UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE select committee on modernisation of the house of commons
connecting parliamentwith the public
Wednesday 1 march 2006 Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 36
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Modernisation of the House of CommonsCommittee on Wednesday 1 March 2006 Members present Mr Geoffrey Hoon, in the Chair Liz Blackman Ms Dawn Butler Ann Coffey Mr Greg Knight Mark Lazarowicz Mrs Theresa May Mr Richard Shepherd Graham Stringer Andrew Stunell Mr Edward Vaizey Lynda Waltho Sir Nicholas Winterton ________________ Witness: Lord Adonis,a Member of the House of Lords, Minister for Schools, Department for Educationand skills, gave evidence. Q1 Chairman:Lord Adonis, could I begin by thanking you for coming to the ModernisationCommittee and for setting out the work that has been done so far on citizenshipas part of the National Curriculum. Weare extremely grateful for you sparing time, not least because we anticipateyou have had one or two things to do over the past few weeks. Lord Adonis: Like other membersof the Committee, I have been practising democracy. Q2 Chairman:I am grateful as well for the material that you have supplied to us alreadywhich I am sure has been read assiduously by all of my colleagues; I will betesting them on it later. Would youlike to begin by setting out where we are and the nature of the citizenship componentof the National Curriculum? Lord Adonis: I should say thatthe Government is very grateful for the reports of your Committee which we havetaken great heart from, and the emphasis that you give to citizenship educationin schools. Citizenship education hasonly been going for three years in schools as a formal statutory curriculumsubject. There was a great debatebefore it was introduced about whether it was wise to add further burdens tothe statutory curriculum and, as you will all know from your constituencyaffairs, head teachers do not like the Government telling them that there aremore things that they need to do on a statutory basis. In fact, citizenship has been remarkablywarmly received as a subject partly because people understand the importance ofit and its three key components: political literacy, community engagement andsocial and more responsibilities. Theysee as important things in light of schools as much as in the teaching that pupilsreceive. They have accepted that it isimportant but they have also found it a good way of engaging more widely withtheir local communities. I have foundin many schools I visit this has led to a much more intensive relationship withlocal councillors, with other elected representatives, with organisations likethe Hansard Society which have materials and support to offer. It has led to a great wave of enthusiasm inan area which was, I think, neglected too much before we introduced citizenship. But, of course, it has been an entirely newsubject from scratch. There were nodedicated citizenship teachers until we introduced the subject. There were no PGCE courses for the trainingof teachers or materials. There areexcellent organisations such as the Citizenship Foundation that have beensending out materials for years like the Young Citizen's Passport which, I amglad to say, when I was reading it this morning, has a very good and largelyaccurate section on Parliament except that it remarks that the powers of theHouse of Lords to eject Bills are in order "to protect against power beingseized by a dictator"! There is a goodattempt there to get to grips with and to give people more information aboutthe essential work of Parliament. Werecognise in the DfES that we have a huge job of work to do to get citizenship mainstreamedin schools and get a very large body of teachers who are competent in leadingwork in this subject. That is why wehave established a new PGCE course and that has more than 200 students a year. We are going to introduce nationwide a newcertificate which existing teachers will be able to take which the Governmentwill pay for for the next two years, that will be for 1200 teachers in citizenship. We have worked with the PEU and the HansardSociety in areas like mock elections where we have provided funding for schoolsto conduct mock elections. We have putout schemes of work alongside the National Curriculum. We have sponsored the development of thehalf GCSE in citizenship which is now the fastest growing GCSE. I have some papers here if members areinterested in seeing them afterwards. Theygive good weight to the work of Parliament itself. I picked one up at random this morning and the whole theme in oneof the GCSE courses that is on offer in schools is "Power, politics andParliament" and there is a whole set of questions in this GCSE papers startingwith "What is a constituency? Explainthe difference between an MP and a government minister. Why are high turn outs of voters desirablein elections? What is proportionalrepresentation? Give one reason for andone reason against changing the way MPs are elected to the House ofCommons." I expect that once they havehad a visit from any member of your Committee they would be able to give tenreasons either way. There are goodmaterials going out there to support the work of teachers but we do recognisewe have more to do and we are investing more in this area in the ways I haveindicated and we will welcome the further work of your Committee in takingforward further investments. I wouldjust add that we would also pay careful attention to Lord Putnam's report - theHansard Society report - which we regard as a valuable piece of work. There are a number of recommendations thereabout the work of the PEU and how that could interact better with schoolswhich, speaking personally, I strongly support. Speaking personally, for example, I would welcome the use of thetwo chambers in the recesses for school councils or the Youth Parliament. I know that the Youth Parliament wouldwelcome opportunities like that. My ownsense is that Parliament is not sufficiently accessible for young people and itis not simply more organised visits - although that is important - and expandedwork that the PEU could do that the Hansard Society recommended, but also amuch greater sense of public accessibility to representative groups of studentsand young people. We have a thrivingYouth Parliament; we have very thriving school councils now. I hardly ever visit a school now that doesnot have a school council which regards itself as a kind of mini Parliament inthe way they undertake their activities and responsibilities. I think we should strongly encourage this inour schools; I believe it will do as much as anything to boost turnout inelections and a greater sense of political engagement. I think in both Houses of Parliament we havea role to play here. Q3 Chairman:Thank you; that is very helpful. I readyour speech this morning which was delivered to Millfield School in Hackney andI, too, have been struck by the number of school councils, not only insecondary schools but in primary education as well. One of the questions we have is how we build on that work thatgoes on with tremendous enthusiasm and tremendous commitment by the peopleinvolved. Sometimes I have a sense thatthe teachers themselves are anxious to take it a stage further but perhaps lackeither the training themselves (if they are not politics graduates that isprobably understandable) and perhaps also, at the moment at any rate, lack thematerials. That is perhaps where thisCommittee might be able to help in terms of making available more aspects ofparliamentary life into the classroom to allow that connection to be madebetween, say, the work of the school council and the wider work of Parliamentin the community. Lord Adonis: I think that wouldbe valuable. There is a good deal ofmaterial that is now made available in the general teaching of citizenship butalso in the particular area of political literacy. I pay tribute to the work of the Hansard Society in particularfor the work it has done in this area which has been immensely valuable andalso the Citizenship Foundation which has worked hard in this area too. It clearly is an issue for your Committeewhether the work of the PEU can be expanded directly and of course LordPutnam's Committee had a number of recommendations to make there. The only observation I would make fromceaseless visiting of schools is that it is impossible to over rate howimportant it is to the development of citizenship as a subject that schools seetheir local MPs, meet their local councillors and have a real sense ofengagement with the local political process. That is something I find MPs and local councillors take immenselyseriously and they find it enormously encouraging. When I go to visit schools now I usually meet the school counciland it is not just for discussion about the school (although it often is aboutwhat is going on in the school and the education policy), they also want to askme about how Parliament works and they explain to me the rules governing theirschool councils. Some of them have themost extraordinarily complex electoral system to members of their schoolcouncil which would make even the liberal democrats impressed at the capacityof very young children to understand. Ialso find, as always in this game, we learn ourselves. I was sceptical in the beginning about theconcept of school councils in primary schools; I am now completely converted tothem. The idea that six, seven, eight,nine year olds are not capable of expressing strong views in a forum about whatmatters to them in their school and how things can improve is completely wrong. In the past we have not allowed sufficientlyfor organised expression amongst the pupils in schools and I also think atell-tale sign now is that the best head teachers regard this as an immenselyvaluable tool in developing a greater sense of responsibility and success intheir school. They do not regard it asa threat or in any way an impediment to the work of the school. They are seeking to develop these areas andthey are latching on to citizenship as a way of doing so. Q4 Chairman:I assume that school councils have managed to avoid having a hereditary elementso far. Lord Adonis: I have not seenone, but then the electoral system for the election of hereditary peers issomething which is very hard to encourage anyone else to adopt. Q5 Ann Coffey:I think that there are some aspects of this which are going extremelywell. From my observations going intoschools I totally agree with school councils; they are going extremely well inschools. I also think another aspect whichis going very well is the community involvement. I have visited schools where they have had an environmentalproject and the children have drawn up a list of things they wanted improving,have engaged with the local council and things have got done. I think that is going very well as well,together with this broader agenda of teaching values and self-respect. I was very impressed by the number ofschools that have got involved in anti-bullying week. I think most things are going well, but I think is stilldifficult and I am not sure quite how we get over it, is that people stillthink Parliament is only about party politics and there is a reticence ofgetting involved in that area by teachers. I think that is something to do with getting involved and being seen tobe partisan; they are not sure how you teach about the democratic processwithout children taking stories home and perhaps then being seen as partisan intheir politics. They tend to do all therest of it but actually stay out of that area and that is difficult becausethat actually is the central theme that we are trying to engage children andyoung people in; a great deal of the whole process of making laws and thedemocratic process is centred on Parliament and this place. I still think we have a real problem withthis curriculum in helping teachers to be able to teach about Parliament andthe process of making laws and feeling comfortable about that and not feelingas though they have to engage in party politics and have views aboutparties. I think that is still a veryserious difficulty. The other thing Iwould say to you is that the Youth Parliament (which I think is absolutelyexcellent) is in my view over-representative of a particular kind of youngperson which tends to be the more educated, more middle-class youngpeople. I have a real difficulty tryingto engage young people in the areas of my constituency where children come fromvery deprived background into that kind of Youth Parliament. They are totally overwhelmed with it. Interestingly enough, a year ago they bothmet in the same room and the young people who came from the more deprived partsof my constituency were totally overwhelmed by the Youth Parliament, by thearticulateness of the young people there. I think it is excellent but I think that we have to reach beyond that toother young people who are disengaged because they are the same people who aregoing to grow up not to vote. Lord Adonis: That is a very goodpoint and I think that is part of the reason why school councils can play suchan important role because they are so bottom up in with class representativesand so on in all schools. On the firstpoint, reflecting on the experience of developing citizenship over the lastfive years since we first seriously engaged on it, what I am struck by is thatthe big debate when we started down this road was fear of politicalindoctrination. We all remember this;we were warned at the time and there were quite heated debates about citizenshipeducation being about seeking to have politically correct views imposed onchildren and it could lead to an excessive degree of party politicisation ofthe work of schools and so on. That wasa very great concern and I remember at the time we had to point to theelaborate provisions of the 1996 Education Act and the need to ensure politicalimpartiality and balance and so on, and the development of the Curriculum Ordersin Citizenship took account of that too. In fact, that has not proved to be an issue at all in the development ofcitizenship; it has never once been raised with me at any of the schools I havevisited which are teaching it. Teachersare well-equipped at putting opposing points of view. Their main challenge, in my experience, is encouraging theirpupils - particularly those who come from, as it were, less articulatebackgrounds - to express strong views in the first place. It is not an issue that this is becomingunduly politicised. I think the factthat we have now got over that hurdle, we do not believe that the formalteaching of political literacy in schools need mean a politicisation of thework of schools, I think it is now much easier for head teachers and governorswho were nervous about entering this area to give strong support to thedevelopment of teaching. The otherissue that is clearly still a big challenge is that, despite everything I havesaid, we still have only a very small group of teachers who are properlyequipped in this area; we still have fewer than a thousand trained citizenship teachers. We are talking about 1200 teachers whom wewill be able to pay for to take the citizenship certificate over the next twoyears, but we have 4000 secondary schools so it still means that we will nothave immediately in most secondary schools a trained teacher. We are seeking to overcome that by theresources that we are putting into this certificate; we are raising the numberswho are training on the PGCE and we are making knowledge of the citizenshipcurriculum a requirement for new teachers coming through the system. However, it is going to be a few years yetbefore we have a level of expertise in each school that we would regard assatisfactory. Q6 Mr Knight:I think the last point you have made is very important indeed because I havealways taken the view that to ensure that young people learn a subject you haveto make it interesting. One of theproblems here is, as the school inspectors have said, that too many teachersare relying on worksheets I suspect because they are unsure of the subjectthemselves. I know when I have gone tospeak in a school I usually have the teacher come up to me afterwards and say,"Well, that was interesting" or "I've learned something today about howParliament works". I think this is thekey, that teachers have to be taught this specialist area in order to make thesubject interesting for the children. Lord Adonis: I completelyagree. We are sending out much betterprofessional development materials to schools, just making sense of Citizenship. There is a booklet which is excellent andhas some excellent case studies of how teachers themselves generate localprojects - waste management and other issues of relevance to schools - and wehope that will prompt teachers to think much more creatively about how they canuse the local context that is at their disposal in developing better materialsfor pupils. Q7 Ms Butler:We have to ensure that this agenda is taught in a more creative way because ifwe rely on worksheets then it will put young people off in the classroom and itwill just reinforce the vision that politics is quite dull and boring and it isnot about conflict resolution and how you approach with a passion what youbelieve in. I would also like to pursuethe idea that at the end of the citizenship agenda that it culminates in cominginto Parliament and having a debate in the chamber and then ensuring that thatdebate and what the young people then pursue themselves is then carried forwardinto government policy so it is not just empty rhetoric, there is a sequence ofevents and young people get to discuss what they believe in passionately and thechanges that they want to see - whether it be in the education system, whetherit be in waste management, whether it be in environment, crime, anything - wethen find a way to build that into government policy so they know they have areal role in the political system. Lord Adonis: I think this couldbe a very valuable role for your Committee, how you promote greateraccessibility of Parliament to schools and youth groups. One of the salient points about LordPutnam's report which very much chimed with me from my recollection as asecondary school boy coming round Parliament is that it is always very muchabout the architecture - Pugin and all of that - which is wonderful, but notmuch about the actual processes that take place here. This is an efficient parliament which represents the people andthis is how it goes about doing it. Ithink a much stronger emphasis on that and the work that Parliament itself doeswould be valuable, as well as this extraordinary architectural wonder in whichwe all work. I think that isimportant. In terms of engagement morelocally, there are some excellent examples and what we need is more ofthem. We now have within the specialistschool programme 18 schools that have developed citizenship as their mainspecialist area of excellence and I would expect them to start developingcurriculum materials and approaches to teaching the subject that will thenspread out more widely across the system. For example, Deptford Green School in south London which has anoutstanding record in this area, most of the students there do do the part GCSEin citizenship and they do a wide range of local community projects as part ofit. Some of them I found genuinelyintriguing; a group of them did a video on sales of cigarettes and drink to theunder aged in local off licences and supermarkets. I wanted to know what actually happened to the video after it wasmade, whether this was made available to public authorities; no record wasgiven to me as to what happened. Therewere a lot of immensely relevant and important issues to young people that werebeing developed as part of the citizenship agenda and we strongly encouragethat. Q8 Mrs May:I wanted to carry on the theme about the teachers and the training and soforth. You made a very valid pointearlier when you said that whatever we do there is nothing like MPs getting outthere into schools and showing accessibility and talking about what theyactually do, but I am concerned this issue of teacher training. You talked about the new certificate that isgoing to be available, but I wondered what changes had taken place in teachertraining colleges in relation to the citizenship curriculum. Also, you spoke earlier about expanding thework of the Parliamentary Education Unit in relation to more schools havingaccessibility to Parliament but surely one of the issues is about teachersactually being able to see what happens and having a greater understanding ofthe workings of Parliament itself. Lord Adonis: I think those arevery valuable points. On teachertraining there is now a requirement that teachers with qualified teacher statusmust have knowledge of the citizenship curriculum, but of course that will bealongside so many other things that have to be done and I accept that that isnot always a demanding knowledge. Yoursecond point is one that might well be worth us exploring more because we arenow training this cadre of citizenship teachers both coming up from the bottomthrough the PGCE route and those who are established teachers taking the newcertificate. I think it is a veryinteresting issue - since it is a manageable number coming through at any onetime - whether we should build in an expectation that they undertake somedirect parliamentary experience as part of that. It may be that if the PEU was equipped to do so you could includesome element in that certificate or in the PGCE in citizenship directly relatedto knowledge of Parliament and having some direct experience of it. I would be keen to explore that further; Ithink that could be a valuable role. Q9 Mrs May:One possible thought that goes through my mind is that timing and availabilityis a difficult issue, but we have the Industry and Parliament Trust, we havethe Armed Services Scheme, but if we are expecting our teachers to be teachingchildren about what happens in this place and what members of Parliament do,maybe we should make ourselves more available to them, to have some sort ofscheme where they are able to actually learn directly what we are doing. Lord Adonis: I think there couldbe some serious mileage in that suggestion. At the moment there are 240 PGCE students in citizenship this year; thatis less than one per member of the House. Perhaps we should think about whether some type of formal relationship,perhaps a mentor - I do not know whether this is might be something where Icould do the same in the House of Lords - offering each of those people who aretraining to be citizenship teachers a mentor and some direct experience of thework of Parliament. I am sure thatwould have a transformative effect in their personal understanding of Parliamentand they could then engage with their students. I would welcome thoughts from the Committee in that area and ifyou think that there are steps that you can take I would be very keen to workwith the Teacher Training and Development Agency to see whether we canimplement them. Q10 Andrew Stunell:First of all, I think we all recognise that it is work in progress and a lot ofwhat you have said is very useful. CanI just comment on two aspects, the first of which is the school councils? I think they are doing very well in manyschools. In fact, Ann and I share someschools and councils and we have seen some of the work. I was impressed with the secondary school wherethe pupils are encouraged to mark the best and the worst lessons each week, butI do not know what the staff room make of that. I spent an hour at a primary school being put through the mill asto why I had not immediately banned smoking. Sometimes these things have lives of their own which go well beyond thenormal political confines. I think theywill be good at single issues in the future. That brings me to my second point about whether they are actually goingto be good in participating in what we may describe as mainstreamdemocracy. I had a look at some of thefigures from the Electoral Commission and it would seem, looking at thedemographics, that probably at the last general election about 65 per cent ofteachers voted. In other words, a thirdof teachers did not vote at the last general election. That is obviously an approximation but Ithink there is a lack of participation and a lack of engagement by quite a lotof staff. It is a bit like atheiststeaching Religious Knowledge: you might get some idea of the general conceptbut not very much commitment. I thinkthe whole teacher training and teacher involvement issue really is importantand it would be interesting to know whether your department has any plans toaccelerate what you have talked about in the report that you have given us andalso whether there are any plans to monitor the effectiveness in terms ofincreased participation rates, maybe looking at some of those exemplar places. Will that feed through into moreparticipation? Lord Adonis: I think there a lotof important points in what you have said. One of the roles of citizenship teachers in schools is not simply toteach their own subject but to mainstream it in the teaching of other subjectstoo. Again, from what I have seen inschools that do citizenship well, those teachers who are properly qualified inteaching the subject have a dramatic impact in other subjects too and in justraising the level of awareness of citizenship amongst the staff as much as thepupils. I think that is a valuablerole. In terms of accelerating thework, I set out things we are doing which we are seeking to accelerate. For instance, the certificate we have beenpiloting for the last year; we are now looking at a comprehensive role out of thatand in my experience there is nothing which encourages teachers to take upthese sorts of courses more and for schools to offer them than if they know thatwe, in the Department of Education, are paying for it and we have said that wewill pay for it entirely for the first two years so I would expect those placesto be taken up quite quickly. We aremaking a big investment in this area too. In terms of monitoring, Ofsted has done one report and will keep thissubject under review. We have a team inthe Department headed by Jan Newton, the Chief Executive of the CitizenshipFoundation (who is sitting behind me) who takes a keen and on-going interest inwhat is going on at school level and are constantly injecting ideas andthoughts into how we can develop Citizenship in a whole range of differentways. However, you make a good pointabout the fact that you cannot expect the pupils to be engaged in the politicalprocess if the teachers are not either. I confess that I have not given much thought as to what we, as adepartment, could do to encourage political participation amongst teachers, butall thoughts are gratefully received. One interesting thought that I can offer is that about half the pollingstations in the country are schools and I have always found it odd that schoolsclose when elections are going on. Surely they should be open. Itwould be good for the pupils. One thingthat I find striking is that in other countries you have television cameras inpolling booths; it is a great sense of a community event and a publicevent. In this country what goes oninside the room is a kind of sanctum where even the scrutineers are not allowedin. I remember when I used to be ateller outside there was a big argument with a returning officer about whereyou were allowed to stand and how close you can go to the door to take people'spolling numbers and all of that. Ofcourse voting itself should be secret, but the whole process is shrouded withthe closing of schools. I think it is aslightly odd thing that an election should be regarded as an event for schoolholidays with schools being closed. Perhaps we should think more creatively about how we can engage schoolsthemselves in the conduct of elections. I am not sure what that might mean; I do not think I am volunteeringschool pupils to be the scrutineers or that kind of thing. I think we would need to maintain verystrict ratios in the allocation of pupils to political parties. Q11 Mr Shepherd:Lord Adonis, you are in a room that actually marks out the background to whatwe are talking about. You will havenoticed behind me the connecting dates. My problem with this subject as constructed is the inadequacy. I spent two days in a school in myconstituency doing Key Stage 3 - all the pupils of that age as they camethrough - and there is no narrative as to the story of this country, the longmarch, as the dates portray - 1832, 1867 down to 1928 - there is no realisationthat democracy was not a particular principle of this country until developed inthe 19th century. There isno understanding as to who owns the country - you and me, I would argue - andbecause of this lack of narrative which, when I was at school these were keyevents in the teaching of history, and how we have come to be what we aretoday. It is essential to theunderstanding of what we are as citizens. One cannot demure from anything in your letter to us, but it is this disconnection. Unless there is a story of how every mancomes to own their country and the importance of the institutions that wereformed and that therefore helped them advance, now that has to be anexcitement. I look at schools in theUnited States; obviously there are formative events similarly in theirconstitutional development and concept of citizenship because I think onesprings from the other, one is defined by the other. I am posing this as a reflective point about what I see as thegreat absence, the diminution of British history as an element in the life of aschool. This is the area where one can evokeor awaken an interest in the actual things - the building blocks - of why thisis important, who we are and where we hope to go. Lord Adonis: I should stressthat schemes of work that the Department and Qualifications and CurriculumAgency Authority put out do stress the importance of narrative and seek to makethe subject genuinely interesting and engaging. I can make material available to the Committee afterwards. For instance, one of the units in the KeyStage 3 curriculum is why did women and some men have to struggle for the voteand what is the point in voting today, so setting the act of voting in thecontext of exactly what Mr Shepherd was mentioning, which is the sweep ofreform and the struggles of the Chartist Movement and then the suffragettes andso on. So it is there, but at the endof the day we are in the same situation as we are in all subjects. We in the Department and the QCA can writethese sorts of papers until we are blue in the face, but what actually mattersis the quality of teaching and sense of excitement which is brought into theclassroom at school level. We cannot,of course, dictate that from the centre and that is why I attach suchimportance to the systematic training of citizenship teachers including, Ithink, a real sense of engagement with Parliament. I remember, as somebody who has been politically interested froman early age, actually visiting Parliament and seeing it at work and sittingthrough debates. I vividly remembersitting through a House of Lords debate on education which Rab Butler made (oneof his last great speeches) quoting Luther. It was a great sense of the dramatic. It is those sorts of experiences which are going to have a great effecton young people and that is what we need to work at more, teachers whothemselves have this sense of excitement and engagement who can then pass it totheir students. In terms of the actualmaterials (which I can make available) they do stress the narrative, as indeedthe Curriculum Orders do in history too (a good knowledge of the development ofmodern British history), but at the end of the day, as I say, how well it istaught depends upon the quality and the engagement of the teachers. Q12 Mr Shepherd:I wish you well in this task but it seems to me that (as the teacher who stoodin with me, because I was not allowed to be loose in a classroom by myself) somany teachers themselves are wholly unaware of this background so this is whereI think you have quite a serious difficulty because you may give them a module whichshows you all those things but in 1832 the fact that there was no electedmember for Birmingham or Walsall or Wolverhampton, the fact that almost no-onehad the vote and the whole social march of our country was dependant upon theenfranchisement of people. If you saidto a classroom today or teachers today, "Do you realise there was not aconstituency of Birmingham in 1832 or there was not a constituency inWolverhampton?" (this would actually apply to most of the country) they areactually rather puzzled at that. Theyaccept that everyone can go off to vote today whether they want to or not andwhy was it that a hundred thousand people marched from Wolverhampton toBirmingham to argue for the Great Reform Bill et cetera. Lord Adonis: I can only agreewith you and say that this is work in progress and we have further to go. Of course the more exciting the material thebetter. I have just finished readingEdward Pearce's fantastic book and what he does brilliantly - which manyacademic historians do not do - is to bring Parliament alive. His re-creation of the debates I think isphenomenal and good teachers will have read those sorts of books and will beable to express it in those sorts of ways to their students. However, it does take a combination of goodmaterials and good teachers. Q13 Chairman:When I have groups of students or young people here I find it hard to explainwhat happens here if they do not understand that there was a time when womendid not have the vote or, indeed, working men did not have the vote. There was one group who had no idea at allthat there had been an English Civil War. I accept that this is an aspect of the teaching of history but I find itodd, I have to say, as a parent that my children at 15 and 16 spend their time learningabout the history of medicine - important though that is - or the history ofthe American West - important though that might be - but do not have any senseat all of what happened in the English Civil War. I think it is part of that wider debate and I am not sure thatthat can simply be taught as part of a citizenship course if they do not havethe basic history to go with it. Lord Adonis: The point is ofcourse very well taken. There is oftentoo much of a sense among historians that recent history is not real historytherefore you get this disconnect between the history that they are studyingand the present. In my time as ahistorian at university my best history tutor said that no historian shouldhave any gaps between their period and the present which I always thought was avery sound piece of advice. Too much ofthe teaching of history is about discreet modules which are too disconnectedfrom the present time. I do agree withthat, but it is not for me to be dictating precisely how historians are trainedat university and the work of our universities (I would get into very difficultterritory there). Similarly when itcomes to the training of politics - many politics teachers have done politicsas a degree, it is a very popular degree course - I would like to see Britishpolitics as a really strong element in the teaching of politics courses acrossthe country, but it does vary. In someuniversity politics courses British politics is not such a majorcomponent. These are legitimate issuesfor the history profession and the political science profession themselves toengage with and I think the stronger the emphasis your Committee gives to themand Parliament itself, I think the stronger the lead that will be given to theprofession. Q14 Chairman:I was thinking more about the syllabus for GCSE than the teaching of history atuniversity. Lord Adonis: The issue of howfar we seek to specify precisely what must be taught is of course a difficultone. There is a range of options withinthe National Curriculum which is available at GCSE and that does include arequirement to do some British history but how far we actually go in specifyingit is a difficult issue. Q15 Liz Blackman:Lord Adonis, you have mentioned several times the PEU and its potential to playeven further into teacher training, professional development and the quality ofmaterials in the classroom. How doesthe PEU relate to other organisations which have responsibility for developingthose particular courses and those particular materials? Is there a coherent relationship or does thePEU operate in a bit of a silo playing into the classroom and training by ahappy accident? Lord Adonis: My understanding isthat the QCA - the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority - and its partnershave been engaged with the PEU in the development of the materials which we putout to schools. We ourselves havefunded with the PEU, for example, the work that the Hansard Society has done insponsoring mock elections. There werewell over 2000 mock elections that we know about that took place in schoolslast year. We provided funding, supportand materials and so for those. I thinkthat is a very valuable role that schools can play in engendering realpolitical literacy. We funded thatjointly with the PEU and it was undertaken by the Hansard Society. We have been engaged with them but we wouldlike to see how we can engage further and recommendations that you have to makein that area we will look at very seriously. Q16 Liz Blackman:Basically what you are saying is that you do think there is further dialogueand cooperation with the PEU and you are looking for a way forward. Lord Adonis: Yes,definitely. For example, taking MrsMay's comments earlier, if we were to have some parliamentary component in thePGCE I assume that the PEU might broker it. I think it would be very appropriate if it did play some role likethat. We would be very open tosuggestions about how the PEU could enhance this education work and we wouldseek to work very closely with the PEU in doing so if that were what you wereminded to recommend. Q17 Mr Vaizey:We talked about training teachers; what about the training of MPs? As a new MP it strikes me that we do not getany advice on the sort of things we should be discussing with sixth formers andpupils when we go and visit schools. Wedo not get shown the curriculum they are being taught or anything like that andI think it would be a good idea if new MPs were given advice and told whattopics might be worth covering and the likely level of pupils they will betalking to and what sort of things they have recently learned. Also, there is an Armed Forces parliamentaryscheme but there is not kind of Teach First scheme for MPs and if there couldbe some sort of scheme that allows MPs to spend some time in school actuallyteaching that might bring home some of the requirements. Lord Adonis: In my experienceschools are only too delighted to engage with their MPs and of course MPs do soI am not sure how much we could help in the making of contacts but if you thinkthere is work we can do then of course we will look at it. The point is well taken about us providingmore advice to MPs on what citizenship itself is. The fact that you have not had anything from the Department Itake as a criticism which we should act on. I think it is absolutely right that we should see that MPs are aware ofthe content of the citizenship curriculum and the materials we are putting outto schools and how they can help. I amalways slightly wary about being presumptuous but if you think it would beuseful for us to do this, I or Ruth Kelly will be more than delighted to writeto members (and members of my House too) to set all this out. If you think that is something which wouldbe useful perhaps we might try out on the members of the Committee the sort ofadvice we might give to members on how they could help in their schools giventhe citizenship curriculum and the work that we are seeking to promote in thisarea. We would be more than happy to dothat if it would be useful to you. Chairman: That would be veryhelpful. Q18 Mr Vaizey: We have talked about Parliament and its role inteaching citizenship and going out to schools, but what do local councilsdo? What does the local governmentassociation do? Does it have its owncouncil education unit, as it were, or scheme to encourage councillors to gointo schools or to encourage school children to visit councillors and so on? Lord Adonis: I am not aware ofthe LGA having and organised programmes although I will ask. It might be good if they did do more. A lot of local councillors are schoolgovernors and are intimately engaged in schools and I tend to find that theyare quite engaged in the work of their local schools, but whether it could bedone on a more systematic basis I think is something well worth looking at. Q19 Mr Vaizey: What I have decided to do in my schools is to holddebating workshops because I think debating is the best way to teach kids aboutcitizenship, learning how to marshal arguments and so on. It seems to me that all these great debatingcompetitions which you and I were involved in as children have completelydisappeared. There seems to be noschool debating competitions on a national basis or on a regional basis and Iwondered whether you had any thoughts on the importance of debating as a methodof teaching citizenship. Lord Adonis: There areorganisations which are seeking to promote that. There is a very good charity called Debate Chamber which isworking with a number of London challenge schools, these are schools which havenot had a history of having school debating societies and so on and which isseeking to promote them. I think it hasits London final because I know I am going as one of the judges on Saturday inMossbourne Academy which is a new academy in part of Hackney which is a verydeprived community. They have their owndebating team which I am told has been coached properly by Debate Chamber whichincludes a number of quite serious debaters in their twenties who are doingthis as a charitable activity. I amtold that their team of Year 7 and 8 students is more than a match for some ofthe more established school teams which are older. We would certainly seek to encourage this and the work oforganisations like Debate Chamber may be valuable. Debating is not part of the citizenship curriculum as such. I had not considered whether it should be; Ithink that is an issue that is worth considering. Certainly one of the things that MPs visiting schools would beable to encourage strongly since they have such a good personal knowledge inthis area is how schools might get debating societies going and the sorts ofthe people they might invite and so on. The thing that probably has more impact on this than anything is role models. If schools have a regular programme ofvisitors who stimulate debates in the school then I think that, as much asanything, will get these sorts of activities going. Sir Nicholas Winterton: I have anumber of short questions to the Minister, the first following up RichardShepherd. Lord Adonis, would you notagree that history/experience is the best teacher in life and therefore agreater emphasis on the constitutional history of this country - not just goingback to the Chartists or the suffragettes but well beyond that and back toMagna Carta and the divine right of kings replaced by the power of the barons,replaced by the power of the important people in the countryside and in thecities, bringing us up to date to the power of the people - associated with thecharacters and the personalities that were involved in these changes could wellexcite young people to have a much greater interest in how our country wasformed and how we come to what we are today? We have stressed in this question time with you the role of teachers;not once has anyone mentioned the role of parents. Surely in educating their children parents have very considerableresponsibility in respect of citizenship, and is it not a sad reflection thatperhaps greater emphasis is not sought to be imposed upon parents and the rolethat they can play along with teachers? You talk about educating people into Parliament, one of the greatproblems is that schools in the Greater London area and in London can come toParliament very easily, but schools from much further afield cannot, not leastbecause of the very heavy costs of coming to London. If you want more schools to visit the House are you going to makemore money available from the centre to enable them to do it? Can I talk about political engagement and becontroversial here? One of my views isthat people are not taking much interest in politics because they do notbelieve it is worth their while doing so because politicians are now in thepower of their parties rather than elected to represent the people that theyare elected to represent in this place. We have had plenty of examples in respect of your own government; thereare many people who do not like what you are doing in respect of the EducationBill but they have been whipped into place. I have listened for three quarters of an hour to what has been going onand I think we are missing the point. It is the political parties that are ruining the politics of thiscountry, not Parliament or the people's ignorance of Parliament. I think there is a lot of interest in youngpeople but they look to the politicians to be open, honourable and transparentand to do what they believe to be right rather than necessarily what theirparty tells them to do. Can I also pickup the point of Mr Vaizey? He talkedabout you producing some material and help to educate members ofParliament. I find that quiteextraordinary. Does that not indicatethat more and more members of Parliament are coming into Parliament with a lackof experience and knowledge of real life? Mr Vaizey: That wasnot my point; that is not what I said. Q20 Sir NicholasWinterton: I have been in Parliament for 35 years. On a regular basis I visit my secondaryschools and have a very, very good relationship with them. Surely it is the experience of life - and wecome back to history and Richard Shepherd - that is so important to enablepeople to have an understanding of citizenship and what their responsibilitiesshould be. Can you deal with that? Lord Adonis: No. As to the form of the political parties andthe whipping system it is beyond my remit. I think you make a very good point about the cost. Of course it is the case that those who arecoming to Parliament from further away do have to pay the considerable costs engagedin this. In my experience of schoolsthat do organise trips, if you have a teacher who is committed to organising atrip they will ensure that it happens and the cost then is not the majorfactor. I think we referred earlier tothe role of the LGA and local authorities; it could well be that part of whatlocal authorities can do to promote access to Parliament and greater knowledgeof it where they are in constituencies that are further away might help todefray the costs to schools. Theremight be a kind of incentive to get teachers to organise trips on a moresystematic basis. I think that point iswell taken but, as I say, in my experience if you have teachers who arepassionate about the subject and organise the trips, the trips will take place. If it were possible perhaps to have somekind of funds, this is maybe something the LGA could look at and it mightencourage those who are further away from London to take advantage of it. Q21 Mr Shepherd:We do have a problem of capacity in these buildings obviously and there is asort of iniquity that the Houses of Parliament can only hold so many and withits other commitments - it is a working place -it is a sort of block we come upagainst. I would love all my schools tobe able to come here but if that were so of every local education authority inthe country it simply cannot happen. Itis only a tiny fraction that can and therefore the actual teaching iscrucial. I cannot remember what age Iwas when I came here but probably 17 or 18 and that was because of proximity toLondon. It was not on an organisedbasis; it was getting from my Member of Parliament a ticket for thegallery. I would like the focus to beon what we can do out in the country, a national standard rather than theopportunity of everyone to get here because it simply cannot happen. Lord Adonis: I take all thesepoints to be important but I certainly would not like to see students not beingable to come here because of the cost. Q22 Lynda Waltho:I am a former teacher and also the mother of two teenage boys. It is very difficult to engage young peoplein bits of paper and books when they have the pull of the computer and allsorts of electronic devices. It is ITreally that I am interested in because I see it as a way not only of makingteaching more interesting but also encouraging the inter-active nature of howwe should be going. I think it wouldhelp with the problem of constituencies being further away from London. Dare I say that there should be somethinglike "MP Cam" so that they could actually watch the whole process and see wherethe work is being done on committees, for instance. What I was wondering is if you see a role for IT, particularlythe inter-active side, but also about resources for that because I think thatis certainly a way of engaging most of the young people I know in thisprocess. Yes, they should still comehere, but I do not think that one visit is going to be enough. I think seeing what is going on on almost adaily basis would actually be more valuable. Lord Adonis: That is animportant point. We have worked withthe Hansard Society developing on-line chat sites to develop interest in publicissues and so on. That has been highlysuccessful. I do agree with that. I also note that one of Lord Putnam's mainrecommendations is that the parliamentary website should be radicallyimproved. At a minimum it should beconsultative, interactive and easily navigable. Clearly they see the role of the website which Parliament itselfprovides as something that could give a good boost in this area and, of course,you are one of the main sources being Googled by citizenship teachers andstudents when they actually want to gather materials themselves. I should imagine one of the first thingsthey do is to look at the website of their local Member of Parliament and seekto find out more about them and so on. I think there is an important role that IT can play in this area. Whilst there is criticism in Lord Putnam'sreport about the parliamentary website at large, having Hansard available online in the way that it is from the day after is an immensely valuable resourcefor schools and others engaged in education. What was a prohibitively expensive publication before - to my mindscandalously expensive - in seeking to have the record of Parliament madeavailable to all is now available free of charge immediately. I think there have been some verysignificant improvements in this area which have helped a lot but there must befurther we can go. Q23 Mark Lazarowicz:Lynda Waltho talked about the possibility of something like "MP Cam" but infact we are now being recorded and perhaps being broadcast somewhere andcertainly the BBC Parliament channel is on all the time. Is there any way in which the existingrecordings of various committees can actually play a part in the educationprocess within the schools in a more organised way? Clearly the big debates tend to be at times of the day whenschools are not in operation but if there is a big debate there could be theopportunity the next day for people to see something relating to that. It would seem to me that would give atopical advantage as well. Lord Adonis: The televising ofParliament has transformed accessibility in this area. I was at one school where they actually movedtheir GCSE citizenship class to noon on Wednesdays so they could begin theclass by watching Prime Minister's Questions live which I imagine the Committeewill be greatly impressed by. I thinkmost students find that the most exciting part of the work of Parliament,actually seeing the party leaders engaging personally. Q24 Chairman:That is the arena, the theatre; is that actually Parliament? Lord Adonis: It is clearly partof Parliament but equally the Parliament channel and the teachers recordingparts of the channel and using it in their lessons does have a role toplay. I am very struck on theParliament channel as somebody who flicks on to it as I go through Freeviewevery evening. It has brought thecommittees of the House and the committees of the House of Lords alive in awholly new way. They, as it were, werethe great hidden part of the work of Parliament so far as the televising ofParliament was concerned. About half ofthe broadcasting that takes place on the Parliament channel must be of thecommittees and they are often fascinating to watch and they do show the otherside of the work of Parliament which is at least as important as the moreformal and theatrical debates. Q25 Graham Stringer:The Transport Select Committee was on television at ten o'clock on ChristmasDay evening. Somebody told me that theyhad watched the Transport Committee; this person is married as well. The Transport Committee gets disproportionatecoverage because it is immediately accessible; people understand when thecommittee are talking about rail fares or the noise of aeroplanes. Some of the other committees are lessaccessible and it strikes me that there might be a role of explanation andsupport in the Parliamentary channel that would help accessibility to the workthat we do in this place. I wondered ifyou had an opinion or had thought about that. Lord Adonis: I had not thoughtabout it but I think it is a very good point. I have not looked at the audience figures for the Parliament channel butI imagine that the numbers who flick across it and may stop for a few minutesand, even it is on Christmas Day and the Transport Committee, if they canimmediately relate to it they tend to stop rather than move on. I think if there were explanatory materialsavailable that might be an added advantage and might have a particularrelevance to young people too. I amcertainly prepared to look at that further. I am not sure how the Parliament channel is regulated; I assume it is arelationship between the BBC and the House authorities as to how that channelitself is handled but if you think that we could think at all, if there was adesire to develop explanatory materials directly relevant to young people, Iwould be very happy to oblige. Chairman: Bearing in mind that broadcasttelevision is rather old fashioned technology in the sense that thesediscussions that we are having now will be available on the internet for twoweeks and that most schools that I visit have white boards and the ability touse the internet as part of their teaching, I actually think that what is onthe Parliament channel is probably only a small aspect of our concern. We have now reached the point where everyonewho wanted to ask questions has asked one; a number of colleagues haveindicated they would like to ask a further question. I am going to ask my colleagues to ask questions of a morespecific kind related to the particular inquiry. Q26 Mrs May:I just have a comment on the televising of Parliament. One aspect of Parliament which is not shownon the Parliamentary channel is the committee stage of bills and there is awhole raft of activity that goes on to which people have no access, knowledgeor understanding at all. I actuallywanted to ask a question about the curriculum itself. You mentioned earlier that citizenship was well taught when itwas mainstreamed yet one of the issues that Ofsted raised was specifically thequestion that where citizenship was mainstreamed across other subjects actuallyit lost out in the teaching of Parliament and the work of Parliament and theother aspects of the citizenship curriculum. I just wanted to explore that because certainly parts of the curriculumthat are set out here, certainly in Key Stage 1 and 2 (which I realise are justguidelines) to me are not citizenship. Naming parts of the body, for example, is not exactly teaching citizenshipitself. I wonder if you can comment onhow you see the balance between citizenship being best taught in relation tospecific lessons versus mainstream across the curriculum and what the balanceshould be between knowledge teaching and skills (which picks up part of thequestioning that Mr Shepherd started). Lord Adonis: I was notsuggesting that there was an alternative between mainstreaming and teaching asa specific subject. On the contrary, Ithink where you have good citizenship teaching as a specific subject with alarge number of students doing the part GCSE that will have an impact on themainstreaming of citizenship in the teaching of other subjects as well. So I do not see these as either/or. Of course, the requirement to teach citizenshipis a secondary requirement as a statutory subject and there it should be taughtin schools as a subject to see that the knowledge is imparted. There is a balance there which is set outclearly in the programmes of study between the formal instruction and the widerrange of skills. The three key strandsare social and moral responsibility, political literacy and community involvement. You could not do the third without havingpractically based skills. In the partGCSE I think a third depends upon practical engagement and two-thirds is basedon subject knowledge. That seems to meabout the right balance. At the primarylevel I think the materials you were referring to are materials which embracePHSE as well and at primary the two tend to be brought together so the teachingof parts of the body I do not think was an introduction to the conduct ofcommittee stages of bills. I think inthe QCA materials we put on the website we embrace PSHE as well as the wideragenda at primary level. It is aninteresting subject which is debated within the citizenship community, at whatstage you should start teaching formally political literacy. In the Key Stage 2 curriculum the understandingof what the main institutions of the state are and so on is there but theactual formal teaching of political literacy is a Key Stage 3 subject. I think it is a matter for furtherconsideration whether you could do more in Key Stage 2 and I think where youhave the teachers who have the enthusiasm and the subject knowledge themselvesit is perfectly appropriate to be teaching Key Stage 2 pupils more about theactual work of Parliament and democratic institutions than we do at the momentfor the most part in primary schools. Q27 Sir NicholasWinterton: Would you care to introduce there the role of parentswhich you failed to respond to when I put the question to you? Why have you never mentioned the role ofparents in the teaching of citizenship? Lord Adonis: I am verysorry. I do see it as important it isjust that we do not ourselves directly engage with parents in how they engagein education at home. Of course it isvery important and the more the parents themselves have come through the processof education in citizenship the more they will pass to their children in duecourse. Q28 Ann Coffey:I wondered if you had ever considered having a special award for schools thatperhaps ran projects that were very interesting and creative and how they teachpolitics. Lord Adonis: I personally havenot; I do not know whether my Department has. I will look at it and come back to you. If we could do some award in conjunction with a reputable body such asthe Hansard Society, I could see how one could do this is a way that could bequite exciting. I would be very keen tolook at it; I do not believe we have specifically considered that point. Q29 Mr Vaizey:I would like to correct the misrepresentation. The reason I asked my question about the advice to MPs was that havingnot sat an exam for about 20 years when Lord Adonis cited the GCSE questions Ithought that when I go to speak to my sixth formers I am not sure at what levelto pitch my talk so it would be interesting for MPs to receive the GCSE papersso they know what the pupils are learning and that is the level to pitch atalk. That is the point I was making; Iwas not suggesting for a minute that MPs need to be further educated althoughthe Committee will be interested to know that I will be taking physics A levelthis summer because I do not know any science and my constituency is good atscience and I do believe in life long learning and continuing education. Lord Adonis: In the course oftransparency and accountability, I hope your constituents will know the gradethat you achieve at the end of the day. Q30 Mr Vaizey:The grade will be confidential. Lord Adonis: I did take MrVaizey's point to refer to the citizenship curriculum and the materials we giveto schools, including GCSE papers and not remotely seeking to tell MPs how todo their job. Q31 Ms Butler:I was wondering what other materials are available for the Citizenship agendalike DVDs and so on. What is availablecurrently and are there any plans to make other such things available? The second thing I wanted to raise was thatthe biggest consultation that the Government has embarked upon has been theYouth Matters Green Paper where almost 20,000 young people have participated inthat consultation process. So to saythat young people are not interested or are completely disengaged in politicsis actually incorrect because, as I say, it was the biggest consultation. I, myself, held a youth forum in AlpertonSchool in my constituency where over 150 young people turned up from allover. I think we need to acknowledgethat young people are interested in politics to a degree; what we have to lookat is how we engage them further and we have to be very careful about we dothat in ensuring that we do make classes more innovative and more interestingand that we give credit to everybody's life experiences because, althoughsomebody's life experiences may differ from another, it does not make it lessworthy or less interesting or less credible. I think you are right, I would not want to see parents having a definedrole in the citizenship agenda. I thinkthe parents' role in the home is something which is to teach their children toknow right from wrong and to be good people and be good citizens, but I do notthink they should have a defined role in this agenda in the schools. I think that would be detracting from whatit is supposed to be. Lord Adonis: I agree with youand I also completely agree with what you said about the Youth Mattersconsultation process. I am constantlystruck when I go to visit schools and colleges by the desire to be engaged,particularly when it is specific issues of concern. I was in Luton a few weeks ago at a Muslim youth forum and verylarge numbers came. Of course the issueof social relations in Luton has been a big and difficult issue over time andthere was a large group of young Muslim students who organised a meeting, theyhad speakers, they wanted to put their points of view. I met them with the local MP and then, as Ileft, they asked I would speak to them if they organised another meeting in twomonths' time. I did not feel I couldsay no so I am going to do that too. Ithink the desire to be further engaged with is profound and we have a big partto play in meeting it. Sir Nicholas Winterton: Ientirely agree that young people are interested in politics but translatingthat interest into voting is, of course, another matter and I still feel thatsome of what I said has a bearing on why so many people do not vote. I have been challenged over parents; schoolswant parental support so I have to say that I believe that in getting throughthe importance of citizenship parents working with schools can have a veryimportant role to play. Ms Butler: The Education WhitePaper tackles parental support in schools quite well. Q32 Sir NicholasWinterton: Indeed it does but I think we should see more parentalinvolvement. The question I want to putto Lord Adonis is that in seeking to get the whole purpose of citizenshipacross do you contact organisations like the Junior Chambers, Round Table,Rotary and other organisations in addition to the Hansard Society that actuallydo seek to get young people together for public speaking, for public debate andon matters relating to citizenship? Should you not broaden the appeal that you are making to voluntaryorganisations - many of them involved with service - who could in fact carry agreat deal of influence with young people in respect of citizenship. Lord Adonis: We have beentalking particularly this morning about political literacy which is one of thethree elements of citizenship but a good deal of the citizenship curriculumengages with a much wider range of issues - human rights, civic organisations,local government - and in those areas we have indeed engaged in the developmentof a curriculum and the materials with a very wide range of organisations whichhave contributions to make. The issuewhich I noticed was raised in your report that you are now following up is thebalance between political literacy and these other areas in the formal citizenshipcurriculum. Your concern was that therewas not enough emphasis being placed on the formal teaching of Parliament andpolitical institutions and that is what I was seeking to respond to inemphasising the particular work we have done with the Hansard Society. I entirely agree with you that it is a verywide agenda there of engagement with wider civic society and that is a crucialpart of the teaching of citizenship effectively in schools. Q33 Liz Blackman:Do you think that lowering the voting age to 16 would engage more people inpolitics and make them more positive towards the citizenship curriculum? It is quite a hot topic at the moment; whatis your take on it? Lord Adonis: I can only give apersonal view on this. I personally dosupport lowering the voting age to 16. I think if we expect young people to be responsible we have to give themthe rights to go with the responsibility. I think if sixth form students in schools were themselves actuallyvoters they would come to these issues with a much greater sense ofengagement. We have talked aboutpolling stations in schools and if part of the electorate locally were theolder students in schools I think that would give a much deeper sense of engagementand commitment. I should stress thatthese are personal views and I realise that there will be other views which arestrongly the other way. Q34 Mr Knight:When you write to us will you send us a copy of the Citizenship syllabus? I would find that useful. Going back to something you said at thebeginning, does your Department provide any advice or guidance to theparliamentary guides and, if not, is there not a case for you so doing? I actually will not use the parliamentaryguides when I have a party of school children at Westminster because I feelthey dwell too long on general history and do not explain adequately howParliament works. I have seen too manyparties of school children with their eyes glazed over after ten minutes havinglistened to a monologue for 15 minutes in front of a picture of The Last Sleepof Argyll. That is not what they arehere for; they want to see how Parliament works and I do feel one small stepwould be to give some guidance to the guides who carry out this work. Lord Adonis: We are at theservice of the House. If you think wecan play a role and our citizenship advisors can play a role in this we wouldbe more than happy to do so. Q35 Chairman:I think everyone who wanted to ask a question has now asked it. I do not know whether you have anyconcluding remarks, Lord Adonis, that you would like to make. Lord Adonis: I think it has beena very valuable session. A number ofconcrete suggestions have come out which I will take away and write toyou. Equally, on a number of the pointsthat have been raised if you were minded to make recommendations we would wishto work with you closely in seeing that they were realised. Q36 Chairman:We are extremely grateful to you for the work of your Department in thisarea. I think one of the key issuesthat we will have to examine is the relationship between what we do inParliament - in the Commons in particular - and the work that the Department isundertaking. I think there is a slightrisk that we might pass each other in some areas of the work that we are bothengaged upon and I think we need to ensure that what we do is coherent with theexcellent work that is being conducted in the Department. Can I add the thanks of the Committee to myown personal thanks for the time that you have devoted to this subject and thefact that you have made yourself available this morning for our questions. Lord Adonis: Thank you. I look forward to Christmas Day next yearwatching the proceedings of the Committee. |