Education Bill

My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for raising the subject today, as on many other days previously in my years here. He is indefatigable in his determination to remind us of the importance of young children and of the family in providing the relevant context. I was going to say that we are all parents but looking at the grey hair around this House, I am obviously talking overwhelmingly to grandparents rather than parents. However, thinking back to when we were young parents, there would be no disagreement that our duty was overwhelmingly to our children. I am not opposed to parental education; quite the contrary—the more the better. I certainly did not have any but my wife and I had no doubt whatever that when we got married we would have children and that, of course, the children were our responsibility. We devoted our lives to them. They are now very grown up but occasionally the phone rings and one will ask, ““Is mum there?””, meaning that he has a problem of the sort that he used to have when he was three years old. There is nothing between us on what we are focusing on. The question is: what contribution we can make in the context of this Bill, which will become an Act of Parliament? I am not too happy at the negativism I have heard from one or two noble Lords on this. I say to myself, ““Why should we not put our aspirations in the Bill?””. Would it not be useful for your Lordships—people of experience and distinction—to send out the message that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, wishes us to send? I believe very strongly that the answer to that question is yes. I see nothing in our unwritten constitution that says aspirations must never be placed in an Act of Parliament. Indeed, I would go further: I feel those of us in this House would be failing in our duties if we did not insist that proper recognition was made of our aspirations. I am therefore in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that this should be in the Bill. I also think that, in terms of making policy, there is a genuine problem sometimes in not having all the relevant information we might need. This is not the last Bill that will ever be presented to your Lordships’ House on education, nor the last to be presented that will deal with the subject of children. It would be jolly good if we were able to speak with a full factual basis behind us. That is why I would particularly hope that the Minister would look at Amendment 3—also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne—with the intention of giving us a database for future policy-making in due course. I conclude as I began: it would be a very valuable thing for this House of older men and women to send out a message to the world that we really do think this is of central importance, and we aspire to do something about it.