Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360
- 379)
TUESDAY 4 MARCH 2008
MR IAIN
WRIGHT MP AND
KEVIN BRENNAN
MP
Q360 David Davies: Wonderful words,
and I know you personally and I know you to be a decent and honourable
man, but we have been told on this committee that 250 girls under
the age of 16 have disappeared in Bradford alone. When you say
"every child matters" and you are saying all the right
things, if I may put it like this to you, what is actually being
done to discover what has happened to those 250 girls in that
one city and all of the other hundreds of girls that we can assume
have disappeared in other cities? These are girls under age of
16. They should not have been able to disappear. Somebody should
have been investigating what happened to them?
Kevin Brennan: That is right,
Chairman. I understand that the figure of 250 that has been quoted
quite widely has been taken up by the Committee. I have asked
my official to look into that figure with Bradford City Council.
They explained that they identified 205 children. If I could just
continue.
Q361 Chairman: Mr Davies is being
a little premature. We will be coming to this question a little
later.
Kevin Brennan: You would not care
for me to break that figure down, Chairman, which is what I was
about to do for the sake of the record?
Chairman: I would ask you to hold on
to your figure because another member of the committee will be
questioning it. We will take a quick supplementary from Mr Streeter
and then we must move on.
Q362 Mr Streeter: So I can feel reassured
that something is going to change as a result of our inquiry.
You mentioned yourself an inspection of schools. Are you able
to discuss with Ofsted a higher ranking or a higher focus on this
issue of schools where there is a particular issue? It is all
fine saying "every child matters", but this is a particular
issue for certain communities in certain parts of the country
and in certain schools. Are inspectors alive to this? Will you
go from this session, or from our report, and speak to the inspectors
to make sure that something changes about how this issue is highlighted
and how certain schools are failing to tackle this serious problem?
Kevin Brennan: Yes, Chairman,
Ofsted will have to look at this issue. We are aware of the areas
of the country where there is a particular problem, and government
offices have been in contact with all of those areas recently
to look at the extent to which the problem is being dealt with
in schools. Can I make it clear to the Committee, it is absolutely
the case, as part of an Ofsted inspection, in particular in relation
to safeguarding, which, as I say, Chairman, has risen up the agenda
considerably recently, the issue of domestic violence and forced
marriage absolutely has to be a part of their inspection of schools.
Chairman: We will come back to Mr Davies'
point and he will cross-examine you further on that issue a little
later, but Bob Russell has a question on the curriculum.
Q363 Bob Russell: I would like to
go back to the line of questioning that Mr Prosser was on with
so-called domestic violence. I think we should call it thuggery,
because that is exactly what it is. I was shocked that a survey
of teenagers carried out three years ago by Sugar Magazine
found wide acceptance of abuse among young people in the UK, and
45% of teenagers believed that, in some circumstances, it is acceptable
for a boy to assault his girlfriend. I think that is an indictment
against all of us, society in general, but, I would suggest to
you, particularly against the education system, because the schools
do have personal, social and health education, and I am sure you
are aware that research commissioned by the Home Office came up
with the conclusion that domestic violence—I use their phrase
"domestic violence"—should be a core feature in
the PSHE, including forced marriage. Why is it not part of the
laid down curriculum? Forty-five per cent of teenagers think assaults
by boys on girls is acceptable.
Kevin Brennan: Chairman, I come
across many statistics in the course of my job and I take very
seriously the point that Mr Russell is making, but I would not
actually draw my evidence directly from Sugar Magazine
necessarily as the best source for evidence on this issue. The
Ofsted Tell Us Too survey on young people's attitudes I
would recommend to the Committee as a very good way of looking
at what young people actually think, and that is properly assessed
and very good evidence.
Q364 Bob Russell: What is their figure?
Kevin Brennan: I have not got
that figure to hand, Chairman.
Q365 Chairman: Will you let us have
that figure, since you are relying on it in preference to Sugar
Magazine?
Kevin Brennan: I can certainly
have a look at it, Mr Vaz, but in relation to the serious issue
about personal and social health education in schools, obviously
there are opportunities for that issue to be taught through PSHE
lessons, including domestic violence and forced marriage. It is
for schools to decide, I think, Chairman, it is fair to say, within
the PSHE curriculum how to deal with these issues, and there is
huge pressure on the curriculum across the piece to introduce
all sorts of things as additional statutory burdens on schools,
and in relation to this what is absolutely clear is that PSHE
should be taught in all schools and clearly the safeguarding of
children, domestic violence and these issues are very important.
Q366 Bob Russell: We are the Home
Affairs Select Committee and we are dealing with violence in society,
and if we can deal with violence as part of education, then surely
that must help society throughout the rest of life. Why can it
not be part of statutory sex, relationship education? That is
statutory. Why not extend it so that violence within the home,
violence, male against female, and sometimes female against males,
is regarded as a serious part of the statutory education provision
alongside sex education?
Kevin Brennan: Chairman, that
may be possible. We have given a commitment to review that in
the Children's Plan, as the Committee will be aware.
Q367 Chairman: By when will you have
completed your review?
Kevin Brennan: I do not have the
date to hand, but I imagine it will be within the next few months,
Chairman, because everything coming out of the Children's Plan
is moving forward pretty rapidly and we will be taking into account,
obviously, the views of young people and if this committee wants
to make representations, I am sure—
Q368 Chairman: The reason why Mr
Russell is so passionate about this is because only yesterday,
when we went to Colchester, we asked four women, the victims of
violence: where does it all start? How do we get an early intervention?
They said to us it started in the school. If there was proper
education given, proper training, then the cycle of violence would
end. That is why he is pressing you on this.
Kevin Brennan: It is a very fair
point, Chairman, and obviously we need to look at improving PSHE.
Often, as you know, Chairman, the cycle of violence starts within
the home as well. I should make that point.
Q369 Mrs Dean: To go back to the
information that is available in schools, particularly about forced
marriage, would you agree that if there are posters displayed,
that can empower young women, particularly young people, but if
it is in the form of a leaflet, they may be in a drawer somewhere
and not able to empower. I think that posters can have a better
chance of getting information through to students than leaflets,
although leaflets are important. Secondly, in your experience,
are schools reluctant to display the information about forced
marriage because of the pressure from parents or local communities?
If that is the case, would it not be a good idea to insist that
schools display this information, to mandate schools to put the
information up for students, so that we know that all students
have that information?
Kevin Brennan: Chairman, we would
not want to mandate schools to put up particular posters, I should
make that absolutely clear, on any subject. Schools have to have
a degree of flexibility of how they deal with these issues at
local level. Nevertheless, we would want them to deal with the
issue and deal with it in a serious manner. In relation to your
question about what the evidence is out there, the government
offices gave a fairly mixed report in relation to the Forced Marriage
Unit posters in schools. Some areas are displaying the posters.
For example, in Oldham they are on display. Staff in some areas
were not aware of the materials but would display them if they
were aware, and as I understand it, Chairman, they were not sent
out routinely, they are posters that are available to be ordered
for use in schools if they want to. For example in Blackburn that
was the case. Some areas do not display them. For example, the
Newham Asian Women's Project has not seen the posters in any of
the schools they are working in. In other areas, for example in
Luton, Chairman, that is where the authorities issued Forced Marriage
Unit cards, which they considered to be much more effective than
the posters.
Q370 Chairman: So it is very patchy.
Kevin Brennan: There are variable
approaches to this, Chairman. What I would say is—
Q371 Chairman: What can we do about
it?
Kevin Brennan: We do not want
to get hung up on the issues of posters, Chairman, when what we
need to be doing is to understand that every school should take
this issue seriously but that they should respond to it according
to the local situation and their own knowledge.
Q372 Chairman: Certainly. Minister,
I can assure you the Committee is not getting hung up on the issue
of posters. What concerned the Committee, and that is why it was
raised by Martin Salter with the Prime Minister, is the very patchiness
that you describe, but what is the Government, what is your department
doing to end this patchiness?
Kevin Brennan: Chairman, there
are a number of things that we are going to be doing in the coming
months in relation to that. One of them is to work with the Forced
Marriage Unit to try and improve the quality of some of these
materials and make them perhaps more suited for use in school,
and I think it is important that we actually engage young people
as well in the design of some of these materials and hear what
they think is effective. We are also going to work with the Forced
Marriage Unit to revise the guidance for professionals, and that
is going to be put on a statutory footing, which gives us more
levers in relation to this. The other thing, Chairman, is working
on the issue of data. At a local level, it has now become mandatory
since last year for data to be collected in relation to this on
a local level. I am conscious of the fact that we have a devolution
agenda in local government, and we do not put burdens on them
without consultation, but we do want to work to consider how we
can best improve the amount of data available on a national level
on the issue of children missing from education and forced marriage.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q373 Mrs Dean: It was suggested to
us that one of the reasons some schools did not display the information
was because of community pressures. Did you come across any evidence
of that?
Kevin Brennan: That was the point
I was going to come on to, Chairman. In the government office
evidence that they looked at, they did not find any direct evidence
of that, Chairman. However, obviously we are conscious you have
taken evidence to that effect and, where there is direct evidence
of that, clearly that is something that would need to be followed
up.
Q374 David Davies: Going back to
that, Minister, can you explain what your figures were again,
205 not 250? I am sure you would agree they are worryingly high.
Kevin Brennan: Yes, Chairman.
If I could finish the point, and anyone reading this evidence,
I hope, will refer to this bit rather than when I stopped earlier
on. The Council explained they had identified 205, not 250. Of
that number, 172 of these children were tracked to an alternative
destination or known to be on roll at a school. That does still
leave a number of young people unaccounted for, Chairman, but
I think it is useful if the Committee has the figures that have
been given by Bradford City Council to the department.
Q375 Chairman: Who is looking for
these children?
Kevin Brennan: Where a child is
missing from education, then after 20 days, if they have been
missing without any account of where they are, in other words
they become an unauthorised absence for 20 days, it is a requirement
of the school for the school and the local authority to try to
discover their whereabouts and, if they are unable to do so, then
the matter should be reported also, clearly, to children's services
in relation to the safeguarding issues, also to the police and
also the forced marriage unit if there is a suspicion they may
have been taken abroad.
Q376 David Davies: Mr Brennan, that
is 28 girls under the age of 16 who have disappeared in one city
in one year alone.
Kevin Brennan: Twenty-three, Chairman.
Q377 David Davies: I take your point:
23 young girls under the age of 16. Is that not a scandal?
Kevin Brennan: Chairman, I think
I am not going to have words put in my mouth in relation to it.
Q378 Chairman: What are your words
then?
Kevin Brennan: What I would say
is that it is a serious concern when any single child becomes
unaccounted for, and we need to try to seek the explanation for
what has happened. In many cases, Chairman, you will be aware
that there are instances where children who are in school are
dual passport holders. There may be an explanation in some cases.
Q379 David Davies: Are the police
looking for them?
Kevin Brennan: They should be.
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