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2.54 pm
Mrs. Nadine Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con): I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), who made an excellent speech. I could not agree with him more that social exclusion is a subject that should be above party politics. It should be the objective of all hon. Members to ensure that those who live in socially deprived areas, or who suffer as a result of social exclusion, can find their own pathways out. We should attempt to achieve that by whatever means we can. The debate should be non-partisan.
Disraeli was probably the first pioneer of social exclusion. In 1872, he said that one of the main objectives of his Government would be the elevation of the condition of the people. That has been fundamentally at the heart of all Governments who have been in power since then—although they probably did not use phrases such as “social exclusion”—as part of the formation of their policies on health, education, transport or welfare payments.
Our debate takes place against the backdrop of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) described as
“Breakdown Britain”. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) discussed my right hon. Friend’s report, which raises important issues. Labour Members have shouted to ask why my right hon. Friend is not in the Chamber. He is working on two projects in Balsall Heath in Birmingham. While we are in the Chamber talking about the problem, he is out there with his sleeves rolled up looking for the answers and talking to the people who know the answers.
I want to talk about the link between special educational needs and social deprivation. I think that I can hear groans from Labour Members, which is disappointing, because since I became a Member I have taken every opportunity— whether in the Chamber, in Committee, or in sittings of the Education and Skills Committee—to talk about that link and the way in which children with special educational needs are especially held back in society.
The report by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green describes education as a social escalator that elevates many people from the background into which they were born to a future that they deserve and should have the opportunity to enter. Speaking as someone who spent the first 21 years of her life on a Liverpool council estate and who is dyslexic and has a dyslexic child, I know that education is the most secure pathway. I use the word “secure” because education will be with a person for life. It is the most secure pathway to social mobility.
My right hon. Friend also identifies the fact that the escalator is broken—it is out of order. The cost of that is huge; it can be measured only in lost opportunities and wasted lives, especially for children with special educational needs. The statistics back that up: 87 per cent. of all children who are excluded—I prefer to use the word “expelled” because it describes what happens more graphically—from primary schools have special educational needs. That figure speaks for itself.
We know that there is a link between poverty and SEN, although it is not unique. It does not necessarily follow that someone with SEN will be from a socially deprived background and nor is it the case that someone from a socially deprived background will necessarily have SEN. However, we know that 26 per cent. of all statemented children in secondary schools are eligible for free school meals, compared with a figure of 13 per cent. for all secondary school pupils. In areas of high deprivation—I am sure that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North will identify with this—the figure for statemented children reaches a staggering 50 per cent. Although I am talking about statemented children, the policy of inclusion means that many children in mainstream education are not statemented. We do not know how many children with special educational needs are in receipt of free school meals, only the number of children who are statemented.
Unfortunately, statementing carries with it an obligation of funding and provision. In many areas—this affects some of my schools—an obligation that is put down in part 3 of the statement to identify financing and the hours and provision of education can be difficult for the authorities to meet. Many authorities resist statementing children and attempt, in all honesty and to the best of their ability, to follow
the policy of inclusion. However, that does not work for many children, including autistic children and those who live chaotic lives in socially deprived areas and who have particular special educational needs.
A middle-class parent who has English as their first language, who has a good income and a reasonable intellect, and who can battle with teachers and the authorities, may be able to secure the provision that their child needs. If they cannot secure that provision, they may have the finances to take their child out of the system and educate them privately. I did that, and as a Conservative, I have no guilt about it. I made my choice: I educated my daughter in a private boarding school, Kingham Hill school, which has a special Greens learning support unit that addressed her special educational needs. That focused my attention on the parents and pupils whom I left behind in the school from which I took my daughter—the parents who did not have English as a first language, and who could not argue the case for their children. Many of those parents had special educational needs themselves. A parent with special educational needs will often have a child with special educational needs, as I did, because there is a genetic link.
I am sure that Labour Members are squirming, but I do not make judgments about anybody who does what I did to secure the best provision for their child. I endorse my right, as a Member of the House, to speak whenever I can on behalf of children who have special educational needs that are not met under the policy of inclusion, or because they are socially deprived. The state lets down children with special educational needs, especially those who come from socially deprived backgrounds. When things go wrong for a child with special educational needs, they go spectacularly wrong, as I know from first-hand experience.
Some parents can argue the case for their child, but let us put ourselves in the position of a child who comes from a chaotic home. It is a challenge in itself to get those children, who may also have special educational needs, through the school gate in the mornings. If they arrive at school, they often have not had breakfast. They do not like coming to school, as they feel different because they are from a socially deprived background. They already feel isolated and excluded, and their educational problems make them feel even more so. Their special educational needs exacerbate and enhance the problems that come from their backgrounds.
As I say, it is difficult to get those children through the school gates, and when they arrive they may not have eaten. When they do eat, if they do not partake of the free school meal, they will probably eat junk food loaded with additives, which makes their behaviour even more difficult in the afternoons. When they go home in the evening, they do not have a quiet place to do their homework. They do not have the encouragement that we give to our children. The domestic problems in the home may be acute; there may be problems with dependence and/or debt, and those problems may overwhelm any parents or carers who are in the home.
If there is one thing that the state could and should do, it is provide the education that is needed by both special educational needs children, and children who come from socially deprived backgrounds. The state can do that, because the infrastructure and expertise are already there, and the levers are just waiting to be pulled, so that we can provide those children with an education that meets their specific needs. If we do not take action, a self-fulfilling prophecy will come into play. Those children will not go on to contribute to society or the economy, but will be trapped for ever in their lifestyle. As the Minister for the Cabinet Office said, they will go on to have early teenage pregnancies. They may have children with special educational needs, but they will have no pathway out of the environment into which they were born. People who are born into poverty and have special educational needs feel very lost and excluded.
Many of those children, as I know from first-hand experience, begin to truant and spend time on the streets. They are vulnerable to street culture and to people who enjoy life on the streets. Drugs are far more accessible and easier to buy than they were years ago, so their problems accelerate and worsen. Many of them find themselves in young offender institutions, one of which I recently visited. All of the inmates had special educational needs, and they all came from socially deprived backgrounds. If 100 per cent. of YOI inmates have special educational needs and come from such backgrounds, what more evidence do we need? We must address the problem to prevent those children from going to those institutions We must get them through the school gates, not the gates of YOIs. The situation is frustrating, because the Government and, indeed, any Government, have the ability to achieve that goal in the education system. Many people involved in community programmes think that they are powerless and that there is nothing that they can do to stop those things happening. However, there are things that we can do because, as I said, education is a social escalator.
In his recent report, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green said:
“We need a system that understands that while material deprivation must continue to be dealt with, poverty isn’t just an issue of money. While money is important, so is the quality of the social structure of our lives. To improve the wellbeing of this country it is necessary that we help the people of Britain to improve the quality of their lives or we all become poorer.”
We are letting those children down, as their special educational needs are not being met. They drop out of school, because they do not think that they belong and they do not receive the education that they need. They feel different, isolated and excluded, so they end up on the street with children like themselves, with whom they feel comfortable. They fall into a life of crime, as we heard from several hon. Members, and they end up in youth offender institutes. There is a revolving door, because when they leave those institutes the cycle begins again. At the heart of my right hon. Friend’s comment in “Breakdown Britain”—an excellent, hard-hitting report that I recommend to everyone in the House, whatever their party—is that cycle and the escalator out of social deprivation.
3.7 pm
Tom Levitt (High Peak) (Lab): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), who did the House a service by reminding us that special needs, when linked to social deprivation, become extra special needs and require more attention.
My contribution has two themes, the first of which concerns the Community Development Foundation, a non-departmental public body that has existed in one guise or another since the 1960s. Its trustees are appointed from the public, private and voluntary sectors, and I have the pleasure of chairing it. It is a Government appointment: members from each political party serve as trustees, and the chair is always drawn from the governing party. Mr. Deputy Speaker, the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst), chaired the CDF many years ago. The role of the CDF is to discover, develop and disseminate good practice in community development. It is through strong communities that we tackle social deprivation and exclusion, and it is important that sustainability is built in. Until a few months ago, the CDF was part of the active communities directorate at the Home Office, but after last summer’s reorganisation, the principal component of which was the establishment of the office of the third sector in the Cabinet Office, it was agreed that the CDF would be better placed in the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The voluntary sector, of which I am a strong supporter, plays a vital part in communities. A healthy community is one with a healthy voluntary sector, but the voluntary sector is only one of the players in a healthy community, and it is the job of the CDF to work with all such players to establish good practice.
“Together We Can” is a slogan that embodies the most positive approach to community development. It is also the title of a campaign launched in the Home Office a few years ago, which was transferred and reinvigorated by the Department for Communities and Local Government over the past few months. But “Together We Can” is more than a slogan. It is an attitude that goes to the heart of community development. It is all about partnership, because without partnership there can be no sustainability, no mainstreaming of ideas and practices, and no common interest in the achievement of shared goals.
Within those successful partnerships there must be trust, which can be measured by the way in which Government and Government Departments can let go and allow projects to be managed independently and locally, with different processes developing and even different outcomes being achieved in different areas. If we increase the ability of individuals and communities to participate in local decision-making to improve local public service delivery, we must trust those communities not only to deliver an outcome that is right for that community, but to hold themselves accountable for their actions.
If the process of letting go is a problem for Government, it is no less challenging for local government. Because councillors identify so closely with their wards and set so much store by their elected status, it can be difficult for them as individuals to let go. Good councillors, in my view, do not represent their
wards and their communities despite the activists who work in their ward to better the local community: they work alongside them. Good councillors are enablers, helping their electorate to do things and taking responsibility themselves for the delivery of services.
Good councils give electors direct access to services while not undermining the role of councillors. Indeed, greater involvement of voters in the everyday decision-making process of local authorities should enhance the role and status of councillors, not diminish it. Giving councillors a greater scrutiny role and extending that scrutiny to areas such as health, outside the traditional ambit of local government, is a great idea and I am pleased to see it being taken forward. The establishment of local area forums, which allow electors to hold councils and councillors to account, face to face, presents opportunities, rather than threats, to diligent councillors.
I was interested in the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) about local strategic partnerships. I was at a conference about a year ago which examined the role of LSPs. I overheard two councillors who had not met previously discussing local strategic partnerships. “These voluntary sector types,” one said, “who do they think they are? They come along and speak with such authority. Don’t they know that we are the elected representatives?”, to which the other replied, “We don’t have that problem in our LSP. We don’t have voluntary sector people sitting on our LSP.”
How can a local strategic partnership be a partnership, genuinely representative of the locality, or even strategic if the people who are the users of services, those who deliver the informal and increasingly the formal services that operate in those communities, and those who are asked to make judgments about the quality of the social environment at election time are not involved in the strategic planning process, not just once every four or five years, but on an ongoing basis? But good practice does exist in the operation of local strategic partnerships and should be celebrated.
The Community Development Foundation was asked by the Government to undertake the administration of the neighbourhood renewal fund and more recently the faith communities capacity building fund. That fund supports faith and interfaith organisations to play a fuller part in civil society and to generate community cohesion and social inclusion by supporting interfaith activities that bring together people from different faith groups to talk, network and learn from each other. At a time when faith is seen by some as a byword for conflict, community cohesion and social inclusion across those barriers of faith are essential.
Religious tolerance, like any other tolerance of ideas or personalities, is something that I take as read within a successful community because every compassionate, articulate and intelligent person must see that tolerance underlies the whole concept of cohesion where it is an issue—it is not always an issue.
However, work must be done, principally by people of faith themselves, to increase levels of understanding of the needs and the nature of religious communities as a way of breaking down fear of the unknown among
others. The faith communities capacity building fund is one way of enabling that to happen: 582 organisations received grants of up to £30,000 each for interfaith projects in the first round of the fund, and bidding for the second round recently closed. I am pleased to say that both rounds were massively oversubscribed, showing a genuine interest among grassroots members of faith organisations in breaking down these barriers and promoting the social inclusion both of their own people and of others—their neighbours.
Last summer, I took the board of trustees from the Community Development Foundation to my constituency, and we spent an afternoon in the ward of Gamesley. Gamesley is unique, certainly by High Peak standards, and not only because it has a Roman fort—Melandra castle—and is crossed by the popular trans-Pennine trail. I wanted to show my colleagues a model of community development of which I am incredibly proud—a community that started with nothing and is now developing into something of which to be proud.
During the slum clearance programme in central Manchester in the early 1960s, it was decided to relocate hundreds of families by building a council estate in the middle of nowhere on a greenfield site well outside Manchester. The estate was designed with flat-roofed houses, narrow streets and a perimeter road, which, to this day, feels like a defensive moat. It was given half a dozen shops, a primary school, a church hall, two pubs, a narrow choice of bus routes, very few play facilities and no employment opportunities to speak of. It was not designed to liberate people or to engage or involve its residents. It was not designed to integrate with its larger neighbour, Glossop, nor even to be seen from other parts of the vicinity. In a phrase, that estate was not designed to succeed as a community.
Even today, Gamesley is among the most deprived 5 per cent. of the nation’s communities. It has high levels of unemployment, single parenthood, incapacity benefit claimants and teenage pregnancies. It has the highest level of smokers in Derbyshire and the county’s lowest proportion of mothers who breastfeed. According to the 2001 census, half of all households have at least one person with a limiting long-term illness, half of all households have no car, and half of all adults have no educational qualifications. One in three of those who are registered unemployed are classed as long-term unemployed.
On a more positive side, 96 per cent. of pensioners in that ward who are entitled to benefits are receiving them. When that figure was published two years ago, it was the highest such level in any ward in the country. That is a clue to what is happening in Gamesley, because statistics like that do not happen by accident. This is a community which works and which cares. At the heart of that community is the early excellence centre—now, of course, the Sure Start centre. Time was when that was simply a nursery. It is now the hub of a network of activities, including a pensioners’ luncheon club, a huge variety of adult education classes, with an exceptionally high participation rate, a comprehensive adult literacy programme, including popular parenting classes, to which many parents go for the first time as
adult learners and then choose to stay on to do other courses. The centre’s activities fully complement the estate’s lottery-funded healthy living programme. Members of the local church run a community cafe on the estate offering basic fare at an affordable price. When I dropped in on their Christmas party, I could sense how much that community involvement by the church was appreciated.
Gamesley is not a diverse community in terms of race or religion or of family income and aspiration. Derbyshire county council invests heavily in services on the estate, and the newly refurbished community centre is well used by statutory and voluntary groups, including the youth service. There is a thriving football community. I recently visited a new Rainbow group for the youngest members of the Girl Guides family. Rainbow is run by volunteers, as are so many organisations there, including the very active residents association.
In recent years, the doctor’s surgery on the edge of the estate has vastly increased the services that it delivers locally. The Tameside and Glossop Primary Care Trust has invested in a community dentist, and community safety officers work alongside the police and in direct consultation with residents’ groups to keep antisocial behaviour under control.
Since the council in High Peak—then under Labour control—reorganised council housing across the borough, with the overwhelming support of tenants, into an arm’s length management organisation, investment in homes and the local environment has been not only massive but well focused. The then chairman of the Gamesley residents association also became chairman of the ALMO for the borough. In Gamesley, they know how to respond to the needs of the complex organisms that constitute today’s communities.
In December, I was delighted to present the community in Gamesley with a Big Lottery Fund cheque for £250,000 from its “Reaching Communities” grants programme. According to the BLF website, the money is designed to
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