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9.1 pm
Mr. David Amess (Southend, West): I rise to support the reasoned amendment tabled in the name of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. I do so because I am anxious about certain parts of the Bill--my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) gave a fair account of the problems involved.
All hon. Members are united in our desire to give all our children the best possible opportunity, regardless of whether they are disabled or have learning difficulties. It is interesting to reflect on how legislation is first brought to the House. Does it come as a result of the work of pressure groups, or is it based on the advice of civil servants? Does it derive from the experiences of individual Members of Parliament? Some hon. Members are disabled, and many had special learning difficulties when they were children. When I was a small child, I had to go to a speech therapist for three years, reciting the phrase "how now, brown cow" and so on. I am very grateful for the help that I received, and not at all ashamed.
It is on the record--and I am sure that the Minister will accept this--that the Secretary of State did not entirely enjoy his experience at school. My brother-in-law is blind, and my wife's sister has very little sight. They are about the same age as the Secretary of State, and went to a school similar to the one that he attended. However, their experiences are different from his. He has all the power, and they have no power at all.
I want to share with the House the practical effects of the Bill. When my noble Friends Lady Blatch and Lord Baker spoke in the other place, they were very concerned about how the Bill would be funded. Lord Baker thought that the costs would be astronomical in educational terms, and felt that the Government had not estimated the financial consequences of what they were doing. The care
in the community policy was very expensive, as the House knows, and I believe that the Bill will also turn out to be very expensive.At the start of the debate, hon. Members asked whether anyone could point to an organisation that was not in favour of the Bill. Given that other hon. Members wish to speak, I shall not spend time on that point, but there are any number of organisations--
Mr. Berry: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Amess: I will not give way, as that would be unfair to other hon. Members. I want to tell the House that there are organisations that have expressed concerns about the Bill, among them the Royal National Institute for Deaf People. The letter from the National Association of Head Teachers, which has been referred to, shows that that association, too, has reservations, which it outlines.
I want to share with the House what has happened in Southend. The Liberal-Labour council, driven by the Government's intention to develop their policy of inclusion, decided to consult. The council's proposals have upset parents and children alike. I went round all the schools, and not one parent wrote saying "David, for goodness' sake, we must close these special schools and put the children into mainstream schools."
My constituency has magnificent schools, including Lancaster, Kingsdown, St. Christopher, Fairways special needs unit and Priory school, which, along with the school mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde, also received a magnificent Ofsted report. In the neighbouring constituency we have St. Nicholas school. I pay tribute to all the teachers for the magnificent job that they do.
The chairman of the education committee, Councillor Mrs. Sally Carr, said to me that this was a fine policy, but did the Government realise that, perhaps uniquely, there was a teacher crisis in Southend? We do not have the number of teachers that we need in our secondary and junior schools. One need only look at The Times Educational Supplement, which advertises a huge number of vacancies, to realise that there is a dire shortage of teachers. Is it any wonder, considering the Government's policy outlined in circular 10/99? There are three cases in Essex of children who have been caught with drugs on school premises. Government circular 10/99 has enabled the parents to appeal against the exclusion of such pupils. The Government's policy is that if children bring drugs into school their parents can appeal against their expulsion and they can be taken back. Children can be permanently excluded only if they are actually selling drugs on school premises.
That has obviously undermined a number of head teachers, who have quite rightly expelled children caught with drugs on school premises. However, as a result of Government circular 10/99, whose potential consequences the Government presumably fully understood when they issued it, the good reputation of those heads has been completely undermined.
I spoke this afternoon to Mr. Peter Brown from Essex Mencap about the Bill. He said that everyone welcomes inclusion in so far as it means assisting people with learning disabilities to access community facilities where it is their wish to do so. Those are not my words; they are the words of Mr. Peter Brown, who also said that although
politically correct thinking says that the learning disabled should use community facilities, in fact in many cases they prefer to associate with people who are also learning disabled. Mr. Brown drew an analogy: people want to play tennis with others on their level, not necessarily with professionals. Mr. Brown said that of course Mencap was against discrimination and that it was not against the learning disabled having access to community facilities. However, he was wary of the danger of pushing people with learning disabilities to do something that they were not necessarily comfortable with for the sake of political correctness.The head teacher of one of our excellent special schools said that if we are to begin the process of inclusion, we must ensure that mainstream schools have the right resources and staff to provide services.
I presume that Labour Members are putting it around that the Conservative party is opposed to helping children with learning difficulties and disabled children. However, we all know that that is not so. As parliamentarians, we want to be party to good, sensible legislation, so we should scrutinise measures.
I salute all those teachers who are working so hard. We have a tremendous teacher shortage at present. It is all very well for the Government to say that this Bill is wonderful and that it will help all our children, but it will fail if it is not carefully thought through and if we do not have the resources to back it up.
9.10 pm
Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen, South): Like many Members, I welcome the Bill. I, too, have received a large number of representations from organisations in Scotland; they also welcome the Bill and hope that it will pass speedily through this place so that it can be enacted before a general election comes along.
I have always felt strongly about the subject of the Bill--it is very dear to my heart. Apart from my first four and a half years and the past four years since my election to this place, I have spent all my life in education. It is a pity that the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) is not in his place--although perhaps I am glad. Earlier, he was jumping up and down heckling my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.
I spent a long time in education not because I was a slow learner, but because I became a teacher. I felt passionately about that. However, I almost did not become a teacher, because in 1973, when I applied to the college of education in Aberdeen, I was told that I could not go there. Why? Because I had an encroaching disability, and people with disabilities could not be teachers. I suffered discrimination.
Had my disability been slightly more advanced while I was at school, I might not have been able to attend a spanking new school in 1970, when I was in the fourth year of secondary school. At that time, I was still walking, although my legs were beginning to break and so on. Had I been in a wheelchair, I would not have been able to go to that school, but would have had to go somewhere else. As I lived in a rural community, it would probably have been several miles away--possibly in Dundee, 26 miles away. Thirty years ago, that was a long distance. In 1970, no one even thought that someone in a wheelchair could attend mainstream school.
I felt passionately about the fact that education was left out of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. That was a glaring omission and I am glad that the Government are putting it right.
In my comments, I had intended to concentrate on part II of the Bill, because its anti-discrimination provisions are relevant to Scotland; part I deals with special educational needs and does not apply to Scotland. However, as I have been called towards the end of the debate and shall perhaps be the last Labour Back Bencher to speak before the winding-up speeches, I want to correct some of the impressions given by Conservative Members.
I have looked carefully at the Bill. Nothing in it suggests the end of special schools, and no Labour Member has said that. I, more than most people, appreciate that, due to advances in medical science, an increasing number of babies and young children survive and live with severe disabilities who would have died in previous generations. They will need an enormous amount of support if they are to be educated. Sometimes that will be in special schools, but I find that, in Scotland, they are frequently educated in special units of mainstream schools. The situation may be different in England and Wales.
Those children do not necessarily follow a mainstream curriculum. Indeed, they may not be very integrated with the mainstream. They go through the same school gate, but they attend a specially equipped unit. They often mix with the other pupils at interval time and lunch time, but there is a special curriculum that they can access. In some cases, they mix and match: sometimes they dip into the mainstream curriculum; at other times, they are taught in the special unit. I taught at a school where there was such a unit. Nothing in the Bill outlaws any of that provision.
The Opposition want the Bill to be passed, but if their amendment is accepted, the Bill will not receive its Second Reading and it will fall. Thus many parents who want their children to receive mainstream education will be denied it, as happens now. Parents who want special education for their children will not be denied it under the Bill, but if it is not passed, plenty of children--perhaps younger versions of myself--will be denied access to the school of their choice, because the local authority or the school can say that it is too expensive to put in the necessary ramps or lift, or that it is too difficult to find a way round the barriers that exist in the school. I therefore hope that the Opposition will think again and reconsider the Bill.
I had intended to concentrate on part II, and I shall do so now. Much has been said about whether the Government listen. I can attest, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne), that the Government have listened to those representing the Scottish dimension. RNIB Scotland and Children in Scotland were concerned that the model of English special educational needs provision would be used as a delivery mechanism in Scotland. They felt that that might be inappropriate if rolled out in Scotland.
The Bill is interesting because it is, I think, the first of its kind--it will put the devolution settlement to the test. We are legislating on a reserved matter--anti-discrimination legislation--but it will be applied to a devolved matter, education. The test is to find out whether the right relationships exist between the House and the
Scottish Parliament, and between the officials at the Department for Education and Employment and those at the Scottish Executive.Initially, charities in Scotland, such as Children in Scotland and RNIB Scotland, were concerned that perhaps the relationship was not right, but many of their anxieties were laid to rest after a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Ms Hodge), who has responsibilities for disabled people. They were anxious about two matters: the code of practice and the planning duties.
I shall deal first with the planning duties. The Bill states:
- "The duty to produce an accessibility strategy or plan will not extend to Scotland."
It is interesting that the Scottish Minister who will be in charge of implementing those provisions is the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Aberdeen, South--a Liberal Democrat, working in a Labour-led coalition. I spoke to him yesterday, and he is very well aware of the issues. I am sure that the Scottish children's charities will be in touch with him to ensure that, if the Bill is passed, the time scale for implementation in Scotland is in line with that in England, and that that is done speedily and timeously, as I hope it will be in England.
I seek the Minister's assurance that the Government will continue to work with Ministers in the Scottish Executive and their officials. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun has already paid tribute to the officials at the Department for Education and Employment. I should like to add my thanks to them and the Minister for listening and for taking those concerns seriously.
I appreciate that, whether in Scotland or England and Wales, there must be a rolling programme within the strategic development plan that will make schools accessible. I understand that we cannot do everything at once. We cannot suddenly make all schools accessible to every child overnight, and the needs that should be met first are those in schools with children who have real needs; they should be foremost on any plan. However, I seek an assurance from the Minister that we shall try to speed up that process to make it as rapid as possible. It is not just pupils who use schools. Parents have to visit them for parents evenings, and I hope that there are more disabled teachers than there were when I left the profession four short years ago. I hope that I will not have to go back into the profession--although I must say that that would not be a problem for me. I really enjoyed my time in it, but "Not just yet, please" is my plea to my constituents in Aberdeen, South.
Parents, teachers, relatives and visitors all use schools. When I was a teacher, I used to coach the debating team in my school and I had enormous problems getting into other schools when I visited them with the debating team. I would not like to tell the House how many flights of stairs I had to be carried up to reach debating halls. It was ridiculous and no teacher would have wanted that to happen, but that was often the only way in which I could get to the halls.
Matters are improving, and such problems do not exist in every school and local authority. Things have moved on dramatically in 30 years, and there are examples of good practice, but the time has come to legislate to ensure that those problems that still exist are properly addressed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun also referred to the need for a Scottish code of practice. I reiterate that point because it is important. The code of practice is not just about physical adjustments, as the example of Julia shows. She arrived in Arbroath aged 11 with her mother, having gone to special schools throughout her primary career. Her mother wanted to put her into mainstream education, so she looked for a secondary school and Julia arrived at the school in which I taught before I was elected.
Julia had severe cerebral palsy. Although she had good oral skills, she could not move much of her body. She had an electric wheelchair and, with an auxiliary, she was happy at school. Her mother told me that, for the first time in Julia's life, people would say hello to her and ask her how she was when she went down the street on a Saturday morning. She had never been part of a community before. Attending school was good for Julia and good for the other children. The worst scallywag in the class bought her a box of chocolates for her birthday. We think, but are not sure, that he bought them; they came in a brown paper parcel.
The interesting point about Julia's story is not that she went to a mainstream school, but how she ended up at the school in which I taught. There are two schools in Arbroath: the one in which I taught is a 1960s monstrosity with glass, many different levels and lots of stairs; the other is a brand-new school that is properly adapted with wheelchair access everywhere. Julia lived in the catchment area of the new school, so why did she end up at the school with worse access?
The school was not a problem for me. I was an English teacher on the ground floor and the pupils came to me, but there were problems in the school. Julia came to my school because, when her mother visited the two schools, she found that their attitudes were totally different. One said, "Oh, I'm not sure how we can cope with that; that might be quite difficult", while the other said, "Yes, I see that that might be a problem, but I am sure that we shall find a solution." It found a solution and Julia was able to get upstairs even though there was no lift. The local education authority bought a brand new, super-duper, stair-climbing wheelchair. It cost £6,000 and it belonged not to Julia but to the LEA. However, that piece of lateral thinking got Julia round the school relatively cheaply. The solution was certainly much cheaper than installing lifts. I echo the opening remarks of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State: that was seeing a way round the problem rather than seeing the problem.
Education is the basis for ensuring that young people are given equality of opportunity. It is crucial if we are to raise their expectations and aspirations. We must give them goals to aim for, hope for the future and the opportunity to realise their potential.
Young people with disabilities need those opportunities as much as their peer group. If the education system discriminates against them, that discrimination will follow them throughout their lives, denying them the chance to succeed and to be all that they can be. Discrimination has no place in education, which is why I am pleased that the Labour Government will outlaw it. I make a last minute plea to the Opposition: please withdraw your amendment. Some matters can be argued in Committee, and it would be inappropriate to vote against Second Reading tonight.
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