incredibly low cost, there is a high correlation. To some extent, this has become the drug of choice. A dedicated taskforce is focusing on the root causes of homelessness by giving individuals the support that they need to end the cycle of dependency on drugs and alcohol and helping them to turn their lives around. Three outreach workers, who specialise in homelessness, mental health and substance misuse, are supporting the community in Mansfield and trying to build relationships with users, even when their help is rejected, as it often is.

Mansfield is learning from projects in other areas in order to work on its own best practice when dealing with this issue. More than 50 people shared their experience at a recent Mamba seminar, which will provide further guidance for the local authority. I have met people from the Nottingham Mamba clinic to explore new approaches, hear their experience and try to share their work in my constituency. Interestingly, even the drugs workers on the ground in the Nottingham Mamba clinic agree that reclassification would be an important aspect of managing the problem locally. A police inspector in my constituency, Nick Butler, says that the College of Policing has acknowledged that Mansfield is leading the way in dealing with Mamba users and tackling antisocial behaviour and rough sleeping. That is commendable.

We must accept that, in some cases, it gets to the point where enough is enough. Although we can offer individuals help until we are blue in the face, the fact is that people can refuse help or sometimes, for a variety of complex reasons, are not able to accept help. Instead, they end up in an endless cycle of reoffending. We have reached the point where existing powers to deal with repeat offenders no longer have an impact, and local police are calling for further support, as we saw in the example of the police and crime commissioners writing to Government.

Following my debate in July about the societal impact of these drugs, I asked the Government for two things. First, I asked for a national strategy to share best practice, seek medical intervention and support local areas in combating the issue and, secondly, I asked the Government to consider reclassifying these drugs from class B, comparable to cannabis, to class A, in line with heroin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Ford]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again, yet again he is making a really important point. I heard a tragic story when I visited my local prison recently. Three prisoners died after taking drugs. All three were also taking epilepsy drugs and there may be an issue there. With these synthetic drugs, we simply do not know what they do or how they interact with common medicines. Is that not another reason for treating this matter more seriously?

[Ben Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and I absolutely agree. We have seen the impact of these drugs and not only on users; there have been cases of prison officers having to go home sick, having inhaled fumes exhaled by people taking these drugs. The impact is not only on users themselves but on the broader community, which—absolutely—is another reason why this matter needs to be taken more seriously.

It is not yet necessarily recognised in the literature on this subject, but there can be problems for users as bad as bleeding from the eyes and bleeding from orifices. Similarly, teeth falling out has been described by long-term users as a side effect of these drugs, and such things are not comparable with the outcomes and side effects of other class B drugs. It is ridiculous that these symptoms do not warrant a higher classification for these drugs.

Unlike natural cannabis, synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists, or SCRAs, do not contain cannabidiol, or CBD, a chemical that is sometimes sold in our high-street shops, and which appears to possess antipsychotic properties. The psychotic symptoms that occur relatively frequently following SCRA consumption might be linked to the high potency of the drugs and the absence of CBD. In many cases, however, we do not know what is actually in these drugs. That is partly why it is so difficult to have a clear national treatment plan for users; the drugs are manufactured locally and ingredients vary across different regions. Sometimes, the main ingredient is nail varnish remover, but at other times it is not, and the impact on health and symptoms can vary greatly.

Cases have been reported where users choose to take heroin instead of Mamba, as there is more treatment available for heroin. There is no substitute for Mamba in the way that methadone can be used to help heroin addicts to come off heroin. I have been told by service providers off the record that they would prefer to treat people who take heroin, as their understanding is greater and the pathways to support and help are clearer. The fact that drugs workers say, “Actually, I would rather you take this class A drug than a class B drug”, suggests that we have not got classification right.

I have been told anecdotally that these drugs are far more addictive than heroin or cocaine. An article in The Economist emphasised the difficulty faced by outreach workers as they try to help users. Although heroin addicts often have four or five hours of lucidity a day, Mamba is often chain-smoked continuously by users throughout the day. As Members can imagine, that makes having a coherent conversation with a Mamba user a nearly impossible task.

Last weekend, The Sunday Times contained a very interesting article by Rosamund Irwin, which included an account from a user about how much worse the outcomes of taking Spice are compared with those of taking any other drug. In the article, Karen from Blackpool said:

“I’ve been on heroin for over 30 years, I’ve tried every drug, and Spice is by far the most horrible. You can function on heroin, but on Spice I thought I was coming off the world.”

In the same article, Karina, who is from the Salvation Army, says that these drugs

“rob people of their personality, it’s very different to heroin in that you can still have a conversation with a heroin user, but when people are on Spice their body is there, but they are not.”

The impact of these drugs is immense and affects towns across the whole of the UK. Not only is the impact on individuals worse than that of many class A drugs, but the impact on others and on public safety is arguably the worst aspect of all.

I want to see heavier penalties for manufacturers and dealers; I want to see work being done to shut down supply chains for the ingredients used in these drugs; and I want to see that increased risk and difficulty make life harder for manufacturers. In the meantime, I want the police to act, in order to keep people safe on our streets.

I have spoken to the staff of many local services in Mansfield and Nottinghamshire who have seen at first hand the impact of these drugs on our town centres. It is clear that the low price of Mamba and Spice is a key problem. At the cost of as little as £5 for four or five hits, synthetic cannabis is one of the cheapest drugs on the market, but it is also one of the strongest. The effects of these drugs can leave users resembling zombies, slumped in a state of semi-consciousness, sometimes foaming at the mouth and sometimes passed out in the street.

It is uncomfortable enough seeing such things as an adult; it is devastating having to explain to your four-year-old child why there are people passed out on the ground in the market square in Mansfield town centre. That situation has clearly had a negative impact on town centres and local economies. It causes anxiety among shoppers and business owners, reduces footfall and discourages families from spending the day in the town centre.

These drugs have put an extra strain on ambulance services around the country. Figures from South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust showed that between August 2016 and July 2017 there were 157 calls related to synthetic cannabis. That jumped up to 960 calls in the following year. Most of the time, the users hop back up after 20 minutes or so; they are absolutely fine and do not need an ambulance, but that time and money has been wasted. This issue not only affects my constituents in Mansfield and Warsop; it impacts on constituencies around the UK and it is getting worse. The Government need to act now to stop things from worsening further.