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Lord Elton: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down perhaps I may say that she made an important announcement to the effect that the Home Secretary's group would be publishing a Green Paper this autumn. Can she please help us by saying when we can expect winter?

Baroness Cumberlege: As a farmer's wife, my Lords, I can say that we are quite flexible about seasons.

Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, before she sits down, can the noble Baroness not say anything beyond the fact that there has been correspondence about the absurd discrimination against married women whereby they can only get ownership rights of any kind in the matrimonial home either by becoming widowed or divorced? There are now three outstanding Law Commission reports, two of which are very long outstanding.

Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I am aware of the noble and learned Lord's impatience. However, I feel that this is a matter for my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. I know that he is working with the Law Commission to try to expedite matters.

7.25 p.m.

Lord Northbourne: My Lords, I was impressed and delighted by the enormously high standard of the debate, for which I am grateful to all noble Lords who took part. It seemed to me that there was consensus on the huge cost to society of failing families and children; consensus on the need for families and the importance of the family; consensus on the importance of parenting and the need for education and support for parents; consensus that intervention can be successful; and consensus on the desirability of lifelong commitment and that the two parent family, if it works, can be the best vehicle. There was consensus also on the need for holistic employment practices and attitudes, including childcare which respects the equal opportunities of

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children as well as parents; and consensus on the need for a coherent government policy among all speakers, except for the noble Baroness, which is understandable.

There were differences about marriage. There were clear differences of opinion on how we should celebrate that long-term commitment that we all want and how we should encourage it and give it a formal status. Those who are opposed to marriage or inclined to treat cohabitation as equal to marriage ought to think quite seriously about that. So ought those who support marriage. If so many people do not want to get married, we must ask ourselves why. Is it because they are not prepared to make the long-term commitment? Is it because it costs £8,500 and they feel that they must have a tulle dress, get themselves up in funny clothes and pay a lot of money for a feast. It is very nice to have a feast but that is not the point of marriage; that is not what marriage is about. In that context, what is marriage about?

Today, too many young people probably see cohabitation and marriage as an extension of a relationship. The research, from One Plus One in particular, suggests that there is a need for young people to learn to think about entering into a formal partnership to bring up a family as entering not into a relationship which will have ups and downs but into a partnership to do a job, a partnership in which the children will be involved as powerless partners and therefore their interests and concerns must be respected. Therefore there must be a determination to make it work.

Your Lordships did not entirely agree on the whole question of how a balance between work and family can be achieved. It is a complex issue and we still need to give much more thought to it. While respecting the right of women to go out to work and have equal opportunities, we also must consider how we can achieve equal opportunities for the children and secure, so far as possible, the solidarity of the partnership.

I feel that it is a mistake to talk about a Golden Age. I do not think that any of us believes in a Golden Age. We should not be thinking about turning the clock back. We should think positively. We want to see how we can go forward and make sure that we do not go forward blindfold. We must make sure that we are indeed looking at society today and at the problems and we must at least try to make a plan to achieve the maximum success within the parameters on which we all agree.

I omitted to mention in my opening remarks that there are many other things which are being done and could be done. I shall deposit in the Library a "wishlist" which has just been published by the Parenting Forum (of which I have the privilege to be chairman) of some of the things that the 300 members of that organisation feel ought to be done.

I want particularly to thank and congratulate the maiden speakers. The noble Viscount, Lord Leathers, made an extraordinarily interesting and important contribution on homelessness and the noble Lord, Lord Coleridge, was equally eloquent on the school for the deaf, which I had the privilege of visiting the other day when I was in Exeter. The noble Baroness Lady Symons

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of Vernham Dean, gave an immensely impressive speech. I see, too, that we have another great fighter for equal opportunities on the Opposition Benches. I just hope that she will fight as hard for equal opportunities for children and men as for women. If not, she will find herself crossing swords with me. I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Elton, who said that the role of men is a major problem in our society today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said something very close to my heart when she said that the best way to help children was to help parents. She mentioned pre-school playgroups. That leads me to one other small matter, which I omitted to mention earlier; namely, the very low cost of certain forms of support for parents.

Homestart costs only £510 per family served and that is for a trained volunteer to visit parents in their home for six months or more. Pre-school playgroups, which now call themselves the pre-school learning alliance, costs £320 per child, per year, per half a day. After-school provision of the Kids Clubs network costs £15 a week and £35 in the holidays.

The noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, referred to the importance of schools as part of the community and helping with the stresses of parenting. In that context it is important also to think of schools as a centre for lifelong learning and help for parents so that they can contribute too and be involved with their children's learning. All the evidence suggests that the strongest single factor in a child's success at school is parental involvement.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Jakobovits, in his absence, for his support of my Select Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, was bold enough to speak the word "love". It made me think of the phrase I intended to use in relation to the effectiveness of investment in the family. Investment in support of families multiplied by natural love and affection equals personal good quality care at low cost to the taxpayer.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, mentioned a number of the many excellent things the Government have done and I praise them for that. In the area of support and help for families and also in ensuring that agencies are playing their part, all governments need to think not merely in terms of sustaining what is there at the moment, which has been greatly cut back in the past 10 years, but also in terms of putting more resources and energy into support and help and into ensuring that agencies are doing their job. It means investing in families.

Finally, I thank all those who have spoken this evening. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

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Education (Special Educational Needs) Bill [H.L.]

7.32 p.m.

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.--(Lord Campbell of Alloway.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Lord Burnham) in the chair.]

Clause 1: [Special educational needs: rights of children]:

Lord Pearson of Rannoch moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 1, line 8, after ("child") insert (", excluding a mentally handicapped child,").

The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 1, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 and 17, which are all in my name.

I should start by declaring an interest as the father of a mentally handicapped 16 year-old daughter. I should like also to congratulate my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway on his introduction of the Special Educational Needs Tribunal in our last education Bill. The very existence of that tribunal in the background has done much to encourage local education authorities and others to pay more heed to the real needs of special educational needs children and to the wishes of their parents.

Furthermore, I share the general sentiment expressed by my noble friend the Minister in a Written Answer in yesterday's Hansard at col. WA82 when he welcomed the tribunal's annual report for 1995-96 and applauded its work. It may be that I have not had time to read the report with sufficient care, but the tribunal does not seem to have found that the present status of the child, which this Bill seeks to change, has caused any great difficulty.

The purpose of the amendments is to remove, from mentally handicapped children only, the Bill's proposed new rights for children at all three stages of the tribunal procedure; that is, assessment, the tribunal itself and appeal. It should be clear that I am talking of statemented children with severe learning difficulties, who make up around 6 per cent. of the tribunal's workload, according to its annual report.

I tabled the amendments because, with the best will in the world, it cannot be helpful to the tribunal's activity to involve children such as my daughter in these processes. Such children will nearly always say what they believe they are required to say. If their parents are active on their behalf, then those parents' wishes should normally--indeed, almost always--be paramount. If their parents or a relative are not present, it should be for the tribunal to decide on behalf of the child.

I noticed that at Second Reading my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway had some difficulty with the definition of when a child might be of

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"sufficient understanding" to understand the new responsibilities proposed in the Bill. Indeed, such was that difficulty that my noble friend proposes in Amendment No. 2 to leave out from the Bill the expression, "if of sufficient understanding". If my noble friend's amendment is successful, as far as I can see it will mean that all children would become involved directly in the tribunal's processes, even though they were clearly not of sufficient understanding. That cannot be helpful, which is why I trust the Committee will accept my amendments.

Before concluding, I should mention the wider problem which lies behind the need for my amendments this evening. The problem stems from Clause 316 of the Education Act 1996, as it now is in its amalgamated form. The clause creates a qualified duty to educate all children with SEN in mainstream schools and not in special schools. When the Bill which introduced the clause was going through your Lordships' House, I did my best to resist it and to exclude mentally handicapped children from its scope. Indeed, there was a good deal of sympathy from all sides of your Lordships' Chamber for my view. I mention the issue now because there are signs that the clause is having the unfortunate effects which I foresaw at the time. It is relevant to this Bill because it is pushing too many mentally handicapped children towards ordinary schools which their parents often do not want and which therefore brings the tribunal into action.

The problem does not only affect mentally handicapped children. I understand that some 23 per cent. of the children at the troubled Ridings School in Yorkshire have special educational needs, including 5 per cent. with statements. However, this is not the time to debate the wider problem; perhaps we may do so when the new Education Bill reaches us. In the meantime, I beg to move.

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