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Health and Education

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend on that point. Social workers do a great job. Yes, we should look to see if we can improve their training and we should look at their management, but it is one of the hardest jobs in the world. If there is a tendency to take people off the front line quickly, and to promote them into the management and administration of the children's department, we must find out how to combat that by encouraging people, and by giving them time away from the front line to rest them and then bringing them back. It is a very hard job and we must respect that. We must also respect the complexity of the management task faced by the 150 directors of children services, who have very large empires to manage. A little more humility is called for. My hon. Friend is right about the media. For example, last week a study was published in The Lancet which said that 5 per cent. of children in developed countries were subject to abuse, either sexual or physical. When one looked at the full reports, it became apparent that the figure of 5 per cent. was never mentioned—it was only in the press reports. The media treatment of that report gave people in this country the wrong idea. For a start, hardly any of the original research was carried out in this country. How many times do we hear on the BBC the words, ““Research carried out by this programme””? We know what that consists of. Indeed, we had an example this weekend when it was claimed that research carried out by the BBC had found that a tiny number of MPs— 20 or 23—were unhappy with some aspects of the Speaker's performance. That was not research. It was some kid in the office who had pestered MPs over the weekend. Too often, the media, especially the BBC, do such things; the ““Today”” programme loves to do it. Many members will have been rung up as part of that alleged research. I know what real research is, and that is not real research. The amendment expresses the Opposition's concern about international tables. We do not stress the good news enough, and the trends in international mathematics and science study, or TIMSS report, shows how extraordinarily well our children have done in mathematics. The performance of the 10 to 14 age group has improved dramatically, and those on both sides of the House should welcome that. The investment in early years education, children's centres and Sure Start takes a long time to show results, and we are always in danger of making those issues a purely party political contest, with the Opposition saying that whatever the Government have done is wrong. Actually, as Chairman of the Select Committee, I see an enormous amount of good. However, before the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families gets too happy about that, let me say that the Committee's most recent report, which will be published in the new year, points to some concern. I totally disagree with the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), the former Leader of the Opposition, and his talk of the broken society and an underclass. Such language gets us nowhere. I hate the terminology and I think that it gets in the way of evaluating what is happening in our society. It is true that some people suffer from social deprivation and a longstanding lack of good employment prospects, but the situation is dynamic and people move in and out of it. There are problems and challenges, and all parties have to find ways to ensure that every child gets a chance to fulfil their real potential. Sometimes that will be through the academic route, and sometimes through an apprenticeship, training and skills route. Thank goodness, we are achieving provision, especially for 14 to 19-year-olds, that is beginning to address all the talents. We should also give talented people the chance to move easily between disciplines. In a sense, what was wrong with the Education Act 1944 was that people stayed on one track; if they were academic, they went to grammar school—that was their future. People who went to secondary modern school had little chance of getting requisite skills, while those who lived in areas with technical colleges went down a different route again. The apprenticeship provisions in the Bill that we will consider later this Session will ensure that 14 to 19-year-olds have access to a range of potentials. Finally, I want to say something about child development. One of the great things about a Select Committee is that we can take a cross-party look at very difficult subjects. We can take conventional wisdoms and the sort of street knowledge that people pass on without much research and gather evidence to see whether they are right. Most of us will have been troubled by the oft-repeated research that asserts that a child's potential is more or less decided by the level of stimulation that it receives up to the age of 22 months. If that is true, it poses a great challenge to everyone interested in the future of this country's children. I remind the House that 22 months is about the age of little baby P when he died. If that stimulation is so important, are we making the right decisions to ensure that the right environment is provided for all children? Of course, we have come a long way already with early-years provision. We have children's centres and Sure Start, and children aged three now get 15 hours of free nursery care. All of that is good, but you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that child care is still expensive in this country. The challenge is to provide good, stimulating environments for children as early as possible. Income levels should present no bar to that, but at present they do limit what is provided for very young children aged between nought and three. We are not doing a bad job and I do not want to castigate the Secretary of State or the Government, but we must do even better because that is the crucial age. I advise the House that my Committee will call evidence on levels of stimulation and the development of a child's brain. We want to establish how accurate the research to which I referred earlier and the conclusions based on it are.