REPEALS (Hansard, 10 June 1981)

§ Dr. Boyson
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
It is some time since the Second Reading debate. We may deal more rapidly with the Third Reading, especially in view of the speed with which we dealt with the last few amendments on Report. I shall watch the clock.
Following the Warnock report, we introduced the Bill to establish a legal framework through which we could help public opinion to accept that, wherever possible, children with special needs should be integrated into normal schools with normal curricula. We wished to extend the definition of children with special educational needs to cover not only the specific and obvious categories, but many others both inside and outside normal schools. We have done that.
We have abolished the 10 separate categories of handicap and replaced them with a system of pupil profiles, thereby extending the provision for special educational needs to many children in ordinary schools. We have involved parents much more in the education of their children. They have to be approached before a statement is made. They may complain about the draft statement. They may see the statement being made. They may attend all the examinations. They can appeal to the Secretary of State if they do not wish their children to go to certain schools. Parents are shown to be vital partners in the education process. We have done in the Bill what we did in the 1980 Act and we have similarly involved parents.
The Warnock committee was established by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when she was Secretary of State for Education and Science. The committee reported in May 1978. The Government issued the White Paper in 1980 and the Bill will go to another place after what I presume will be a successful Third Reading. There are those who say that we need more resources, but if we wait for resources we shall do nothing.
On 5 December Mary Warnock wrote in The Times Educational Supplement: It is far better to build optimistically on those changes, even within a highly constricted Budget, than to sit around with folded hands, moaning. The Deputy Chairman, George Cooke, wrote in Education on 24 April that he agreed broadly with Mary Warnock that the Bill went as far as possible on legislation. The Advisory Centre for Education stated: We welcome the Paper's echo of the Warnock report's recommendation that the existing form of categorisation of handicapped students should be replaced by the more flexible concept of special educational needs. I commend the Bill to the House. We have established a framework. We trust that more resources will be available in future and that we shall be able to go further with the proper education of children with special educational needs. I refer not just to those with extreme needs, but to the broad sector.

§ Mr. Kinnock
This is the second Bill to pass through the House—I am especially pleased to say this in the presence of the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop)—under the hybrid procedure. Anyone who was a member of the Special Standing Committee or who attended as an observer will testify to its unmitigated success. It was a great improvement on the way in which 491 we address ourselves to matters which are not of great contention but which require the consideration of complex arguments as we seek to improve the law. I am not giving those of us who were members of the Committee a pat on the back. I am endorsing the proposition that the procedure should continue and flourish. It should be used as extensively as possible for Bills of this sort.
We were assisted by the mass of detailed and well-argued information that came from outside the House from many bodies, including the teachers' trade unions, various voluntary organisations and professional bodies that counselled us, provided us with information and generally advised us. I am not patting us on the back. I am merely saying that much of our consideration in Committee was rather better informed than is sometimes the case when dealing with complex issues.
It is appropriate on Third Reading once again to record our debt of gratitude to Mrs. Mary Warnock and the members of her committee not only for the work that they did but for that which they have instigated by the force of their argument and analysis. I refer to the legislative provision that has resulted and the provision of a bible of information and a number of proposals on which we can continue to build.
Having said that, I regret to say that our worries remain. Our first worry is that the Bill is a 2 per cent. Bill and not a 20 per cent. Bill. We are willing to give it a fair wind, but we feel that it should provide at least circumstantial, if not forensic, evidence to support the view that there are severe inhibitions in making proper provision for the 20 per cent. of children who, in Mrs. Warnock's estimate, will have special education needs at various periods of their scholastic lives.
My attention is always drawn to the problems attached to the definition of learning difficulty in clause 1, which we still believe is inadequate. The matter was the subject of lengthy deliberation in Committee.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) said today, under clause 1(2) it will still be possible to misinterpret a difficulty in mobility in gaining access to a normal school as a learning difficulty, when actually it is a difficulty of attending a place of learning, not the difficulty in the accumulation of knowledge, as may happen with children with various intellectual afflictions.
We believe that the Bill is weakened because the possibility still exists of the prejudicial use of clause 2(3) (c) by people who are not well disposed to the development, improvement and integration of children with special learning needs into normal schools. We believe that the phrase the efficient use of resources can be used as an alibi for inactivity either by the complacent or, in even more miserable circumstances, by the willing who are simply denying the proper resources which they need effectively to proceed with the integration of children with special learning needs and with the expansion, extension and improvement of facilities to meet the needs of the 20 per cent. of children of any generation who have those learning needs.
Probably the most serious criticism—especially as our debate has taken place against the background of the Warnock report—is of the Government's failure, for reasons which, after many hours of argument, we still cannot accept to take effective action on the three areas of first priority in the Warnock report. There is no 492 development of provision for children under 5 with special education needs. That kind of development is not simply a matter of change of attitude, about which the Minister has spoken on Third Reading. It is a matter of providing resources to meet the needs of children under 5 and of their families.
The Government have made no serious effort to develop the legislative framework or to provide the necessary resources for Mrs. Warnock's second area of first priority—young people over 16 with special needs. Again that is mainly because of the Government's refusal to provide the necessary additional resources to bring about improvement.
There is also the matter that Mrs. Warnock considers the most serious, indeed, crucial, for the development of special education—the improvement of teacher training with reference to special education. The Bill makes no such provision, although we accept that it may be difficult to legislate for such a matter. There is no emphasis in any other Government statement or circular, or promise of any statutory instrument, which would significantly change the curriculum to encourage and improve teaching in special education as part of normal studies in teacher training.
Overshadowing even the advantageous parts of the Bill where provision is improved, where the statutory requirements are more progressive and where the definitions are updated, is the failure to provide new resources. That is the Bill's greatest deficiency, which will remain unless and until we can secure those additional resources.
I could go on at considerable length, but I have no intention of doing so, because the most articulate and effective criticism of the Government's deficiency in this regard has come from Mrs. Warnock herself.
The Under-Secretary concluded his remarks by referring to the views of the Advisory Centre for Education. ACE also said that the White Paper that preceded the Bill should be criticised for the absence of an unequivocal commitment to integrated education as a right", and that Government policy … along the lines of the White Paper will lead to a degree of international humiliation for Britain at the start of the International Year of Disabled People'". That is a different picture from the one painted by the Minister, but, sadly, the Bill is considerably less progressive in its provision than even we were led to expect by the White Paper.
I have no wish to misrepresent Mrs. Warnock. She is a distinguished lady and we owe her a considerable debt. I have no wish to use her remarks in a political cockpit, as she has repeatedly made it obvious that she abhors the partisan exchanges that sometimes affect our debates on education.
Mrs. Warnock recognises that that is inevitable, but she does not like it. Therefore, without indulging in mud-slinging, and without attempting to be partisan, I ask the Minister and Conservative Back Benchers to understand that I use Mrs. Warnock's words to make a plea for the development and improvement of education so that it meets special needs.
In her column in The Times Educational Supplement on 13 March Mrs. Warnock said: I said in evidence to the Standing Committee, (and I am prepared to go on saying this till I lose my voice), that 'without some special fundings, the 1981 Education Bill will not only do no good; it will do positive harm. More important, I believe that 493 without specific grants for teacher training our whole educational provision, not only that for children with special needs, will fairly soon be seen to be hopelessly ineffective and inadequate. If the present Government is prepared to say that £3 million (what is being spent on the Assisted Places Scheme) is chicken-feed, then they can find as much chicken-feed again, for a different lot of chickens. Three million would come in extremely handy for funding a limited short-term pilot project of inservice training in schools, for the teaching of children with special needs; or indeed for some other teacher training project."
I shall not elaborate on Mrs. Warnock's words. They represent the most articulate testimony of the weaknesses of the Bill, much as we welcome and accept some of its provisions. I hope that the Government will have the common sense and common humanity to change their economic policy in time to make the Bill an effective and active policy instead of just a framework that is dependent upon the whims and fortunes of various local authorities.

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
I echo some of the mixed feelings of my hon. Friend the Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Kinnock). Most of us who served on the Committee find the new procedure of taking evidence helpful. We also found the Government's attitude worth while and encouraging. Not only did they make some concessions in Committee, but they have promised that further improvements will be made in the House of Lords.
Despite that background we have a deep dissatisfaction, because the Bill will make things worse rather than better. We have to look back to what happened in the 1970s and the way in which discontent and dissatisfaction with special education developed. The concern that we have perhaps got the principle wrong and should not be separating—