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Debate on the Address

My Lords, the gracious Speech offers a rich mix of opportunities for comment and it was quite hard to decide where to jump in, an experience which a number of noble Lords have had. I might have chosen the Climate Change Bill, which, like the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, I welcome. However, it still fails, in my view, to take a sufficiently urgent view of the threats we face, particularly from the growth of the aviation industry. But it is the wrong day to talk about that or about the challenges in balancing national security against the preservation of civil liberties, although I hope that at least some of your Lordships saw the admirable drama ““Britz””, broadcast by Channel 4 last week, which gave considerable food for thought on this subject. Although I must not mention the proposed changes in the planning system, I am assuming that at the appropriate time other noble Lords will encourage the Government not to allow local opinion to be overridden in the drive for infrastructure growth. Today, however, is a good day to talk about young people. That has been shown by the many wonderful speeches we have heard, particularly by the moving contributions of several noble Lords about the needs of looked-after children. I want to talk about how we can help them to make the most of education and training and how they can link their skills and enthusiasm to the world of work. In this connection, I want to make particular reference to the Make Your Mark campaign and to its annual enterprise week, and to mention the role that the arts can play in education, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, did earlier. Quoting from its own publicity, Make Your Mark is, "““the national campaign to create an enterprise culture among young people in the UK””." It was founded by the British Chambers of Commerce, the CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Institute of Directors and is principally funded by the department we must now call BERR. It is supported by a wide range of organisations from the business community, education and the voluntary sector and has attracted significant corporate and media support for specific elements of its campaign such as ““Make Your Mark in Fashion””, which has just launched with a nationwide competition for young people to create a new range for an established sustainable fashion label. Nine leading sustainable fashion businesses are partnering Make Your Mark in this competition. I should at this point own up to a special interest because my son is part of the team running the campaign. I wonder whether the ““Pink and Powerful”” day in Liverpool, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Morgan will be joining in. I hope so. Make Your Mark's best known activity is enterprise week, which this year is taking place next week from 12 to 18 November. It aims to be a national celebration of enterprise, inspiring young people to turn their ideas into reality. Last year there were 3,184 events organised by 1,410 organisations and this year looks set to be just as successful. All this energy is directed towards enthusing young people about the possibilities of developing their own business ideas because, as Make Your Mark says, "““having a can-do attitude and the capacity to spot opportunities and implement ideas offers very powerful benefits to the individual…There are also huge potential benefits to the UK from a more enterprising culture””." The Government's Household Survey of Entrepreneurship published by the DTI, when it still existed, in 2006 reported a growth of 22 per cent between 2003-06 in the numbers of 16-24 year-olds thinking of starting a business compared with a growth of only 3 per cent for all ages combined. We need to make sure that we are providing the right educational environment for all this potential enterprise to flourish. The new Education and Skills Bill will raise the age for compulsory participation in education first to 17 and then to 18. I support this intention. The Bill will provide for young people to continue their education post-16 in a number of different ways, including full-time school or college, work-based learning and part-time education or training if they are employed, self-employed or volunteering. This range of options recognises the many different ways in which people learn. An even higher degree of co-operation between education and training providers, local authorities, parents and students will be required than we are able to achieve at the moment, but flexibility and diversity in provision are vital to give everyone a better toolkit for dealing with the increasingly unpredictable world into which they will be moving as adults. More people will have to be enterprising and ambitious on their own behalf rather than relying on old models of employment. The critical thing, however, must be the quality of education and training on offer. What work is being done, and what resources are being made available, to ensure that we can consistently deliver the highest standards in what is offered to young people in future? I noted the remarks of my noble friend Lord Soley on, among other things, personalising the provision of education services. That is so we can minimise the risk of developing a new cohort of educational refuseniks needing to be managed by coercion and sanction. I draw attention to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on the assessment of people at different stages in education and how important it is that we know what people can do rather than asserting what they should do. I suspect that success will depend upon the contribution of a wide variety of organisations, of which Make Your Mark is obviously one, but I remind my noble friend the Minister of the importance of the arts in developing the capacity of children and young people to learn effectively. I hope he will ensure that the valuable support of his former department, the DfES, for the excellent work being done by, for instance, the Roundhouse in north London, of which I am a trustee, does not diminish under the new departmental arrangements. Its programmes are designed to engage young people for whom conventional educational models do not work so well—and there are many of those, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, pointed out—and have already attracted approximately 8,000 participants from the 16-plus age group since the Roundhouse reopened just over a year ago. I hope the Government will continue to invest in creativity and imagination throughout the educational system because children who are encouraged from the start to think for themselves, to express themselves through music, sport or drama and thus to learn to communicate—again I refer to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on the subject—and discover in these ways where their aptitudes and enthusiasms lie will have a better chance of taking advantage of the opportunities envisaged by the Bill. Enterprise, ambition and a willingness to learn are hard to insist upon between 16 and 19 if they have not been instilled much earlier.