Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Education
Alan Thomas Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the debate produced a very beautiful meeting of minds between the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which once again demonstrates the supreme value of Committee proceedings in your Lordships’ House. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, all of whom have emphasised the fundamental importance of education and the critical need to get it right I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that children do not take kindly to being preached at. I was suggesting not that they should be preached at but that they should be taught, with real professional skill. I would certainly envisage that appropriate role models—the kind of people who can talk to young people in their own language and whom young people will be able to identify imaginatively with—are of course the sorts of people who will be able to play a very valuable part, if schools have the imagination and skill to find them and bring them into the schools programme However, there have to be more systematic pressures on schools. I very much agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, when he said that having performance in respect of drug education forming part of the data that go to establish league tables will give a salutary shock to quite a number of schools. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, suggested that that is almost the case, and I drew some encouragement from the quotation that he gave us about the requirements of Ofsted. Yet I have a sense that the prevailing culture in our schools is such that they are not taking that point from Ofsted sufficiently seriously, and if they fail to perform in this regard they may not be able to qualify to be rated "outstanding". I am not sure that enough of them know about it or that enough of them are being seen to act on it The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made the point with which I so much agree: that the funding so far provided for the system is—I do not think this was his word—derisory. That is sending a signal from government that this is a second or third-order issue. I know that the Minister does not think it is at all but I hope he will reflect on how he can, tactfully as always, bring more effective pressure to bear on his ministerial colleagues in the Department for Education. He undertook that he would talk to them. I also understand that it is very difficult for them to persuade the system as a whole that it has got to take on yet another task in a new way. There are endless pressures on schools. New Ministers and officials are for ever coming up with new policies and asking the people on the front line to implement their bright ideas. I understand all those difficulties, but having acknowledged that, we have all recognised and are all fully persuaded that we have got to do better on education and that that is going to be fundamental to the success of the overall strategy I am glad that my noble friend Lord Rosser drew attention to a significant section in the report of the expert panel which should give strength to the Minister’s elbow. I was grateful for the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who survived her education, which is something that everybody has to do. I was grateful to the Minister for a series of thoughtful and helpful points. Of course he is right that the term "legal highs" has been profoundly unhelpful, and I have every sympathy with the Government in their creation of an aggravated offence of supplying psychoactive substances in proximity to schools. I think there is an amendment which adds other institutions where children may be present If the Minister would be kind enough to write to us clarifying the figures—what is being spent on what, on public account in this field—that would be very helpful. I was also much encouraged by what he said about wanting young people themselves to be involved in the debate, as it were owning the issue and the problem and to help us all to find better ways to deal with it. I look forward to returning to this broad issue at Report and in the mean time beg leave to withdraw the amendment.