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Bercow Review

I certainly will pick up on the theme that my hon. Friend has identified, because it is essential to cater for all the groups on the spectrum. I will say something more shortly about the need for a broad range of provision. The Under-Secretary referred to the five themes around which the review's recommendations have been formulated. Communication is crucial—it is the key life skill that enables children to learn, achieve, make friends and interact with the world around them. It is a vital part of the equipment of citizenship, yet all too often it has not enjoyed that priority in the minds of commissioners or policy makers. Sometimes an unwritten, unspoken and—dare I say it?—lazy assumption has been made that children will speak when they are ready, and other important aspects of the children's development agenda have tended to elbow speech, language and communication out of the way. That is why we have recommended the creation of a ministerial communication council upon which both the Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families would be prominently represented. We believe, too, that an identified individual with relevant expertise and commitment—a communication champion—should be appointed to drive forward the process of implementation, to report to the communication council, to raise awareness and to disseminate best practice. The communication champion will, over time and after appropriate and due preparation, have responsibility for overseeing and running the national year of speech, language and communication. As part of that process of investing in speech, language and communication services and making them a great priority, it is right that information at key ages and stages of a child's development should be proactively made available, in a readily accessible form, to children, young people and, in particular, their parents, charting the normal course of communication development, indicating where a person should go if there is a difficulty and advising parents on how best they can assist in the process of bolstering their children's speech, language and communication development. That concept—that communication is crucial—accompanied and reinforced by a series of specific recommendations, is very important. The Minister rightly referred to early intervention. At the risk of being marginally pedantic, I would like to describe it as early identification and intervention. If we are to identify early, we need regular monitoring and surveillance of children's speech, language and communication development at key ages and stages. We have not been over-prescriptive—there is scope for differences of opinion on the exact point at which it is most appropriate to undertake the monitoring; indeed, there is also scope for local variation in what is judged to be right—but the principle that monitoring and surveillance should be done, that it should be done regularly, and that it should be done with a view to securing a signpost to appropriate assistance if there is a problem, is important and, indeed, inviolable. We all know that if we intervene early when there is a problem, the child has a better chance, other things being equal, of overcoming the difficulty, accessing the national curriculum and fulfilling his or her potential. The logical corollary of that is that if we do not intervene early, the problems mount: emotional and psychological difficulties, behavioural problems, lower educational attainment, poorer employment prospects, persistent communication impairment, challenges to mental health and, in extremis, even a descent into offending and reoffending. That is why it is so important that we intervene early, both through that monitoring and surveillance, and by making speech, language and communication a prime component—a centrepiece—of the work of all children's centres.