HC Deb 17 January 1968 vol 756 cc1911-22

Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Harold Walker.]

10.0 p.m.

Mr. Victor Goodhew (St. Albans)

I am grateful for this opportunity to raise a matter which concerns a constituent of mine, Mr. James Trevorrow, who is a club leader. It may seem a rather small matter compared with the momentous decisions which have been debated earlier tonight, but although it concerns only one individual I believe that it has an important bearing on the over-all policy for the employment of youth club leaders.

The background to the case is that in St. Albans there is the Pioneer Youth Club, which was started during the war, in 1941–42, as the Barbara Tanner Youth Centre. It has grown over the years to a club with a membership of 320. and it had spendid new premises built in 1965, largely as a result of the efforts of the club members and the management committee in collecting £7,000 towards the total cost.

The previous leader, Miss Barbara Tanner, had worked for the club for more than 25 years, after having started it, and she was awarded the B.E.M. for her efforts. She stayed on for an extra year after the normal retirement age because of the difficulty of finding a successor. I suggest that her long service, the award she received, and the fact that the club had been built up into a successful enterprise over the years to the point of having its own fine new building, are ample evidence of the good judgment of the management committee.

Knowing the club and the committee as I do, I would back their judgment in selecting a replacement for someone who might well have been considered irreplaceable. The committee spent 18 months searching for a new leader and finally found Mr. Trevorrow, whom they thought to be ideally suited to the post, in July, 1967. He is aged 30 and is married. He left school in 1953 at the age of 17 and has gained five O level G.C.E. certificates and the English Commercial Senior Certificate since. He joined the Sea Cadets, and gained his first two 0 level certificates when he was in the R.N.V.R. and was awarded a cup as the best new entry cadet of the year. On leaving school he entered industry on the administrative side, and he served in his first post for four years. He then served for a year at sea, and in 1958 he returned to industry.

In 1962 Mr. Trevorrow began a five-year theological course at Trinity College, Glasgow University, for ordination. He qualified for ordination in the Church of Scotland in 1967, but did not present himself for personal reasons. Therefore, there is no doubt of his mental calibre, and he has had valuable experience in industry and at sea. He has done five years at a theological college whose dean gives him excellent references. One might have considered that this was an excellent background for youth work—far better than, say, that of a university graduate with no experience of the world outside an academic institution. One is also entitled to assume that his character is ideal for this calling, because there is obviously a close affinity between work in the church and youth work.

I should like to go briefly through the youth work he has undertaken over the years. Between 1958 and 1961 he assisted with the youth fellowship of the Church of St. Georges in Tron, in the city centre of Glasgow, under the leadership of Mr. Tom Allen. At the same time, he worked under Dr. D. P. Thompson at a lay training centre at Crieff. There, he led discussions and Bible studies, visited caravan sites and so on. He was mainly involved with young people. He left the youth fellowship of St. George's because he disagreed with the policy of having no members of the club on the committee. He felt that it was quite wrong to have a controlling committee on which there were only adults appointed by the church minister rather than the members of the youth club.

Mr. Trevorrow went from there as an adult helper to the youth fellowship at Woodlands Church, Glasgow, and there assisted in training young people who were being prepared for a conference of the British Council of Churches at Leicester in 1962. This training consisted of leading discussions on the rôle of the Church in relation to the community and young people, and it took place at the Church of Scotland Youth Department& Community House in Glasgow. Mr. Trevorrow was one of 40 representatives from Scotland, and was one of only four of the 40 who were selected as discussion group leaders.

After the Leicester conference Mr. Trevorrow continued to assist in the youth club at Woodlands Church, and during his first year as student assisted at the youth club run by the college in the Carlton area of Glasgow. During the second year of his studies he ran a youth leadership course at Woodlands in liaison with the Church of Scotland Youth Department and the Youth Officer for Glasgow and various social agencies. The training was that of parish youth leaders.

During this time Mr. Trevorrow was acting as assistant leader of the Woodlands Club and assisting the Church youth fellowship. In 1965, as part of his course of training, he moved to the Jordanhill Church, Glasgow, and did parish work three evenings a week. It was his sole responsibility to run the youth club every Saturday for two years. There is a good deal more that I could say about the work that he has done, but I think that this shows that he had made great efforts to get himself experienced and active in the youth field, and he has, as I say, very good references for that.

It was in the spring of 1967 that, having completed his course of training, he applied for the post of leader at the Pioneer Youth Club, St. Albans. While awaiting confirmation of the offer to him, which was then made, he was employed as a full-time assistant warden at the Pentland Youth Community Centre in Edinburgh. He has done over the years other missionary Sunday School work in Glasgow and many other forms of active work with the Church there. including help in church work in the night life of the city centre dealing with alcoholics, prostitutes, thugs, and so on. He was a founder member of the Glasgow branch of the Samaritans, and has had considerable informal contact with youth throughout this time.

All this, one would have thought, would surely indicate that Mr. Trevorrow has a very deep interest in youth and, furthermore, has considerable experience in working with them, and also must have considerable ability in dealing with them because he would not have spent all those years helping in various clubs were this not so.

The case was brought to me after the Department of Education and Science had ruled that Mr. Trevorrow could not be accepted as a qualified leader. It is perhaps important to mention at this stage that there are two forms of qualification needed. There is that which is attained as a result of taking a recognised course, and there is also a means of being qualified on the ground of one's experience when this is accepted as being sufficient by the committee concerned.

Mr. Trevorrow was turned down at this stage first because he is not a qualified teacher and has not undertaken a recognised course in youth leadership, and, second, because although he had done his ordination course, he had not been ordained and had not had thereafter five years' pastoral experience. He was turned down desipte the fact that the joint negotiating committee for youth leaders and community centre wardens is empowered to grant exceptional recognition in such cases on the basis of training and experience in these youth fields.

Upon my being approached over this case, I contacted the Minister who has been good enough to come here tonight to hear me again, and he kindly referred the case to the committee last summer. The verdict on that occasion was that Mr. Trevorrow has undoubtedly undertaken valuable work with young people but I am afraid that we are agreed that his training and experience in youth work is not sufficient to justify exceptional recognition as a qualified youth leader. I ask: why not? How is it that this man of 30, with experience in industry and in the Merchant Navy and with theological qualifications and all this work in youth organisation over the years, is considered less suitable than a young man of, say, 22, who has purely paper qualifications and no long experience whatever either of youth club work or of the world outside?

Of course, it is not merely a question whether this person is told that he can be regarded as a qualified youth club leader. There is the question also of salary, which affects him greatly. I understand that, at present, being a so-called unqualified leader, his salary is only £800 and that he would qualify for £1,500 if he were accepted as a qualified leader. I also understand that, as he is not accepted or recognised as a qualified leader, there is no question at present of getting a local authority grant to pay for this qualified leader's salary.

I have been told that, if he were to take a single year's course, he would then become qualified, but surely his experience over the years is much more valuable than merely one year's course on youth work. The chairman of the management committee was so disturbed at the facts about this man he considered ideal for the job that he wrote to the Prime Minister personally, and in his letter I think he made out what I would regard as a thoroughly reasonable case. I shall not read the whole letter, but a few pertinent words: There is a very large shortfall in the number of qualified youth leaders available to fill the posts which are now vacant. It is undoubtedly right that such people should be formally qualified and ultimately, no doubt, the system will produce a sufficiency. Meantime, those who do qualify are very largely too young and inexperienced to take charge of a difficult youth club such as that with which I am concerned. There is a very urgent need for a period, at least, during which persons who are qualified by experience shall be accepted as fully qualified. I believe that this period should extend for at least ten years to give a chance for a sufficient supply of experienced and qualified people to be developed. The chairman is not suggesting that one should indefinitely accept that it is necessary to take on people who have not passed examinations. He is suggesting that, in the mean time, while we are waiting for a sufficiency of qualified leaders, this is necessary. Of course, he got a rather dusty answer from the Prime Minister and wrote a further letter which was referred for further answer to the Department, from which he got a further dusty answer.

Following this, I asked a quesion on 7th December last, but after I had tabled it, the Minister once more referred the matter to the committee, which gave the same answer. Is this a case of a Minister being too far divorced from the scene to be able to form a sound judgment?

The management committee considers this man to be an ideal leader for the club. He is at present employed by it but at the very low salary he can command merely because he is unqualified. The chairman has sufficient confidence in his suitability to approach his Member of Parliament and the Prime Minister and the Chairman of the Hertfordshire County Council Education Committee, in a letter dated 11th December, stated: The Education Committee is favourably disposed towards the efforts you are making in connection with Mr. Trevorrow. A Member of Parliament who knows the club and the persons involved is so convinced himself of the merits of the case that, after seven months of this work, he is taking the opportunity to press the Minister to think again. Is it not possible that the hon. Gentleman and his Department are wrong and that the local authorities are right? When there is a nationwide shortage of youth leaders, qualified or otherwise, is it sense to discourage a man of this calibre and discount as worthless the views of those who know? I hope that the hon. Gentleman has come here prepared to think again.

10.15 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Denis Howell)

I much appreciate the interest of the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) in this personal constituency case, and I agree with him that it is a good thing that even in the midst of its momentous discussions the House of Commons can consider the plight, or fate, of one individual in the community. I say at once that I have no intention at all of detracting from the personal qualities of Mr. Trevorrow, and I am happy to accept all that the hon. Gentleman has told me in that respect.

The essential question for the Secretary of State or for myself to determine in this matter is entirely one of professional standards in the Youth Service. This goes back a long way, back to the Report of the Albemarle Committee, on which I sat myself and one of whose major recommendations was the need beyond all else to improve the standard and status of youth training and youth leadership in the country, a policy which was adopted by our predecessors and which will certainly be continued as far as I can.

In the three years which I have held this office, I have formed the opinion that this is the paramount need above all others in the Youth Service and in the last 12 months we have had Departmental committees investigating how we can enhance and improve the quality and training of youth leaders. I have myself taken part in many negotiations and more negotiations have still to be undertaken. If this matter is so important that the Government should be considering it in this way, clearly to take a decision, even on an individual case, which in any way could be said to be detracting from the principle of improving professional status and qualifications is a serious matter.

This is not only my view. I note with interest that, following our exchange in December when the hon. Gentleman asked a Question, three or four students of the West Hill Training College in Birmingham, wrote a letter to the Herts Advertiser, which the hon. Gentleman may have seen, in which they said: We sincerely feel that if Mr. Trevorrow is recognised as a qualified youth leader, then a mockery is being made of our professional qualifications and the precedent can result only in the lowering of standards. One of the questions which the hon. Gentleman ought to ask and which I have to ask is, if I accede in this case—although I do not believe that the decision is the Secretary of State's or mine, as I shall say in a moment—what could possibly be the answer to these students and to thousands of others who have qualified in the normal way by having a one year's training course for mature students.

Following the Albemarle Report, a committee of the highest possible importance was established to deal with these matters, a committee called the Joint Negotiating Committee for Youth Leaders and Community Centre Wardens. The composition of that committee is representatives on the employers' side of the County Councils Association, the Association of Municipal Corporations, the Association of Education Committees, whose representative, incidentally, is the chairman of the education committee whose comments the hon. Gentleman mentioned, the Welsh Joint Education Committee, the Inner London Education Authority, the Standing Conference of National Voluntary Youth Organisations and the National Federation of Community Associations, while on the staff side there are representatives of the Youth Service Association, the National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Local Government Officers, the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions, and the Community Service Association. There could hardly be a body of greater competence and status to determine these questions, and only in extreme circumstances would a Minister be justified in disregarding the advice of so eminent a body on matters of professional competence.

I certainly do not believe that such a case has been made out by the hon. Gentleman tonight. What does this Committee do? First of all it decides on pay and conditions of service, which are obviously matters of great importance. Secondly, it recommends to the Secretary of State overall qualifications and training acceptable for qualified youth leader status. When the hon. Gentleman referred to youth leaders coming out of our training colleges immature, with only paper qualifications I think he said, he displayed some ignorance of the processes by which we train our youth leaders and the type of people we are training.

The National College at Leicester, which is specially designed for mature students, takes no students unless they are mature and unless they are certainly at least in the middle twenties. It is not just a paper qualification. After they have gone through the year course they have to go into the field and supervise there. They have a period of probation and in every way can be regarded as adequately qualified.

The third point, which the hon. Gentleman made, is that the Committee deals with these individual cases. It is of interest to note in respect of this that when the Joint Committee started, after Albemarle, and had a look at what it would regard as the criteria for adequate qualification for those who had not been academically trained, if I may use that phrase, it reached the conclusion that one of the qualifications required was five years' full-time experience in the service as a youth leader. That is what it said then. Therefore, if the hon. Gentleman wants to get Mr. Trevorrow in under that head he has to have at least five years' training in the field.

May I turn now to Mr. Trevorrow, for whom I have heard nothing but the highest praise. As I say, I accord with all that the hon. Gentleman has said of him. He did five years' training at the theological training course, although it seems to us to have been a three-year course. I am not quite sure about that. At any rate he spent five years there. The essential point is that it was not a degree course nor did it produce a qualified training at the end of it.

A propos the point about an ordained minister, if a minister wishes to become a teacher he has to have done a three-year higher course of training and he must be ordained. Thirdly he must have had at least five years pastoral experience and Mr. Trevorrow does not qualify under those heads. I am prepared to believe that Mr. Trevorrow has done a great deal of voluntary youth service in his Church.

So have hundreds of other youth leaders and they would not expect to be regarded as qualified youth leaders on the basis of their voluntary work. Most of the students at the Leicester Training College, and at West Hill and Swansea, the other two training colleges, also do a great deal of voluntary work. Usually they become students because of their voluntary work. It is because they have done voluntary work that they get an aptitude for the job and offer themselves as candidates to the colleges.

As far as I can understand, Mr. Trevorrow left the theological training college in Glasgow in the spring of last year. He then had two months as an assistant warden at an Edinburgh youth club. In the summer of that year, that is after two months, he applied for the job of youth leader at St. Albans. It is obvious from those brief biographical facts that even now Mr. Trevorrow has done less than one year as a full-time youth worker.

The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to refer to the occasions when this matter was being referred to the Joint Committee. When a body of such professional eminence advises us it is a very serious matter indeed to disregard its views. Mr. Trevorrow took up this job in 1967. He first came to our notice when he applied to become a qualified teacher, not a qualified youth leader, on 24th April last. That was refused on 17th May. The next we heard was when the hon. Gentleman wrote to us on 14th June applying for qualified youth status for this gentleman. That must have been almost within a month of his taking up the job, if indeed he had taken it up at all. As a result of the hon. Gentleman's letter, I consulted the Negotiating Committee, and on 9th August it gave us its view, which we transmitted to the hon. Gentleman, that it could not possibly believe that Mr. Trevorrow could be recognised as qualified on the basis of his experience in the field as a full-time leader.

The next point in this saga is that the hon. Gentleman tabled a Question for me to answer on 7th December asking me again to refer the matter. Out of courtesy to the hon. Gentleman, I did not even wait to answer the Question. I again referred the matter back to the Joint Negotiating Committee immediately. Again, it gave me a negative answer which I was able to transmit to the hon. Gentleman in reply to his Question. Therefore, this matter has twice been before the Joint Negotiating Committee—a most expert and reputable body.

I question whether this type of public approach about an individual is in his best interests, and whether it can be in Mr. Trevorrow's best interests, because if all that the hon. Gentleman says about him is correct—and I do not dispute it at all—the best way out of this dilemma is to get Mr. Trevorrow properly qualified as soon as possible. That is why, when I answered the Question in December, I offered the best services of my Department to bring that about. My offer still stands. If the hon. Gentleman can persuade Mr. Trevorrow to take a one-year course, we shall be happy in our Department to do all that we can to fit him into an appropriate course and to ensure that he gets the professional qualification and status which clearly he wants.

I am well aware that none of this helps the club, which is a very proper concern of the hon. Gentleman. But I cannot believe that questions of professional status can be dealt with on the basis of the needs of individual clubs. This would mean that the whole system and the attempt to raise the status of the profession would collapse and there would be a great outcry from many other clubs and from many hundreds of youth leaders who have taken their training in the normal way.

Therefore, my conclusion must be that the Committee was right—that Mr. Trevorrow should do what hundreds of similar men and women have done throughout the country to get themselves properly qualified. I can only hope that as a result of this debate the hon. Gentleman will use any influence which he has to get Mr. Trevorrow to apply, with or without our help, for acceptance at one of the training colleges.

Mr. Goodhewrose—

Mr. Speaker

The hon. Gentleman has exhausted his right to speak. He can ask the Minister a question before he sits down.

Mr. Goodhew

Before the Minister sits down, may I ask him whether consideration has been given to the possibility of interviewing candidates of this sort? It seems to me that there is a good deal of advantage in their being interviewed by this august body rather than merely having their paper qualifications considered.

Mr. Howell

I will transmit that view to the appropriate committee and ask it to consider it. But a body of such eminence will understand the manner in which the world works. It has at its disposal a great deal of information, particularly from Her Majesty's Inspectorate for Schools, whose views and advice it can draw upon in individual cases if it wishes to do so. While I do not think that Mr. Trevorrow was interviewed, I think that it would be a mistake to assume that the Committee took this decision completely in ignorance of his qualities, his experience and expertise.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock.