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Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, we have had an excellent and very wide-ranging debate, as is so often the case in these debates on the gracious Speech. We have had three excellent maiden speakers. I should like to join others in congratulating the noble Lords concerned, welcoming them to the House and saying how much we look forward to their further contribution to our discussions and debate.

The subjects covered in today's debate have been education, health, environment and rural affairs. I think that we got off to an extremely good start with a very able rounding up of all those issues by the noble Lord, Lord Warner. I have, however, been surprised by how few contributions on health there have been. We had a very forthright speech from the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, arguing for the Government to take a stronger line on a smoking ban in public places. We are, of course, going to consider this issue for our own House. I gather that that debate is likely to take place on 21 December, on the report of the Administration and Works Committee. It will be interesting to see whether we apply to ourselves what we sometimes urge on other people.

The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, made a strong plea—one with which I wholeheartedly agree—that we should take the HIV/AIDS pandemic much more seriously than we have done to date. The noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, mentioned the whole issue of dentistry. I agree with him that it is currently in very sad disarray and that one cannot see it emerging from that with the proposals that are currently on the table.

It was, however, left to my noble friend Lady Barker to mention the Disability Discrimination Bill, which will complete the work of the past 20 years on the issue. That legislation is very necessary. She also spoke of both the Mental Capacity Bill and the Mental Health Bill, stressing how vital it is that, in proposing ways forward in this area, we do not impinge on those people's basic human rights—a point which we echo time and again from these Benches.

On rural affairs and the environment, we had contributions by my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer and the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. The noble Baroness, Lady Byford, took a fairly broad sweep across the issues that we are considering. Both spoke about the challenges to the rural environment and the impact of the new combined English Nature and Countryside Agency, an issue also picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington.

I very much echo the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for more training in management for rural businesses. We are beginning to see further education colleges going out into the community and working with small and medium-sized businesses. That is an excellent move and I hope that we shall see a cementing of those relationships over the coming years,
 
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rather than their being swept away in yet another round of radical changes in the further education sector. The great danger is that every time we change the structures, what has been established will be swept away.

The noble Earl, Lord Peel, spoke about the challenges that the farming community now faces with the withdrawal of subsidies, a theme echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, who dramatically illustrated the real income cuts that the countryside has suffered. I have very great sympathy with his infuriation at the Government's failure to provide any leadership on biofuels. He may already have read the Select Committee report on renewable energy. I was one of the members of that Select Committee, which does castigate the Government on the issue.

The majority of speeches in this debate have been about education, which is my own topic. I was delighted that so many noble Lords picked up the third sentence:

"My Government attach the highest importance to extending educational opportunity so that all individuals can realise their full potential and the country can benefit from the talents of all its people".

That is a splendid sentence. I hope that some of those aspirations will be realised.

I should like to pick up two further sentences in the gracious Speech, starting with the fifth sentence, which states:

"A Bill will be introduced to extend financial support for 16 to 19 year-olds engaged in training and education".

That picks up a theme mentioned both by the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, in his maiden speech, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Wall. It is an issue with which I am entirely in accord. For far too long in this country the position has been that young people who can afford to stay on at school do so while many of those whose parents cannot afford it—who perhaps want to see an income coming in, or who perhaps do not value education so highly—go out to jobs.

We are encouraging our 17 and 18 year-olds to stay on in education and training, and will roll out educational maintenance allowances to them. We have already piloted that and the pilot has worked excellently. It is good to see that being further rolled out but there is a big hole, which both noble Lords who mentioned the issue touched on in some senses. The provisions are not to be applied to work-based learning. One problem with rolling out educational maintenance allowances and paying people to stay on in school is that it militates against them taking up apprenticeships.

I shall pick up a theme mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. Sometimes it is more appropriate that those aged 16 and 17 go into the workplace and experience an apprenticeship than stay on in school. I would like to see our Government doing rather more to raise the profile of work-based learning; that was very much the theme picked up by the noble Baroness, Lady Wall. We need to do so. The dignity of work is there. One can learn much from going to work. Many of the young people are motivated by work, and need to be before they come back to learning. It is important
 
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that we enable them to do that, but that we also open the doors to learning when they are more mature. Again, I am delighted that the Government are just beginning to enable some of the grants to be paid to more mature students.

On the whole, I support the fifth sentence of the gracious Speech on the rolling out of the educational maintenance allowances. The fourth sentence says that:

"A Bill will be introduced to streamline the regime of school inspections to help raise standards for every child in every school".

That Bill had its First Reading today; the noble Lord, Lord Warner, spelt out at slightly greater length precisely what it will involve. There will be short, sharp inspections, and inspections will be streamlined so that they include both children's centres and day-care provision.

We have no problems with that. The Liberal Democrats have argued for that agenda for a very long time. We have said that we want lighter-touch inspections and do not want teachers to be bogged down in bureaucracy. Teachers may say, "We don't like short, sharp inspections. We want warning". However, the more warning that we give them of inspections, the more time they will take preparing for them, so it is appropriate that there be unexpected or relatively unexpected inspections. We are happy to see provision for that.

The Government suggest minor changes so that there is no longer an annual meeting of parents, and that a profile of the school be published and distributed to them. On the whole we welcome that, but I have some reservations. If we are to elect parent-governors, it is important that there sometimes be meetings of parents. Feelings can come to the fore on those occasions. I am not sure that I am entirely with the Government on that.

A further aspect of the Bill, which we expect to be carried, although I am not sure when we will see it, is the five-year strategy, particularly the funding strategy. It is on those issues that we differ from the Government. We pioneered local management of schools and are very anxious to see schools take responsibility for their own position. Nevertheless, we see education as a system. We see children's centres feeding through to primary schools, which feed to secondary schools, which feed to sixth-form colleges and further education colleges. We comprehend a system of education applied within the local community, and that the local community works with that system.

There are great dangers with the proposals put forward by Her Majesty's Government. Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, leader of Kent County Council, described them as a,

"plan to nationalise education funding".

The Department for Education and Skills cannot run 25,000 schools in this country and should not pretend to. When we had the funding crisis, it wept and said, "Oh dear, we do not have details of every school in this country". I said, "It is right that it should not have those details".
 
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We find a strange contradiction in the Government's position. On one hand, collaboration is the name of the game—they want schools to get together and collaborate. On the other hand, independence, setting schools apart and league tables are all in the structures being created. The Government cannot have it both ways. They have to decide whether they wish to give priority to collaboration or to competition. We endorse collaboration.

I want to end by saying a few words about the link between behaviour in schools and the general law and order issues raised by the Government, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. The issue also picks up the thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on the importance of parenting. The yobs of today were the disruptives of our classrooms of yesteryear. I too am a governor of a primary school, and one issue at the moment is the very poor behaviour on the part of some pupils in year 6, the top class. If we exclude them, they ride their bicycles round the playground and everyone thinks that they have been rewarded for their bad behaviour.

It is an enormously difficult issue that we have to cope with. However, we have to try to understand why those young people come to school and behave so badly and use such foul language. It is frequently because that is what they have seen at home. Excluding them gets us nowhere. We know very well that if we exclude them from primary schools and they fail to achieve the basic skills—the three Rs—in primary school, they will never achieve at secondary school and will become the drop-outs, the vandals and hooligans. They will cost us as a nation thousands and thousands of pounds. At a minimum, it is £50,000 a year to keep a young man in gaol, and £25,000 for an extra teacher in a primary school is not very much; he may save six of them from gaol.

The bee in my bonnet at the moment is not so much that we want teachers; we do, but we should also have counsellors in primary schools. The evidence of mental distress on the part of some of the young people from the chaotic lives that they lead is very considerable. The evidence of the goodness that can be achieved from their having someone to whom they can talk, vent their anger and explain why they are angry is very considerable. We ought to look at whether it would not be worth spending a little money by putting counsellors into primary schools, so that children can be counselled and withdrawn from class and do not disrupt others. There is an organisation called The Place to Be, which essentially offers such children a place to be. I think very highly of what it is doing; it is a model that we need to look at.

It has been a very stimulating debate that leaves us with plenty of food for thought. I would like to conclude by picking up thoughts seeded in the debate by both the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port. Again, they pick up the issue of the behaviour of the young, in terms of the need to nurture the child spiritually and morally—the fourth R mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, to
 
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supplement the basic skills in the three Rs. It is not only in Port-au-Prince that children need to learn about the meaning of mercy, pity, peace and love.

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