| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Rowlands: My Lords, perhaps I may first offer my thanks and appreciation to the staff and officers of the House for all the advice and support they have given me.
It was my real privilege to serve in the other place for a total of 33 years and to represent for most of that time some of the most remarkable communities. I realise that, these days, Parliament and the House of Commons in particular get a poor press. It is fashionable to knock it and to criticise and call for modernisation. Some of that is justifiable and understandable. But it is also useful to remind ourselves of the remarkable resilience that our system has demonstrated. After all, Parliament has sat every year since 1690.
At a time of unease and insecurity which has been reflected in certain parts of the gracious Speech, it is perhaps time to remind ourselves that that system has sustained democratic representation and accountability through times of extreme insecurity, military and economic, a depression, a Blitz and a world war while maintaining that careful balance between accountability and security. I think that that experience may hold us in good stead as we debate the various issues that arise in the coming months.
After 33 years, I have, frankly, remained an unabashed believer in the Commons. On its day, it is about the best place to test the mettle of an argument and the mettle of a person. One understandably stands in awe at the heritage of this House, but I have also stood in awe at a very different but equally significant heritage—the industrial, social and political heritage of the communities that I represented for 33 years.
Merthyr Tydfil is a place of firsts. This year, in 2004, we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the first steam train to run on rails—it was not Stevenson's but Trevithick's of Merthyr Tydfil. Merthyr Tydfil returned to the House the first Labour Member of Parliament, Keir Hardie. Four of us virtually spanned a century of that representation. Over a span of 75 years, three of us had the honour to represent the other community of Rhymney, where my two predecessors were Michael Foot and Aneurin
30 Nov 2004 : Column 410
Bevan. I think that even Aneurin Bevan would have approved of the levels of investment we are putting into the health service today.
In 2001—to borrow a phrase from another world—I decided that I had to try to kick the Westminster habit. My wife and I decided that we would try to find out whether there was another life outside and beyond Westminster, and, after three years, I was virtually clean, to borrow another phrase. I was home and dry until I received a telephone call from a former colleague and good friend from the Commons, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, our Chief Whip. I was caught unawares by that prospect and particularly by a felicitous phrase that he used: "Ted, you know the rhythm of the place", by which I think he meant, "You know when to turn up to vote".
In the three years of "rehab" that I spent outside Westminster—alas, as a result of that telephone call I am now a parliamentary recidivist—I spent my time advising a local charity, Tydfil Training, and the National Training Federation of work-based learning providers which delivers vocational training programmes throughout Wales. I thought that this experience might ever so modestly inform today's debate. For I witnessed the very positive and sometimes painstaking efforts to break through what had sadly grown up in far too many workless households—a sense of fatalism and resignation. Young people and not so young people were resigned to a life on benefits. There has been, and is now, a tremendous effort and drive to change that. I have witnessed the transformation of old-fashioned reactive unemployment benefit offices into job-promoting jobcentres.
Recently I was presenting certificates to lone parents on one of the New Deal projects. One of the young women there summed it up for me very well. She said:
"I have been a wife, and that wasn't much cop Mr Rowlands. I am proud to be a mother, but I also want to be myself".
These programmes are helping young women and lone parents to re-engage in both learning and employment. They are most welcome and should be welcomed on all sides. I look forward to the expansion of the Pathways to Work projects, shaped and influenced by a former constituent of mine, Professor Mansel Aylward, whose pioneering work on the whole relationship between unemployment and health will be of considerable and great importance.
However, I must say that I have been surprised and shocked in one or two respects. The Minister rightly pointed out the tremendous progress that has been made and the improvements in standards. But there are still far too many young people at 16 who do not have the basic skills of literacy and numeracy. Think of the world that is closing for them as a result of that lack of basic skills. I have shaken my head in some bewilderment because those young people are supposed to have been in full-time education from the age of three to 16. But when you talk to them, it is not so much that education has failed them, or that they have failed in education; it is that in most cases they have almost escaped it.
30 Nov 2004 : Column 411
Truancy and minimal attendance at school is still under-recorded and is certainly not being addressed. Schools must meet that challenge, because we cannot afford to add further to the pool of adult illiteracy and innumeracy that has already been referred to in this debate. The nature of that illiteracy was poignantly illustrated to me in an IT suite, where, amazingly we have a blind tutor who does the most magical things with a type of voice machine. He had brought his programme on to the screen and his client turned around to him and said:
We seriously must address the issues of adult literacy. There are people, both in employment and unemployed, who still do not have the basic skills.
There is a second area that concerns me—although again, I was pleased to hear in the Minister's opening speech of the numbers of people taking on apprenticeships. That is most encouraging. But, sadly, on the ground in many communities, and certainly in our communities of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, vocational training enjoys poor status and esteem in the eyes of young people, of parents and possibly, indeed, of society. I admire the efforts that have been made to encourage more and more young people to stay on in school and college. That is rightly an admirable objective and is important—as long as they stay on for and with a purpose, it must be a good idea.
Unfortunately, as a side consequence of that drive, an impression has been left and a perception has been established that vocational training is the route for academic failures. That is wrong and sad—and needs to be corrected. Just compare the tremendous resources and efforts that are involved in finding a university place for an A-level student in any part of the country who has three mediocre grades to the efforts to guide, offer advice and encourage people into quality vocational training routes. They just do not bear comparison. It is time that we corrected that balance.
The Prime Minister famously once said, "education, education, education". Perhaps I may have the temerity to amend his statement modestly. The three "E"s should be education, employability and employment. Anybody like myself who comes from and has represented communities that have known all too well the suffering of high unemployment above all knows the supreme importance of a decent job—a decent job which enhances the dignity and well-being of the individual and his or her family, and also enhances the well-being of the community. I hope and believe that certain measures foreshadowed in the gracious Speech will make an important contribution to just that.
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, on his maiden speech. He came to this House with an established reputation, having held senior ministerial office in another place. He is an old friend. He and I have travelled to Wales on the same train many times. He once confided in me that his
30 Nov 2004 : Column 412
small children were critical of him as a government Minister for not having what they called "a proper job". What they meant was that he was not at home, either to take them to school in the morning or to fetch them in the evening. I am very glad for all of us that he persevered with his career in Parliament to make the contribution that he has made for his country over these many years. His children are, of course, now grown up and he has a strong family. I very much hope that the friendship that the noble Lord has on all sides of the House has helped him through his recent difficult times. We look forward to hearing him many times in the future.
I am a strong supporter of independent education because I believe that independent schools provide some of the best education in our country and I believe in a free society where parents should have the right and the opportunity to educate their children at independent schools if they wish. It is in that context that I wish to say a few words about the Government's proposals to modernise charity law. I hope that I should be pleased that the Government are planning to bring in a Bill.
The Government were wise to consult and to publish a Bill in draft. Parliament was right to set up a Joint Committee of both Houses to look at the draft. It did a good job and it is not my intention to criticise the 52 recommendations. However, I have a serious worry about the report, which I will come to in a minute.
First, let me declare an interest—or many interests, which are all unremunerated. I am a governor of a leading girls' independent school, chairman of a charitable trust that runs three—soon to be four—independent schools, I have just retired after 18 years as a governor of one of the country's leading public schools, I am also chancellor of a university and my wife is a governor of one of the country's top schools. So, the Wakeham family are into education in a reasonably substantial way.
Let me repeat that I welcome the fact that the Government plan to modernise charity law and the draft Bill has much to commend it. But can the Government deliver the educational part of the Bill? I guess that this Government are the worst example in our history of a government with a huge majority failing to deliver what they plan to do. Their so-called supporters, time and again, turn the Government over—for example, on House of Lords reform, foundation hospitals, top-up fees, hunting, gambling, not to mention Iraq, where no Prime Minister going to war has had more of his supporters voting against him.
Will the educational part of the charities Bill be another of those? The signs are not good. If I were Prime Minister, I would consult my Chief Whip very carefully before embarking on the Bill. It is worrying that the press release of the Joint Committee, which has a Labour chairman, highlighted a sentence in the report about the charitable status of independent schools which was not one of the Joint Committee's recommendations. I have been around long enough to recognise a fudge when I see one. Paragraph 95 of the report states,
"we believe that the Government should consider reviewing the charitable status of independent schools and hospitals with a view to considering whether the best long term solution might lie in
- those organisations ceasing to be charities but receiving favourable tax treatment in exchange for clear demonstration of quantified public benefits".
That means that some members of the Joint Committee are against charitable status for independent schools. The words in that fudge represented a proposal to the Treasury that anyone with any experience of government knows there is not a chance in hell of the Treasury ever accepting. In my judgment, that is how an agreement was reached not to come out against independent schools.
So, with the massive proviso that the Government can deliver, independent schools can in my view live with the Bill even if some schools will have to make some changes. They will have to go to much greater lengths to show what they do, remembering that the governors are also trustees of charities as well as governors of schools.
The first test is one of public benefit. That has been the test of charitable status since early in the 17th century. Education has up until now been presumed to pass that test automatically. But no longer—in future schools will have to demonstrate public benefit. I suspect that almost all will pass the test.
We have something like 1,000 independent schools in this country educating around half a million children and saving the taxpayer approximately £2 billion a year. That is a significant public benefit in itself, meaning that many parents of children at independent schools are not only educating their own children but are subsidising the education of their neighbours' children who go to maintained schools. However, I am not sure whether that in itself will be sufficient to satisfy the test of charitable status in every case.
Almost one third of pupils at independent schools are given help with their fees. This far outweighs any tax advantages they get. The Independent Schools Council estimates that on average £2.30 is given back for every pound of benefit from charitable status. However, in my view, they may need to do still more if they are to keep in line with what I might call "public perceptions".
Every school will be different, but let me indicate some of the things a school which is a charity might do. First and foremost, it should set out in its annual report exactly what it does in order to justify its charitable status so that parents and the local community can then see exactly what that is.
For instance, some independent schools give assistance to the top children in local maintained schools where specialist teachers may be in short supply—for example, the teaching of Mandarin or Greek—and help with sports or arts facilities and any help their children may give to disabled or disadvantaged people in their local community. Many of these activities go on at the moment to the advantage of children at independent schools, the maintained sector and to the local community.
All this should be set out in an annual report to show what the school does, and to compare that with the value of charitable status to the independent school,
30 Nov 2004 : Column 414
and thus be able to make a comparison for itself and others to see, not least for the trustees of the charity to have a yardstick by which to measure.
I therefore welcome the Bill to reform charities, if the Government can deliver it. I have considerable doubts about their capacity to do so.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |