---

Children and Families

My Lords, I thank and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in particular on battling against the shortcomings of the digital age in her excellent speech. There is no finer investment that we can make at any time, not just during a financial crisis, than investment in our children. This country’s success in the world will depend on the quality of our people and we must invest in that. Therefore, anything that prevents our children from fulfilling their potential and leading happy, successful lives must be eradicated. Unfortunately, recent sad cases have demonstrated that we have not yet got it right for children. We are still not putting enough resources into their safeguarding, their mental and physical health or their education. That must change. These are cost-effective measures, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, emphasised. I accept that this Government have done more for children than any Government, but the numbers of needy children are rising and the complexity of the pressures on their lives is growing. None the less, many of the Government’s policies are moving in the right direction. I particularly support the five principles and six objectives of the Children’s Plan. There are many aspects of children’s well-being, so I shall concentrate on just five issues from the debate. The first of those is child poverty, as mentioned by the right revered Prelate the Bishop of Leicester. The Government made an ambitious commitment in 1999 to halve child poverty by 2010 and to eradicate it by 2020. Although progress has been made, I know that the Government are disappointed that they did not meet their interim target of a 25 per cent cut by 2005. I suppose that that is not entirely surprising, since the ways and means of achieving it are very long term. Paying parents large amounts of benefit is neither affordable in the short term nor sustainable in the long term and, therefore, it is quite unrealistic. They say that it is far better to give a poor farmer a tractor and some seed than to give him a bag of grain to feed his family. On the other hand, if you do not give him a bag of grain as well as a tractor, his family will die of starvation before the crop can be harvested. I think that your Lordships will follow what I am saying, which is that the Government must address short-term poverty while at the same time putting into place those measures that will enable families to support their own children adequately in future. This is where we come, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, mentioned, to the education of the parents, in particular the mother. In developing countries, funders know that the best way to help children is to educate their mothers so that they can bring up their children well. Even in this highly developed country, we know that a woman with a good education is more likely to have fewer children and a stable family structure and be able to get a job to help to support them. She is less likely to make poor health choices that will harm her children, such as smoking or drug and alcohol abuse, as the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, mentioned, all of which can destroy children’s lives as well as those of their parents. She is more likely to appreciate the importance of education and to do everything that she can to support her children’s learning. In the mean time, her education will help her to feed them well without great expense, understand their health and social needs and learn from those who have found effective and positive ways of parenting without resorting to violence. So why has it taken the Government 10 years to agree to make personal, social, health and economic education a statutory part of the curriculum? Of course I welcome that, but they have wasted 10 years since Tony Blair made that commitment, without realising that such education would be one of the levers that would help the Government to achieve their child poverty target. Will the Minister tell us how the Government are getting on with the implementation of the new policy and with the training of the teachers and say whether parenting skills will be included in the curriculum? Secondly, I should like to mention the importance of continuity for children, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, referred. Most families, rich and poor, are loving and caring, and the best continuity for the child is to leave it with its family. However, some families, as we have recently had brought home to us most sadly, are downright dangerous for the child. For those families, very difficult judgments have to be made by social workers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, as to whether the child’s best interests are served by staying with the family, with support, or going into care. A couple of years ago, the cost to a local authority of taking care proceedings rocketed and the number of cases brought to the courts fell substantially. If that was because more families were being supported and it was safe to leave the children at home, that would have been a good thing. However, the fact that there has been a doubling in the number of cases since Baby Peter died suggests that that was not the reason. The implication is that many vulnerable children have been left in danger. I do not underestimate the cost and difficulty of taking these children into care. Many of them have been very damaged and need foster carers with very special skills and support. Sadly, most foster carers do not get either the training or the support that they need to do and carry on doing this very difficult job. Thirdly, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has made the case brilliantly about the family courts. I agree with her wholeheartedly; it is a matter of the rights of children to be properly and independently represented and supported in court proceedings. However, the current proposals will discriminate against women and BME practitioners, just as the law was becoming more diverse. I think that that is very sad. Fourthly, I will say a word about speech and language difficulties. The noble Baronesses, Lady Warnock and Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, spoke most effectively about the benefits of helping children with these problems, especially, in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about those in young offender institutions, where there are rather a lot of them. It is vital—and cost-effective—that the service in custodial settings should be properly funded. However, prevention is better than cure. If more resources were put into communication problems in the early and primary years, that would probably avoid many of these young people getting into trouble in the first place and save us all a good deal of grief and money. Will the Minister say how the Government are getting on with the job of implementing the Bercow report? Last week, the Government told all primary schools to place more importance on speaking and listening skills, following Sir Jim Rose’s review of the primary curriculum. I have read about I CAN’s primary talk project pilot in schools in Somerset, Bradford and Walsall, which accredits schools for creating "communication-rich environments". Heads say that it is making a real difference, but the chief executive of I CAN said that she was frustrated over delays in implementing the Government’s speech and language strategy. Can the Minister say what is being done to support such projects and implement the strategy? Does the Minister also share with me and others a regret that the BBC has found it desirable to cut its budget for children’s radio programmes such as "Go4It", which is to be axed next week? I must declare an interest as a BBC pensioner. One of my earliest, happiest memories was of sitting in front of the fire with my mother after lunch and listening for that most familiar tune, which your Lordships of a certain age will recognise as the signature tune for "Listen with Mother". If we are to give children every opportunity to improve their oracy, which must always come before literacy, surely children’s radio must play its part. Last year the BBC spent £460 million on radio, but only £1.6 million went on young listeners. The numbers listening to children’s programmes may not be large but they will be hooked on radio for ever and become dedicated radio-listening adults, so they deserve their space in the schedules. It is patronising to children to suggest that all they want is TV soaps and pop music. They do not. Just because fewer children choose to eat fruit and vegetables, we do not remove them from the menu in school canteens. Children’s radio has an important place in our efforts to ensure that the next generation grows up able to communicate verbally as fluently as possible. I hope that something can be done to stop the rot. Finally, I draw the Minister’s attention to child trafficking and the report published today by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, which asks for more investment in police teams to track down victims and bring traffickers to justice. It says that immigration judges and border officials need to be better educated to recognise trafficking and that there needs to be more safe accommodation and psychological support for victims. The committee concludes that: ""In effect, traffickers may be using the care home system for vulnerable children as holding pens for their victims until they are ready to pick them up"." This must end. UNICEF, in which I declare an interest as a trustee, has for a very long time urged the Government to open their eyes to this abuse. I hope that this report will ensure that the Government do so.