Educational Settings — House of Lords, 2020-03-19
Topic: Education
Dominic Hubbard (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I associate myself with the last few comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson. This is an unprecedented time and an unprecedented challenge. However, we still need a bit more clarification. If we are going to hear later on today about who are the key workers and the categories, can the Minister give us more of a hint about which groups they will go into? Delivery drivers would probably not have been regarded as key workers before this occasion. Where exactly will this go? If a little more guidance could be provided today on the categories of people, if not the exact job descriptions, that would help the situation Then we come on to the list of those who will be going to school. I and the Minister have had, shall we say, a bit of cut and thrust already on education, health and care plans, although she has not been in post that long. This is probably an occasion where, to be perfectly honest, the health and care part of that plan is probably more important. Are all people with the plans to be treated in exactly the same way? When I listened to the Commons yesterday, people in special schools was a particularly popular topic of discussion. Will all special schools with a residential capacity automatically be gathered in? Is there any categorisation within them, and so on? The plan seems nice and comprehensive, but it covers a great deal of things. For once, I do not think that dyslexics are a special case here. My group is not the highest priority. Can we make sure that we look at this so that we get practical solutions? It might be a little bit too soon to do this, but then again it has to start functioning by Monday. What will happen there The Government seem to have gone to the BBC, saying "Give us a hand". Have not times changed a wee bit? However, it has a huge resource available to it via iPlayer to enable large numbers of students to continue their courses and study. Will the Government work with the BBC to get particular packages together to help people? For instance, I think you can probably do it at the moment off the top of your head with history programmes for history and English language, and there will be other subjects which I do not bother looking at, so I do not know about them. What are the Government doing there? Also, surely the other public service broadcasters should take this up as well. Is there a co-ordinated approach coming so you have this available? A large amount of support is actually almost at our fingertips here. How are we going to use it? That would be valuable to know On free school meals, once again, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, how will this work? The voucher system, again, has to be functioning by Monday. What is happening there, and when will the general public know what is happening? They have to know. It is no good us finding out and then finding out in a week or two. They have to find out what is going on by Monday. Could we have a bit more guidance on that Nobody wanted to do this, but if the Government feel that this is the correct thing and they have the advice, we can only go with them. However, we need to know how it will work. Clichés come to mind, but the one about the road to hell being paved with good intentions is nagging at the back of my head here.