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As the noble Baroness knows, we have been consistent in opposing the compulsion element of the Bill. We believe that the Government could have put all the duties on local authorities, employers and indeed themselves to help young people carry on in education or training until they are 18-plus without criminalising them. We laid various amendments to remove the compulsion element and replace it with an entitlement to free tuition up to level 3, but sadly we were not in a position to win that argument because, unfortunately, the Official Opposition would not allow the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, and her noble friends to support us. That would have been the simple way of addressing the issue of criminalisation.

So we were reduced to mitigating the effects as far as possible. I am pleased to say that the Government have come a long way towards us by accepting our learning and support contracts under another name, clarifying that there will be no custodial sentences and ensuring that young people will be able to appeal in their own right at every stage of the enforcement process. This amendment is another of those concessions.

The Government claim that the full enforcement process will not be necessary except in a tiny minority of cases. We challenged them to prove that by laying a review of the operation of enforcement before Parliament at an appropriate stage after enactment. I am glad to say that they have taken up that challenge, which indicates that the Minister is very confident in what she says.

I have a few questions, however, about the operation of the criminal offence, about which I have given the Minister notice. First, when the Home Office issues guidance to the police about the relevance of disclosing offences under what are currently known as CRB checks, will it be made clear that the offence of non-participation in education under the Bill will not be considered relevant and therefore not disclosed? Secondly, will the Minister give me a similar assurance on employers’ discretion, when filling positions exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, that this offence should not be relevant in an objective assessment of the candidate’s ability to undertake certain roles, since it is not a violent or deception offence? Finally, will she clarify the position of 18-plus year-olds who have been convicted of this offence after they turn 18 compared with those who have outstanding fines when they turn 18? I would like an assurance that they too will not be liable for a custodial sentence and that the offence will be spent in two and a half years.

I look forward, if the Bill is ever fully enacted, to scrutinising the review carefully in 2016.

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses for their response and support for the amendment. I offer the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, the reassurance that I think she is looking for. Having said that, I do not think that I will ever be able to reassure her until we have finished the review, which we are absolutely committed to undertaking for

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exactly the reasons that she espouses. We are confident that a tiny number of young people, if any, will reach the stage where they incur a criminal sanction.

When the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act provisions are reviewed, which the Government have committed to do, we will work closely with the Ministry of Justice on disclosure. We recognise that there is a strong case in the disclosure period for fines for these offences to be reduced. We will be working with the Home Office on using these offences as an example in its guidance on disclosure when it is reviewed. I can assure the noble Baroness that we will be answering her concerns through guidance and taking great care to make sure that all the professionals who work with young people through the administrative and then the youth justice enforcement regime have proper, full and appropriate guidance.

This is about raising participation in education and training for young people. We know that it is through participation and progression in education and training that young people are best served by this Government and by the education system.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Lord Elton moved Amendment No. 3:

3: Before Clause 66, insert the following new Clause—

“Screening and assessment for specific learning difficulties

(1) The following shall be screened for risk of specific learning difficulties—

(a) each pupil in a maintained or voluntary aided school—

(i) before his sixth birthday;

(ii) in the second year after completion of Key Stage one; and

(iii) in the first year after Key Stage two; and

(b) each person sentenced to imprisonment in one of Her Majesty’s Prisons or a Young Offender Institution or a Secure Training centre for a period of not less than 6 months shall within one calendar month of the commencement of his sentence.

(2) The screening referred to in subsection (1) shall be carried out by a prescribed person with prescribed qualifications.

(3) The specific learning difficulties referred to in subsection (1) are—

(a) dyslexia;

(b) dyscalcula;

(c) dyspraxia;

(d) dysgraphia;

(e) attention deficit disorder;

(f) attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder;

(g) Meares-Irlen syndrome;

(h) a high level of co-morbidity of any two or more of the above conditions.

(4) Every pupil referred to in subsection (1)(a) and every person referred to in subsection (1)(b) who is identified as being in need of support as a result of a condition mentioned in subsection (3)—

(a) shall be entitled to that support, and

(b) shall if appropriate be nominated for a full assessment.

(5) Anyone nominated for a full assessment under subsection (4) shall—

(a) be entitled to receive it within three calendar months of nomination; and

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(b) shall be entitled to appropriate support from a date not later than three calendar months after the assessment; and

(c) shall at the time the result of the assessment is communicated to him receive specialist advice on the nature of his need and the strategies for coping with it.

(6) The assessment referred to in subsection (4) shall be carried out by a prescribed person with prescribed qualifications.

(7) In this section “prescribed” means prescribed by order by the Secretary of State.

(8) The Secretary of State may, by order, specify conditions to be added to those referred to in subsection (3).”

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I acknowledge gratefully the permission that your Lordships have given me to move this amendment. I should explain that I have not in any way resiled from my overall objective of having every child screened for dyslexia in early school years. Teachers really need to know what is going on in the heads of the children whom they teach; the damage that can be done if that is not understood can be remarkable and can last a lifetime.

The opportunity that your Lordships have given me is to enable Her Majesty’s Government to make a statement about what they intend in moving in this direction. The movement may seem small, given that dyslexia was first raised in this House in 1970 as a result of the work of the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, as he now is, and special educational need was first recognised as a result of the brilliant report in 1978 of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, whom I am glad to see in her place, which was incorporated into the Education Act 1981. That is all a long time ago. I think that the Minister will promise us legislation in the next Session; I can promise her relentless pursuit in this direction from all of us between now and then. I beg to move.

3.30 pm

Lord Ramsbotham: My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment. Like the noble Lord, Lord Elton, I am extremely grateful to be given the opportunity to raise points that I have raised before in this House. I make no apology for raising them again. I very much appreciated the meeting that the Minister and her officials arranged last week to discuss these issues and the detailed letter that she has sent to those of us who took part in the meeting. I say that because, in this amendment, I do not just include the learning difficulty, dyslexia; other learning difficulties are mentioned in subsection (3) of the proposed new clause.

Noble Lords will not be surprised that my concern is very much based on those who come into custody. I have already explained to the House that in 1999, thanks to having a speech and language therapist carry out an assessment in a prison in Scotland for the first time ever, I found that discipline, education and healthcare staff were made aware of a whole range of problems faced by young offenders. Armed with that, they were able to institute proper programmes to help to give those young offenders a start in life.

I then began campaigning to have speech and language therapists on the staff of every young offender establishment, secure training centre and youth place of custody, to make certain that that assessment was given to every young person. The great thing that

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came out of all this assessment in the young offender establishment was the realisation that this should have happened a long time before, preferably before all these young people started school. Without people being alerted to their difficulties at that stage, the young people were frankly unable to engage with the teacher and, therefore, with the education system.

The implications of all this have been stated over and over again. I could list the number of Ministers to whom I have referred this matter since 1999, in many cases twice: Mr Charles Clarke, both as Education and Home Secretary; Dr John Reid, both as Health and Education Secretary; and Mr Jack Straw, both as Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Justice. There have been numerous Ministers, including Hilary Armstrong, the previous Minister for Social Exclusion. All listened, all agreed, but nothing happened.

The nearest that we got to anything was when in 2005 Mr Paul Goggins, then the Prisons Minister, was charged by the Secretaries of State for Education and Health and the Home Secretary to examine the question of money. It all boiled down to who was going to pay the £33,000 a year to fund a speech and language therapist in each young offender establishment. Of course, the cost savings of having a correct assessment made that £33,000 pale into insignificance. I gnashed my teeth when I heard the Prime Minister at the time demanding £90 million for his respect agenda, £30 million of which came from the Home Office, because less than £1 million would have funded these speech and language therapists—and what is more respectable than to be able to conduct relationships with your lips rather than with your fists?

I hope very much that the Minister, in considering the new Bill, which I understand will include new arrangements for juveniles, will review all the evidence put to her and other Ministers and officials over the past nine years to my certain knowledge and probably longer. Evaluation has been carried out by academics; observations have come from people working in the field. Advice comes from all quarters, all of which seems to be disregarded. We owe a duty to these young people to let them engage with the education system. We have an opportunity to do so in the next Bill. I hope, therefore, that having reviewed the evidence, the Minister will ensure that measures are in that next Bill to make certain that every child has this assessment to enable them to set off on the road that we would all wish them to be on.

Baroness Warnock: My Lords, I add my voice to those describing the enormous importance of this amendment. I am grateful that we have been able to hear an able defence of it. The crucial word in the amendment is in subsection (5), which says that anyone nominated for a full assessment should be entitled to receive “appropriate” support. It is of the greatest importance that schools, particularly when they deal with children under the age of six, should not be able to get away with saying that there is support and extra help, with classroom assistants and other people who can help these children to get started.

Anyone who supplies support to children with dyslexia, or any of the range of problems coming under this heading, must have had special training and must be

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an expert. A non-expert may be full of good will but may do more harm than good to a child because she will not have the expertise and the child will not progress. The child will feel that his position is hopeless and will therefore get worse. A child, as we heard not long ago, can learn more in eight weeks from an expert than in many years from someone who has not been trained. I hope that, in the new Bill, it will be emphasised that when every child enters school they will be assessed and have appropriate access to a genuine expert teacher and not simply be propped up by someone who has not been trained.

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, it would be difficult to argue against the amendment and I defy the Minister to try to smuggle it into a non-statutory framework. Our knowledge of the behavioural aspects of the human being has expanded so much that this kind of screening has become essential.

Lord Addington: My Lords, I will say a few words about the processes that we have gone through to get here. Having received the Minister’s letter, I appreciate that there is a considerable degree of commitment to carrying this further. Dyslexia was first mentioned in statute in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. The 1981 Act said that we should do something about it and legal action has been taken on numerous occasions. There have been few Acts since then about which we have not thought that we have got it right. We have said that there should be greater entitlement and that these problems must be addressed. Ministers—whatever colour rosette they wear on election day—have all said, “Yes, we have done more than before. We have talked to and engaged with more people. We have done so much more than ever before”. But we have never reached a sufficient bite point. Often, that is because of a failure to identify those who should be receiving the help. Also, everyone defends their budgets. How do we say which proportion of the budget should go towards the problem?

I recognise the limitations of lists. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, one term cannot cover everything, but it is appropriate to talk about dyslexia because it was used to cover virtually all the conditions in this list at a time when we understood the process less well. You may be going through the process and not know what is in front of you. You may refuse to recognise dyslexia and say, “Can we have yet another test or assessment?”. It is always possible to deal with it in that way. You can give someone a little bit of extra help.

However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, just pointed out, inappropriate help is probably the best way to put somebody off the educational process. That is one problem with the Prison Service. Most prisoners are education self-excluders by the age of 14 at the most. Half the prison population has dyslexia or one of the other conditions in this list. Most of them have problems with acquiring education and therefore acquiring employment. The Minister has an opportunity to say what commitment the Government will give.

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I hope that the whole House will remember that, when you go through this process, there will always be a series of opt-outs. One is that people will disagree about what dyslexia really is. I remember as a 16 year-old being dragged along to a conference on dyslexia by my mother, where I shifted chairs around. Sulkily, I sat down to listen to part of the conference. I remember a long discussion between two people about what exactly dyslexia was. I then heard somebody criticise them by saying that we had got over the problem 10 years before. The dancing on the head of the pin that can be done in academic circles defies belief. It was first said of economists that, if you laid them all end to end, they would never reach a conclusion. Take three or four more disciplines, stick them together and the possibilities are infinite. There can be great agreement on about 90 per cent of these problems. We must deal with the real problems and, for once, do whatever we can to ensure that initial teacher training contains enough to enable teachers to stand a chance of recognising dyslexia.

We cannot be dependent on a Minister’s enthusiasm. In the meeting, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, pointed out with a degree of delicacy that I am afraid I do not possess that Ministers tend to come and go. I remember David Blunkett saying when he was at the Department of Education that he was enthusiastic about dyslexia and something should be done, when he knew that he would be moved after the coming general election. Ministers do not stay for ever. Unless some structure is put in place, all their statements mean nothing. Ministerial enthusiasm will always be there and Ministers will always be moved on in a few years’ time.

I hope that the Minister can start to address these points. There is no one simple answer. Unless proper screening is backed up by a long-stop, people will always be missed. The best chance of success is cutting the amount of missed people to a minimum.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, we are particularly lucky to have my noble friend Lady Warnock in her place and to hear her endorsement of the proposals and her backing of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I join others in expressing the gratitude that we all felt to the Minister for the time and detailed attention that she gave us last week on this whole issue and for the valuable range of experts whom she brought with her, all of whom addressed the subject and were working as hard as they could for the right solution.

I am entirely in favour of what everybody else has said. However, on prisons, I have considerable sympathy with the frustration of my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham at what has happened over so many years. Again, I suspect that it all has something to do with the churn of Ministers and sometimes even the churn of civil servants; a lot of the experience gets lost.

We will hear a lot of our points answered when the Minister replies. However, we know that prison governors are autonomous in their own prisons. They can decide what to do about pay, for example. Equally, a lot is being done to improve prison education, which one hopes will be rolled out—if not, we will all quickly be on the trail yet again. However, if prison governors

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can pay their inmates more for working in the kitchen, or wherever, than attending the education and skills training that would better equip them for the outside world, that battle will be lost. I hope that the Minister will address that issue as well as others.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I shall let the House into a little secret. Over the past few months, my party has been reviewing its education policies. I can tell the House that, although Ministers may not have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, the Liberal Democrats have. All the elements of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, are already in our policy paper. All we need to do is elect a Liberal Democrat Government and we will get all these good things.

3.45 pm

Baroness Morris of Bolton: My Lords, I am not sure about that. But I support the forceful points that my noble friend Lord Elton made both today and in Committee. Far too many children with learning difficulties are undiagnosed, and it has a major effect on their ability to participate in school, to keep up with their peers and to engage with their education. From personal experience I know the difficulties that a child can face when he suffers from a learning difficulty. Without diagnosis, the problems can only multiply.

I was encouraged by the brief exchange that we had on this topic on Report, in which the Minister indicated that a review of dyslexia is being undertaken. I hope that she will be able to expand on that. I know that she had a fruitful meeting with Members of your Lordships' House. I believe that a diagnostic reading test at the age of six, or after the first year at school—this is one of the Conservative education policies—is vital in preventing children with learning difficulties slipping through the net into underachievement and disillusionment. This issue goes right to the heart of so many of our discussions on the Bill. One of the key elements in keeping children fully engaged with their education—and more, to inculcate them with a love of learning that will benefit them so much in later years—is to identify their individual needs and to ensure that they are catered for. My noble friend is right to say that identifying specific learning difficulties must be a priority. To do anything else would be to fail some of the most vulnerable children in our schools.

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their kind remarks and for the passion that they have brought to this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, triggered—as he has done previously—an important and enlightening debate which gives me the opportunity, for which I am grateful, to put on the record some of the comments made in the letter I sent to noble Lords.

It would be foolish of me to comment on Ministers coming and going, but I shall comment on their enthusiasm, which I am glad has been noted. I, too, am enthusiastic about this issue. However, noble Lords are not interested in that; they want to hear what we are going to do. I do not want to make any jokes about

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waiting for a Liberal Democrat Government, because we need to get on with the task. I thank noble Lords for the helpful discussions that we have had with my honourable friend, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, the Minister responsible for this matter in another place. I am absolutely sure that the debate will be the beginning of many conversations that we will have with your Lordships on this subject, to which I look forward.

I share noble Lords’ concerns that we should continue improving the school workforce’s identification and teaching of children with special educational needs, and that we must continue improving educational provision in custodial settings, including for prisoners with learning difficulties. However, as noble Lords are aware from discussions and from the correspondence last week—I am glad that noble Lords found that helpful—we are currently addressing these concerns in ways that are different from those proposed in this amendment.

There is already a statutory duty placed on schools to use their best endeavours to ensure that necessary provision is made for pupils with special educational needs. That is a very important duty. The professional standards for teachers require trainee teachers to demonstrate that they can make effective personalised provision for those they teach, including those who have special educational needs.

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