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Special Educational Needs and Disability (Support) Bill

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and there can be no excuse. Whenever we look into the causes of that, we always get into a debate about British sign language. It is, of course, right that a child who cannot speak or hear must be able to communicate, because otherwise the frustrations that the hon. Gentleman so eloquently described earlier in our debate are likely to come out. We are probably only at the beginning of understanding how deaf children learn. Deaf children have been warehoused in deaf children's schools and they have not been expected to achieve—and, of course, if we do not expect a child to achieve and do not push them to do so, they do not achieve. The mainstreaming of deaf children into mainstream schools presents those schools with a huge number of challenges, and I will come on to that shortly. I was talking to a mother with a child in a mainstream school, and she said that there is a pupil who is deaf at that school so every child who attends the school has been learning sign language. They learned it for two years before the child came to the school, and they are all learning it now. She was genuinely mystified as to why every child in the school should learn British sign language when there was just one deaf child. The answer, of course, is that every other child in the school should be able to communicate with the deaf child. We have to turn this on its head and say, "It's fantastic that your children are learning sign language." It is a universal language, so often people do not need to understand the language that is being spoken to understand what is being said. Therefore, whenever these children go abroad to any country they will be able to make themselves understood. One only has to observe the Italians to understand the power of gesticulation in communicating across language boundaries. The Italians can always make themselves understood because they are completely uninhibited about gesture, whereas we are British and we keep our hands in our pockets or by our sides—except when we are holding our papers, as I am now—so we are not as good at communicating. I said to that parent, "This is a blessing for your children. It is fantastic and it will be of use throughout their lives." It is also teaching them that communication is not just about oral communication; it is also about how we stand, use our hands and look at people. For a person who is deaf, there is a whole series of such means of communication that have to be deployed. I know that myself, as somebody who wore hearing aids for seven or eight years, from my mid-20s to my early-30s. My experience, as someone who acquired a hearing disability, was that it is extremely challenging. I was working as a university lecturer, and I had to go to my boss and say, "I've got a real problem; I can't hear what my students are telling me in the lecture halls." It was beyond embarrassing to have to keep on asking people—sometimes two or three times—to repeat themselves. The university had to install—it had the support of the Department for Work and Pensions—a hearing loop so I could hear what was going on. In my work as a councillor, I was also unable to hear what was going on in the chamber, particularly because in local politics, as in national politics, things can sometimes get a little rowdy. I could not hear what was being said off-microphone when my hearing aid was switched to the loop system. Unless someone has physically experienced the frustrations of not hearing, and the stigma, they cannot fully understand. Babies will pull hearing aids out of their ears because they are uncomfortable, but adults do not want to wear a hearing aid because they are concerned that it makes them look stupid. I confronted that stigma and prejudice myself. Wearing a hearing aid is not like wearing spectacles; there are no designer hearing aids. Armani does not do make hearing aids; they just sit on the back of a person's head and other people think they are not very clever. The challenge is to change that. As soon as someone puts on a hearing aid, their IQ goes down by 50 points in other people's eyes. That is a huge problem, which we have to face up to. It is to do with our own internal prejudices. That is also why people in later life do not wish to wear hearing aids. There is a big issue to do with how we feel about disability, and it is incredibly important that we overcome the challenges before us.