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Having said that, I agree with a great deal of what she said. The charitable institutions and our schools have a vital job to do, alongside parents and the rest of the community, in helping our children to have ambition, confidence and self-respect. If they have those, they will work towards their goals for their own benefit and that of all of us. From what she said, the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, would agree with that. That, and the fact that this debate is being answered on behalf of the Government by the Minister for Children, Schools and Families, the noble Lord, Lord
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I propose to your Lordships a concept that is currently being developed by UNICEF’s UK National Committee, of which I am a trustee, in response to the Government’s child welfare agenda: child-friendly communities. You might ask: why single out children? After all, our environment and our community should be friendly to all of us. In answer, I say that it is helpful to have a focus when planning what sort of community we want to live in. I was interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, had to say about children. As I recall it, she said that if children play together, eat together, live together and even fight together, they will understand each other and be able to live together well. A community that is child-friendly will also be supportive of, and helpful to, other vulnerable people, including elderly people. If it is a good place for small and vulnerable people to live in, it is going to be the sort of place where all of us would want to live and gain a good quality of life. I make no apology for singling out children, because in doing so we will be benefiting everyone.
What do we mean by a “child-friendly community”? It is a way of integrating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into national and local government processes. It is equally applicable to governance of all communities that include children, large and small, urban and rural, and is intended to provide a foundation for adaptation to suit all localities.
The child-friendly communities initiative emerged in response to the rapid transformation and urbanisation of global societies and, consequently, the increasing importance of cities and towns within national, political and economic systems. The initiative promotes the implementation of the convention at the level where it has the greatest direct impact on children’s lives: right in the place where they live. It is a strategy for promoting the highest quality of life—indeed, for all citizens of all ages.
What would a child-friendly community provide? It would guarantee the right of every young citizen to the following nine things. First, they would have a voice. Children in such a community would be able to express their opinion on the community if they wanted and have their views listened to. We all know how we can get better decision-making if we listen to those who receive the service. Secondly, they would have a right to participate in family, community and social life. Communities that welcome families and make them safe and happy places to bring up children will, of their nature, be low-crime communities.
Thirdly, they would receive basic services such as healthcare. Services would be easy for families with children to access, with no discrimination as to race, income or other factors. Fourthly, they would have
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Fifthly, they would have the right to drink safe water and have access to proper sanitation. On the whole that is an aspiration for less developed countries than ours, but with overseas aid we can help them to reach the standard we are lucky enough to have here. Sixthly, they would have the right to be protected from exploitation, violence and abuse and to walk safely in the streets on their own. We still have a long way to go on that one. Sadly, almost every week there are still terrible stories of children who have been abused and even killed. We have to tackle the very foundation of these problems and bring a full stop to this abusive cycle by giving more support to families in difficulty and giving the best possible treatment science and psychology can devise to the perpetrators so that they never offend again. That is one of the most difficult challenges we face.
Seventhly, they would have the right to meet friends and play. I was delighted recently to hear about how the 2012 Olympics are involving children, but it sad to me when I see a new estate being built with nowhere for children to play. Children need green spaces and playgrounds where they can meet other children and get on with them, and teenagers need meeting places and leisure facilities. I know these things cost money, but they save money in the long run when we consider the cost of the youth crime, drug treatment, alcohol abuse and so on that result from children not being brought up with lots of good activities to keep them busy and use up their energy.
Eighthly, they need to live in an unpolluted environment. There are lots of challenges here in making our cities green, but I do not have time to go into all that now. Finally, children should be able to participate in cultural and social events. They should be equal citizens of their community, having access to every service, whatever their ethnic origin, religion, income, gender or disability. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, I am lucky enough to live in a village—Gresford—that has wonderful community facilities for young and old people. Would that everyone had that.
If all this sounds like an unattainable ideal, I remind noble Lords that a couple of centuries ago it seemed like an unattainable idea that we would all live in cities with clean water, good sanitation and universal education up to at least 16—but today we do. However, it would need a special group of people to focus and plan for such a community. That plan would need to be focused on outcomes and to take account of the views of children and their parents. Those all sound like good ideas to me. Does the Minister agree?
1.50 pm
Baroness Warsi: My Lords, I am privileged to sum up from the Front Bench for the first time in a debate on a topic of great importance, in which the
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Apparent in it has been the fact that families, community cohesion and social action are interlinked. Debate now should focus on how we create communities at ease with each other, where, whatever one’s background, race, age, faith or sexual orientation, we live lives that drive towards a common purpose: strength in unity.
In addressing the challenges facing modern Britain, we must be guided by core values: our commitment to equality under the rule of law, our recognition that as a nation we are all in it together, our attachment to civil liberties, and our determination to tackle racial discrimination and ensure equality of opportunity at all levels, in a belief that our nation is made stronger by the contribution of our different communities.
The report of the Conservative Party social justice policy group—its two volumes are entitled Breakdown Britain and Breakthrough Britain—provides a long and detailed analysis—I wholeheartedly disagree the description of it by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens. It describes and explores how poverty and deprivation have created a vicious cycle of unemployment, addiction, crime and further poverty, diminishing families and neighbourhoods. It refers to the cluster of mutually reinforcing sources of deprivation: worklessness and state dependency, family breakdown, drug and alcohol addiction, low educational attainment and debt. For those caught in such traps, one problem interacts with another eventually to produce a malign spiral of social dysfunction. Lack of qualifications makes it harder to get a job, giving the downward spiral another twist by increasing poverty and opening the door to crime. Partly as a result, young people find it harder to create lasting relationships; teenage pregnancy increases; and children are born into conditions in which the cycle is prone to continue. In short, traps of multiple deprivation are a reality in Britain today.
This side of the House believes that solutions to neighbourhood breakdown have to be local, because the problems are local; they are also complex and delicate, and require a practical and flexible response. I was particularly impressed by the clearly defined and practical solutions explored by noble friend Lady Bottomley. Ultimately, the solutions need to be bottom up, grassroots driven, and not dictated by bureaucrats sitting in Whitehall. As my noble friend Lady Platt firmly put it, leave it local.
One of the best ways to revolutionise the hopes and opportunities of individuals in the most troubled neighbourhoods, and hence those of future generations, is to help the 55,000 social enterprises that already exist. We should listen to their views and not impose ours on them, thereby taking away that very passion that made them successful. Community groups, too, play an important role in providing solutions to local problems. They are steeped in local knowledge, deeply motivated, flexible and imaginative; and we need to tear down the barriers that centralist government have put in their way, such as the short-term and complex
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The term “multiculturalism” is again at the centre of a debate in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, referred to the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, who has said that multiculturalism is of another era and should be scrapped. My understanding of multiculturalism is that communities from different backgrounds, cultures and customs can live alongside each other, celebrating their differences but uniting in purpose.
Unfortunately, during the past decade or so, a form of state-driven multiculturalism, however well intended, has helped preserve cultures and languages while failing to unite Britons. It has resulted in people being kept apart, giving them less incentive to learn English, and has been one of the factors responsible for contributing to cultural group solidarity at the expense of broader social participation. The treating of communities as monolithic blocks rather than as equal members of society has been divisive and patronising. I endorse the views of my noble friend Lady Verma, who spoke of self-appointed community leaders who singularly and incorrectly purport to represent large, diverse ethnic communities. I bring it to the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, that this divisive form of state-driven multiculturalism focuses on things that divide rather than unite us. My right honourable friend David Cameron was right to criticise it.
Although the ease of local communities will ultimately be delivered by local solutions, we must recognise that there are areas where government policies can and do make a difference. Families, however defined, are acknowledged across this House as one of the bedrocks of society, yet where do we find this Government’s record? Couples face financial penalties. A study by Frank Field MP for the think tank, Reform, found that in families with exactly the same number of children, two-parent households need far greater earnings than a lone parent to move past the poverty line. That was referred to by my noble friend Lady Gardner.
The benefits system pays for couples to split up. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has highlighted the example of a couple with children, where the husband earns £15,000 a year while his wife has a part-time job paying £5,000 a year. As a couple, they can claim benefits and tax credits worth £2,317, but if they split up, the wife on her own with the children would receive £7,785 from the state, making them better off by more than £5,000. That again is something that the Government can address. I am pleased that proposals from my party are to give clear and unambiguous backing to families that come together and stay together.
The tax credits system, which is another Government responsibility, is in chaos. Fraud, error and overpayments have led to £5 billion being wasted. In the last year for which we have data, more than half of all tax credit payments were incorrect. Almost 2 million people a year receive the wrong tax credit payment and face having money clawed back, putting them in extremely difficult circumstances. This again is something that the Government can and need to address now.
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Let us consider the Government’s record on children in care, 20 per cent of whom will still be unemployed in the September after they leave school. Nearly 50 per cent of them will leave school without a single GCSE. They are children for whom local and central government have direct responsibility of care. We cannot shirk it or blame other agencies or families for it.
I turn to an area covered by my own brief: community cohesion. In October 2007, Hazel Blears announced £50 million of investment over three years to promote community cohesion and support local authorities in preventing and managing community tensions. In December 2007, the Department for Communities and Local Government set out proposals for distributing £38.5 million of it, but, only recently, the Government announced that the framework to advise how to deliver this money will not be ready until the summer of this year. Surely this approach is back to front. Surely one needs to work out what needs to be done and then budget for it, not set a budget and then decide how to spend it. I hope that the Minister will enlighten your Lordships' House about this confusion.
In the Government’s response to the report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, the Department for Communities and Local Government said that it would be,
However, I must warn the House that this headline-grabbing announcement is not all it seems. The nucleus of these teams will be neighbourhood renewal advisers, who are already in place.
There is hope. The Department for Communities and Local Government recently acknowledged in its response to the report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion that this Government’s approach had failed over the past 10 years. It stated:
“We agree that given local complexity, a one size fits all strategy is no longer appropriate, and our guidance in the past may have wrongly taken this approach”.
I hope that the Minister will confirm that that signals a new direction from the Government and some hope for how we deal with community cohesion, social action and families.
1.59 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Lord Adonis): My Lords, the House is grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, for this opportunity to debate a wide range of important issues relating to families and community cohesion. We have had an excellent debate. I am particularly glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who occupies a prominent position in the Conservative Party on these issues, and we welcome her to our debates.
We have heard a lot about negative aspects of modern society in this debate, about problems caused by drink, drugs and anti-social behaviour, about families causing misery within their neighbourhoods, about instances of youths perpetrating violent crimes, about entrenched social disadvantage, and about poverty of aspiration. These are issues of the utmost gravity, which I shall say more about in a moment.
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I do not believe that we are living in a fundamentally broken society. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend Lord Giddens that Britain is a place where the great majority of families provide a loving and supportive environment for children to grow up in; where in so many aspects of life the present is better than the past; where most parents want their children to get on and succeed in school and at work; and where most communities are safe, friendly and vibrant places to live. Also, as the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said, most of our immigrant families believe that they belong and are proud to be British. I myself come from an immigrant family and I would certainly say that of my family and community, whatever the continuing challenges that we face in diversity and immigration.
In the 2007 Tellus2 survey, which collected the views of more than 110,000 children, 93 per cent of those children said that they were happy about life, with a similar number having a positive view of their parents and families. Last year’s British Crime Survey showed a 41 per cent fall in the incidence of violent crime since its peak in 1995 and the performance of schools is sharply improving, with nearly 100,000 more 11 year-olds up to standard in literacy and numeracy compared with a decade ago and the number of failing schools halved. That does not lessen the impact of the very serious problems that do exist; it is our duty to tackle those issues, and concerted action is required across government in each area named in the Motion.
We are improving support for parents to bring up their children happy and healthy, with clear values, a sense of social responsibility and high aspirations for their lives. We seek to create more good schools and promote citizenship and community cohesion in our schools and communities, combining targeted support and robust action when appropriate to counter challenges such as drug and alcohol abuse, anti-social behaviour and gun and knife crime.
Before turning to the specific issues, I shall make a broader point about how the Government provide services. First, many issues raised today relate to individuals and families who have complex needs that can only effectively be addressed by support from a range of public services and joint working between agencies at national and local level. Secondly, they vary widely from community to community. We can and must establish a policy framework at national level but, in the end, as the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, so rightly said, these are often inherently local problems, requiring locally designed and driven solutions with local government and the local leadership of public services and voluntary agencies playing a pivotal role.
To take up the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, I stress the role of voluntary agencies. As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, said, it is people not governments who bring about change; community
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Among the most important of the local services are the local health services, including the vital role of health visitors, as rightly emphasised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bottomley and Lady Hooper. These services are developing further, for all the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, gave about the vital contribution that health visitors can make, particularly in respect of vulnerable families, with whom they have an almost unique relationship to bring about improvements for the better in how those families operate and in particular in the support available to mothers. I highlight, for example, the family nurse partnership, which tests a model of intensive nurse-led home visiting for vulnerable first-time young parents in 10 areas of England, not only for the early weeks after childbirth, as is traditional in the case of health visitors, but right up to when the child is two years old. A sum of £30 million has been allocated to expand the family nurse partnership scheme in the next three years; this is targeted at the most vulnerable first-time young mothers and their first child, who can benefit from intensive preventive early intervention to improve their life chances. The programme is taken up by 90 per cent of the hard-to-reach families to which it is offered and has been welcomed by the health visitors and midwives in local areas, who see positive changes taking place in behaviour, relationships and well-being. That kind of initiative is exactly the kind of area in which the state in its local capacity can work more effectively with families to ensure that children have a much better start in life and that issues to do with family breakdown are avoided.
A key reform in this area is also the development in each local authority of children’s trusts, which have been possible since the Children Act 2004, as my noble friend Lady Massey said. Children’s trusts co-ordinate the agencies that plan, commission and deliver services for children, including primary care trusts and third sector organisations, to promote better integrated services focused around the individual child and his or her needs. In many parts of the country, these changes have brought about substantial improvements. My noble friend asked for examples. I have been told recently of the success of the Bedfordshire children’s trust in developing a commissioning strategy to focus resources on earlier assessment, intervention and family support leading to radically improved results for children. The number of children in care in Bedfordshire has come down from 441 to 308; attainment in schools and children’s centres has improved and school exclusions have reduced by 25 per cent. Other children’s trusts have similarly positive stories to tell, but I fully accept that some areas are making less
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