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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Before I call the next hon. Member, I remind the House that Madam Speaker has placed a limit of 10 minutes on speeches between 7 pm and 9 pm.
5.31 pm
Mr. Michael Alison (Selby): Clauses 20 and 21 impose important new duties on head teachers and governing bodies of maintained schools generally to prescribe in written form and to enforce acceptable norms and standards of pupil behaviour in schools. It is perhaps a coincidence--if so, it is a helpful one--that we should be debating the Bill as a national consultation is taking place on the conclusions and recommendations of the so-called National Forum for Values in Education in the Community.
The forum was convened on the initiative of Dr. Nick Tate, the chief executive of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority. Although I do not agree with everything in the report, his initiative is to be warmly commended. The initiative was in fact a follow-up to an important SCAA conference in January this year. Dr. Tate's speech on that occasion was to some extent the forerunner and inspiration for the Archbishop of Canterbury's own initiative on 5 July in introducing the House of Lords debate on society's moral and spiritual well-being.
Section 1 of the foundation Education Reform Act 1988 insists that the school curriculum prepares pupils for the
My right hon. Friend will know that five members of the forum's parent-governor group, including Mr. Guy Hordern who is well known in Birmingham, wanted a specific reference made in the report to the cardinal contribution made by the family, sustained by marriage, in creating and transmitting virtues--"virtues" is probably a better word than "values". Mr. Hordern and his minority group wanted to include the words:
Should she need any supportive arguments, I remind my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State--in an effort to strengthen her hand in the lead that she has given--that marriage is a practice and condition supported and sustained by a powerful tripod of Church, state and common sense. I also remind her of the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, who said:
It is perhaps not surprising, given those figures, that a Gallup poll in The Sunday Telegraph of 3 November showed that 75 per cent. of the public believe that schools should teach children that marriage is a good thing. According to the Audience Selection poll in The People, 73 per cent. believe that moral teaching in schools should focus on marriage and the traditional family.
On the role of the state, my right hon. Friend will recall that, since the introduction of the so-called wife's allowance in 1918, our system of taxation has deliberately singled out marriage for specific recognition and support, as in the married man's allowance, the wife's earned income relief and, since 1990, the married couple's allowance. Both Lord Lawson and the present Chancellor specifically rejected the view that the tax system should pay no regard to marriage.
Miss Joan Lestor (Eccles):
I am tempted to follow the right hon. Gentleman and discuss family life; I shall not do so, but I suggest that he should choose his words carefully, because a child whose family does not conform to his specific concept of what marriage and family life should be may get the idea that there is something wrong with that family. Rightly or wrongly, many children today have a different experience of family life from that described by the right hon. Gentleman; we would do them enormous damage if we implied that their way of life was not totally acceptable.
Mr. Brazier:
Will the hon. Lady consider for a moment where her argument leads? What would she say to a friend of mine who was brought up in a home with a violently alcoholic father? Does she think that children should not be taught that it is wrong to be an alcoholic and to beat up children? That is where her argument is taking her.
Miss Lestor:
I do not see the analogy. I am talking not about drunken fathers, but about children who are not in what is regarded as, but never really was, a traditional family, and who may be given the impression that there is something wrong with their situation. When children are alienated from society and people make judgments about them, problems are created. Children must be told that, whatever their family structure and however it is perceived, their family is important.
When I first came to the House more than 30 years ago--I was extremely young--I was told that if I stayed long enough I would hear the same arguments again. That has indeed happened tonight. I am sorry that the Secretary of State has left, because the arguments that we are hearing about grammar schools and comprehensive education and about selection and choice are exactly the same as the arguments that were made against those of us who were involved with the campaign for the advancement of state education and with the changeover to a non-selective system. We should not forget that we have Lady Thatcher to thank for closing more grammar schools than any other Minister.
We were told, and we have been told again tonight, that choice and preference are the same thing, and that under a comprehensive system with no grammar schools parents would lose their right to choose. The words preference
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"opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life."
It is against the background of what I hope my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will regard as a supportive and sympathetic appraisal of Dr. Tate, SCAA and the national forum that I must nevertheless express my strong criticism of SCAA and the forum for taking an unacceptably negative and mealy-mouthed approach to that adult experience known as the family and married life for which the school curriculum and school standards should be preparing children.
"The most important relationships throughout life are those experienced within the immediate and extended family. Children should be nurtured and developed within a stable, moral and loving home environment with preferably both mother and father present in a happy marriage relationship. Marriage and parenting successfully undertaken are very creative of good values in adults and children."
Almost unbelievably, the proposal was disallowed. Its repudiation in the forum's report was dealt with in the following words:
"Four members of one group wanted to include a fifth area for the family, with the emphasis on the need for heterosexual life-long marriage. However this proposal was not accepted by other members on the grounds that it was not a true representation of the analysis of documentation"--
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whatever that bizarre observation may mean--
I hope that it is reasonable to claim that we in the House and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State do have the right and authority to prescribe on family structures. I hope, too, that my right hon. Friend will agree with my stricture that the repudiation of Guy Hordern's advocacy of the norms of marriage and family life is mealy mouthed and unacceptable. I was deeply relieved when, on 27 October, I heard my right hon. Friend specifically criticise the deletion and omission of the minority group's references to marriage in the forum's report. I very much hope that she will stick to her guns and continue to have the splendid courage of her convictions, which she manifested in her initial reaction to the forum's report.
"and the belief that neither they nor SCAA had the authority to prescribe on family structures. However, all members were eager to stress the quality of family life."
"Cohabitation is not and cannot be marriage in all but name. Marriage is not cohabitation. Marriage is the institution which is at the heart of a good society and let us not be reluctant to say so. I do not say this in condemnation. I say it as an invitation to a better way."
I also remind my right hon. Friend of the key facts of family life. The Family Policies Study Centre, for example, showed in a 1995 survey that 71 per cent. of children live with their married father and mother; 3 per cent. of children live with a cohabiting mother and father at any one time, and almost all cohabiting couples get married after they have a child; 17 per cent. live in a lone mother household; 7 per cent. live with their mother and stepfather, married in the case of 4 per cent. and cohabiting in the case of 3 per cent.; and 2 per cent. live in a lone father or other such household.
I cannot think of a more clear-headed and specific endorsement of the concept of marriage than the Government's providing substantial budgetary support for people preparing for marriage and for those with marriages in difficulty; and yet SCAA, in the consultation process following the forum, has not had the guts and the common sense to recognise that everybody--but everybody--believes that the only rational and sensible way to bring up children is to encourage marriage and the married state.
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