My Lords, before the commencement of business, I take the opportunity to inform the House that I am to open the annual exhibition of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers in the City of London on Friday 17th, March when the House will sit. Accordingly, I trust that the House will grant me leave of absence.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence will help to end the current inequities of access by advising which treatments are clinically and cost effective. Where the institute advises against the use of a treatment, it will give guidance about patients currently receiving it. In some cases it may be possible to switch patients to more effective therapy.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Answer, which, of course, I do not find satisfactory. We were told that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) would constitute a levelling up, not a levelling down. Will the Minister assure me that in cases where treatments are considered costly but where research has shown that they are definitely effective—such as Beta Interferon for multiple sclerosis and the taxanes for ovarian and breast cancer—those patients receiving such treatments will be allowed to continue to receive them? It is bad enough for people not to be able to receive a treatment, but to receive effective, though costly, treatment and then have it taken away is rather like an employee whose firm is taken over and finds that his or her wages are cut. Will the Minister assure me that that will not happen?

My Lords, I can best reiterate the point that I made in my initial Answer; namely, we must take into account the advice that NICE gives in relation to each individual drug or therapy. That is the Government's position. We shall, of course, consider that advice carefully as and when we receive it. As regards the point about levelling up, this process is about levelling up. The history of the NHS has shown considerable inconsistency in the availability of, for example, new treatments and new drugs. Having made a judgment about whether a particular treatment is clinically and cost effective, the aim of NICE is to ensure that it is introduced in a consistent way throughout the whole of the National Health Service.

My Lords, would the Minister care to give advice to a doctor faced with postcode prescribing affecting the treatment that he thinks would benefit a patient? Should be not tell him or her about the existence of a treatment; or lie, as some cancer specialists admit that they have to do? Or would he tell the patient about a treatment but say that the health authority cannot afford it?

My Lords, it is not for me to advise clinicians in the exercise of their clinical judgment. Our concern is to ensure that the situation which has existed for many years of woefully inconsistent availability of treatments is ended. We believe that the processes we have set in train in the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the advice that it can give on whether treatments are cost effective and clinically effective, the introduction of clinical governance at local level and the involvement of the Commission for Health Improvement will enable us to ensure that the public receive high quality, consistent care across the country.

My Lords, will the Minister answer one simple question? Can he assure the House that when the changes in the arrangements are introduced no patients will be worse off than they are now?

My Lords, I refer to the matter of a current treatment which is being evaluated by NICE where the institute advises against the use of that treatment. We have asked NICE to give us its best advice on what should happen in those circumstances. Over the years the National Institute for Clinical Excellence will have referred to it many treatments and many medicines. I do not believe that one can state a simple principle in relation to all the potential future treatments and drugs. However, as I say—this is important—we shall ask NICE to give us advice in relation to each treatment or medicine.

My Lords, my noble friend refers to cost effectiveness. Who judges that; the patient suffering the pain, or the Minister?

My Lords, there are various considerations which the National Institute for Clinical Excellence will have to take into account. First, it must ensure that the best possible evidence is available as to the clinical effectiveness of a treatment. The institute then has to take into account the effectiveness of the treatment alongside issues of resources. NICE develops evaluation reports which are considered by appraisal committees. Draft guidelines are circulated for comment and careful note is taken of all those considerations. At the end of the day, of course, a judgment has to be made as to whether a particular treatment or medicine is cost effective. I believe that we have set in place a mechanism to ensure that we get the best possible advice and a pattern of consistency across the country.

My Lords, does the Minister recognise the growing practice among general practitioners of issuing post-dated prescriptions for drugs? Does he approve of this practice?

No, my Lords. I have not come across such an instance. If the noble Lord cares to write to me about this matter, I shall be happy to look into it.

My Lords, does the Minister recall that I have written to him on a number of occasions about people who require treatment through environmental medicine because nothing else has succeeded? Is he aware that, in order to get such treatment validated, I have had meetings with representatives of NICE? I have found them extremely co-operative, helpful and very understanding of the situation. They have given me and the doctor practitioner a large amount of advice on how to get the treatment validated. Will the Minister pass my thanks on to them?

My Lords, that is the kind of supplementary question I am always happy to agree to. The House can have confidence in the process. We have brought together some extremely high calibre people to assist the NHS in ensuring that the best possible treatments are available throughout the whole of the health service. Careful appraisals and an ability for organisations to submit their views to the commission give us a great deal of confidence in the impact that this will have in the future.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, apart from clinical and cost effectiveness, the other part of NICE's remit is to assess the effective use of available resources? Does not that mean that NICE will be the judge and jury on the affordability of treatments in a national context? How will that not prevent a situation in which doctors find themselves obliged to withdraw established effective treatments from patients who have been receiving them?

My Lords, I do not follow the noble Earl's argument. As I have said, traditionally, new treatments in the NHS have been introduced in a very patchy way, as has the phasing out of old treatments which have proven to be not very effective, and the process has taken longer than it should. The whole impact of NICE is to enable us to speed up the process of phasing out ineffective treatments and to speed up the introduction of new, effective treatments. Yes, NICE will advise on clinical and cost effectiveness, but it is for Ministers to decide the overall resources of the NHS.

As to the issue of absolute affordability, it is worth making the point that, in relation to some of the medicines we have referred to NICE for appraisal, some health authorities have been funding them and others have not. That is a reflection of the inconsistency of the current decision-making process. It is the very reason why we need the mechanisms of NICE to ensure greater consistency in the NHS.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, the bed modelling for the 16 major acute hospital projects currently being built under the PFI scheme considers the same major factors and drivers as identified in the national beds inquiry. To be approved, PFI schemes need to demonstrate flexibility. Experience already shows that changes can be accommodated at PEI hospitals.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Is it not clear that the first PFI schemes being completed involve a reduction of 30 per cent of available beds and cuts in staff numbers of up to 25 per cent? The national beds inquiry made clear that we are at least 4,000 beds short. Last year 56,000 operations were cancelled due to lack of beds. Is it not time that the Government recognised, like the Institute for Public Policy Research, that the economics of PFI schemes are extremely unsound and that they will cost the NHS more money in the future while forcing a continuing and disastrous reduction in the numbers of beds available? Or is the NHS, after the Prime Minister's recent comments, planning to fill the gap with private beds?

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite wrong. Public/private partnerships enable us to combine the best of the public sector—particularly in regard to the direct delivery of clinical services—with the best of private sector skills in the management and financing of major capital projects such as the 16 new hospitals now in train. The NHS has had unhappy experience of the traditional route for capital builds going back to its foundation. Many schemes have taken years and years to bring to fruition. I am sure that many noble Lords will know of instances where there has been a phase one, a phase two, a phase three and a phase four in the building of a hospital, which can take up to 20 years. With the public/private partnership arrangement we can build whole hospitals at a very quick pace.

As to beds, there are two factors to bear in mind. First, in a comparison between outline cases using the traditional capital route and the PEI route, there does not appear to be any difference in the number of beds planned. Secondly, of course we need to take notice of the national beds inquiry and to ensure that we have the flexibility to take account of the changes we need to make. We recognise that we need to increase the number of beds in this country and to use the ones we do have more effectively.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that if an NHS trust is unable to provide an urgent operation to a patient, there is no ideological barrier to the trust placing that patient somewhere in the private sector? If he agrees that there is no such barrier, has that message been transmitted to the chief executives of NHS trusts?

My Lords, the Government have made the position clear. Where the NHS requires extra provision to be made and where it is not available within the NHS it can then look to the private sector. The policy is quite clear.

My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister note that many on this side of the House agree with his outline of the future in relation to the initiatives being undertaken by the Labour Government? However, will he explain in slightly more detail how he sees the delivery of these hospitals as regards timescale and issues of that nature?

My Lords, the national beds inquiry is currently being consulted upon. We expect the consultation period to run to 15th May. We shall then be able to make decisions in developing a national strategy for providing NHS beds in the future. I believe that the current capital programme with the PFI and conventional funding, which is enabling us to build a record number of new hospitals, will allow us to take account of the inquiry as quickly as possible.

asked Her Majesty's Government whether they will establish a statutory hotel registration scheme.

My Lords, there are no plans to introduce a statutory scheme at the present time. First, we want to evaluate the voluntary approach under the new quality standards to see whether it results in increased take-up and improved quality. If it does not, we shall consider introducing statutory measures, but only if the burden of any such new regulation can be justified.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that helpful reply. I declare an interest as vice-president of the Northumbria Tourist Board and vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Tourism. Is my noble friend aware that, rather surprisingly, three-quarters of the members of the Association of British Travel Agents support a statutory scheme? Does he agree that there is a greater demand than ever on the part of consumers for visibly high standards, not only in hotels but in other aspects of holiday provision'? I recognise that there are difficulties; however, could we not learn a great deal from the many countries which have operated such a scheme for many years? I remind my noble friend that this matter was included in the Labour Party manifesto at the general election.

My Lords, perhaps I may deal first with my noble friend's final point. The Labour Party manifesto stated that we would introduce new quality assurance in hotel accommodation. We did not say that it would necessarily be statutory. We went on to say in the document, Breaking New Ground, that should the voluntary approach not be a success, Labour would move towards the second step; namely, the introduction of a statutory national accommodation grading scheme.

My noble friend is right: there is consumer demand for high standards. However, it must be recognised that the announcement last autumn of consistent, unitary standards between the AA, the RAC and the English Tourism Council is a major step in that direction. The inspectors are now working to common standards to provide a common classification in England and are, in effect, acting as small business advisers, helping hotels and others to improve their own standards. The voluntary scheme, which is achieving a 50 per cent take-up, is already leading to improvement.

My Lords, should there not be a "national beds inquiry" in the tourism sector in this country? Given that tourism is the quintessential industry of the European single market, will the Government ensure appropriate consultation and cooperation with our EU partners should any registration scheme of the type described he contemplated?

My Lords, tourism registration schemes are a matter for national governments, not for the European Union. They exist in France and the Netherlands but not in other European countries. As to quality in this country, the steps that we have already announced in the Tourism Strategy are having an effect.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is certainly a need to raise the standard of hotel accommodation, particularly at the affordable end of the sector and especially in London? Will the Government undertake to work closely on this issue with next mayor of London, whoever that may be?

Yes, my Lords. The next mayor of London, whoever that may be, will of course have responsibilities in the tourism sector. The noble Baroness is right to say that it is not just a matter of hotels, but also of guest-houses, boarding houses and self-catering accommodation. We are making progress in those areas as well.

My Lords, is it not difficult for voluntary schemes to create standards anywhere near those of a statutory scheme? The voluntary schemes operate according to different criteria; they do not have the same standards; it is difficult for customers to know which are reliable; and they are not comprehensive. Does he agree that the Automobile Association, which has had a voluntary scheme for many years, having been taken over by Centrica now seems more interested in selling gas appliances than travel services to motorists and other travellers?

My Lords, I do not think that the Automobile Association's breakdown service has anything to do with its classification of tourist accommodation. My noble friend does not give adequate recognition to the fact that in autumn last year we introduced a unified scheme between the English Tourism Council, the Automobile Association and the RAC. They do have common standards which are known to all, and their inspectors work to common standards. I think that my noble friend is being unduly gloomy.

My Lords, the Minister speaks of standards. Standards may well be high, but so are costs, and people who want to book hotels are surely most in need of objective, rather than subjective, ratings. At present, many of the voluntary ratings leave great areas of doubt. One couple's idea of a "well-furnished" bedroom may be very different from that of another couple. Does the noble Lord agree that it is therefore not surprising, given the cost of hotel accommodation here compared, for example, with that in France and Italy, that many people who travel prefer bed-and-breakfast accommodation, which is proliferating throughout the country?

My Lords, I simply do not think that the noble Viscount is right. The voluntary scheme, jointly operated by the AA, the RAC and the English Tourism Council, applies objective standards to hotel and guest-house accommodation which are comparable to those of the Nomenclature Nationale and other standards in France. The simple difference is that it is not compulsory in the same way. I do not think that it can be said that there is a single version of a statutory scheme. A statutory scheme may consist simply of registration; it may require self-regulation, inspection to minimum standards, or inspection to new quality standards. There is a whole range of ways in which statutory schemes could be imposed, but it is better to try the voluntary schemes first and to give them a chance to operate.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that our traditional seaside towns still provide extremely good value for money both to British visitors and to visitors from abroad? However, does he further agree that many are showing signs of wear and tear from their glory days? What plans do the Government have to give specific help to the seaside towns?

My Lords, I know that the noble Lord is referring in particular to Blackpool. He will be pleased to know, if he does not know already, that there are local schemes in Scarborough and Blackpool which go further than the existing voluntary schemes and which will achieve some of the benefits that have been identified in more universal schemes. I congratulate Scarborough and Blackpool on what they are doing and I hope that other seaside towns will follow their example.

My Lords, will the Minister tell me about accommodation in pubs? I understand that there is a Good Pub Guide. Who compiles that; and is it to be relied on?

My Lords, I believe that the Good Pub Guide is outside the sphere of government control—and long may it continue!

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, we believe that the selection of children by schools on the basis of ability is not in the best interests of children, is divisive and restricts parental choice. We want an education system that benefits the many, not the few, and for all children in all schools to receive good quality education.

My Lords, will the noble Baroness accept from me that we support very strongly the right of the Prime Minister and his ministerial and parliamentary colleagues to make choices for their own children to attend schools which select on the basis of interview and/or examination? Why is it that that choice cannot be extended to all parents for their own children?

My Lords, I have already said that the Government believe that a non-selective system is one that is likely to serve the needs of all children. I do not believe that there is any support for a move towards a selective system. The noble Baroness's own government in 1996 produced a White Paper which sought to expand grammar school provision. They sent out a consultation document which pursued the idea of a grammar school in every town. That produced over 600 responses. Only 2 per cent supported the proposal and 69 per cent strongly opposed giving schools greater freedom to select pupils. I am answering the noble Baroness's question. Most parents do not wish to have the opportunity to send their children to schools which select by ability. Nor does the Prime Minister send his children to a school which selects by ability; it is a comprehensive school.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree with what appears to me to be the case; namely, that more grammar schools became comprehensives during the period in which the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, was Secretary of State for Education than at any other comparable period? If so, what deductions does my noble friend draw?

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. Perhaps I may confirm the statistics. Between 1970 and 1974 when the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, was Secretary of State for Education and Science—that was, I believe, her position at the time—she approved 91 per cent of secondary reorganisation plans submitted to her, more than any other Minister before or since. In answer to my noble friend, I deduce from that that the Conservative Party has not been the defender of grammar schools that the noble Baroness claims it to be.

My Lords, was the Minister present in 1995 when Mr David Blunkett made a speech in which he said:

"Watch my lips: no selection either by interview or examination under a Labour government'"?

As I now believe that that was a joke, can the noble Baroness tell me whether the joke was, "Watch my lips" or "No selection by interview or examination under a Labour government"?

My Lords, I was there at the time. In using the expression, "Watch my lips", the Secretary of State was parodying the famous phrase coined by Mr George Bush. There may be noble Lords who do not remember it. My right honourable friend did not say that the policy was a joke; indeed, he made it absolutely clear at the time, and has done since, that there should be no more grammar schools. He made clear in many media interviews both before and after the general election that there would be no more grammar schools and no further selection based on the 11-plus. It is our policy to oppose selection on ability or through interviews.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that all that needs to be said on this matter was said yesterday in a one-and-a-half-hour debate on an amendment and will no doubt be repeated at similar length this afternoon when she repeats a Statement? Therefore, rather than reiterate well known entrenched views and statements, can the Minister tell the House what lessons the Government have learnt from their handling of this issue?

My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Tope, that this is a total distraction. However, the distraction has not been introduced by me but by the Opposition, who wish to take up parliamentary time on this matter. We believe that if we are to consider education we should debate the important questions of how to raise standards in schools, improve quality and narrow the gap between those young people who are extremely successful in our schools and those who fail. Regrettably, that gap was not narrowed under the previous administration.

My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that the average performance of the top quarter of pupils at comprehensive schools is just as good as that achieved at grammar schools? Is that not proof that comprehensives are at least as effective as grammar schools in providing a first-class education?

My Lords, I can confirm that. I provide my noble friend and the House with the statistics. The average performance of the top 24 per cent of pupils in maintained comprehensive schools is slightly higher than that in grammar schools. The percentage of pupils in grammar schools who achieve five-plus grades A to C at GCSE and GNVQ is 95.4 per cent. The figure for a similar level of achievement in comprehensive schools is 100 per cent. That demonstrates without doubt that comprehensive schools are doing extremely well.

My Lords, after the first debate my noble friend Lady Blackstone will, with the leave of the House, repeat in the form of a Statement an Answer to a Private Notice Question in another place on selection in education. That will be followed by my noble friend Lady Hollis of Heigham who, again with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement on inherited SER PS.

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

rose to call attention to the role of education in developing countries; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for introducing a debate on such an interesting subject. Education is the means to improve life for the many illiterate people in the world. The majority are the female population: the women and girls.

Today in The Times there is a detailed report of a scam whereby people from the UK are being asked to send money to help children to receive education in Uganda. Investigation has revealed that the money is not being put to the use for which it is sought. It is all very unfortunate and those who have been conned in this way will be badly hurt by the experience.

For the past 10 years, I have been the chairman of PLAN International UK, a child-sponsorship-based charity working to the benefit of children and their communities for long-term sustainable development. In the UK, our donors give more than £14 million a year and internationally PLAN raises more than £160 million a year. Twenty-seven per cent of the budget is spent on education.

Often, our donors are not well off, but they give because they feel that others have greater needs. It is important that donors can feel confident that the money is being put to good use and that the agencies to which they are entrusting their donations have a presence on the ground in the development country and a strict audit of expenditure.

Money is necessary, but quality and practicality of the education programme are also essential. There needs to be a long-term commitment and that will work well only if it meets the needs of the local community. I want to read a comment on Niger by Dr Sathya, the PLAN learning adviser, himself an Indian. He writes:

"I have travelled now in more than 25 developing countries so far and observed the life of the poor in rural and urban areas and how they respond to both formal as well as non-formal education programmes. I have never seen in any other country such high extreme poverty and illiteracy that I witnessed recently in Niger. At the current rate, it will take forty years for Niger to achieve primary education for all.

Most countries' education systems are rooted in human capital theory and promise a better life for educated people. But in Niger, there is no evidence what so ever for this. The entire education system based on the French system is ill equipped to meet the educational needs of people ill rural areas. [The] formal education system in Niger is essentially a mechanism for separating out a French-speaking elite from the masses. Understanding this, the people in Niger are increasingly becoming apathetic towards it. This is evident in the operation of formal primary schools and the enrolment and literacy figures. With only 30 out of every 100 children [going] to primary schools and only 14 per cent of the adults (10 per cent females) who can read and write, the situation is catastrophic. In villages that PLAN International has selected to work the gross primary school enrolment rates are as low as 3 to 14 per cent …

What are the reasons for the current situation? Due to the predominantly subsistence character of the rural economy in Niger, agricultural practices and animal husbandry are primitive and labour intensive. Therefore they demand labour from every able bodied person—adult and child. I saw very young children (approximately four years and above)—boys as well as girls, involved in household chores, on-farm and off-farm activities … I also saw children involved in bellowing at a blacksmith's work place in a hazardous environment. Women's working hours range from 12 to 15 hours. A typical day of most women begins about 5 or 5.30 a.m. with pounding of millet and ends around 9 p.m. They spend 3 to 4 hours a day to fetch water in a hot and dusty environment. Therefore organisations aimed at improving enrolments and literacy should take these factors more seriously and allow flexibility while designing education programmes".

I myself in Tanzania saw a child sitting beside a hole in the ground with a small yoghurt mug on the end of a long stick waiting for enough water to seep in so that he could dip one cupful out and put it in a bucket and then return to the same task again. In a nearby village, I saw where we had installed a water supply for these people—indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, mentioned a similar experience—where the child with a touch of a hand could fill a bucket with water. That child had all those extra hours to go for education.

The same applies to fuel. If people can be helped to grow trees which will provide fuel, they do not have to walk miles through areas denuded of forestation in order to find fuel with which to cook food.

PLAN International also states:

"PLAN International's efforts will be mainly to support the village development committees to organise and manage progressive non-formal community schools. These schools will meet the educational needs of children, youths and adults".

In some areas, school hours have been changed to suit the occupation of the people. Instead of regular hours, there might be no school classes when, for instance, the produce has to be harvested. Everyone in the village can turn out to gather it in. A certain number of hours each day may be needed to collect water or fuel or to perform agricultural tasks. In that situation, it is more effective to reduce the number of school hours than to have long, formal hours when no one attends.

The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, mentioned the conference in Senegal. PLAN is running a project in Senegal where less than half the population is literate. Again, we are faced with an intractable problem in rural areas and are trying to set school hours which fit in with the children. We are undertaking a scheme in collaboration with the Senegalese Ministry of Education and two local NGOs. It is going well because the teacher, who is a young graduate volunteer, is hosted by the local community and lives with them. He is teaching a combination of traditional subjects combined with literacy, and it is working well. We must examine such practical plans if we want to create educational opportunities.

My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for introducing this important subject. I declare an initial interest; it is my connection with the Council for Education in the Commonwealth. Forty years ago, I was one of its founders as an all-party organisation and I am still connected with it.

In the limited time at our disposal, I want to emphasise two aspects. The first is the fundamental importance of the education aid budget within the overall development strategy. I should be grateful for some reassurance on that from the Government as I find it difficult to disentangle the figures. Will they confirm that the proportion of education aid as against our overall aid budget has not reduced in recent years?

My second and more pertinent point—I shall be a little more critical than the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker—relates to the need for a better mix of expenditure within the educational aid budget. All the emphasis in UK policy is on basic education. I agree with the noble Baroness that the needs are real and obviously there is an issue of priority; she emphasised the education of girls who will be tomorrow's mothers. However, it is important that a proper balance is maintained in our support for education in developing countries. Primary education takes place in local languages and must be grounded in local cultures. The need is for money for teachers' salaries, for better classrooms and better schools, and for better reading materials and so forth. Frankly, unless we are prepared to make available large sums of freely spendable cash, it is not clear that countries such as Britain are best placed to support basic education on the substantial scale of the ambitious targets that have just been described.

In my view, we are better placed to help in terms of technical, vocational and higher education. Recently, UNESCO and the World Bank issued a report making a case for higher education development support and for a better balance in support of education in developing countries. I should like to use the opportunity of this debate to ask the Government to give some fresh consideration to that particular point.

It is most unfortunate that Britain's policy of full-cost fees for students from abroad and the reduction in the number of publicly funded scholarships under the aid programme have taken such a serious toll of students from the poorest countries. The number of students from the European Union, whom, very properly in my view, we treat as equals under our memberships obligations, has increased more than 10 times in United Kingdom universities since 1979, whereas the number from the poorest Commonwealth countries has declined by 49 per cent during that period. Moreover, some of the scholarship schemes introduced to mitigate the effects of full-cost fees have been cut back severely under DfID's Technical Cooperation Training Programme. They have been reduced from about 12,000 places 10 years ago to approximately 1,500 now. The Government should look carefully at those very serious figures.

DfID's 1999 departmental report published in March last year talks with legitimate pride but, perhaps I may add, just a little dogmatically, of concentrating its resources on primary schools and gender inequality. Of the 26 paragraphs in the annual report on education, only two deal with what are described—perhaps I am over-sensitive to the language but I sensed a certain disdain—as "more conventional scholarship schemes". They included such schemes as the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan.

Education is one of the essential cements that hold the Commonwealth together and give it meaning in the modern world. Yet the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan has been allowed to shrink and only eight or nine of the 54 countries now give awards. However, I believe that there is still a lot of life in it. The University of the South Pacific in Fiji, for example, now funds a fellowship for the first time. I pay tribute to the United Kingdom Government, who still play a full part by providing 200 to 300 places. Research into that scheme shows that approximately 30 of the former Commonwealth scholars or fellows have gone on to be vice-chancellors in universities in their own countries. Others have become Ministers and leaders of public life. It is a rich harvest, but one which at present is at some risk from our priorities and our own aid policy in this field.

I should like to plead with DfID to give a wider and more imaginative impulse to its policy of educational aid, battling not only against poverty and illiteracy but encouraging an educated leadership, capable of sustaining decent civil societies in their independent countries. I believe that DfID has achievements to trumpet, but it does not make enough of them; for example, with regard to books. DfID's reference to them is confined to worthy remarks about the battle against illiteracy, but there is nothing about the success of Book Aid, for example, which DfID assists with a grant of £200,000. When I was first involved with Book Aid some years ago, its annual income was £123,000; today it is £1.5 million from a variety of sources. It is promoting local publishing in Africa and fruitful partnerships with NGOs.

This is supposed to be joined-up government. Valuable educational work is being done, partly by DIM, partly by the FCO, and partly by NGOs with encouragement from various government departments; for example, in training journalists around the world in the skills of unbiased reporting. Both the BBC World Service Trust and the Thomson Foundation, of which I am a trustee, carry out good work in this area with funding from, among others, DfID. The BBC World Service on an FCO vote is now the world leader with 151 million listeners and a most powerful educational force.

There will shortly be a major conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Canada. I should like to plead with the Government to give an imaginative lead at that conference. Perhaps they will seek a Commonwealth education charter or perhaps go on to create a Commonwealth education council, as they did in the business field at the South African CHOGM a year or so ago. But in a Commonwealth where 85 per cent of the citizens—

My Lords, I am dreadfully sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. When seven minutes are shown on the Clock, the speaker's time is completed. The Minister will have no time at all to reply if everyone goes over their time by two minutes.

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness and to the House. I have reached my last few words. I simply plead that in a Commonwealth where the citizens are so poor, we should educate for democracy and ensure that that matches education against illiteracy.

My Lords, there is no doubt that one of the greatest challenges which will face developing countries in the 21st century will be the need to tackle the education crisis, particularly in countries such as India, South Africa (where I come from) and the African continent. There is no doubt that tackling the education crisis would have a major knock-on effect in reducing poverty, infant mortality and crime. I mention crime because that has become a major concern in South Africa.

I join in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for having given us the opportunity today to raise this vexed issue. The statistics which we have heard, and which I am sure we shall continue to hear, make very stark reading. One in four adults—that equates to 872 million people—in the developing world is illiterate. That number is rising, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for one-third of the total out-of-school population. Every year almost 12 million children under the age of five die needlessly of infectious diseases, including AIDS—all associated with poverty. I understand that each additional year spent by their mothers in primary school would lower the risk of premature child deaths by almost 8 per cent.

It is a well known fact that one of the reasons why many children fail to attend school in developing countries is that their families are expected to pay for them, which many simply cannot afford to do. As the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, has already mentioned, 50 years ago the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed free and compulsory education to be a basic human right. With teaching standards in many developing countries being very low, compounded by over-crowded classes and, again, as the noble Baroness mentioned, with over 90 million girls of primary school age around the world not in school, the challenge to provide primary education for all appears to be several decades away. Originally, it was estimated that by the year 2000 all children would be educated to primary school level. The estimate was then extended to 2015. It now looks highly unlikely that it will be reached by 2030.

However, there is much to be positive about. Through the ongoing support of the World Bank, UNESCO and the many hundreds of thousands of NGOs, many of which come from Britain, the world has made major strides in expanding access to primary and secondary education. The advent of the Internet—the world's fastest growing method of communicating—could to a certain degree solve some of the problems in third world education.

In South Africa the increased provision of electricity and basic services, such as water, to most of the rural areas has given a major boost to improving access to education. One of Nelson Mandela's first initiatives when he came to power was to provide one meal for all school children in South Africa. At the time it seemed an easy task, but the problem facing many school teachers was what that meal should be. Eventually there was a joint initiative of the government and business to provide the distribution, as well as the basic needs, of one meal a day. That has had a huge effect in promoting education for many of the young in South Africa. It has been shown that without a basic meal, breakfast, many children have problems concentrating.

There is much other positive news in South Africa. South Africa supplies two thirds of Africa's electricity and is one of the cheapest electricity suppliers in the world. In 1999 Eskom, the major government electricity supplier, provided over 1.7 million homes in the country with electricity. The South African Government have, among their eight core education initiatives, pledged to improve the professional quality of teachers and to promote schools as the centre of community life. Just as important, they are focusing more and more resources on the provision of higher education. This approach to higher education has been endorsed by the World Bank and UNESCO, which are now calling for more focus on advanced education for developing countries challenged by hunger, persistent poverty, environmental degradation and economic under-performance.

In the short time that I have left, I wish briefly to touch on how the Internet could help education in the developing world. I should declare an interest, as managing director of an Internet infrastructure company. Schools in the developing world, without textbooks and well qualified teachers, can now access educational websites and lessons with long-distance teachers. The Internet already reaches almost every country in the world, and by 2001 the number of Internet web users in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and eastern and central Europe will have nearly quadrupled, from 7.6 million to 25 million.

In conclusion, I wish to say that, in order to tackle the education crisis in the developing world, it is not just a matter of coming up with £5 billion a year, which is what it would cost to put every child through primary school. It is a matter of refocusing the approach to higher education and of pressuring all developing countries to allow girls the same access to education as boys. The Guardian on 31st January this year said:

"Education in the developing world is neither a luxury nor a privilege; it is a fundamental right".

My Lords, I also wish to start by thanking my noble friend Lady Whitaker for initiating this very important debate. Its importance is illustrated for me by two quotations. First, I quote also from Kofi Annan, who in 1998 said:

"education is a human right. On it rests the cornerstones of freedom and democracy … there is no higher priority, no mission more important than that of education for all".

I then wish to quote an unknown Ugandan woman who said:

"An educated person will have new opportunities. My daughter's life will be better if she can read and write".

It is on her daughter's life that I wish to concentrate.

Despite progress, there are still wide gaps in enrolment between girls and boys, as has already been said. The reasons are many and complex. The high economic and social benefits gained by the fact that girls are educated are substantial. It results in women having fewer children and healthier families. A study of 45 developing countries, as has been said, also found that the average mortality rate for children under five was 144 per thousand live births where the mothers had no education, dropping to 68 per thousand when they had attended school. There can be no better example of the value of education for girls. But education also leads to a reduction in health costs, brings about greater social cohesion and is the most valuable development intervention a country can make.

The year 2005 was the target for eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education set by the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. That conference identified education as the single most important key to development and poverty alleviation. Poverty has a woman's face, 70 per cent of the world's poor being female. The education of girls is therefore critical. Beijing recognised for the first time that in order to promote full equality between women and men in all spheres of life the causes as well as the consequences of inequality had to be addressed, the major cause being the lack of access to education.

So what is the reality? Seventy five per cent of children are enrolled in primary schools but, as my noble friend said, more than 130 million children do not attend primary school at all, 73 million of them being girls. Unfortunately, instead of closing, the gender gap is widening.

In Ethiopia, which has one of the lowest rates of enrolment in the world, a third of six to 11 year-old boys attend school, but only one tenth of girls are enrolled. In 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa an extra 2 million children will join the ranks of those not at school. The majority of them, I am sure, are girls. The proportion of girls in school fell by 10 per cent in Pakistan and by 8 per cent in Afghanistan.

But there has been progress. In Bangladesh the proportion of girls to boys attending primary school is now 49 per cent. Guinea has attempted to reduce the domestic burden on girls and has also made it illegal to force girls to marry before they have completed nine years at school. Malawi has eliminated school uniforms and therefore reduced costs. Mauritius, after 20 years of schooling, has sent women surging into the workforce.

I repeat that there are many reasons, both economic and cultural, why girls are denied their right to education. In West and Central Africa children as young as seven are trafficked within and across national borders to work as domestic workers or in some other form of manual labour. Ninety per cent of them are girls. Anti-Slavery International cites as examples that in parts of Nepal, Pakistan and India girls are forced to work 12 hours a day as bonded labourers in the fields, brick kilns and quarries, as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes.

Exclusion may also be because of the lack of separation of the sexes or the lack of female teachers. Educating a daughter might be perceived as a waste of time and money. Schooling is not always free, and sometimes girls are not seen as permanent members of the family as they will marry and move away. Some think that there is no value in educating a girl who will be unable to provide for her parents in later life; it has been said that educating a girl is like watering another man's garden.

But education is not just about access and enrolment; it is about quality and content. All too often there is a shortage of books; there are teachers who are badly trained or poorly motivated and who discriminate; there are classes with over 100 pupils and inflexible school schedules and hours; there are language barriers; and there are schools with no access to clean water and often without toilets. This dismal quality means that many attend school but learn little. There are 150 million children, mostly girls, who drop out of school before acquiring basic literacy skills.

That is tragic because education is affordable. Primary education for everyone for 10 years in all the developing regions would cost only an additional 7 billion to 8 billion dollars each year. That is about four days' worth of global military spending and, it is understood, less than Europeans spend each year on mineral water.

The Secretary of State is to be praised for her promotion of joint programmes, for promoting schemes to write off billions of pounds of third world debt and for helping to secure international agreements on swapping debt relief for action on poverty. Development goes into reverse when poor countries spend more on paying their debts than on educating their children.

Millions of children will continue to be denied the right to education without a global financial strategy incorporating detailed action plans to get children into schools and ensuring that none of those plans fails through lack of money. But, ultimately, progress towards education for all depends on national governments. They must have the political will. There must be a commitment within their overall development plans to secure universal primary education and to work to a focused agreed strategy which removes gender inequalities, educates girls and empowers women.

I have had time to refer only to primary education. But, equally, there must be literacy programmes for those women and girls who have never been to school or who have learnt little. Primary education for girls in the developing countries is the one chance for them to acquire basic literacy, numeracy and essential life skills. It is not an option; it is a necessity.

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lady Whitaker for introducing the subject for our debate today, and the more so for the cogency and urgency with which she has demonstrated its importance.

Education in developing countries is a fundamental ingredient of any strategy to break the cycle of world poverty. At the world conference, Education for All, a decade ago the commitment of the world was high. The promises of a full decade ago included:

"Universal access to good quality primary education".

The promise also foresaw that within the last decade of the 20th century the world's children would be provided with an opportunity "to develop their full capacities". I ask your Lordships to note that word "capacities" because I wish to return to that shortly.

However, the performance has not been matched by the promise and as we examine the achievements of the last 10 years of the 20th century the statistics, which were so kindly provided to us by Oxfam in a very useful brief, are a frightening condemnation of our collective incapacities: 125 million primary school-age children not in school; a further 150 million children are starting primary school and not completing four years' education; one in four adults in the developing world is unable to write.

The statistics are bad but the trends are worse. I readily pay tribute to the work of my right honourable friend Clare Short and her strategic approach to poverty reduction and, it is hoped, eventual elimination. But yet again the global community has shown itself to be strong on promise and woefully short on performance.

Education is not just a necessary input to personal development; it is an imperative ingredient of economic growth, of sustaining democracy, of enhancing equity. It is the very basis of empowerment within the international community.

As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said,

"There is no more noble cause than education of quality for all".

It is against that background that I want to return to the word I mentioned earlier—"capacities". Throughout the world, in a range of international fora, the current buzz phrase is "capacity building". The United Nations and its specialised agencies want capacity building. If one looks at the European Union and its relationships with the ACP—the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries—with which we negotiate the Lomé agreement, again capacity building is part of the order of the day. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank support capacity building. The World Trade Organisation, in its post-Seattle analysis of the problems of how to deal with the interests of the least developing countries, also focused on capacity building.

But in my opinion demands now for capacity building are the empirical evidence of the past failures of past strategies to provide education in developing countries or of the world's failure to provide such education to the extent that it promised. Demands for capacity building today are the broken pledges of the past returning to mock us.

Globalisation has brought ever greater pressures on rich and poor countries alike to internationalise the resolution of their joint problems. But in the international fora there is a great and growing inequality in the capacity of individual nation states equally to defend their essential interests.

Therefore, in this short debate I draw two conclusions. I believe that we must clearly recommit ourselves and work within the international community to honour the pledge of universal access to quality education. We must make sure that next month's conference produces promise which has more meaning than those which were produced in Thailand a decade ago.

Secondly, we must seek to equalise more urgently than can be provided by universal education the role of developing countries in the international arena. Capacity building cannot wait for a whole generation to be educated. That would be to continue internationally to institutionalise the inequalities which exist to an unacceptable degree.

Therefore, in the meanwhile, governments, the European Union, the IMF, the World Bank, the United Nations and its agencies, and the WTO must all accept responsibility for putting on to their agenda the need urgently to address the problem of capacity building so that the failures for which we have in the past been responsible do not continue to the detriment of third world countries.

Unless we do that, I believe that we shall return again to this subject in a decade's time; we shall be expressing exactly the same regrets; we shall be discussing exactly the same problems. The only thing which will have changed is that in a decade the international expression of the inequalities will have become worse.

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for making it possible for us to participate in this debate. It is extremely timely. The world's attention is focused on some massive tragedies on the African continent. The flood and cyclone ripping apart communities in Mozambique and Madagascar are still fresh in our minds. The tragedies of Rwanda and Burundi highlight conflicts which have torn communities part. The unsettled situation in many parts of the continent is still a matter of grave concern. Despite all that, there are key issues which need to be addressed. Those are the elimination of hunger and poverty, political stability, and, above all, education.

I was born in Tanzania, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes. I went to primary school there. It left a lasting impression on me. To a great extent, it has a stable government for which much credit must go to the father of the nation—Julius Nyerere. In any debate on Africa, we should never forget his contribution. With his death, we lost a statesman who did much to inspire the African nation.

We take many things for granted. It is easy to forget that countries in the third world do not have the resources to develop themselves. It is easy also to isolate ourselves from the tragedies faced by those countries. Many of their governments become irrelevant when faced with massive problems confronting the local population. But we cannot close our eyes to what goes on. Environment, health and education issues operate beyond national boundaries. What happens in other parts of the world affects us here too.

I left the small town of Tabora, in Tanzania, years ago. But many of that town still meet annually to raise funds for charities there. The High Commissioner, His Excellency Dr Shareef, plays an important role in ensuring that we support educational projects in the country of our birth.

Over the past few years, Taborians have sent money so that village schools have books and desks for the children. That is just a small example of how it is possible for all of us to make our contribution. But we should not under-estimate the role played by DfID in promoting development and the reduction of poverty. We are often critical of our own efforts but, having been involved in a number of charities and, in particular, as a trustee of the Save the Children Fund, I congratulate DfID on its commitment to the internationally agreed target of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by the year 2015. The target includes basic healthcare provision and universal access to primary education by the same date. That is a remarkable target. Let us pray it is achieved.

During a number of visits abroad, I have been impressed by the way in which Britain has contributed to the underdeveloped world. Of course, resources are never enough and more needs to be done. But despite progress with economic structures and political reform, Tanzania remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Fifty per cent of its people are below the locally defined poverty line. Educational indicators are worsening and health indicators are poor. Poverty is not restricted to rural areas; it is found in larger cities. The partnership between Britain and Tanzania is sound. I am encouraged that, if progress is maintained, Britain will deliver a substantial and increasing programme of bilateral development assistance, rising from £42 million to approximately £63 million over the next two years.

Education does not simply mean a qualification on a piece of paper. It must be much more than that. It means encouraging people to develop democracy as a core value. It means promoting a civic society which values the contribution of all its citizens. It means improved public resource and economic management. It means opportunities being available to all and, in particular, to the poor. Education must encompass programmes which improve knowledge and health status but also raise awareness of people's civil rights.

We read headlines about the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in this country, but we often forget that conflicts in Rwanda, Burundi and Congo have created massive shifts in population. Countries such as Tanzania bear the brunt of such upheavals. Tanzania has many challenges to face. Despite equal rights under the 1977 Tanzanian constitution, the status of women varies. That must concern us all. The public education service in Tanzania is in a state of unprecedented crisis. Primary school enrolment, which had reached 100 per cent in 1980, is now less than 60 per cent. A growing number of children are dropping out, disillusioned by the quality of teaching. That itself is the result of low morale among teachers due to poor training, lack of supervision, lack of basic teaching materials and low pay. Many children leave school without being able to read or write, and illiteracy is increasing. Secondary school enrolment, at 7 per cent, is one of the lowest in Africa. State education, which used to be provided free of charge, is now subject to fees and contributions which put education beyond the reach of many children from poor families.

In the health service, the picture is also critical. The government are in the grip of tight cash budgeting. As in the education sector, structural problems mean that what money is available is not well spent. Food insecurity is a major issue in many parts of Tanzania. Many families live on or just below the poverty line. Although Tanzania has avoided involvement in the violent conflicts which have overtaken much of the Great Lakes region in the past decade, it is vulnerable to influxes of refugees and to other negative effects of regional instability. Those in turn have serious implications for Tanzania, in particular its food supply.

That picture may be repeated in other parts of Africa. Uganda and Congo, which border Tanzania, are no exception. We welcome what DfID is doing, hut, equally, we should not forget the role of charities. Despite all the changes taking place in Africa, effective work is still being undertaken. I, for one, admire the work undertaken by the charity with which I am associated—the Save the Children Fund.

We need to mount attacks at every level to ensure that the emerging nations benefit from the core values which education can produce: human rights; transparency; the creation of a just and civil society; assisting with the building of infrastructure; and caring for the environment. DfID has set a good example. Clare Short has had many battles, but she has the determination to succeed. Her contribution and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, should not be underestimated.

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Tomlinson mentioned globalisation. Globalisation tells us that work will go to the lowest labour cost country. So why is it that all our industry is not packing up and going to Madagascar or to Vietnam? Why is it that in textiles—surely a global industry—Italy remains the largest exporter of fabric after China? In her thoughtful opening speech, my noble friend Lady Whitaker put her finger on the answer: education; education in its broadest sense—not only primary education, but also technical education, skills training, and training for enterprise. Pure globalisation assumes that skills, learning and business development are available everywhere; manifestly they are not. That is why I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, that education aid needs to be balanced.

If we are going to help people to lift themselves out of poverty, primary education is not enough. They need work-related skills that lead to employment—and employment needs economic development. That means that however universal the technology, a lack of skills and literacy is a drag on the economy. Do not believe that that can be compensated for by the microprocessor. It is a common feature of less developed countries that frequency and voltage variations in the electricity supply cause microprocessors either not to function at all or to function incorrectly. Any engineer who has installed equipment in a less developed country will tell you about those problems.

To give credit where it is due, I must congratulate the Minister on the fact that her department has recognised the need for skills training. The Government have helped in two ways. They support the Commonwealth of Learning which provides skills training for countries within the Commonwealth. The Minister's department recently announced the Skills for Development initiative, which is full of good ideas, but they need to be put into practice.

However, that is not enough. To progress in our modern globalised world, developing countries need to establish an environment where there is a use for training skills. Job creation and the generation of wealth are as important there as they are here. Consequently, it is not enough to teach the soft skills of management, such as accountancy and engineering drawing. We need also to teach the much tougher and more difficult skills such as how to manage a sea port or run an electricity supply.

My right honourable friend Clare Short is today calling on pension funds to invest more in developing countries. She herself can encourage that process by channelling aid, not only into education and training, but also into establishing an economic infrastructure that encourages business. There is nothing mysterious in all that. The Government are doing much the same thing here. What is right for us is right for the developing countries.

But there is a catch to all this. There is another side that I should like to explore. There seems to be a kind of reverse brain drain from developing countries to the developed world, of which we are the beneficiaries. For example, only last weekend an item in the press stated that Germany will waive its strict immigration controls to allow 10,000 non-European Union computer and high-tech experts to enter the country this year. Headhunters are reportedly already at work in Asia offering salaries 10 times that which such experts can earn locally. There was also an item of news about how the NHS is anxious to recruit more heart surgeons outside Europe to improve our coronary services. I am told that India has become the world's largest exporter of doctors. There are possibly more Indian doctors outside India than inside.

If we think about that for a moment, it is possible that those technicians and doctors were recipients of the very aid we are debating today. Could we be creaming off some of the best educated for our own benefit? The Overseas Employment Corporation of Pakistan says that 36,000 doctors, engineers and teachers have migrated to other countries in the past 20 years. But that figure represents only a small proportion because the majority do not register. My point is that that emigration transfers the benefit of education aid from the developing world to the developed world.

Should there be some form of compensation for that? Should developed countries pay back the original cost of the immigrant's training? Should that be in the form of a tax or import duty levied and then returned to the developing country to compensate not only for the immigrant's training but also for holding back the development of the immigrant's nation?

I doubt whether that kind of levy and repayment would be practical. To arrive at a figure, one would have to cross a minefield of sensitivities. However, much more thought must be given to this reverse brain drain. It needs to be studied. It could be a significant cause of holding back development. It demonstrates how aid to the less developed countries brings extra benefits to the developed countries. Unless that is recognised, the full benefit of educational aid which we are discussing today will not be reaped by the less developed countries. Some of it will be harvested by us in the developed world.

My Lords, in view of the time constraints, I shall restrict my contribution to this important debate to one aspect only. I refer to the role of the international financial institutions—namely, the IMF and the World Bank—and the impact of their structural adjustment policies on the education programmes of the developing world. I start by saying that I do not believe that their role has been distinguished to date.

That was most vividly brought home to me when in 1996 the International Labour Organisation, of which I have the privilege of being vice-chairman, sponsored a tripartite conference on the impact of structural adjustment programmes on educational personnel. At that meeting I heard a litany of the impact of such policies from educational organisations and trade unions across the world. They included reductions in the numbers of teachers; closure of teacher training colleges; compulsory retirement of teachers; reduction in teaching qualifications; massive reductions in the numbers of non-teaching support staff; and wage freezes lasting in many cases for a number of years, almost always imposed without the prior consultation of any of those directly involved in education, be it the ministry of education, the teachers' organisations or civil society in general.

To obtain a measure of the impact, one should note that in Africa, 46 of the 51 countries of that continent are or have been under structural adjustment policies. Three-quarters of the sub-Saharan countries have cut public expenditure on education. That is in a region with 47 million children not in schooling.

The recent story in east Asia is little different. The Oxfam publication IMF-Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Medicine is an excellent report which reflects my own experience with those two organisations. The document states that in east Asia the medicine from the IMF led to,

"A dramatic increase in poverty and deterioration in education indicators".

The wrong medicine had considerable impact. It resulted in 1.3 million children dropping out of school in Indonesia; and a 300 per cent increase, to almost 700,000, in children not attending school in Thailand. The story in Latin America is no different. A similar story can be shown from the impact of IMF policies in Mexico or the 25 per cent decline in early childhood education programmes in Brazil. There is a sorry story wherever we go: IMF structural adjustment programmes equal cuts in health and education. That is mainly because those are the major areas of public expenditure, outside defence, in many developing countries.

The record of the World Bank is not as bad, although even there I do not believe there is a great deal to shout about. It too is held in thrall by the neo-liberal economists who believe that private equals good and public equals bad. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will tell me that attitudes are changing in both the Fund and the Bank and that the lessons of the Asian crisis mean that the IFIs recognise the need to be more sensitive to the impacts of their decisions and the social policy adjustments that need to be made. I suspect the Minister may be positive to the proposals that the IFIs will protect expenditure on health and education. If so, she would be correct. Indeed, in no small measure it is due to the splendid efforts of her colleague, the Secretary of State for International Development, that those proposals are coming about.

To that end, she may extol the commitment of the director of the World Bank, Jim Wolfensohn, and the outgoing head of the IMF, Michel Camdessus. All that is fine. I have discussed the issues with both Jim Wolfensohn and Michel Camdessus and their sincerity is not in question. Therefore, what is the problem? The answer is to be found at the coal-face, the chalk-face or whatever nomenclature we want to use for economists working in the depths of the IMF and the World Bank. They are neo-liberal economists to a man—I say that because most of them are men. They draw up the policy framework plans and remain faithful to their neo-liberal training and the now discredited "Washington consensus". They continue in their own arrogant way to prescribe that one policy fits all, usually without consultation with those directly involved in education in the countries concerned.

I have two anecdotes which cover those points. The first concerns consultation. I and others complained to the Bank and the Fund at the lack of any consultation. The message was received and led to an official, on arrival in Ghana, telephoning the head of the Ghana Trades Union Congress. He said, "We really need to consult with you. How about 2.30 this afternoon?" That is not real consultation on a structural adjustment programme, in anybody's terms.

The other anecdote is even more disturbing. Shortly after the last general election, I spoke to an official at the World Bank about changes in policy and the ILO's declaration of fundamental rights to work, which had already been accepted by the head of the Bank, Mr Wolfensohn and, indeed, by Mr Camdessus. The official explained that there would not necessarily be any real change for a considerable period because people had been working with previous policies for two decades and it would take them time to adjust to any change of policy at the head of the organisation. I pointed out that any Permanent Secretary in this country greeting an incoming minister with the revelation that policies could not be changed for several years because civil servants had worked for a previous administration would not be a Permanent Secretary for long.

That kind of arrogance, I fear, operates both within the Bank and the Fund. My appeal to the Minister and the Government is for them to show the same determination to ensure that the Bank, the Fund and the regional development banks really protect education and health rather than simply pay lip service to that end. They should do so in collaboration with those directly involved at country level in education ministries, teacher trade unions and parent organisations.

The Government have shown great determination at international level to ensure that those issues are on the agenda. They deserve to be congratulated on changing policy in the Fund and the Bank. However, unless they show the same determination to feed that policy down to working level, I fear we shall still be looking for change in years to come. I am grateful for the work of the Ministers and civil servants within DOD. That policy commitment needs to be translated to the officials at the Bank and the Fund.

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in warmly congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, on introducing this debate, which highlights one of the most important aspects of the needs of developing countries.

As the noble Baroness and others have already emphasised, education is essential for development: for economic development, without which no society can prosper; for the development of civil society and democracy; and for the development of individual citizens to enable them to develop their personal potential and to make effective contributions to their societies. Lack of education too often brings unemployability and a downward spiral of poverty, frustration, alienation and pressures to resort to desperate measures for survival, such as crime, drug trafficking or even selling children into prostitution. By contrast, education can bring personal fulfilment, employability, financial independence, the ability to take care of one's family, and personal dignity.

In many places, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, has already highlighted, there is an especially urgent need to provide education for women to enable them to develop some economic self-sufficiency, personal independence and the ability to make their contribution to civil society.

In a radio interview on Commonwealth Day, the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth was speaking about aid. I did not hear the interview, but I am told that he made reference to the fact that, too often in the past, aid resources intended to promote essential services such as education and healthcare had disappeared into the pockets of local elites, never reaching those for whom they were given. I understand that he gave the welcome commitment that, if developing countries are to be relieved of the burden of debt repayment, which many of us hope will be the case, they will be required to specify measures to guarantee that aid given for education or healthcare will be used for those purposes. Can the Minister therefore please indicate what measures will be put in place to ensure strict accountability by countries receiving aid, so that it really is used to maximum effect?

This highlights the main issues on which I wish to focus: accountability and appropriateness. But before I introduce a negative note and refer to a problem, perhaps I may express my appreciation of so much good work that is being undertaken in many developing countries. We have already heard about many examples of such good work. However, because education is so important and because resources are finite while needs are almost infinite, it is essential to ensure that educational aid is both appropriate and that it is used and provided appropriately.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this issue is to follow the noble Lord, Lord Brett, and to give an anecdote. I hope that the House will forgive me for recounting a personal story. I was in southern Sudan in an area designated by the government of Sudan as a "no go" region for the United Nations and other aid agencies. In Christian Solidarity Worldwide, we focus on such "no go" areas. Our small aeroplane dropped us off on a forbidden airstrip. We were walking through the bush when we nearly stumbled over a man dying of starvation. I gave him a drink of rehydration salts to ease his discomfort. I will never forget his gracious smile. In the morning, he was dead. A few yards further on, a young woman was dying under a thorn tree.

After we had pitched our tents, we walked through ghost villages where the survivors were living skeletons. While walking to one of these villages, we saw a little boy standing by the path. He was aged about five, naked, with a pot belly as a result of malnutrition or worms, or both. He spoke to us in English. I stopped in amazement and said, "You speak English?". With a cherubic smile, he replied very proudly, "Yes, I go to school". School was a patch of sand under a mango tree and the children were learning to read and write with sticks in the sand.

Later that day, to my surprise, I discovered a large mound of neatly stacked boxes from a humanitarian organisation which I will not name. They obviously contained aid. Feeling delighted to think that these people had received some essential supplies, I went to investigate. I then discovered why the boxes were still intact. They contained several tonnes of blackboard chalk. Try to imagine the cruelty of this: there, in the midst of people dying from starvation and disease, some aid organisation with an educational remit had delivered chalk without even supplying a blackboard. Imagine the hopes raised when the aid aeroplane had landed on that remote airstrip and people thought that there would be lifesaving medicines, food or clothes. Then imagine the crushing disappointment when all that was unloaded was box after box of blackboard chalk. When the rainy season comes and the cardboard disintegrates, that chalk will be a whited sepulchre to the inappropriateness of some Western aid.

I am not making an unwarranted generalisation from an isolated example. During the course of our work in remote areas, we have come across too many examples of inappropriate aid being sent as a result of lack of accountability and sensitivity on the part of certain donor organisations. Time does not permit me to cite those examples and I have no wish to do so, because I do not want to detract from much good work that is being done. But there is a need for measures to guarantee accountability for aid, to check that it reaches those for whom it is intended, and to ensure that it is appropriate to their situation. Inappropriate aid can be as cruel as corruption.

However, I shall finish on a positive note, with a tribute to the dignity of many people in these dire situations and to their appreciation of the help they do receive. One day, "footing" through the bush in Sudan, we stopped at a village to meet the local people. Sitting under a tree after having exchanged courtesies, the local elders asked if they could offer a word of criticism about Britain's role in the history of Sudan. Of course I agreed, emphasising that I had come to listen and to learn. I expected a rebuke on Britain's role in colonialism; instead, they told me that they regretted the fact that, "Britain left too soon". Then, with characteristic Sudanese graciousness, they quickly added—lest I should be offended—"But we will always be grateful to the British. You gave us education and that is the most important gift. Education gives the freedom to think and that is the most important freedom of all".

Such is the dignity of those Sudanese people, suffering and dying in a bitter war, and such is the dignity of many others we meet in similar dire circumstances in other countries. They cherish education as the most important gift we can help them to attain. For that reason, I hope that this debate will help to ensure that many more people in developing countries will be enabled to attain the realisation of their personal and national potential, which only education can give.

My Lords, like many other noble Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Whitaker for initiating this debate, not only because it gives us an opportunity to discuss generally government responsibilities, both domestically and internationally, but also because it gives us an opportunity to pay tribute to the positive role played by NGOs in the field of education in the developing world.

Perhaps I may first declare my interest as a founder member and trustee of One World Action. For some considerable time, One World Action has been engaged in educational projects with its partners in a number of developing countries. Like other speakers, time does not allow me to tell noble Lords of the many and varied educational projects in which One World Action has been, and continues to be, involved. They range from teaching skills and literacy in Namibia to citizenship training for women in Bangladesh, to adult education in Mozambique. Unfortunately, this afternoon I shall be able to refer only to a major partnership project undertaken by One World Action in recent years in South Africa.

Today, millions of women, men and children in South Africa still experience severe poverty and marginalisation. Life in the townships is gradually improving as new houses are built and basic services are improved. However, for those living in the remote rural areas, life is still very grim. Poverty there is caused by a lack of any employment opportunities and an almost complete absence of the most basic services such as water, transport and housing. Healthcare and education are also extremely poor. Women make up the majority of the population in rural areas because men migrate to the towns and cities in search of work and return to the rural areas only infrequently, if at all.

The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), one of One World Action's partners in South Africa, is working with local community-based women's organisations in the poor rural areas of Northern Province to improve the political, social and economic situation of these women. It is running workshops in consultation with poor and excluded women from the rural areas to enable them to become more active in local government. One World Action funds this very important work.

The IDASA also works with local community-based and women's organisations to gather information, using that data as a kind of social audit on the basic service needs of women. It organises consultations with local groups and government representatives. Workshops are then set up to discuss the results of the information-gathering exercise. The consultations and workshops ensure that the basic service needs of rural women are better understood by local and national government. The women are able to express their views and opinions directly to local policy-makers and to demand the kind of services they want. As a result of those educational opportunities, women's access to these services are vastly improved.

One World Action has been working with the IDASA for a number of years and has played a part in the development of its local government programme, LOGIC. The aim of the project is to enhance democratic governance and improve service delivery at a local level. The IDASA and One World Action are working together to promote and consolidate democracy and a culture of tolerance by designing and facilitating processes and programmes that transform institutions and empower individuals and communities as the basis for sustainable development. One World Action takes the view that empowerment of women is a vital and essential element in building democracy, not just in South Africa, but in all its work with partners in the developing world.

I am aware that our Government are determined to assist the developing world wherever and whenever they can. Those noble Lords who heard my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development, Clare Short, speak yesterday afternoon at an all-party meeting could not fail to have been impressed by her breadth of knowledge and her understanding of the many and difficult problems that the international community is facing.

The long-term needs of the developing world—graphically illustrated recently—are made that much more difficult by natural disasters in so many areas of need. It was encouraging for me, and I am sure for others, to hear from the Secretary of State how our Government are taking a leading role in a number of international institutions, such as those referred to by my noble friend Lord Brett (who I know has battled long and hard to bring down some of the barriers that exist), to address the vexed questions of debt relief and the proper co-ordination of international aid.

Party politics aside, all Members of this House can rightly be proud that we have such an able and committed advocate on behalf of the poor and excluded people who share this one world with us. It is our responsibility to share the world's knowledge and resources with those who, by accident of birth, do not have in their whole lifetime that which many of us sometimes take for granted in one day of our own lives.

My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Whitaker introduced this challenging debate. I must declare an interest as I work as a consultant in the areas of education and health for the UK Department for International Development.

Many issues have been raised, so I shall concentrate mainly on the impact of education for girls and women on population and reproductive health. I must express my thanks to Population Concern, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation for supplying information.

As my noble friend Lady Gould said, there is strong international evidence that educating girls raises economic productivity and lowers infant mortality and fertility rates. It is the key to reducing poverty and to improving quality of life. Children's success, health and productivity depend to a great extent on their mother's health, education, skills and welfare.

The World Bank estimated that each year of schooling a girl receives reduces the under-five mortality rate considerably, as the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, mentioned. Women who are better educated have more grasp of issues of health, sanitation and nutrition; they are more likely to use contraception; more likely to defer child-bearing; have fewer children, and pass on education to the next generation. They are less likely to be burdened by the debilitating impact of frequent pregnancy.

A woman with four years of secondary education tends to have two fewer children than a woman who has not. A World Bank study suggests that doubling female secondary enrolment could reduce the number of births, by choice, by almost 30 per cent in 10 years. The spacing of child-bearing helps to improve women's education and status. If a woman marries early or has pregnancies during adolescence, she is more likely to be unable to continue her education. Women who have repeated pregnancies find it more difficult to work outside the home or to keep a job. The spacing of children gives women more options. Education facilitates both the spacing and the options.

The average family size and child death rates are lowest in countries such as South Korea which combines strong family planning and health programmes with high levels of education for women. Family size and child death rates are highest in those countries where there is low female education, and poor family planning and child health programmes; for example, in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa. There are exceptions to those trends, such as in Bangladesh and Indonesia, where the converse is true for complex reasons. But generally, the correlation between education for girls, low fertility rates and better child health seems indisputable.

The United Nations Population Division's latest projection for global population in the year 2050 is 8.9 billion, which is lower than the 1996 projection of 9.4 billion. The major reason for that is the decline in fertility rates, although about one-third of the reduction in the projection is due to increasing mortality in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of India, caused by HIV and AIDS which have devastated families and economies.

Our strongest response to AIDS has been, and will remain for the foreseeable future, in sexual health education and awareness for men and women. Men too, of course, have the right to receive information and education about reproductive health, partly to support and encourage women's choices, but also because they need to take action against sexually transmitted infections for their own protection.

Gender relations between men and women in societies have been shown to influence contraceptive usage, child spacing and women's contribution to the economy. Opportunities for women may be seriously affected by gender inequality; and gender inequality is the responsibility of men as well as women, perhaps more so. Education can support gender equality.

Strategies suggested by development experts for improving the education of girls include a number of strands, such as structuring timetables (as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner) to suit the need for help at home; giving scholarships to girls and convincing families that education for girls is important. One consistent strand is the need for education in sexual and reproductive health, combined with appropriate services. Since the conferences on population and development in Cairo and Beijing, there have been efforts by some governments, non-governmental organisations and the World Bank to increase educational opportunities for girls. The Beijing declaration included a commitment,

"to protect and promote the rights of adolescents to sexual and reproductive health information and services".

Adolescent girls, 83 per cent of whom live in developing countries, may be subjected to violence, trafficking and abuse as well as too-early pregnancy, anaemia, genital mutilation, unsafe abortion, and infections of the reproductive tract. Reproductive health education can be provided in families, schools, communities, clubs, places of employment and other places where girls might gather. This education can involve girls as peer educators and councillors. Unfortunately, many countries are reluctant to encourage sexual health education and information even in the face of problems such as HIV and AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the actual numbers of girls enrolling in education have gone down and in parts of Asia there is a growing imbalance of girls and boys due to sex-selected abortion, infanticide and neglect. In India, for example, the girl mortality rate in the nought to four age group is 43 per cent higher than for boys; and young women in the 15 to 19 age group have higher death rates relating to pregnancy and childbirth. Again, the support needed from education programmes is clear.

Girls' and women's rights to education, health and reproductive choices are improving in many societies. But there remains much to be done by international and local communities to make those rights a reality, and vigilance is needed if they are to be improved. I look forward to the Minister's comments.

My Lords, I must declare an interest as chair of Oxfam, which has education in developing countries at the top of its agenda, which I personally believe is exactly where it should be.

Perhaps I may join other noble Lords in expressing my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for introducing this most important and timely debate. It is important because we live in a world which could provide good quality basic education for every single child, but which is failing miserably to do so. The debate is timely because, in just six weeks' time, in the last week of April, the World Education Forum will take place in Dakar in Senegal. If this moment is seized, there is the opportunity to launch a concrete programme to deliver on the internationally agreed target of providing all the world's children with access to good quality basic education by the year 2015.

The critical importance of education is that it is the key that unlocks the attainment of all development targets. In fact, none of the 2015 human development targets—whether to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty or to reduce child death rates by two-thirds—will be met without also meeting the education targets.

The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and other noble Lords, have given many examples of the scandal and the effects of 130 million children in the developing world being deprived of access to education. I shall not add to those examples, although I do have a fair number of very persuasive ones. In summary, over 130 million young children are not in primary school; many of those in it drop out; and many of those who remain are taught by poorly-trained teachers in classrooms that often lack a blackboard, chalk, chairs or desks.

So what is to be done about it? The starting point is to recognise that we live in a world in which eliminating global poverty is actually feasible. In 1997, the Secretary of State for International Development pointed out in her department's excellent White Paper, Eliminating Global Poverty, that ours is the first generation in the entire course of human history for whom eradicating poverty is a realistic aim. This is an astonishing opportunity; but it will not happen without education.

I should like to take this opportunity to express my admiration for the work that the Department for International Development has undertaken in this field under the leadership of the right honourable Clare Short and the noble Baroness, Lady Amos.

I move from the United Kingdom to the international scene. It is time to live up to international agreements, notably the promises made at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in March 10 years ago. The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, said that it is time to launch a campaign in parallel with the remarkably successful one that has been launched in relation to debt relief. I am pleased to say that Oxfam International has taken the lead in developing a Global Action Plan for basic education for all. That plan has won widespread support from, among others, the World Bank, the UN Development Programme, and UNICEF. The plan is backed by national coalitions of civil society organisations in many developing countries.

The Global Action Plan argues that the tragedy of mass exclusion from basic education is avoidable and that it could be ended through a sustained, joint effort and practical action between developed and developing countries. It calls for a strategic framework for delivering on commitments, and the political will to match resources with needs. The plan calls for about 8 billion dollars to be invested each year, over and above existing expenditure, to achieve the 2015 targets. That sound like an awful lot of money. But, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, pointed out, 8 billion dollars is just four days-worth of global military spending. If one pauses over that, one realises that it says something about the priorities of the world community that four days' military spending could actually provide education for 130 million children who desperately need it.

The key to the Global Action Plan—both in raising the money and in planning and delivery—is the involvement of governments, the public, and civil society in developing countries. Developing country governments could raise half of the amount were they to do such things as reallocate education budgets more towards basic education and redistribute wasteful public spending, including excessive military spending. In turn, the international community could mobilise the remaining £4 billion through an increase in aid and through reallocating aid towards basic education.

Much money could also 'come from debt relief. The 10 billion dollars in debt servicing that sub-Saharan Africa has paid each year exceeds what the region spends on basic education. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative has the potential to generate significant resource flows from over 30 poor countries. Indeed, under the reformed HIPC Initiative—reformed, I would say, very much through the efforts of our Chancellor of the Exchequer—eligibility for debt relief will be contingent on countries demonstrating a commitment to poverty eradication, including a commitment to basic education.

We are already seeing the effects of debt relief in Uganda. There, the government have moved vigorously to provide universal primary education. All of the budget savings from debt relief, amounting to around 40 million dollars a year, have been allocated to a Poverty Action Fund, which includes resources for education. Over the past two years, the number of children attending primary school in Uganda has doubled. The Dakar conference could be the next major step forward in delivering such a Global Action Plan. However, it has to come up with real plans, real money and real momentum—not more high-falutin declarations of intent and statements of principle.

I believe that the UK Government and the Prime Minister are in a unique position to drive forward the goal of education for all. The Government, through the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for International Development, have, rightfully, won plaudits for taking the lead over international debt, using their influence to secure agreement and funding for a more generous package of debt relief. If the Prime Minister at this 11th hour before Dakar champions the cause of universal primary education in the same way, he could make all the difference. He has already taken a strong lead on domestic education; were he to project this into the international arena, it would send a powerful signal to the rest of the world that the global education crisis really can be tackled now.

My Lords, I, too, should like' to add my thanks to those already expressed to my noble friend Lady Whitaker for bringing this important issue to the attention of the House. I should also like to join my noble friend Lady Gould and others in paying tribute to the work of the Secretary of State for International Development, who is personally driving and delivering so much in her department. I should also like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Amos. They have demonstrated that, when the old ways have failed, we have a responsibility to provide new and innovative ways in the way that this country works with the developing world to create real change. But how are we to find new ways to improve the outcomes of the assistance that we give to the poorer developing countries? Here our central object and central goal must be effective outcomes.

I wish the Secretary of State well at the Education for All Global Forum in Dakar on 11th April; and at the meeting of the Commonwealth Education Ministers in Nova Scotia, when their attention will be drawn to how they look at education in the global era and what it means for the Commonwealth countries, especially the small Caribbean states. I look forward to real progress in this area.

I should like to contribute to this debate by looking at how development donors, such as the British Government and other institutions—public, private, and voluntary bodies—could assist these nations in the Caribbean to equip their citizens with the skills to enjoy, and compete in, the global information revolution.

The Caribbean in particular is my reference point. The revolution in global information can be brought about in the developing nations of the Caribbean in a way that is significant. I should like to point out that, like every Member of your Lordships' House, I see the number one priority for education in the developing world as being to ensure universal primary education. I say this not only from the standpoint of one who believes that education is a basic human right but of one who knows that primary education is the absolute precondition for progress in development and reduction of poverty. It is to the hard facts of economics as well as human rights that I should like to look.

We in the Caribbean are fortunate to have a thirst for learning and, on the whole, Caribbean governments have put education among their top priorities and basic education has become a right in the small nation states. The greatest need at this time is for information technology. If these new nations are to compete in the global village, they must be helped to prepare themselves to expand their markets. The playing field is not even. The United Nations reports that 20 per cent of the world's population living in the richest countries account for 86 per cent of the total income of the world, while 20 per cent of the world's population living in the poorest countries account for a mere 1 per cent.

The question remains: how do they compete? We believe that knowledge is the key. Technological competence and knowledge enhancement through the Internet can assist so that these small nations can become more competitive. This country has the wherewithal to provide the equipment to facilitate such training.

Access to technology cannot be left to these small nation states alone. There is a need—a real need—for computers and I believe this Government can help.They can encourage institutions in this country to recycle or donate those computers they no longer need to be used in the schools of the Caribbean. Alternatively, the Internet and computer software industry—we know they are enjoying a boom at this time—could be encouraged to subsidise new equipment in schools. Not only would the pupils and schools benefit but I dare say these companies would be laying the foundations to establish their own future markets.

If this proves to be a sensible route to take, what we could usefully export in conjunction is the know-how and the skills to use the new technology. I should like to suggest the possibility of distance learning and, where possible, the use of technologies to expand access to skills training.

I understand that the Department for International Development has supported the Commonwealth of Learning, which provides training, institutional networking and expertise in distance course development for countries in the Commonwealth. Information technology now provides major new opportunities to increase access to these courses. For example, the Commonwealth of Learning has worked with the University for Technology in Jamaica and other countries to develop training up to the diploma stage for technical teachers based on open and distance learning. The result is that this course can be taken to the student and not the expensive alternative of taking the student to the institutions.

The information superhighway is becoming a crucial tool in education. Education is the key area for real and sustainable development for the new nations. I urge the Government, when considering how they deal with the heavy burden of third world debt, to consider recycling the repayments towards technological training so that developing countries like those in the Caribbean will not be left behind in the new age but will be equipped to compete equitably.

My Lords, I am the 15th speaker in this debate. Noble Lords have said a number of good things, one of which I shall repeat. I thank my noble friend Lady Whitaker for introducing this timely debate.

I agree with the fears expressed by my noble friend Lord Tomlinson and almost repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Joffe. However, I do not expect much will come of that. People make resolutions, set targets and so on, but these things go on at a supermacro level. We need to think of the third world not as victims but as active agents.

What are the reasons for failure? Here I take up something my noble friend Lord Haskel said. I of course deny that there is any such thing as a brain drain—I have to, do I not? What is true, even in the sphere of higher education, is that these countries can achieve a great deal. There is no problem. Many of these countries not only achieve good higher education but can export higher education.

Why do they fail in primary education? Of course, as here and everywhere else, the middle classes capture a number of gains for themselves and like further education. Our students like further education—they complain a little about the higher education fees, but why should they not? The problem is not so much shortage of resources, although there is a shortage of resources, but allocation within the budget as to where the priorities are. Even admitting the strictures of my noble friend Lord Brett about structural adjustments, among those countries which had to undergo structural adjustment, some managed to save education better than others. We really ought to study the successful responses and strategies in those countries and not just write out a cheque because we believe that we have to do something.

One of the studies to come out of the London School of Economics Asian Research Centre has been about basic education in Pakistan; a similar story can be told about India. It is not so much that parents do not want primary education for their children, even for girls; it is actually that the supply of primary education is inadequate. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, made this point. There are schools but there are no teachers. The teachers are paid but they do not attend. This occurs because the teacher is appointed as a favour to a local Member of Parliament and is not under an obligation to attend. This is one of the perks that the MLA gets. In addition, the school buildings may be so inadequate that parents of girls do not want to send their children. For example, there may not be any toilets.

Something has happened in India. The devolution of power to the village level has meant that the villagers are themselves in charge of the school. They control the teacher and supervise whether the teacher attends. They are on hand to know whether a teacher attends. The key in this case is for the power to be at the top, not at the bottom, and the self-organisation of people whose fortunes are at stake. When people are organised, they want education for their own children and will move heaven and earth to achieve it. In urban areas, one observes very poor parents spending a great deal of money to send their children to good schools. It is not that parents do not want education for their children; it is that they feel helpless because of the structures that are in place.

There is a way in which we should deal with this matter. I am sure that the excellent work of my right honourable friend Clare Short at the Department for International Development is very much in this direction. We should be able to funnel the funds to local groups. They will then make possible the good delivery of education by responding to existing pressures.

In Mauritius I once gave my usual spiel on primary education, targets and so on, and I was heavily criticised. One man said to me that the whole issue of primary education was a conspiracy by Western countries to hold back developing countries. He said, "We do not just want primary education; we want higher education as well". We must not forget that. I agree that primary education is a human right and that women's education is crucial, but there is more to life than primary education. We must also understand that there is a great desire on the part of developing countries to catch up rapidly with advances in higher education. Some of the techniques to which noble Lords have referred—distance learning and so on—are useful. Many of our universities ought to be engaged—I know that some are engaged—in tackling long-distance learning in order to deal with the shortage of textbooks and other problems that currently exist in higher education in those poor countries.

That is all I want to say. I shall donate half a minute of my time to my noble friend the Minister.

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, is to be congratulated on initiating this timely debate which coincides with the recent publication of the World Bank's task force report entitled Peril and Promise: Higher Education in Developing countries. I should like to focus on higher education, following the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and my noble friend Lord Thomson of Monifieth.

The report focuses attention on the particular role of higher education in developing countries. In surveying the situation, it shows starkly how lack of growth in the tertiary education sector threatens the future economic prospects of much of the developing world. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howells of St Davids, remarked, the playing field is becoming increasingly less even. The picture, of course, is not uniform. For example, considerable progress has been and is being made in parts of south-east Asia. The greatest problems seem to be in much of Africa where for many countries the data sought by the World Bank's team were simply not available.

President Mkapa of Tanzania has expressed the fear that higher education in Africa is becoming increasingly obsolete, especially in the face of growing globalisation. The World Bank endorses this concern and points to some of the internally generated causes: quality is low and often deteriorating; access remains very limited; the better trained teachers and researchers emigrate for better pay and prospects; the physical, pedagogic and technological infrastructures are hopelessly inadequate; and added to those handicaps is the fact that,

"Higher education institutions (and even whole systems) are politicized, poorly regulated and sometimes corrupt".

The task force recommends that governments in the developing world should make it a national priority to debate higher education, to specify its contemporary role, and to determine what is expected from it as they move from agricultural and manufacturing-centred economies to becoming the knowledge-centred economies that now characterise the developed world, where the emphasis is on human capital rather than physical capital.

My noble friend Lord Thomson made the point that there needs to be a greater balance in the allocation of educational resources. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, remarked, people need primary education as a basic human right—that is a prerequisite—but they also want higher education in order precisely to be able to compete in the globalised economy. While progress at the primary level is vital, higher education has tended to be neglected. That needs to be redressed.

As the report states, the main efforts to improve the quality and provision of higher education in the developing world must come from within the countries concerned, but there remains the question of how best to target international aid. The UK cannot and should not seek to be of assistance across the board and spread its resources too thinly. To be effective, it must be selective, even more perhaps that it already is. Distance learning must be further developed, and already the Open University, along with other British universities, has been a pioneering force in this area. The British Council, whose budget was significantly reduced by the previous government, needs again to be expanded in selected countries. Its offices should become major higher education resource centres, facilitating the delivery of British further and higher educational provision suitably adapted to local requirements.

In addition—my noble friend Lord Thomson referred to this point—the role of the Commonwealth should be even more prominent a feature in all of this. The older nations of the Commonwealth should be encouraged to offer more to the developing nations of the Commonwealth, especially to those in Africa. The UK established many of the major universities in east Africa, like Makere and Nairobi, and Ibadan and Fourah Bay in west Africa. They and others need our help to refurbish them both physically and intellectually. It is important to recognise that among international institutions the Commonwealth is one of the better organised and could provide the best vehicle for helping to address some of the many problems identified in the World Bank's report.

Finally, I should like to reiterate a point made by many other noble Lords. Not all worthwhile assistance has to be organised on a macro-scale. I wish to turn to schooling. Small endeavours, properly targeted, can also achieve results, as the work of CamFed—the Cambridge Female Education Trust—reveals. Working in sub-Saharan Africa since 1993, it has enabled hundreds of girls from rural backgrounds in Zimbabwe and Ghana to attend school by creating new forms of partnership with rural communities that transcend the constraints of poverty. With money from Comic Relief and the National Lottery, CamFed has been able to pay local school fees and provide school uniforms, books and stationery for many hundreds of girls.

Apart from liberating the girls themselves, this programme is having profound knock-on effects for national development, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, underlined. That leads to a considerable reduction in the number of young girls becoming mothers too soon. Many of these young women also go on to become "ambassadors" for the cause of female education, forming local associations which are beginning to raise educational funds for themselves both locally and internationally.

CamFed girls in Zimbabwe have now established nearly 80 new rural businesses using micro-credit schemes and are thus contributing to the rural economy rather than drifting into the towns in search of casual and often dangerous work.

In conclusion, perhaps I may add my appreciation to the commitment, dogged persistence and leadership shown by the Secretary of State, the right honourable Clare Short, at DfID, ably assisted by the noble Baroness, Lady Amos.

My Lords, as tail-end Charlie, I am quite surprised to find that I still have a few points to make. First, I should like to say how much I admire the way in which my noble friend Lady Whitaker has timed her debate to coincide with the global forum at Dakar. Perhaps I may draw attention to something that has not been mentioned by other noble Lords. I refer to the strategy document, which is hot off the press, from DfID. It is entitled Education for All—The Challenge of Universal Primary Education. That document is out for consultation. I hope that this debate will be regarded by DfID as part of the consultation process.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, referred to Julius Nyerere, who was widely known as Mwalimu, or "wise one". He said in 1970,

"Education is not a way of escaping poverty it is a way of fighting it".

Therefore it should be—as it is—a central plank of DfID's strategy.

I wish to focus on the impact of basic education on health and community development but with a particular slant towards the problem of HIV and AIDS. As well as the other benefits mentioned by my noble friends Lady Massey and Lady Gould, a further result of the education of girls and the increased empowerment of women is that it may help them to resist the strong social pressure, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, to have early unprotected sex, usually with older men. This has led to the tragic situation in many sub-Saharan countries that the HIV infection rate is higher in women than in men and in a younger age group, with disastrous consequences for their children. HIV and AIDS have seriously set back the plans of many countries to expand education at all levels. Sadly, the incidence in some sub-Saharan countries appears to be highest in the section of the population from which teachers are recruited—the educated middle class. In Ivory Coast it has been estimated that one teacher dies from AIDS every day of the school year, and that is typical of many sub-Saharan countries.

DfID's consultation document states on page 24 that HIV,

"is reducing the numbers participating in education … Countries in Asia, the Pacific and Latin America are also at serious risk of repeating the African experience in perhaps just a decade".

But, paradoxically, it is through education that there is the greatest chance of slowing down the spread of the epidemic. DfID's document further states on page 29,

"Primary education provides opportunities to educate and alert children to the potential danger before they are sexually active".

There are imaginative and appropriate educational materials available to assist with that. Here I put in a plug for the NGO Healthlink Worldwide of which I am a trustee. This organisation publishes newsletters and has links with partner organisations in the South to exchange accurate but effective health educational material to assist teachers and primary health workers. I am glad to say that its value is recognised by DfID which supports some of its activities. There is a great need for down-to-earth relevant information not only in preventing HIV/AIDS but across the board in general and reproductive health. Frank but sensitive discussion about relationships and sex should start before children reach the age where they become sexually active.

The Choices booklet by Gill Gordon, published by Macmillan Education Ltd, and also supported by DfID, distributed through the organisation known as TALC, Teaching Aids at Low Cost, is an example of the style that is needed. It is written for young people aged between 10 and 24, with an African setting in mind. It not only gives helpful advice on how to delay the start of sexual activity until the right time but also explicit information on contraception and avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and HIV and how sex can be enjoyed best as part of a loving relationship. It gives details of how that can be achieved too.

In closing, I draw attention to the article by Stephen Bates in yesterday's Guardian Education Supplement. It is called, in typical Guardian style, Educating Gita. It points out that not only are there still 130 million children in the world missing out on any form of education, but that the level of much existing education is abysmally low and a high proportion of children drop out before attaining any useful literacy. The article concentrates on India, but, sadly, the description of poor buildings, ill trained teachers, poor accessibility in rural areas and the irrelevance of much of the curriculum are all too familiar worldwide. I add, confirming the account of South Africa of the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, that many children are hungry at school. The provision of a nourishing breakfast or lunch enhances their learning ability and provides better resistance to disease, as we know from our experience in this country over the years.

As the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, has told us, Oxfam, in its campaign, Education Now: Break the Cycle of Poverty, estimates that universal provision of primary education within the next decade would cost 8 billion dollars above what is already spent per annum. I suggest that this might need to be doubled also to raise the standards of existing schools to what is needed. However, as the noble Lord pointed out, that would still amount to only eight days worth of global military spending, or the same amount that American parents spend annually on toys for their children. I suggest that our priorities have become seriously warped if paying big boys to play soldiers for a week is thought to be more important than the education of the world's poorest children to help them to get onto the first step on the ladder out of poverty.

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute briefly to this debate in the gap. I declare an interest as the husband of a trustee of the Bishop Mubarak Scholarship Fund for Nuba Women. I wish to make two points. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, I wish to speak of Sudan—the north, this time—to illustrate my points.

I have been to many of the squatter townships around Khartoum and Port Sudan. People live in appalling conditions. From time to time the state government raise the townships to the ground and move the people further and further into the desert. Education is virtually impossible to find. Like many of your Lordships, I could carry on describing the situation in graphic detail. But the question really is: how can we effect change? I should be grateful if, when she replies to the debate, the Minister will indicate how Her Majesty's Government can encourage and support a government such as the Government of Sudan to give real priority, and make real provision, for widespread education at a time when their revenue is increasing day by day as the oil flow increases. We look to the Government to try their best to encourage governments abroad, who may be reluctant—not least, when they are fighting a civil war—to give any pre-eminence to education whatever.

I publicly applaud, draw attention to, and affirm the tremendous work done over many decades by Churches, relief organisations and other bodies, some of which are extremely small and will never hit the headlines, yet make a contribution to improving education throughout the world. I refer to the Bishop Mubarak Scholarship Fund for Nuba Women. I echo the concern for proper education for women which has been expressed many times in this debate. Bishop Mubarak was bishop of El Obeid in Sudan. He died in 1996. The fund was set up in his honour to provide education for women from the Nuba Mountains, 90 per cent of whom are illiterate. They are among the most disadvantaged people in Sudan.

We should note that this fund, set up by Christians with Muslim friends, expresses no discrimination on the ground of faith. It cares for Christians, Muslims and people who worship in the African religions alike. There are no strings attached. The response to setting up this fund was astonishing. The Nuba women in Um Bedda met and 100 of them asked to have lessons straight away. The first thing they had to do was to learn to hold a pencil. Their fingers had become so twisted through years of hard labour that they simply could not hold a pencil. Elsewhere, the Nuba women said that they would not wait until July; they wanted their class in April—and they met in a hut where the temperature was 50 degrees centigrade. That shows an enormous amount of dedication.

When one looks at the situation in a country such as Sudan, it seems impossible to address this issue. And yet, one by one, these little organisations are helping some people to be educated—and every child, woman and man who receives an education for the first time is a step forward.

When I am tempted to despair, I remember the occasion when five barley loaves and two small fish were used to feed 5,000. That is my hope. I hope that when the Minister responds to the debate she will applaud what is being done by these charitable bodies and give them hope as well.

My Lords, we cannot all visit the Sudan, as has the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, but there are very many Ethiopians and Somalis in this country whom we can get to know, befriend and become involved with. What are the Government doing to encourage such involvement? Does the Minister agree that involvement fosters interest, care, concern and the drive to achieve all that we have discussed today?

My Lords, I add my voice of gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. The debate has once again displayed the astonishing level of knowledge and experience in this House. I cannot help thinking that there is a case for a register of altruism to stand alongside the register of interests. By my count, in this debate alone two-thirds of those who have participated have spoken on a basis of their direct relationship to either a charity or some other trust or organisation concerned with the development of the developing world. That is immensely impressive. I wish that occasionally the media would attend some of our debates other than those about fox hunting and Clause 28, which appear to be the only issues that interest them, or us in their view.

I shall not repeat what has already been eloquently said about primary education—a number of noble Lords have spoken with great force—beyond saying that we are all agreed that primary education is the foundation stone of economic development, of democracy and of civil society. Whatever we may say about other stages of education, by definition it has to be the first step; one cannot go on to any other form of education except via primary education.

In regard to primary education, I wish to underline the forceful point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton. She pointed out that it is not only finance which stands in the way of primary education but all too often attitudes. That is well illustrated by the difference between the relatively poor Indian state of Kerala, where 86 per cent literacy has been achieved almost equally between men and women—this owes a good deal to the Christian missions which worked in that region—and other states in India, some of which are better off, where literacy levels are half that rate and sometimes only a quarter among women.

I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brett. I apologise to him because I was called out of the Chamber during the latter part of his remarks. He is right to say that this cause requires not only the powerful and excellent support of the right honourable Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, and in this House of the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, but of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

As the noble Lord, Lord Brett, pointed out, much of the damage done to education has been as a result of the ill thought through stabilisation plans of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. I shall give only two examples. At the time of the Asian crisis, the stabilisation schemes for Indonesia and Thailand required them to make cuts in public expenditure. Of course the noble Lord, Lord Desai, is right: no one enforced those cuts specifically on primary education, but that is where the axe all too often falls. In the case of Indonesia, it fell on the outer islands, which had nothing like the same political power as Java.

To take a very different example, only last year in Brazil plans to stabilise the real forced a choice on its Government between cutting higher education, which in Brazil is free—there are no tuition fees for higher education—or cutting primary education, which largely benefits the rural area. For the reasons expressed so clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Desai—reasons connected with power—the choice was made to protect the free higher education, which overwhelmingly benefits the better off in Brazil, and the axe again fell largely on primary education, which even today does not reach two-thirds of the population in a relatively wealthy country.

In the autumn of last year I conducted a debate among educated young Brazilians who were students at the University of Brasilia in which I asked them why they felt that free university education should be protected rather than primary education. They had been voicing the strongest views about primary education until, I regret to say, that moment. I then became the subject of a good deal of attack, on the ground that I did not understand the needs of higher education in Brazil.

My third point concerns the serious issue raised by my noble friend Lord Thomson of Monifieth and the noble Lord, Lord Haskel. Their remarkable speeches pointed to what I describe as the "educational trade balance". It is not often talked about, but the inflow of students under our present educational arrangements has, as my noble friend said, been cut by some 49 per cent for less well off Commonwealth country scholarships. They are beginning to disappear. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, and other noble Lords have said, the Commonwealth is an amazing creation. We are foolish to value as lightly as we do almost the only multi-racial association of equals that exists anywhere in the world. Commonwealth scholarships have been a crucial part of that, but they have been badly slashed.

I remember trying to persuade the Treasury in 1979 that its decision to cut subsidies to overseas students should be changed into using the subsidies for scholarships for the most able youngsters from poor families and poor countries. The Treasury could not see the point and obliged the following government to reduce subsidies for overseas students. As many noble Lords know, in one year the loss in trade with Malaysia alone more than offset the whole value of the saving made by the Treasury. With great respect to the Treasury, it is not always the wisest of our government departments, merely the most powerful.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, referred to the other side of the education balance of payments when he talked eloquently about the amazing inflow of free graduate labour into the wealthy countries of the world. To what he said about Germany and the United Kingdom, I would add the United States. Two years ago, the United States changed its immigration policies specifically to allow highly qualified professionals to enter without any of the difficulties that stand in the way of desperately poor Mexican and central American labourers. Like the United States, like the United Kingdom, like Germany, the other rich countries of the world cherry pick some of the most valuable people in the developing world and pay not a penny for them. Let us not forget that educating a single doctor costs something like £ ¼ million.

My fourth point relates to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, on capacity growth. The noble Lord was absolutely right. The assessment of capacity based on experience needs to be examined closely as a crucial bridge between formal and informal education. As the noble Lord said, it takes 20 years for an educated group to mature from the moment that they enter the earliest stages of education. There is therefore a 20-year gap to be filled, and that can only be done by experiential learning and adult education.

In regard to adult education, perhaps I may add to what was said my noble friend Lord Dholakia about Tanzania, by the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, about South Africa and by the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, about the work that he has done, with IDASA, with South African communities. I have seen similar work done in Rajasthan, one of the poorest states in India, through a charity called Vidya Bhawan, which has set up a local government institute to train young people coming in to the village councils—many of them women under the quota system—many of whom, incidentally, are illiterate. It is unbelievably inspiring to see those very cheap, low-cost residential courses for young men and women with no idea of local government but who slowly learn about budgets, finance, public health and many other subjects.

Perhaps I may refer briefly to a matter raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howells of St Davids, and the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso; namely, distance learning. I simply want to draw attention to the amazing new experiment by the World Bank called the World Wide Web on the Economic Development Forum. It involves some 8,000 people worldwide in contributing, to and commenting on development policy. It requires World Bank managers, who have often in the past been very superior, to listen to the outcomes of the policies they espouse. I suggest that DfID might like to set up a similar electronic network, feeding back, through e-mail, ideas based on an evaluation and experience of DfID's excellent policies. I believe that that is the way forward to a more massive educational achievement using electronic technology in the way that was so powerfully advocated by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord.

Finally, perhaps I may add my congratulations to the Minister and her colleague in another place on the great work that they are doing.

My Lords, the whole House must be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for introducing this debate, and for bringing a matter before the House that inspired the Leader of the House to attend the early part of the debate. Unfortunately, we have not had nearly enough time to debate a subject of such vital importance—not merely for the developing countries but for the future sustainability of our planet. Almost every speaker has made powerful reference to its seriousness. I pay particular tribute to my noble friend Lady Cox for the constant interest that she takes in this subject and for the outstanding work that she does in this field.

One of the characteristics of Thomas More's Utopian society is that every citizen is taught agriculture and also one particular skill. The general economic and social state of the society is such that all citizens have the possibility and the privilege to spend their considerable spare time as they please, with music or conversation; and everyone, male or female, can attend public lectures—I take that to mean education.

Charles Dickens said in 1844:

"I look forward to the time when high and low, and rich and poor, shall mutually assist, improve, and educate each other".

The present state of education in developing countries is far from being a "perfect state of things", with 125 million children out of school worldwide and a drop-out rate of 150 million. Secondly, education clearly cannot be a privilege. It is a fundamental human right and therefore an end in itself. As James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, has said,

"We all agree that the single most important key to development and to poverty alleviation is education".

Just as important is the role that education plays in determining population growth rates. Economic growth and a reduced debt burden for developing countries are necessary, too, in order to reduce poverty and to enable those countries to invest in education, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Brett, in a clear and focused speech.

A number of different factors are responsible for the still appalling state of education in many developing countries today. The main task is to break the vicious circle of poverty leading to ill-health and poor education, leading in turn once again to poverty. Opinions differ as to the weight of the different factors contributing to the poor state of affairs in many countries. These include corrupt and/or incompetent governments squandering available resources by diverting funds, mostly into military spending, wars and self-aggrandising prestigious projects; genuine poverty at national and household level; and cultural and religious obstacles.

"Education is the road to culture",

Matthew Arnold said in 1882. At state level, poverty results in a shortage of school places, a lack of schools for local communities and low-quality schooling in terms of both the curriculum and the basic facilities. At household level, direct costs for parents are often too high—school fees, expenditure for school uniforms and textbooks. Many families may also depend on the labour of their children on the farm and around the home—for example, to carry water, as we heard from my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes.

Matthew Arnold also said:

"To model education on sound ideas is of more importance than to have the management of it in one's own hands ever so fully".

Economic development to reduce general poverty is, however, only one condition for securing universal education. One of the most apparent problems is the gender gap in education in many developing countries. In general, girls account for two-thirds of the children who are not in school. The gap is not directly the result of poverty in itself. Research indicates that many religious, cultural and social factors cause the difference in school enrolment between boys and girls. The place for women is often considered to be in the home and the family. That traditional role for women and limited opportunities on the labour market often prevent parents from investing highly limited resources in the education of girls.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that it is now generally accepted that education for girls is the single most effective way to reduce poverty. When aiming at universal primary education in developing countries, an important effort has to be made to eliminate the gender gap in school enrolment. Basic education for women tends to lead to later marriage, fewer children and healthier families and reduces infant mortality. Education is especially important with a view to diseases, and I refer, for example, to the world-wide HIV pandemic. Another factor is the passing on of education to the next generation: educated mothers are, in turn, more likely to send their children to school, boys and girls.

As primary and secondary education develops, the importance of higher education also increases. According to The Times Higher Education Supplement,

"Without more and better higher education, developing countries will find it increasingly difficult to benefit from [the] global knowledge-based economy".

That point was rightly stressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. It also emphasises the importance of higher education for developing countries that face great and fast-changing economic and environmental challenges. According to the Harvard economist, David Bloom,

"For years economists had under-estimated the importance of higher education".

Finally, one of the major problems that face the world today is the population growth rate. How does one bring down the world's population to sustainable levels? One does so only by giving women the chance to understand the choices available to them by education so they can decide whether and when to marry and space their children and deal with healthcare matters. The human rights of women include their right to have control over, and decide freely and responsibly upon, their sexuality—including sexual and reproductive health—free of coercion, discrimination and violence. If we do not improve the education, welfare and legal status of women there is little hope of solving many of the population problems, even though this vital human right is fraught with problems, not least those arising from aggrieved boys.

I very much hope that the Secretary of State will continue to press for the case at Dakar and for the necessary funds, and will also demonstrate the Government's support for the BBC World Service, which does such a terrific job in this field, so that universal education does not, and cannot, remain a mere utopia for the developing countries of the world.

My Lords, I should like to begin by thanking my noble friend Lady Whitaker for initiating this debate with a speech which touched on so many issues of concern. It is clear from the contributions from all noble Lords this afternoon that education needs to remain the cornerstone of our strategy to tackle poverty and inequality. As always in a debate of this nature, it is difficult to do justice to an area which is rich in experience and expertise. This debate is made particularly meaningful by the examples and experiences of noble Lords themselves. I also thank noble Lords for their positive references to the work of the Department for International Development and the leadership given to that work by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development, and also for the kind remarks of noble Lords about my own role in that work. I consider it a privilege to have the opportunity to work on issues related to international development.

The matters that have been raised this afternoon are complex. Some noble Lords have argued for greater selectivity in what the department does; others have argued for greater support across the whole sector. I believe that this afternoon four themes have dominated the debate. The first is the importance of looking at education and development, in particular the education of girls. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, that in considering girls' education we must ensure that our approach is practical, focused and flexible.

The noble Lord, Lord Joffe, said that Oxfam had put education at the top of its agenda. Oxfam's Global Action Plan for Education and the Read the World campaign by the Guardian have helped to raise awareness of the plight of the 130 million children not in school, two-thirds of whom are girls. I pay tribute to the leadership which the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, has given in this area. DfID shares the goals of Oxfam. Educational opportunity for all, especially at primary level, is both a fundamental human right and a precondition for progress in development and the reduction of poverty. To deny education to children places a massive block on the development prospects of their countries.

The development case for investing in primary education is now unanswerable. Education helps people to become more productive and to earn more income, and it leads to improvements in health, nutrition and child mortality. It also enables people to transform their own lives, and that of society, and to acquire the basic skills of literacy and numeracy, as well as the capacity to utilise knowledge and information. I agree with my noble friends Lady Whitaker and Lady Gould of Potternewton and the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, as to the importance of educating women. Research into the education of girls shows that women with as little as four years of education are likely to have smaller, healthier families, to work their way out of poverty and to send their own children to school. I believe that we have all read the research by the World Bank to which my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen referred. That research suggests that the education of girls is the single most valuable development intervention that a country can make.

My noble friend Lady Gould of Potternewton set out clearly what is happening to girls around the world and its tragic implications for development if we do not tackle the issue now. My noble friend Lord Clarke of Hampstead also talked about the importance of working with women and gave an example of the work that is being done by One World Action in South Africa. It is right to pay tribute to the work of NGOs, churches and other charitable organisations which very much complements the work that we do. In response to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, it is important to work in partnership in Britain as well as in the developing world.

The Government believe that four things need to be done if we are to make gender equality and universal primary education a reality and achieve the target by 2015. The right reverend Prelate asked me specifically how we could effect change and encourage governments to resource education. We need a real and sustained commitment by the governments of developing countries to secure universal primary education. It is only if there is such a commitment that we can work with those governments and help them to put in place the structural changes required.

Secondly, we need to address the resourcing of education. I agree with my noble friend Lord Desai that there is a clear need to increase the level of resources that the governments of developing countries commit to primary and basic education. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, if we look at the balance of resources that are devoted to primary, secondary and higher education, too often the needs of the primary sector are inadequately funded because the university sector has more vocal and politically influential constituents. For example, in Africa the public subsidy for a university student is 20 times that of a primary school pupil.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso: it is crucial that governments do not impose costs or fees that deter access to primary and basic education for the poor. In some of the countries that I have visited parents make every effort to find the money to send their children to school. I am aware of mothers who do not feed themselves if it means that they can send their children to school for another day or week. We need to stamp that out.

There is also an important role for development donors. Through the DfID's development budget, the British Government have current commitments of around £800 million to education. The noble Lord, Lord Thomson, asked me specifically about our contribution. Seventy-seven per cent of that is for basic and primary education—it is the majority of but not all the money—and two-thirds of those resources are concentrated in 11 of the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. It is important that noble Lords recognise that we are dealing with competing concerns. I do not apologise for the focus we have given to primary education. If we are serious about eliminating poverty, that is what we need to do.

The third factor which DfID believes important is the need to shift from a projects-based approach to a sector-wide approach to basic and primary education. We need to pull together the work of all the different development donors around a focused, agreed strategy drawn up by the government of the country concerned. Too often, aid for education is used to support isolated projects which crumble when external funding comes to an end. Having such individual projects imposes a huge administrative burden.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia—he has had to leave for another pressing engagement—mentioned Tanzania. Tanzania is a good example of a poor country with 30 donors, 1,000 projects and 2,000 aid missions a year. Scarce administrative capacity goes into managing those aid missions. We have been engaged with the Tanzanian Ministry of Education for over three years in seeking to finalise the comprehensive educational sector-wide development programme. We are fully committed to making that programme a reality.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, that education for democracy—and by implication, I think, education for citizenship—must be an important part of our agenda. The Commonwealth has a key role to play in ensuring that the countries within the Commonwealth share good practice on these issues. As a development donor it is crucial that our role should be an enabling one—not usurping the role of developing country governments but helping them to create the conditions for providing education for all their children.

If we are to achieve universal primary education by 2015, the fourth thing we need to do is to link education policy with the wider development strategy of the country, including policies on health, sanitation, livelihoods and rural transport. I shall come back to that point.

My noble friend Lady Whitaker and the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, mentioned the World Education Forum in Dakar on 26th to 28th April. The forum provides an opportunity for governments, development agencies and NGOs from north and south to recommit themselves to education for all, including the achievement of universal primary education by 2015, and gender equality in primary and secondary education by 2005. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, that the achievement of those targets as well as the poverty elimination target is feasible if the political will is there.

In preparation for the forum the DfID has drafted a paper on Education for All: The Challenge of Universal Primary Education. The paper examines what it will take to enable our partners to achieve the development target by 2015. We plan to consult widely on this draft and to finalise it in the light of the Dakar outcome. I hope that noble Lords will have an opportunity to read the paper and contribute to the evolving debate about how we achieve this key international development target. We believe that the forum should pay particular attention to analysing why some countries, including some of the poorest, have managed to achieve considerably more than others since the world conference on education in 1990. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby—she gave the example of Kerala—that attitude and commitment make a big difference.

We have seven major priorities for Dakar. There is insufficient time to explore those now. I shall write to all noble Lords who have participated in the debate about those priorities. It would be helpful if noble Lords who have comments on them would reply to me.

The second theme in the debate is the importance of encouraging a wider debate about education in the higher level, in particular the second and tertiary sectors, and taking a balanced view of the whole sector. My noble friend Lord Desai, the noble Lord, Smith of Clifton, the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, mentioned the importance of higher education. I assure all noble Lords that while universal primary education is the fundamental building block of our support for education in developing countries, it cannot stand alone within an education system.

We recognise that. It does not provide the work-related skills that many people need to lift themselves from poverty or gain employment. It does not lead to higher education or scientific research. It does not even provide the growing numbers of trained teachers needed to staff the expanding primary sector. So we need to take a balanced view of the whole education sector including provision of adult literacy and lifelong learning. In many developing countries, it is not unusual to find a workforce where less than 5 per cent have some form of secondary schooling. That lack of skills is clearly a drag on the development of the economy as well as on the individual's earning capacity.

We need to look with governments at different ways of providing education at this level which are more efficient and less costly than before. Distance learning, which has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, is one possibility, using new technologies to expand access to secondary education and skills training. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, that we shall continue to support the commonwealth of learning which provides training, institutional networking and expertise in distance course development for countries in the Commonwealth. I agree with my noble friend, Lady Howells, that information technology now provides major new opportunities to increase access to these courses.

The third theme is globalisation and the recognition that we live in a globalising world. As globalisation of markets and economies continues, the world needs not only economic growth but equitable growth that benefits vast numbers of poor people. I assure my noble friend, Lord Haskel, that we recognise that trade and investment can have a much greater impact on development than aid. There is no world shortage of investable funds. But developing countries have to create the conditions to attract that investment. That is the only way to achieve the economic growth necessary to reduce poverty.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, asked about accountability. I assure the noble Baroness that it is an area we take very seriously indeed. We are promoting better governance nationally and locally in developing countries, making public servants and elected officials accountable to the public, and improving public administration. We are helping developing countries to improve their own systems of financial management, accounting and auditing to help ensure that resources are effectively allocated and used. We are continuously improving our own procedures and capacity to ensure that our development assistance programmes are protected from abuse. Of course, we try to ensure that donors take an integrated approach so that we can maximise our impact. It is not always easy but we shall continue to push for that.

A number of noble Lords spoke of the importance of building capacity. A skilled labour force facilitates investment. Unfortunately, too many poor countries have both a desperate shortage of skills and unemployed graduates. We know that skills and knowledge contribute to higher productivity as well as the capacity to absorb new knowledge and technology from outside sources. Capacity to absorb technology is a product of early investment in basic education and higher level skills in science and technology. But these skills cannot be provided without some kind of policy framework or institutional base. It is to meet that need that the DfID has established a major new programme of assistance and support.

My noble friend Lord Haskel referred to the Skills for Development initiative. Over the next two years, we shall be committing £20 million to the initiative. That will facilitate the stimulation of entrepreneurial skills required by the poorest countries if their economies are to grow. The DfID continues to fund Commonwealth scholarships, an issue raised by several noble Lords, but only where they are development oriented. As noble Lords are aware, the FCO funds Chevening scholarships.

The Skills for Development initiative has three strands. The first is to assist our partner countries to develop skills in the population which will enable the workforce to contribute to economic growth. Secondly, for those countries where institutions exist but are not sufficiently responsive to skills development, we have established a new programme of links between further education institutions in this country and overseas. Thirdly, our Skills for Development programme will support innovative and knowledge-building projects which can be used to pilot new approaches for skills development work.

I agree with the powerful point made by my noble friend Lord Haskel and endorsed by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, about the brain drain. That is why we need to reform and strengthen the economies of developing countries—and it is also about making those countries more attractive to their own people.

The fourth theme is linking education to the wider development effort. My noble friend Lady Whitaker described graphically the importance of linking education to the wider development effort when she gave the example of Mali. Other noble Lords referred to education and health. The HIV/AIDS pandemic puts at risk the achievements which have been made in education during the past decade. My noble friends Lord Rea and Lady Massey made particular reference to that.

In many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa but increasingly in Asia, the cost of HIV/AIDS to the education system will have to be factored into government resource planning. The steady loss of teachers and others from the education system is already putting a break on the provision and quality of primary education.

My noble friends Lady Massey and Lord Rea and the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, mentioned reproductive rights and sex education. Young people—boys and girls—need good sex education to enable them to make informed, responsible decisions to protect their health and safeguard their future. That is an important area of support for us.

Three other issues were raised. Debt relief was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Whitaker. In Jamaica, we have linked the resources which have been saved through the Commonwealth debt initiative to targeting education. The rationale behind debt relief is to make progress on poverty reduction, and countries qualifying for debt relief have to put in place poverty reduction strategies.

My noble friend Lord Tomlinson raised the issue of capacity building and in particular the need for developing countries to have sufficient capacity to negotiate effectively in international forums. I can assure my noble friend that we have resourced developing countries to enable them to do precisely that. One example is the support we have given to CARICOM to improve its competence on trade.

My noble friend Lord Brett focused his remarks on the role of the international financial institutions. As he anticipated, I shall repeat that we have worked hard for reforms in both the IMF and World Bank and the inclusion of social data when they make proposals for economic reform. I agree with my noble friend that further reforms are needed. We shall show determination when we work with the IMF and World Bank on these issues.

In conclusion, perhaps I may quickly return to the question of basic and primary education for all. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, that the Internet and new technology are huge and significant tools for spreading educational opportunities. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, that using the Internet to facilitate education is important. But we must also remember that millions of children might never learn to read. They might never have the opportunity to go to school unless we take more effective action. The Government are strongly committed to bringing the benefits of educational opportunities to millions of children and to helping spread skills and knowledge so that all countries can accelerate their development, reduce poverty and give everyone the chance to realise their potential.

My Lords, this has been a high calibre debate, with contributions of wide-ranging expertise and first-hand knowledge. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part.

Your Lordships' contributions will be read in detail internationally. The fact that the Hansard Internet address is for the first time on the inside cover, courtesy of the Editor, means that the debates can be more easily communicated and downloaded all over the world. That is peculiarly appropriate for this subject because international pressure is now needed, as my noble friend the Minister emphasised. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer to a Private Notice Question which was asked in another place earlier this afternoon.

"I am happy to repeat to this House the Government's position on grammar schools. We have said on a number of occasions that we have no intention of changing the status of grammar schools unless parents wish it. I am happy to repeat that commitment today.

"The policy which the Labour Party agreed in 1995 and our manifesto both said that the decision on whether grammar schools continue to use the 11-plus would be a matter for parents, not local education authorities. That was agreed by both Houses of Parliament in the School Standards and Framework Act, which remains the law. It remains our position today.

"My noble friend the Minister for Education and Employment said in the other place last night that we would restore that position in the Commons following the Lords' vote to end balloting. We fully respect the vote of parents in Ripon, but it is hard to see how it could be taken as an expression of views in other areas any more than a by-election vote is an expression of the views of those in every other constituency in the land. One ballot should never be allowed to pre-empt the decisions of others with very different electorates.

"While the Opposition keep re-running the debates of the sixties, we are focused on improving standards through diversity and excellence in our education system as a whole. The Government have already significantly extended diversity. We have now 480 specialist schools approved, 250 beacon schools. We have brought in new voluntary aided schools from the independent sector for Jewish, Muslim and Sikh children. The Excellence in Cities programme is focusing targeted resources in inner-city secondaries in London and five other major cities. We have been ready to tackle failure in inner-city schools, where the party opposite simply stood on the sidelines. As a result, failing schools are being turned around in 17 months now rather than 25 previously.

"Yes, we can learn from the first Fresh Start schools, but leaving schools to sink or close is not an alternative which this Government will accept. So today I can tell the House that we are inviting promoters from the voluntary, religious or business sectors to bring forward proposals to take over weak or failing schools or to replace them with new city academies.

"The promoters of the academy will have plans for improving education for all the pupils attending the school which is to be replaced. We will use existing legislative powers to establish them. They will be built and managed by partnerships involving the state, voluntary, Church and business sponsors. Over the next year, we intend to launch the first academies. We will be looking for imaginative proposals from potential promoters. The aim will always be to improve pupil performance by breaking the cycle of low expectations. Promoters may use different approaches to management, governance, teaching, the school day and the curriculum. We would expect a specialist focus in at least one curriculum area. The academies will also work with other local schools.

"So, yes, we will leave the decision on grammar schools to parents. That has been our policy for nearly five years. It is not this side that is confused about policy but the Opposition. The Conservative spokeswoman in the House of Lords yesterday sought to encourage the establishment of new grammar schools with an amendment which was defeated. Yet on 1st October 1999, the honourable Lady opposite told the Times Educational Supplement:

'I don't get the impression that in areas where there arc no grammar schools, there is a great groundswell of opinion in favour of introducing them'.

"When it had the chance to improve our schools, the party opposite let down millions of children. As Secretary of State, I am determined that all children have the equality of opportunity to fulfil their potential, not uniformity that treats every pupil the same. That is why I am willing to leave decisions on grammar schools to parents locally and why I have no intention of shifting my focus from that of driving up standards".

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating that Answer. However, first, I am deeply disappointed that the conventions of the House were not followed and that I was not given a copy of it. I had to go to the noble Baroness's own Whips' Office and was given a copy of the Statement which belonged to one of the clerks in that office. I find that a deeply unsatisfactory state of affairs. I received it literally only two or three minutes before I walked into the Chamber, and only after my own efforts to Find it.

My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness will give way. This Statement was made as a result of an Answer to a Private Notice Question in another place. In the case of a PNQ, it is not customary to give the Answer to the Opposition Front Bench. I speak as one who served on the Opposition Front Bench for 10 years. It is only in the case of a formal Statement in another place that the Opposition Front Bench get a shot at it first.

My Lords, that is as may be. However, copies of the Statement are available. The Minister has it; the clerks in her office have it; and I believe that it would have been a courtesy to have allowed me to see a copy of it, too.

Secondly, I refer to one of the lines in the Statement which the noble Baroness repeated:

"It is not this side that is confused about policy, but the Opposition".

At the weekend, almost every single newspaper in this country was also confused. The statements of the Secretary of State for Education and Employment were widely welcomed in most newspapers but they created some puzzlement in others. However, among people up and down the land who have a connection with grammar schools—the staff, the parents and the pupils—there was elation because of words such as "end of hostilities against grammar schools", "drawing a line in the sand", "putting these arguments behind us" and "arguments about selection are now a thing of the past". There was a great deal of excitement. I wonder what the noble Baroness will say to many of the staff and parents who have been in touch to say how disappointed they are today.

The noble Baroness is aware that the Secretary of State's Statement was extremely disappointing. However, when one strips away all the words, it amounts to a very real message to the anti-grammar school campaigners, "Don't stop your work! Keep burrowing, keep harassing, and we will use the might of our vote in another place to back you".

Since that statement, does the noble Baroness appreciate the reaction of grammar school staff, parents and children? I give as an example the experience of Mrs Margaret Lemon, head teacher of Slough Grammar School. On Saturday morning a meeting of 500 people took place at Slough Grammar School. They were overjoyed with the Ripon result and greeted it with cheers. They were even more thrilled this morning when they heard the news of your Lordships' decision yesterday. However, all their hopes are now dashed. It is a source of great jollity to the noble Lord, Lord Bach. I believe that the sentiments of those parents were genuine; they felt exceedingly let down after having their hopes raised by the Secretary of State over the weekend.

Mr Martin Morys, headmaster of Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School, said:

"It was with enormous relief that I heard the Ripon result. I thought that the end was in sight when I saw today's papers".

But the message from the Secretary of State today is that the end is not in sight and that the war of attrition must go on.

We welcome the announcement today about academies. Indeed, we should regard it as something of a flattering proposition. They are modelled on the city technology colleges. They will be given the freedom that those colleges enjoy, longer days, and involvement with business. They will be freed from teaching the national curriculum, and I wish them well. Certainly, we support the record of the city technology colleges and the way in which the experience of those colleges spawned specialist schools. The noble Baroness's party has picked up, supported and, indeed, extended that.

However, one cannot get away from the Secretary of State's Statement. We understand from a Question earlier today that it was only the reference to "watch my lips" that was the joke. Not many people got that until the other day. As the Daily Mail journalist said, it took us five years to understand the punch-line. Nevertheless, once we understood it, we knew that he was serious about the other half of the statement:

"There will be no selection. either by interview or examination".

That is what he said and that is what we understand him to have meant and to be true. However, it is not true. Ministers' children are being selected by interview as we speak. Ministers' children are enjoying selective education as we speak. Some of them have been selected by interview and others by examination under a Labour Government; indeed, not only under a Labour Government but belonging to a Labour Government. The level of hypocrisy here is absolutely breathtaking.

At lunchtime I asked the noble Baroness a question and a large number of my colleagues were disappointed that I did not receive an answer. Therefore, I shall ask my question again. We welcome and strongly support the right of the Prime Minister and his ministerial and parliamentary colleagues to choose schools which select on the basis of interview and/or examination—to choose the best school for their children. We would advocate that for all parents. However, I want to know what defence the noble Baroness has for saying that that is all right for Mr Blair, for his ministerial colleagues and for his parliamentary colleagues, but it is not all right for all the other parents up and down this land. That question really must be answered. If it is not, it betrays a level of hypocrisy not only that we deem to be present but that the Government defend shamelessly.

Selection also exists within the system, with interviews, auditions and testing for music, dance, sport, science and technology, and for special needs children. What is so sinful about making a special arrangement for children of high academic ability? Why single them out? Why discriminate against them? I believe that this represents discrimination, positively, against a group of young people who will be denied a choice. If the Secretary of State and the noble Baroness are to be taken at their word, are not really interested, want to put this debate behind them and believe that what happens to grammar schools is a matter for people at local level, why do they say time and time again that they do not approve of selection and that there will be no selection by interview or by examination under a Labour Government? If the parents in other grammar schools vote as they did at Ripon, it will continue. Are they some kind of pariah in the system that is not agreed to by the noble Baroness?

Yesterday we had an interesting debate on this side of the House with the Liberals, whom I criticised for being inconsistent in their support for selection, national and local. We said that we knew Liberal Democrats who were actively and in many cases overtly supporting their grammar schools, and we had to remind them that in Parliament Liberal Democrats always vote against selection. I looked up Hansard, and found that I had wrongly accused the noble Lord, Lord Tope. It was to his noble friend Lady Maddock that I said:

"Does the noble Baroness know that some Liberal Democrats support some of their local grammar schools around the country? Does that sit easily with what she has just said?"

The answer came:

"The noble Baroness will know that we support different things locally from what we do nationally."—[Official Report, 10/6/98; co1.1048.]

There it is. I said that I would find it.

My final point is as follows. Almost every time we have this kind of discussion the noble Baroness prays in aid a question as to whether we have a serious interest in raising standards. I do. I applaud diversity, choice, beacon schools, city technology colleges, specialist schools, bilateral schools, grammar schools and comprehensive schools. All are good, good because diversity and choice are there for all parents.

But I wish to tell the noble Baroness that I have been in this business for a very long time, using my energies to help support policies for raising standards. The greatest opposition to the work over the 18 years when we were in power was twofold. The Labour Opposition in both Houses opposed the setting up of CTCs, specialist schools, the introduction of the national curriculum, assessment and testing, grant-maintained schools and devolution of budgets. They did so tooth and nail, all the way down the line. Much of that has now been adopted as Labour Party policy.

My Lords, I am extremely sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness, but we are dealing with a Private Notice Question, following the rules, which is here in the form of a Statement. The noble Baroness will know much better than I that ministerial statements are made for the information of the House, and that although brief comments and questions for clarification from all quarters of the House are allowed, such statements should not be made the occasion for an immediate debate. The noble Baroness had spoken for nine minutes when I rose. She might think that that is a bit long, bearing in mind that this is the equivalent of a Statement.

My Lords, I stand to be corrected by the Clerk at the Table, but I have been in the House since 1987, and my understanding is that each Front Bench spokesman makes a full and entirely free response to the statement from the Government Benches, that at that time the clock is stopped and that then the Clerk starts it again for 20 minutes for questions. If I am wrong, I will stand chided by the noble Lord.

My Lords, I am very wary, because of the noble Baroness's long experience—much greater than mine—-in this House, but I read as follows from the Companion:

"Ministerial statements are made for the information of the House, and although brief comments and questions for clarification from all quarters of the House are allowed, such statements should not be made the occasion for an immediate debate. Discussion on a statement should not exceed 20 minutes from the end of the Minister's initial reply to the Opposition spokesmen".

That does not imply that the Opposition spokesmen are allowed to take part in a debate.

My Lords, that confirms what I have just said, that the 20 minutes start from the end of the Opposition's spokesman's statement, and I believe that I can complete my statement.

I was coming to my last comment: the second thwarting factor of much of what we were trying to do in those 18 years was Labour-controlled councils. I would single out two: conspicuously, Islington and Sheffield. Both were producing the most awful education. They were spending much more per head than others on their children in the schools, but the education was appalling. The present Secretary of State presided over a great deal of failed education, and I will take no criticism from the noble Baroness of our intention to work hard to improve standards, and indeed to support the Government when they are working towards that.

This Statement will come as no comfort whatsoever to those of us who support freedom in education and as much choice and diversity as possible for all the children in this country.

My Lords, I rise with slight trepidation, in view of the previous exchange. I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement here. It was a fairly wide-ranging Statement in reply to a very specific question. The response from the Conservative Front Bench has possibly been more wide-ranging, even embracing Liberal Democrat policy, locally and nationally.

I understand very well how strongly and deeply the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, feels about grammar schools. Nobody who takes part in education debates in this House could doubt that. But it is becoming an obsession. We must be reminded that, whatever our views on the issue of selection and grammar schools, only four and a half per cent of our children attend grammar schools. This is not a mainstream issue for education as a whole. In most parts of the country it is, and has been for a long time, a complete non-issue.

As I was forced to remind the House yesterday, I happen to be closely associated with an area in which it has been a major issue for the last 30 years, and continues to be. But I must say again to the noble Baroness on the Conservative Front Bench that, as I demonstrated yesterday, it is not a vote winning issue, even in the London Borough of Sutton. So I worry and wonder about the obsession that she and some of her colleagues have with what is such a minority issue. Perhaps we should not worry too much about it, but while they are trying to appeal to their hard core support they are missing the real education issues and the issues of concern to a far wider group of people.

Before I turn to the Government, I wish to say that I also, coming from Sutton particularly, view with considerable scepticism the noble Baroness's concern about the instability and uncertainty for schools faced with the possibility of a ballot once every five years. It was not the present government that introduced ballots to schools. It was the last government, when they introduced grant-maintained status. I speak from personal experience when I say that that introduced considerable uncertainty in schools over far shorter periods than once every five years.

I want to turn to the Government's Statement, not the Opposition's. The Minister said yesterday, before the vote, that were it to be lost the Government would use their majority in the House of Commons to overturn that. I suspect that none of us doubted that that would be the case. But I urge the Government to use this opportunity, unwelcome though its cause is, to review the ballot arrangements.

I heard the Secretary of State in the other place this afternoon. Perhaps unlike the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench, although I did not have a printed copy of the Statement, I took the opportunity to listen to it being made a couple of hours earlier. I heard the Secretary of State take comfort from the fact that at Ripon both sides of the argument felt the ballot had been rigged. A less emotive expression might be that the ballot system was flawed. He took comfort because he believed that if both sides thought it was wrong it was about right.

There is another explanation, which is that if both sides think the ballot was flawed maybe they are both right and the ballot system was flawed. So I urge the Government to look at that system. It cannot be right, just to use the Ripon example, that the children of one in four of the parents who took part in the ballot are in a private school and that parents who have their children in a grammar school are not entitled to vote.

My party has a much wider concern. We do not support the parental ballot at all, because, although parents are crucially important to schools, schools are part of the whole community, not just the property or interest of parents alone. Therefore, if those decisions are to be taken, they should be taken by the whole community or, more particularly, by the elected and democratic representatives of the whole community after full and proper consultation with that whole community.

Although the interruption is perhaps unwelcome, it provides an opportunity for the Government to put it to advantage. With the experience of one ballot which has now taken place and various attempts to get up a petition to call a ballot, they should review that process. We can all learn from experience and certainly this Government can do so. I hope that if they are not prepared to trust LEAs—and all the evidence is, and is again today, that they are not prepared to do so—they will at least look at the ballot system which is being used and make much-needed improvements to it.

The Secretary of State took the opportunity given to him by the Opposition to say a lot more about the Government's education policies. Indeed, he made an announcement in the House about today's initiative which has been announced in a six-page DIEE press release; namely, that of city academies.

Since the Minister has repeated that Statement, perhaps I may ask one or two questions about that.

My Lords, I am very sorry to interrupt the noble Lord because he has been on his feet for only a very few minutes indeed. But, as I understand it, the Select Committee on the Procedure of the House in its first report for the Session 1998–99 made the following ruling:

"While there will be exceptions, the time for the two Opposition front benches and the reply to them should be limited to 20 minutes, as for the backbenches".

We are now on 18 minutes. That is not through any fault of the noble Lord. This is a Private Notice Question so one would not have thought that it was exceptional in that sense. I am sure that the House wants to hear my noble friend's reply to the noble Baroness and the noble Lord but I am afraid that she will not have sufficient time to answer appropriately to the House. I am sorry to have interrupted the noble Lord but that is the point I make.

My Lords, of course I shall and wish to obey the rules of the House. But I protest most strongly. I have not had very much time at all. I did not want to intervene in the argument between the other two Front Benches. However, if the effect of one spokesperson speaking for far too long is to deny the other spokesperson any opportunity to say anything and, perhaps of even more concern to the House, to deny the Minister the right to reply effectively and properly to the points which have been made, then that procedure needs to be looked at and tightened up. But I shall not abuse the procedures of the House. I could not and would not do that.

Perhaps I may ask a few questions about the new city academies, as they are to be called. What significant differences are there to be between the city academies and the city technology colleges, which I recall the Minister's party was not too keen on? What are to be the admission arrangements for the new city academies?

There is more that I wish to say but in view of the points which have been made to me, I shall not do so.

My Lords, I shall be extremely brief as I feel that I do not have much choice. But since most of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, were debating points rather than specific questions and since this is not the occasion to have a debate, I do not intend to do so.

I am sorry that the noble Baroness did not receive a copy of the Statement. I am certainly willing to look into that. But I do not believe that it is for my private office to provide copies of the Statement. That is a matter for the House authorities.

The noble Baroness said that there has been a "war of attrition". Once again she used a great deal of purple prose, repeating what was said yesterday. It is not the aim of this Government to have a war of attrition in any way. I repeat what I said yesterday and what was said by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State this afternoon. We intend to continue with our policies, which are to have the highest possible standards in all, not just a few, of our secondary schools and to allow parents the right to ballot in the small remaining number of places where grammar schools are still in existence.

The noble Baroness asked me about Labour politicians who have sent their children to schools where interviews or examinations still take place. I really do not think that it is right or proper for me to comment on private or personal choices made by my colleagues. I am rather surprised that the noble Baroness wants to spend so long on that.

She also raised the issue of selection and its continuation under this Government. She used examples of music and ballet schools and provision for special educational needs children. I merely say that it would be patently absurd—and I say this as somebody who has spent a lifetime with a passionate interest in ballet—to admit children to highly specialised schools providing an extremely specialised form of training without selecting them for talent. Most Members of this House would not have been able to go to a ballet school and would not have been able to benefit from it. That is totally different from a situation in which children are not going to highly specialised schools which are training for a particular talent but are going to schools offering a broad and wide-ranging curriculum.

To suggest that this Government discriminate against able children and treat them as pariahs is absolute nonsense, and the noble Baroness knows it. We have done a great deal to support good provision for gifted and able children and we shall continue to do so.

I turn now to the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tope. I am very sorry that he did not have a great deal of time to make the points that he wanted to. I agree with him entirely that the issue with which the Conservative Opposition seem so obsessed is not a mainstream issue. It is not something about which parents out there are concerned because 95 per cent of parents send their children to non-selective comprehensive schools. Many of them are delighted with the results which the best of those schools are able to provide. This Government are also determined to make sure that those comprehensive schools which are not performing as well as they should be are helped and supported so that they perform very much better.

The noble Lord, Lord Tope, asked me about ballots. It is not our intention to make any changes to the system. We believe that we have the balance right and we shall continue to operate it in the way that it has been set up.

He asked about the new academies which have been announced today. It is very early days. The Government intend to consult with all the parties which are to be involved in the establishment of those schools. After that consultation period is over, we shall issue a prospectus and I shall be very happy to make sure that the noble Lord receives one.

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that, if one puts labels on children, they live up to those labels? The consequence of selection is that we label children. By making them live up to those labels, we contribute either to the problem of exclusion or the establishment of sink schools.

Does it not also devalue the quality of primary education where the head teacher, either because of professional ambition or parental pressure, concentrates far too much on the techniques of examination?

Does my noble friend accept also that if we have failing schools, they will not be turned round within a 12-month period, even if the person parachuted in is of the highest calibre? Does she agree that a longer period is needed in order to tackle the problems which failure brings about?

My Lords, I accept entirely that labelling children as failures at the age of 11 is an extremely unfortunate practice. Many children and, indeed, children going through adolescence and right into adulthood have suffered from that process. They have felt stigmatised by it and have felt unable to escape from that labelling process. They have had no opportunity, as late developers, to make up for the fact that they were late developers. So I entirely agree with my noble friend on that matter.

It is important that we do all we can to turn around failing schools as quickly as possible. I am extremely pleased that those schools on special measures have been turned around much more quickly since the Government came to power than was the case previously. That is a indication of the Government's commitment to provide adequate support, resourcing staff with great commitment to help such schools. The time it takes for a failing school to be brought back to health has been reduced from 25 months at the time of the election to 17 months now.

My Lords, I refer to the declaration of interests I made yesterday. Perhaps I may ask the Minister the following question. Something must have happened to have caused the Secretary of State in a number of performances last Sunday to execute the evolution, if not the volte-face that so annoyed the noble Lord, Lord Hattersley, in our debate yesterday. What was it, and why did he do it?

My Lords, I am not sure to what the noble and learned Lord refers. I am not sure what particularly annoyed my noble friend Lord Hattersley yesterday. That really is a question to put to my noble friend Lord Hattersley.

My Lords, I declare that I attended a grammar school; I met my wife at a grammar school; I taught in a grammar school—an excellent school which was vastly superior to the private schools littered around the place; and that my children went to a grammar school. From all that, I learned one thing: that to decide the future of a child at 11 is wrong. Selection at 11 transforms children's futures. Passing the 11-plus made all the difference to my life. If that had not happened, I do not know what would have happened to my career. It made a great deal of difference.

The question that I want to ask—obeying the rules of these debates—concerns failing schools. A school in my constituency is named after me. It is not a constituency throughout which large numbers of people pass the 11-plus. Who is to decide what constitutes a failing school? Will it be decided by the number of 0-levels—or whatever they are called these days—or A-levels passed? What is a "failing school"? A school may be doing well but not performing in a way that appeals to academics. Who is to decide?

My Lords, I share my noble friend's view that failure at the age of 11 has blighted the lives of many young people, as I said in response to an earlier question. That is not to say that when there was a system of grammar schools, they did not provide many of us with a good education. I do not deny that, but it is a quite different point.

My noble friend asked what constitutes a "failing school". He will be aware that schools are regularly inspected and that it is through the inspection process carried out by Ofsted that schools are designated as "failing". On a whole variety of objective criteria, those schools are not doing the job that we expect of them. I am happy to send my noble friend more precise details of the criteria which Her Majesty's Chief Inspector considers when designating schools in that way.

My Lords, in the Statement, the Minister spoke about the academies which may replace failing schools. She said that such academies may specialise. If they specialise in certain subjects, will they not automatically become selective? Surely, if there is a specialised character to a school, that in itself will result in selection.

No, my Lords. Such schools will not become automatically selective. There are already a substantial number of specialist schools. Those schools do not select by ability and it is not our intention that the new city academies should do so.

My Lords, I am still reeling from the suggestion that the failure to raise standards over 18 years of government was the fault of Labour when the Conservatives were in control—

My Lords, I did not say that we failed to raise standards. I simply said that two thwarting factors were very material during those years.

My Lords, in relation to whether failure or success prevailed, will the Minister confirm that under the previous administration more than four in 10 pupils did not reach the expected levels in literacy and numeracy? What chance did those pupils have of succeeding in secondary education? Does she agree that standards would be undermined by the Conservative Opposition, who, they told us, would immediately remove the literacy hour and other measures which the Government have taken to raise standards in education?

Yes, my Lords, I confirm that under the previous administration, more than four in 10 pupils did not reach the expected level for their age in literacy and numeracy. That has spelt disaster for the large numbers of young people who leave school with extraordinarily poor levels of literacy and numeracy. We are absolutely determined to turn round that situation. It is surprising that the party opposite has not given wholehearted support to our initiatives on literacy and numeracy and, indeed, to the many other ways in which we are turning around primary schools and improving the output of schools for young children.

shall give a few figures: 11 year-olds achieved higher standards than ever in the 1999 tests in English and Mathematics. At the time of the election, when the targets were set, 57 per cent of 11 year-olds reached the target expected for their age in English and 54 per cent did so in Maths. This year, the corresponding figures are 70 per cent and 69 per cent. It is particularly encouraging that nine out of 10 of the education authorities making the greatest gains are in deprived areas.

My Lords, I return to the question of my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew. Clearly, the Minister has forgotten what the noble Lord. Lord Hattersley, said to her yesterday. My understanding of what the Secretary of State said—I am paraphrasing it; I do not have a note of it but I am repeating it from memory—was that he would like to draw a line under the issue, to stop hunting grammar schools, and to leave the matter as it is. Surely that is inconsistent with the Statement that the Minister has just read out.

My Lords, I have not forgotten what my noble friend Lord Hattersley said yesterday. He made a long and highly eloquent speech in which he raised a great number of different issues. He made a number of criticisms of the Government and many more of the Conservative Opposition during their period in power. I have absolutely no idea to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, was referring. What my right honourable friend the Secretary of State said is entirely consistent with what he has said since 1995 when that policy was first set out at the Labour Party Conference. He has said the same thing again and again and he has done so today in the Statement which I repeated to this House.

My Lords, is not the real issue the question of raising educational standards in the 3,600 secondary schools up and down the land, not the admissions policy of 164 grammar schools? Is it not the case that we should like the Opposition to be obsessive about raising educational standards to satisfy the desire and needs of parents up and down the land who want to see resources going into our secondary schools in order to raise educational standards?

Yes, my Lords, a number of speakers, including the noble Lord, Lord Tope, have already referred to the Conservative Opposition's obsession with this particular issue. I have already said that I do not believe that it is an issue about which the vast majority of parents around the country are particularly concerned. We must focus on ways in which we can improve our secondary schools. Many schools could be improved. Many are doing a good job, but I am sure that the head teachers of even the best schools would welcome a commitment to doing all that we can to improve those schools, let alone those which are not performing as well as they might.

As I made clear yesterday, this Government are spending an extra 16 per cent in real terms on education in this Parliament. Over the course of the Parliament, the proportion of national income spent on education will rise, whereas in the previous Parliament it fell. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment set out a radical programme for raising standards in our secondary education, particularly at key stage 3. That is a crucial stage between 11 and 14 years, a phase of education that has been grossly neglected in the past. This is a real agenda, raising standards for all our pupils, but most particularly for those in disadvantaged communities.

My Lords, perhaps I may refer to a matter that occurred at the outset of these proceedings: namely, whether a copy of the Statement is to be vouchsafed to Opposition spokesmen. If an answer to a Private Notice Question is to be economically and constructively elucidated, surely there is every reason why it should be so vouchsafed. Could the matter perhaps be considered by the usual channels and preferably then by the Procedure Committee?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his intervention. He has made a sensible suggestion, that this matter should be considered by the usual channels and then, indeed, by the Procedure Committee. It is important that Opposition spokesmen should receive copies of Statements as soon as they can. I am surprised that the noble Baroness did not receive one.

My Lords, why is the choice of a child for a school where ballet, for example, is a specialist item, not a form of selection?

My Lords, I did not say that it was not a form of selection. The noble Baroness could not have been listening. I said that it was bizarre and absurd to suggest that there was something strange about the Government being selective through their music and ballet scheme. The scheme supports a small number of highly specialist institutions which provide training for those children who show great talent in a particular area such as ballet, music or playing an instrument. Of course they tend to be selected. These schools are about developing that talent. If a child does not have any such talent, it cannot benefit from such schools, which is what I said. The noble Baroness could not have been paying attention.

My Lords, I thought that the government view was that there was to be no selection in general terms; that comprehensively, overall there would be no selection. Am I mistaken?

That is what he said.

My Lords, I am afraid I am losing patience. I cannot believe that such obtuse questions can be asked. I have made clear that the Government are opposed to selection for standard secondary schools which cover a broad curriculum. The Government have never said that they are opposed to selection for highly specialised music or ballet schools. We have to have selection in those cases because only a tiny minority of children would be able to benefit from the curriculum they provide. They are, in part, training institutions as well as schools providing general education for people who need to be trained at a much earlier age than is normal because of the nature of the particular talent they have.

My Lords, does the Minister agree—

My Lords—

My Lords, we have not yet reached 20 minutes.

My Lords, with great respect to the noble Baroness, the Front-Benchers have had their turn. The Back-Benchers have now had their turn. As I understand it, what normally happens at this stage is that we move on to the next business. If I am wrong, I am sure I shall be put right. The Front-Benchers have had their 20 minutes. The Back-Benchers have now had as long as they want. We should not return to the Front Bench.

My Lords, will the noble Baroness—

Order!

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Baroness would help me. I echo the remarks of my noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees. I went to a grammar school. I took my eleven plus at the age of 10. I only subsequently discovered, when I passed, what incredible anxiety it created for my parents, who literally became ill.

Most important, from the day I left primary school, I never again met or saw three quarters of the boys and girls with whom I was at that school. I cannot believe that anyone in this Chamber would wish that the opportunity for a life chance should be taken and lost or won at 10 and that communities could ever possibly be built on a system which strikes one quarter of the children away from three-quarters of the friends they made at primary school. It surely is insane. I really believed that we were moving into a sensible system of education which prevented that type of community and parental pressure and dreadful pressure on the children.

My Lords, I strongly endorse the comments of my noble friend. One of the great disadvantages of the previous selective system was that it divided children into sheep and goats. It meant that children who had been at primary school together were separated. Some, as I have said earlier, were labelled as failures. Others were immediately defined as successes. It cannot be right to do that to 11 year-old children. That is why this Government oppose the principle of selection by ability in this context.

My Lords, apropos the answer to my noble friend Lady Fookes—

Order!

My Lords, is it in order for a person who has asked a question from the Front Bench to move to the Back Bench in order to ask a question from the Back Bench as part of the time allocated to the Back Benchers? If it is, I seriously think that this is a matter which should be considered by the Procedure Committee.

My Lords, if that is in order, I claim the right to move to the Back Bench and complete the statement I was to make but which the noble Baroness deprived me of the time for so doing. That is completely out of order and I trust that the authorities will consider it.

My Lords, I shall put my question in writing to the noble Baroness.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement on inherited SERPS which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Security. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Madam Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on entitlement to inherited SERPS.

"Fourteen years ago, the last government made a series of pensions policy changes, which they took through Parliament. One of those changes meant that, from this April, a husband or wife could inherit a maximum of one-half of their spouse's SERPS entitlement.

"The department published the correct information for about a year after the policy change. Pensions professionals also knew about the change. But it is clear that from early 1987 to 1996 DSS information leaflets were issued that did not refer to it.

"It is also clear that wrong information was given to a number of people by some Benefits Agency staff during this period, and for some time after that. There is no doubt that as a result a number of people were misled, and so could have lost out.

"The giving of wrong information by a government department is inexcusable. There is a clear responsibility to ensure that the information provided is accurate and complete. In this case, it was not; and, what is more, even the serious implications of giving the wrong information were not appreciated by the department. This should never have happened. The last government should have sorted this out years ago.

"Three reports are being published today. First, the ombudsman has investigated four sample complaints. Secondly, the Comptroller and Auditor General is publishing his report on what happened and the action needed to prevent a repetition. Thirdly, the NAO, at my request, also carried out a joint review with internal audit, of the DSS management during the relevant period.

Together, these reports provide a damning indictment of what happened over these years. All those reports will be available in the Library and Vote Office.

"I intend to accept all the recommendations made by the NAO and the ombudsman; and, I can tell the House, I propose to go further in two respects. I will, of course, respond to any additional recommendations that might arise from any subsequent PAC or Select Committee investigation.

"I will turn in a moment to the steps I am taking to make sure that this does not happen again. But first I want to set out my proposals to provide redress for those who lost out.

"First, there are certain groups who cannot be affected in any way. These include people who would have retired before SERPS was introduced, single and divorced people, and those who have already been widowed.

"Secondly, the policy change due to come into force this April will not come in until 6th October 2002, in two and a half years' time. Because of that, anyone who is widowed before October 2002 will not be affected. Their spouses will still be entitled to inherited SERPS under the current rules.

"Thirdly, we will also provide redress for those people who were wrongly informed and who, had they known the true position, might have made different arrangements.

"Let me tell the House how Ministers have approached this matter. As a matter of principle, we believe that when someone loses out because they were given the wrong information by a government department, they are entitled to redress. In applying that principle, Ministers considered two options: first, deferral for up to 14 years; and secondly, a protected rights scheme. We want to ensure that everyone who has been misled and lost out gets redress. Deferral alone does not solve the problem.

"Take, for example, a 65 year-old today who was previously given the wrong information. If he dies at, say, 80, his widow has still lost out, but that is not what he was told would happen. We think that she must have access to redress. Deferral has not provided a solution for this couple.

"Someone who got the correct information and spent money buying alternative arrangements would feel aggrieved if it now turns out that he need not have done so.

"However, a protected rights scheme does provide redress. No one, including people already retired, who was misinformed, and who might have acted differently had they had the correct information, need lose out. Therefore, I am setting up an Inherited SERPS Scheme.

"The scheme will allow individuals to apply to have their current rights to inheritance of SERPS preserved. To be eligible to apply, applicants must be married, must have paid national insurance contributions since 1978, and must have been misinformed after 1986.

"The NAO report identifies a number of criteria considered essential to the success of the scheme. I agree with those recommendations. The scheme will be well publicised. We will consult widely. And crucially, we will not proceed with processing applications from the public until we are satisfied that they can be dealt with effectively.

"Postponing implementation of the policy for everyone will also allow time for claims to the scheme to be made and processed. Because I do not consider that the Benefits Agency has the capacity to deal with this work, we will set up a separate unit specially for the purpose.

"We will consult the appropriate interested bodies on the delivery of the scheme, including the ombudsman and the National Audit Office. We are also writing to a number of interested organisations today.

"In working out the details for this scheme, there is an obligation on the Government to ensure that we have a system to get money to those who have lost out, just as there is an obligation on individuals to tell the truth.

"I shall put before the House the full details of the Inherited SERPS Scheme, including what information we will require from those wishing to claim and the procedures that will be followed to scrutinise those claims. The NAO and the ombudsman will be fully involved in developing these procedures.

"I am setting up a helpline for anyone who is concerned. Advertisements over the next few days will publicise its number, 0845 600 6116. It opens tomorrow at 7 a.m. I am also writing to all right honourable and honourable Members today, setting out our proposals.

"I have set out my proposals to put matters right for those people affected. But I also want to prevent this problem happening again. The crux of this problem was that there was no clear line of accountability for ensuring that the policy changes were properly implemented, or that information provided to the public was accurate and complete. It is symptomatic of a wider problem I had already identified in the department. It was not focused on the people it was meant to serve—in this case, on pensioners—both today's and tomorrow's.

"I have already begun the process of change, focusing the department on its key client groups: children, working age and pensioners. We need to give a better, dedicated service to pensioners. I am already setting up a modern service, with modern communications, so that pensioners can get information and advice on both pensions and benefits available to them.

"Today I can announce the next step. I am bringing together policy and operational responsibility for pensions under a single organisation, distinct from the Benefits Agency. This new organisation will be solely focused on the needs of pensioners and pensions policy. It will deal with everything from policy development to frontline service delivery, from changes in the law to changes in the leaflets.

"We also have a responsibility to provide clear information to the public. We have already tightened up the procedures for checking leaflets and guidance, but we need to do more. The public rely on government information. They are entitled to be reassured that leaflets are accurate and comprehensive. But I believe that all our leaflets should be subject to external independent audit. This should include consultation with others to ensure that all DSS leaflets are written in plain English. I have therefore asked the Social Security Advisory Committee, which is an independent statutory body, to do this.

"This failure was deplorable. It should not have happened; and it will cost a minimum of £2.5 billion to put it right. How much more than that depends on the number of successful claims.

"We are deferring this change for two and a half years. We are making sure that people do not lose out because they got the wrong information. We are making root and branch reforms of the DSS. In future, DSS leaflets will be subject to external audit, so that people can rely on clear and accurate information.

"The last Conservative government have to take responsibility for the mess they created. I will take responsibility for clearing it up. I commend the Statement to the House".

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement made in another place, not least because, when dealing with this issue last year in the course of the passage of the related Bill, this House played an important role in the effort to find a solution. Indeed, the Government's variation on the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rix, in this House forms the statutory basis for what the Government are now proposing. For that reason, we are grateful to the noble Baroness.

However, I rather regret the final part of the peroration of the Statement—if, indeed, a Statement can have a peroration—which was perhaps more suited to another place than to this House. Throughout these proceedings—

My Lords, it is the responsibility of the Minister in this House to repeat word for word a Statement made in the other place.

My Lords, I accept that entirely. However, I merely observe that it was unfortunate for the noble Baroness to be put in that position. She will know of course that we on this side of the House have accepted throughout the proceedings that this was a piece of maladministration by the previous government which was then continued or perpetuated by the present Government. The fact that that is so is a responsibility for both governments. Indeed, it is deeply regrettable and we all understand that that is the case.

It is now important to find the right solution. Certainly, we on these Benches welcome what has been proposed to prevent a recurrence of what must be perhaps the worst example of maladministration that has ever taken place. I suspect that it will prove to be the most expensive.

I should perhaps mention one other point; that is, that there has been a plethora of press comment on this topic over the past two days. It does not bear precise relationship to what the noble Baroness read out. It would not appear to be a leak. But it looks like a classic Treasury case of softening up what is to come by saying that everything is going to be absolutely awful and then what actually happens is rather less. Perhaps the Minister will give the House an assurance that none of those stories originated from either her department or the Treasury.

We are helped in these matters by the reports of the NAO and the ombudsman. I want to ask questions about both of those. I am surprised that the ombudsman's report has taken so long. It would have been helpful to have had it much earlier in our proceedings. I do not understand why it was necessary for the ombudsman to take from March 1999 to March 2000 to produce this document. However, he makes a number of points which are helpful.

Similarly, the National Audit Office report is helpful. But the timing seems rather odd. At page 8 of the NAO report it says that the ombudsman reported his findings to Parliament in March 2000. But the report was only authorised to be printed today. Later, at paragraph 2.19, it states that in March 2000 the Secretary of State for Social Security "announced" a government decision to set up a preserved rights scheme, and then goes into great detail. It seems odd to have the three reports published simultaneously and yet for one to include information which was not available at the time the report was printed. Perhaps the noble Baroness can give us some indication of how that comes about.

I turn to the two crucial points made in the ombudsman's report. I apologise, in the light of the earlier exchanges in the House, for reading a lengthy paragraph from the report, but it is the best way of dealing with the matter. The ombudsman's report says, as part of a recommendation made to the Permanent Secretary,

"individuals who claim to have been misled or misdirected by information given by a department are normally expected to provide some evidence that they have been misled into acting, or failing to act, in a way that has been to their disadvantage. Only then is compensation considered. However, I questioned whether that approach was tenable in the circumstances of the complaints being referred to me. As I saw it, anyone who had read the relevant DSS leaflets [I stress 'anyone.] might reasonably claim to have been misled by them. Whatever such a person then did or did not do, it seemed to me that the burden of proof that he or she would not have acted differently had he or she not been misinformed rested on the department".

The ombudsman then continues,

"I therefore considered that, whatever the approach the department decided upon in order to make good the effects of their maladministration, it would need to be capable of providing due redress on a global, rather than an individual, basis".

The Statement the noble Baroness read out says that the Government accept the ombudsman's recommendations. That is not my understanding of what is proposed. It is not proposed that there should be a global settlement for everyone who may have been affected simply because they read the leaflets issued by the department. On the contrary, what is proposed is a system of protected rights.

We welcome the fact that the Government are proposing to delay the whole matter for two-and-a-half years because the deadline for all this is the beginning of April and the Statement, this report and the NAO report are all up against that deadline. So we welcome that deferment. But perhaps the noble Baroness can clarify one point in that regard. She says that the minimum cost of the operation would be £2.5 billion. Is that simply the cost of deferment and will the rest then be on top of it? I am not clear about that.

Despite the Statement, the Government do not appear to accept what the ombudsman says about a global settlement; on the contrary, they are proposing a protected rights scheme. That brings us to the question of the burden of proof. The paragraph I read perhaps confuses both issues, so let me turn to that question.

This issue came up clearly in the debates we had in this House on 6th July 1999 when the noble Baroness said,

"There is a very real issue of proof. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, asked me about telephone calls. No record is kept of telephone calls, any more than a record is normally kept of conversations at the desk. Paper records arc kept for about six months. But if someone asserted that he had received that misleading advice, I suspect it may well be the case that the Government would have to prove that he had not, rather than the contrary, because there would be no evidence to counterbalance it".—[Col. 847.]

That is reflected in the ombudsman's report when he says that the burden of proof is to be on the department rather than on the individual concerned.

So we are left in a difficult position. First, it may be that someone has been misled simply because they read the leaflet, whereas the Government are now proposing, if I understand it correctly, that the individuals who feel that they have been misled and lost out as a result of that because they did not make proper pension arrangements will have to go through procedures where they say "I wrote to the department. The department gave me the wrong information" or "I telephoned the department"; and yet there is no such evidence. If there is no evidence but an assertion is made by an individual, on what basis will the department reject such applications? Clearly, this is an important issue and it is not the least bit clear either from the Statement or otherwise what the Government intend to do. It ought to be clarified at this stage.

I have one final point. The noble Baroness's reaction when this matter first arose in this House, in answer to a parliamentary Question from myself, was that she was going to take legal advice. Can she tell us what the legal position is now in the light of what the Government are now proposing? If people do not like what the Government propose, can they still take legal action?

These are technical matters. They are of deep consequence to many people. It is hoped that we can find a satisfactory solution to them. For the reasons I mentioned, it is not at all clear at the moment what the Government's solution is, let alone what the right answer is.

My Lords, we too are grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating this Statement on this occasion. I begin my saying that we strongly support the proposal to set up a new pensions directorate to take operational responsibilities and actions out of the Benefits Agency and to have a single dedicated body to deal with those matters. In saying that, I ask the noble Baroness whether she will confirm that benefits such as housing benefit, which goes to both pensioners and non-pensioners, will stay with the Benefits Agency.

The widows' SERPS issue was first raised in Parliament by my right honourable friend in another place, Mr. David Rendel, in November 1998. It was then debated extensively during the passage through your Lordships' House of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill in the previous Session; indeed, the last occasion on which it was debated was 8th November last year when your Lordships considered the Commons amendments. On that occasion the House accepted the revised version of an amendment originally moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rix, who played such an effective part in raising and obtaining a solution to this issue.

That amendment gave the Government three options: first, to increase the surviving spouse's rights to a rate of more than 50 per cent where the contributor died after 5th April this year (that option has been clearly rejected by the Government); secondly, to defer the commencement of the reduction to a date after 5th April; thirdly, to provide a compensation scheme for those who can prove that they acted in reliance on incorrect advice from a government department. What the Government now propose is a combination of the last two options.

I should just point out that in the course of that debate the noble Baroness said that she was unable to announce a decision on the preferred course of action, but added that the Government would make a further announcement "soon". I have to say that it is now more than four months on, with only three weeks to go until the original changeover date, and, therefore, I find it difficult to regard that as being "soon".

We, too, welcome the deferment of the changeover for a further period of two-and-a-half years. But, after that, the Government have chosen an option which may well severely restrict the number of people who can in fact claim. I note that the National Audit Office has indicated that there is a very wide range of possibilities as to what this will cost. I certainly suspect that the number of people who can prove reliance on incorrect advice to anything like the standards that a court would require will be small. The truth of the matter is that this is not just a problem for those who asked a question and received the wrong answer.

The change in the rates of the spouse's SERPS should have been flagged up and printed in very large bold type. Both the present Government and the previous one—the latter even more so because they were responsible for a longer period—should have gone out of their way to publicise the approaching change. That publicity should have said: "You should be aware that if you die after 5th April 2000 your spouse will get only half your pension. Therefore, you need to consider taking action now to protect your spouse's income if he or she survives you".

There are probably plenty of people who did not ask the DSS about it. But if the cut in the spouse's pension had been brought to their attention, they would have done something about the situation. I recognise that an effective remedy is likely to be extremely expensive. However, I believe that it is essential to provide redress, especially for those who are now over or close to pensionable age and who are no longer able to take out a personal pension to make good the shortfall in SERPS for their spouse.

There are important recommendations in the ombudsman's report. The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, drew our attention to one of them, which appears in paragraph 32. I should like to refer to paragraph 41 of the report, where the ombudsman says that his proposals,

"will also need to take account of the fact that most of those misled by DSS or BA are likely as a result to have decided that no action on their part was needed, because they had been led to believe that a surviving spouse was secure in an entitlement to full inheritable SERPS. In view of that, it would be wrong to exclude from redress those who took no action: and the proposals will need to recognise that it will be difficult, and in some cases impossible, for claimants to demonstrate that they would have taken a particular course of action had they been correctly advised. The scheme should also, in my view, recognise that many people will have been misled solely by reading inaccurate leaflets, and will have received no further wrong advice, written or otherwise, from DSS or BA. They will need to be catered for in any proposals".

Therefore, can the Minister say whether the Government accept the full recommendations of the ombudsman as set out in paragraphs 32 and 41 of his excellent report?

My Lords, I am grateful for the responses from both noble Lords. I especially welcome the response from the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, to the proposed administrative changes. I believe that they are our best assurance against such calamities happening again. The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, may well be right to say that, so far as concerns government policy, this has been one of the worst and certainly one of the most expensive errors. However, I must disagree with him in one respect. I do not think that it is just a question of saying that his government were in office for 17 years and ours has been in for three—yah-boo!

The previous administration was responsible for the change in policy. If you change policy, you have an additional responsibility to ensure that those who may be affected by it know about it. That is our complaint. We are not suggesting that there was any conspiracy here. The previous administration perfectly properly and openly debated those changes through Parliament, but then failed not only to ensure that people knew about them but also continued to publicise and print leaflets suggesting the contrary. That seems to me to be a very different situation from one where a new administration comes into office and is looking at an entire waterfront of proposals—for example, the New Deal, child poverty, pension reform and the like—and then discovers a year or so into that term that errant leaflets and errant advice based on a previous government's administration are still being perpetuated.

I am glad that the noble Lord accepts responsibility for that situation. However, I believe that it is even worse than he suggested. Any government who change policies that affect the lives of so many people have a double obligation to make sure that they know about the change and, therefore, do not suffer further disadvantage—

My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness will also accept that the present Government cannot totally avoid responsibility either!

On the contrary, my Lords. We took action as soon as the matter was brought to our attention. However, it has taken some time because we are dealing with sums of money that may well amount to many billions of pounds. As soon as we were made aware of the situation, we acted. None the less, the responsibility to act in the first place was clearly that of the government introducing the policy change. That is undeniable.

The noble Lord also asked where these stories in the press originated. I should like to assure the noble Lord that, to the best of my knowledge, none of them originated in the DSS; but, beyond that, I am simply not in a position to speculate. I can only speak for my department and say that none of these stories came from the DSS.

I turn now to the questions about paragraphs 32 and 41 of the ombudsman's report and about a global response. The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, suggested that the Government's response was not "global". I disagree with him; it seems to me that we are meeting what the ombudsman is calling for. I believe that he was thinking about an individual scheme. He was worried that each individual would have to take separate action, separately argue the case and then receive separately assessed compensation, according to the degree of separate financial loss that may be calculated. No. As opposed to that, we are producing an inherited rights scheme. If anyone can show that he was misled and suffered detriment as a consequence, he will have 100 per cent protected SERPS. That seems to me to be an understanding of what is meant by a "global response"; that is to say, one that is not individually tailored, if I may put it that way, to deal with questions about individual compensation and how much individual loss has been sustained. In that sense, I believe that we are meeting the ombudsman's requirements in paragraph 32—

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness again, but this issue, together with the question of proof, is really the crux of the matter. As regards both paragraphs of the report, I find great difficulty in accepting the interpretation that the noble Baroness has put forward. However, as there is confusion, perhaps we could ask the ombudsman what he meant.

My Lords, the noble Lord is entitled to ask the ombudsman whatever he wishes. I do not know whether the noble Lord is saying that a "global response" would be a case of simply reversing the changes and that anything short of that is not global. We are saying that anyone who was misled and did not know about the changes and who therefore suffered detriment will have his rights protected. That seems to me to be "global", as opposed to being "individually tailored". But I do not think that we can go much beyond that point. That is certainly my understanding of the situation.

The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, asked whether the minimum cost of £2.5 billion referred to the two-and-half-year delay. The answer is yes. Both noble Lords pressed me further about the burden of proof issue. Perhaps I may refer to the very clear words of my right honourable friend in the other place. People will be required to give us information when they make a claim as to how they were misled. We will ask them questions about this when we process the claim. Where there is no documentary evidence, it will be for the department to challenge or disprove the claim. What will count as evidence in this case will be spelled out in the affirmative regulations that will be brought to the House in due course.

Finally, I believe both noble Lords asked what sort of legal action is potentially available to someone who is dissatisfied with his situation. Such a person would indeed have access to a legal remedy. He can appeal and take his case to the tribunals. I hope that I have answered the questions raised by both noble Lords.

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on recognising a very difficult situation which potentially affects millions of people who are very concerned about their spouses' future financial situation if they should die first. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Rix could not be present this evening. He has undertaken a great deal of work and campaigned tirelessly on behalf of widows.

I have to declare a certain interest wearing my other hat of Age Concern, as we have also been campaigning for about 18 months. I am pleased that the Government are taking responsibility for what is a very difficult problem, a problem not of their making, in setting up this new sub-ministry to deal with pensions and pensions issues.

Deferring the whole issue for two-and-a-half years does give some breathing space, although for many people there will still be a period of great uncertainty and worries. The Government have, as I have acknowledged, a very difficult task. There are still worries about how the scheme will work in practice and whether all the individuals affected by this really dreadful situation will find that their spouses' financial position will be secure.

The Government have said that they will publicise the scheme and set up the very welcome helpline. However, experience does tell us that many people, particularly old people, do not like making claims, particularly in situations where they have to declare their personal financial situation and sustaining the onus of proof is therefore very difficult for many of them. The only way to overcome that problem would be to contact all SERPS contributors or pensioners or both.

Will the Minister give an assurance that people who did not specifically receive misleading information on an individual basis from the Benefits Agency but who assumed the situation had not changed or relied on the written leaflets which we know were incorrect will be in some way protected?

My Lords, I am very glad to see the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, in her place and delighted that she felt able to give such supportive remarks to our proposals. She and Age Concern, together with the noble Lord, Lord Rix—who has sent his apologies, as he would very much have wished to be here, as would many other noble Lords had they known earlier that this Statement would be made today—have been very important players in bringing this issue to the notice of this House, Parliament and Government. The noble Baroness can well take some pride in the role that she and her organisation have played in this matter.

The noble Baroness asked specifically about how we would ensure that those who were misled or who may have suffered detriment as a result will know about it. A helpline will open tomorrow and there will be advertising. One of the key areas that we will want to be discussing with the organisations, including Age Concern, is precisely how we reach all of those who may have been affected by the Government's proposals. We hope very much to draw on the expertise of the noble Baroness and her organisation in that very matter.

My Lords, I too welcome the Statement. I welcome the setting up of a separate directorate and separate sub-department. Owing to the somewhat misleading stories in newspapers which have been mentioned already, will the Minister give an assurance that all the people affected by this absolutely awful scandal—the public pensions scandal to accompany the private pensions scandal in those years when the party opposite ruled the country—will be looked after and that there will not be any lingering doubt in our minds that people are paying for others' mistakes?

My Lords, the change came into effect in 1986. At that point, for a year or so, correct information was circulated. In addition, some professional pension advisers knew of those changes—they had obviously followed the parliamentary proceedings and the like. We have every reason to think that they gave correct advice and the people reading those pamphlets would have had correct advice about the situation and were then in a position to make an informed choice as to what, if anything, they did about it. In my view, such people obviously have no entitlement to compensation because they are in exactly the same position as anybody else experiencing a change in the law and they have of course the full 14 years to change the circumstances.

What we are seeking to ensure is that anyone who was misled by the department and, as a result, suffered detriment should be fully and properly compensated for that failure by the department. On reflection, we thought that the best way of doing that was frankly to protect their rights to the 100 per cent SERPS as though that change had not been made. Had we gone down the other route, which was to reduce the deferral from 14 years, which we also considered, it would have been a lottery as to when someone died. We thought that this was therefore the fairer way in the circumstances, as it recognised the obligation of government to redress a wrong committed by government which was their failure to publicise the issue properly to those affected.

rose to call attention to the case for promoting access to, and education and training in, the arts; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, for giving us the opportunity to discuss the arts today. Her credentials for opening the debate are impeccable. She did not mention that she attended the University of York. I am pleased about that as I spend much time at present in York.

I am sure that the noble Baroness will find support from among all the speakers taking part in the debate for the case for,

"promoting access to, and education and training in, the arts".

The points I wish to make in this broadly based debate will be somewhat different from those of the noble Baroness.

This debate is really about broadening the appeal of the arts and encouraging more people to enjoy the wonderful pleasures available in museums, theatres, concert halls, sculpture parks and many other places besides. I suppose the only caveat is that that should not be achieved through any reduction in standards. The pursuit of excellence in all these areas must remain the aim. However, excellence is not always easy to define.

Yesterday the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, and I had the pleasure of being present at the launch of Sculpture 2000, the year of public sculpture. This is an English Heritage initiative at which the first ever guide to public sculpture was launched. It is a useful book prepared by the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association. It is all about creating greater awareness of public sculpture and where to find it. Antony Gormley spoke at the launch. He spoke particularly about his Angel of the North sculpture and made the point that when it was first produced it was vilified but has now become an accepted and enjoyed part of the landscape. He also said,

"Art is not an amenity, but a necessity".

That is a particularly nice phrase and one that all of us here today would, I think, agree with. However, some noble Lords may have seen in today's papers that people have different ideas about excellence. Antony Gormley's idea of excellent sculpture is somewhat different from that of the chairman of English Heritage. Therefore, defining excellence is difficult, but, as long as this leads to healthy debate, this is surely satisfactory.

The invitation to yesterday's Sculpture 2000 launch was issued, imaginatively, both in writing and in Braille, reminding one of how tactile sculpture can be and reminding one of the fact that people with disabilities of one kind or another greatly benefit from contact with sculpture and, indeed, all the other arts. It is nice that there have been substantial improvements in dealing with people with disabilities. Wheelchair access to buildings and museums is now much improved but by no means perfect. However, wheelchair access becomes difficult where grade I listed buildings are concerned. When I was chairman of the Georgian Group dealing with planning applications, we found that there was an extremely difficult and delicate balance to be struck between creating disabled access while maintaining the integrity of grade I listed buildings.

I wish to mention the government initiative of free entry to museums by 2001. That appears to be an excellent plan. However, I am somewhat confused about where we are with this. I hope that the Minister will mention that point when he replies to the debate. We shall soon be able to visit museums here and abroad on CD-ROMs. The technological advances in these areas are extraordinary, but there is no substitute for actually seeing the real objects. Last week the All-Party Parliamentary Arts and Heritage Group visited the Courtauld Gallery. The impact of seeing works of art which one knows so tremendously well from reproductions was quite overwhelming. We all felt that the virtual reality world will never match the real world.

However, the importance of IT is, of course, enormous. There are areas where more access should be available. I refer, in particular, to the computerised statutory list of grade I and grade II listed buildings. At the moment the only people who have access to this enormously helpful resource are English Heritage and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It really should be available to the National Amenity Societies, with which I have been involved, local planning authorities, academic institutions and, in my view, the general public. I hope that the Minister will comment on that point.

I wish to touch on the lottery. I was a trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund in its first year of operation. The results of the expenditure of lottery money are now visible all over the country. It has been of the most enormous benefit.

However, some recent developments are worrying. The addition of another good cause, the New Opportunities Fund, has watered down the amounts available for the arts and the other good causes. This new good cause covers health and education, areas that we would expect the Government to pay for. It is difficult not to conclude that the lottery is being raided by the Government.

I should like to end by mentioning an event that I am attending in Harrogate tomorrow evening which seems to cover all the points mentioned in the wording on the Order Paper for the debate. It is called JC 2000. It has enabled children to explore the meaning of the millennium—a fusion of religious education, dance, art, drama and music. More than half the primary and secondary schools in the country are participating, that is, about 5 million youngsters from 18,000 schools. Tomorrow's event is one of 12 around the country. The final event takes place in the Albert Hall later in the year.

Those children will become the audiences of, and the participators in, the arts in the future. That is a happy and comforting thought.

My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, for giving us the opportunity to speak about promoting the arts this evening.

Recent visitor figures have confirmed that free admission to museums ensures an increase in visitors and hence encourages the greater access that the Government seek. However, there have been a number of obstacles to implementing free access to the national museums. I hope that the proposal I am about to make, which is the work of two respected bodies, will enable the Government to continue with, and reaffirm the principle of, free admission, and to overcome the difficulties thrown up in implementing it as a policy.

In October 1998, an extra £99 million was made available for museums and galleries over the next three years. Culture Secretary, Chris Smith, stated at the time:

"this will enable the Trustees of the major national institutions to introduce free access for children from next year, for pensioners the following year, and for all in 2001".—[Official Report, Commons, 28/10/98; WA 197.]

In December 1998, the DCMS set aside a £30 million reserve for the final year.

More recently, as the noble Lord, Lord Crathorne, stated, a tone of caution has entered into what was once a clear-cut aim. In January of this year, Chris Smith stated:

"Children have already gone free, pensioners will be going free from April and we will be able to extend that further in the next year".

Why then does he no longer talk about free admission for all?

There seem to be two reasons. First, there is a dispute over whether the £30 million is enough to offset the abolition of the national museums' admission charges; the second reason is the VAT problem. The latter has been exacerbated by the large number of lottery-funded major building projects. I shall explain.

Under current legislation, a museum that charges admission is considered a business and can recover VAT on associated expenditure. Museums that do not charge are not considered businesses—with the exception of some activities, such as special exhibitions with entry fees—and therefore cannot claim back VAT on major building projects. The prospect of no longer being able to claim back VAT stops many charging museums from even considering dropping admission fees. Enormous amounts of time and energy have been expended on this problem which could otherwise have been spent on useful projects, from touring exhibitions to education programmes.

Such a situation is directly at odds with the Government's policy of achieving greater access to the national collections. It has been a major obstacle for charging and non-charging museums and galleries alike, which have been forced to grapple with torturous decisions as to whether to make themselves liable for greater costs for the sake of a firmly held principle.

This anomaly causes further uncertainties. First, museums with major capital projects, such as the Tate Gallery and the British Museum, will find it increasingly difficult to avoid introducing entry charges. Secondly, Customs and Excise has declared that it is unhappy with the present partial recovery regime, whereby museums and galleries offer some free admissions—for example, to children and pensioners—but otherwise charge. This means that the future of free entry even for children and pensioners is under threat.

When pressed to resolve the VAT question, the Government have always stated that European legislation on VAT taxation and harmonisation issues prevents them tackling the anomalies as they stand. None the less, there have been extensive discussions and various options have been considered.

In the past six months, on the recommendation of the DCMS, the National Art Collections Fund and the Charities Tax Reform Group have got together to look at ways of sorting out these problems. They have come up with what I consider a simple, ingenious and inexpensive solution. They propose adding an amendment to Section 33 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 to include central government sponsored national museums and galleries.

Put at its most basic, Section 33 is designed to prevent government funds being used to pay tax. Among the list of bodies to which it applies are local authorities, the BBC and ITN News, which can all recover tax related to their non-business activities. National museums and galleries funded by central government qualify by the same rationale. The proposal was submitted to the DCMS in January of this year.

In addition, national museums are no longer autonomous in the way that they used to be. Tough funding agreements and exacting public accountability ensure that, like the BBC, they are in effect public service organisations.

What is so neat about this solution is that it is definitive. Moreover, it will not require primary legislation as the Treasury has the power to add to the list of those eligible for the Act by order. Thus, at a blow, the conflict between the Government's taxation policy and their cultural policy would be eliminated.

Because the only money involved would be the cost to the Treasury of refunding VAT to the non-charging museums, this scheme would not be expensive. In the case of the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, the annual total would be approximately £3.1 million, based on current calculations. With most of the large lottery-funded projects near completion, now is the time to put this proposal in place.

Furthermore, the EC recently stated that Section 33 of UK VAT law does not conflict with the European common VAT system, and that, if it were applied to the national museums, it,

"could be considered as a sort of subsidy granted to the bodies mentioned".

A challenge from Europe to a controlled amendment such as this is therefore not anticipated.

While I am aware that such a move could act as a precedent for other institutions, it would be possible to ring-fence the national museums as a special case. In other words, the arrangement is confinable and will not open doors to every charity. Local authority museums, in most cases, already reclaim VAT on capital expenses. Like the BBC or ITN, the national museums serve the whole nation; their collections are held on behalf of the public on a long-term basis; and their funding is tied to the delivery of public service objectives. The NACF paper clearly sets out the qualifying criteria. I hope that the Government will look favourably on this proposal.

My Lords, when the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, introduced the debate so well, she said that she had been accused of being paid to have a good time and getting away with it. In Parliament, that is very unlikely. Politicians who accuse someone of being paid to have a good time and getting away with it will not only be skating on very thin ice but heading towards a big hole in the centre of the pond. I think that the noble Baroness is fairly safe here.

I was attracted to this debate by the original title on the minute which referred to the "performing" arts. In my naivety, I thought that the performing arts would be very similar to sport, which is my interest. I think that they are similar, but they are different in certain ways. The loads and stresses on the body are different. For instance, an athlete uses style and form to achieve distances and speed usually; a dancer controls power and speed to achieve art and form, which is a slight inversion of the two concepts. At least that is the way it appears to me.

As I thought of the similarities—physical fitness is of course one—I found myself coming across other misconceptions about the idea of physical education being concerned only with sport. I once upbraided one of the noble Baronesses opposite for referring to "non-competitive sport"—and here I am on her patch. The idea is that sport has to be competitive, while dance is a form of physical education and is not competitive; there are activities that give rise to forms of expression excluding the element of competition. It is thus a different world. However, what does strike me as a similarity is that both activities require proper coaching—training is a more appropriate term. That should be done with consideration and should be regulated and backed up by services outside the immediate environment.

As I attempted to research this field, I discovered that most dance training, particularly in participation, is done through private or at least paid-for support. As I spoke to other people, I discovered the many different types of dance. The only other field where I discovered as many activities and accredited bodies was the martial arts sector. All those involved have qualifications, but it is very difficult to follow them up and find out what is going on.

Also, the idea that training needs to be updated surprised many of those to whom I spoke. If you come from the sports world, the idea of updating your training is almost part and parcel of being competent at your job. When talking about paid instruction, it is something that we should be looking to encourage. But that is a matter for the various sections of the internal world of dance to examine.

There is also confusion in regard to qualifications. That means that many people may not have the right type of qualification for safety's sake. As many of those people are involved in small businesses, it will be incredibly difficult to implement any change in this area. As was pointed out to me, word of mouth often guarantees that those who are competent stay. When they push someone forward for higher levels of tuition or higher levels of competitive dancing where awards are given out, usually the good instructors will be those who are part of an organisation. They will thus be recognised and it will be realised what is going on. Thus, there will be some control on them—but not always. It struck me that less competent people would possibly be driven out. But if people are driven out who do not know what they are doing, there is a possibility that people could be damaged; for example, by the inappropriate use of certain dance or warm-up techniques. A twisted knee is a twisted knee. Whether it happens from twizzling on a dance floor or from falling over on a sports pitch, it still hurts.

Therefore, I suggest that the Government should think about ensuring that all local authorities that hire out rooms at least try to make sure that the people and so on to whom they hire them have some form of accreditation. That is probably a good way forward. There is a high drop-out rate among people involved in various forms of physical activity and sport. The rate is particularly high among teenage girls and returning women. On the other hand, dance apparently has a shortage of men. I have a friend who took up Scottish country dancing because he realised that there were very few men involved in it—a message that could possibly be used in a recruitment drive! If the Government could do that, they would be helping themselves.

Perhaps I may take this opportunity to pursue a developing hobby-horse of mine; namely, the idea that there should be better basic training in sports medicine or supporting medicine from the local doctor and making sure that physiotherapists are better identified than is presently the case. The term is commonly used to describe anyone who wants to call himself or herself a physiotherapist or a sports therapist—there are those who are dance therapists but describe themselves as both dance and sports therapists. I refer to people who are not properly trained, who have not taken the recognised examination at degree level and then received practical training afterwards. I realise that this is not the Minister's responsibility; however, perhaps he will carry the message to those in charge that tighter regulation of such people and increased medical training would be a good idea to encourage people to get the benefit out of dance and dance-related forms of activity. If they can do it safely and know that if something goes wrong they can be treated and return to it, they will remain involved. Those who take up dancing eventually receive some injuries. It is a sad fact that merely by walking you will eventually stub your toe or twist an ankle. Therefore, I hope that the approach I have suggested can be taken forward.

In conclusion, when it comes to the arts, the more I have researched, the more I have realised that I must tread very carefully before volunteering to speak just outside my field again.

My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me to follow the noble Lord, Lord Addington. As a fellow member of the House of Lords Rugby Team, I am very impressed with his knowledge of dance. I am sorry that we shall not hear from the noble Lords, Lord Puttnam and Lord Jenkins of Putney, but I suppose that for a debate that was due to begin at 5.30, we are running slightly late.

It was just under two years ago that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, introduced a similar debate. In her reply, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, stressed the importance that the Government place on access to and education ill the arts and pledged support for students. She repeated the Labour Party manifesto commitment to,

"review the scale and quality of all courses which serve our cultural industries and to identify ways in which existing budgets can he spent more effectively to achieve higher quality, better targeted training".

In his preface to the Labour Party's Strategy for a Cultural Policy, the Prime Minister said,

"the arts and cultural industries help define who we are as a nation. They enrich our quality of life and create a thriving society. They have enormous economic benefits and bring enjoyment to millions and for far too long arts and culture have stood outside the mainstream, their potential unrecognised in Government. It has to change and under Labour it will".

As I said then, it has changed—but not in the way that was expected. The Secretary of State for Education announced that arts and music would no longer have a place in the primary school curriculum and that there should be more time for numeracy and literacy. I reminded your Lordships of the importance of the fourth R—namely, rhythm—which has been highlighted in research by several countries, showing that young people who are taught music in schools have increased memory and reasoning capacity, improvements in participatory and time management skills and eloquence.

Rhythm leads me to jazz. I must declare an interest as co-chairman of the Parliamentary Jazz Group and as an average performer on the trumpet. In November 1996, the Arts Council published its jazz policy, recognising the importance of this art form and its inadequate profile in the UK. It said:

"In the last 30 years, many British Jazz musicians have established themselves as original voices within the global evolution of jazz. Their work is well documented and the stature of their achievements acknowledged by their colleagues and audiences abroad. However, there has been insufficient opportunity in this country for this important contribution to world music to be fully recognised by audiences and for the work to be adequately profiled in Britain".

Jazz is a major contributor to the arts throughout the world. All other art forms have been historically patronised. It is right that that should happen—but jazz deserves to be and must also be included. Very few major cities in this country do not have an active jazz scene—it would be even greater if the Government could proceed with changes to the regulations affecting public entertainment licences. The Parliamentary Jazz Group has been lobbying successive Arts Ministers to do away with the two-in-a-bar rule for many years. In the debate on jazz on 15th February in another place, the Secretary of State said that he was,

"actively reviewing the constraints that the licensing system places on musical performance in such venues, and I hope that in due course we shall be able to introduce deregulatory measures to assist the broad picture".—[Official Report, Commons, 15/2/00; col. 190WH.]

Perhaps it is a little early to ask for a progress report, but I hope that the Minister will remind his right honourable friend of the importance of this change and at the same time consider the venues that are licensed and pay heavily for that licence.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh—whom I thank for this opportunity to discuss jazz—will be surprised, I expect, to hear that jazz and opera audiences are very similar. About 3 million people attend jazz concerts and four or five times that number admit to an interest in jazz.

Jazz Services, an organisation funded by the Arts Council, was formed to promote the growth and development of jazz. It has advocated increased public support for jazz in the UK, and in February 1996 made representations to the then National Heritage Committee, which stated:

"We do not believe that the different level of overheads in the performance of jazz and opera explains the massive discrepancy between the subsidy per member of the audience in the two forms of music".

The Arts Council should look again at the funding of live jazz played by British musicians, in particular the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. This great band, which trains and encourages young people to perform jazz, has recently lost its sponsorship funding and been offered an additional £500 by the Arts Council. In the debate in the other place on 15th February the Secretary of State announced a further 24.4 per cent increase in funding in 2001–02. That will bring its funding up to £25,500, which is still derisory for an organisation that at any one time has about 200 young musicians. The principal, Bill Ashton, who has produced many world-class musicians, and Paul Eshelby, who is responsible for NYJO2, which takes on and trains school age musicians and acts as a feeder for the main orchestra, should be congratulated on being able to manage on such a low budget. I am aware that they need about £100,000 to carry out their responsibilities as they would wish.

It is not a valid argument to say that opera and classical music have proportionally much higher costs. But, sadly, this funding is in line with the reality of the situation. In 1999–2000 the Arts Council subsidised each opera seat by £12.75, each classical concert seat by £2.26 and each jazz seat—wait for it—by 25p. Since 1997 opera funding has increased by 52p per head and jazz funding has fallen by 4p.

In February of this year Arts Council News reported that the Welsh National Opera was to receive stabilisation funding and grants in excess of £4.5 million in 2001 and an extra £200,000 in 2002. This is extraordinary when taken with the grant by the Arts Council of Wales of over £2.5 million in 1997–98. As it appears that the Arts Council of England is keeping the Welsh National Opera afloat, perhaps the Minister is able to say whether he expects any funding for the Welsh Jazz Society from the same source.

In conclusion, I refer to the National Touring Programme which uses lottery funds to support the distribution of work across a broad range and scale of arts disciplines to audiences in England. The Arts Council has made an initial commitment to the programme for two years which encourages dynamic relationships between artists and producers, venues and promoters and audiences. It encourages new networks and the commissioning of new works and explores new ways to present work from a diversity of sources and cultural backgrounds. The National Touring Programme is for awards over £5,000. Effectively, this rules out much of the touring activity that the old scheme used to support, as many smaller bands would not while touring reach the £5,000 target. It seems incongruous that a big influx of funding means that the least well off artists are cut off from a vital source of funds. I hope that the Arts Council will have another look at this.

Two years ago the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, chided me for not playing my trumpet during the debate. I had made plans for a performance in case I did not survive the electoral process. It would have entailed leaving the Chamber with an appropriate jazz classic by way of protest. But I am still here. It would perhaps be unfair to Black Rod to force him to decide what to do if I produced my trumpet this evening.

My Lords, was the noble Lord intending to play "When the Saints go Marching out"?

My Lords, certainly that was one of the tunes that I had in mind. However, I shall watch the funding situation and consider whether in the future I shall achieve more publicity for jazz by playing a chorus or two of "Nobody Loves you when you're Down and Out" or "Nice Work if you can get it".

My Lords, I too begin by congratulating my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Hudnall on instituting this useful and interesting debate and on her excellent and accomplished opening. It is commonly held that it is impossible to teach anyone to become a writer, but it is, surely, impossible to teach anyone to become a professional in the arts if talent, or at least inclination, is not there in the first place. As one who has taught a writing course and who receives letters almost daily from aspiring writers, I am aware just how present is that inclination in a large number of people.

Various creative writing MA courses are on offer. That of the University of East Anglia is the best-known and has been the training ground for writers who include Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwen. The course is now led by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion. In his lecture to the Royal Society of Arts on 9th March of this year, he made a plea for funding. Creative writing MA students are at present ineligible for funding. He has asked the Department for Education to look at the situation and has called this lack of support unfair.

Government funding for the arts will be higher this year than it has been at any time for nine years. Under the Arts for Everyone and Arts for Everyone Express pilot schemes, literature made a number of successful applications to the National Lottery, totalling £3 million out of an overall £49 million. For all that, sadly, there is still insufficient support for literature and writers. Perhaps I may quote at greater length from Andrew Motion's lecture:

"It is the fate of literature always to show up very faintly during discussions about arts funding. And the reason is a simple one. It isn't that nobody cares about literature, or that nobody is employed in its creation and promotion. On the contrary. Our literature is one of the things we mention first when we consider matters of national self-definition, and there are thousands of people involved in it—writers of course but also readers, library-goers, festival visitors and so on, making sure that it continually finds new ways of becoming a central part of civic life".

He went on to say that we should remember too that literature underpins all the art forms. Think of theatre without playwrights, opera without librettists and television, radio and film without scriptwriters. He said:

"English National Opera recently premiered Anthony Turnagc's opera 'The Silver Tassie', a poem by Robert Burns, a play by Sean O'Casey: and now a libretto by Amanda Holden. At every turn the writer".

It is not that nobody cares about literature but simply that literature is cheap and is the poor relation in the family of the arts. Is it too much to hope that in future things will change and that literature's contribution to all the arts will be recognised and rewarded?

The Poetry Society is a national organisation which offers training through poetry workshops and an initiative called Poetry Places which funds poets to work in supermarkets. zoos and health centres, among other places. Its aim is neither to discover new poets nor to trivialise poetry but to bring it into people's lives and to show them that it is for the many, not the privileged few.

Probably the best example of training for writers in this country is the Arvon Foundation. Arvon is a regularly funded client of the Arts Council and attracts about 1,000 students annually to its weekly residential courses, which are of two kinds: open courses that are available to all on a first-come-first-served basis and closed courses which are dedicated to students, teachers and special interest groups. The total number of courses is 72, of which 20 are closed courses, and each is run by two professional authors. In 2000–01 Arvon will receive from the Arts Council £123,600, rising to £127,300 in 2001–02. Although widely recognised as the leading training ground for emergent writers, Arvon places equal emphasis on its drive to encourage good reading. As the Literature Director of the Arts Council put it,

"Not everyone will leave an Arvon course a professional writer but it would be highly unusual not to leave as a better reader".

This brings me to those innumerable writers who are not, and never will he, professionals. Art as a hobby for the writer is probably only equalled by art as a hobby for the painter. Samuel Johnson gave the opinion, which would be shared by few, that,

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money".

As one who has been a professional writer for nearly 40 years, I would not advise anyone to enter writing with the aim of making money. Few succeed in living by writing. Nor should fame be,

"the spur that the clear spirit doth raise",

but, rather, a burning desire to write. Amateurs derive enormous pleasure from the act of trying to write and the stretching of their imagination. This is even more true of those who have regularly attended writing courses and learnt something of the craft which will provide them with endless intellectual stimulus.

We should not take that narrow view of art and literature—or anything else—which holds that only those who can earn their livelihood from them should be eligible for access to them. Writing is the least costly of all the arts to practise, the necessary materials being basically only sheets of paper and a pen. or at any rate a word processor. The pleasure and entertainment that it brings to those who strive to achieve writing success, if only the kind that is satisfying to themselves, is immeasurable and should be encouraged in every possible way, including the financial.

My Lords, first, I am grateful to my noble friend and mentor Lady Rendell for extracting me from the Bishops Bench so that I may speak. I am grateful too to my noble friend Lady McIntosh for introducing the debate and for speaking so eloquently and passionately. I do not speak as a producer of art, a professional performer, or even an outreach performer, but as an avid consumer of arts of many kinds. I shall focus my remarks on a limited sphere; namely, the importance of the arts in education for young people. In particular I shall discuss the arts in the new national curriculum framework for schools and give examples from outreach programmes for young people.

The arts are keenly embraced by young people from an early age if they are given an opportunity to explore them. The arts open the minds and imaginations of young people of all abilities. Some form of the arts can be accessible to children who may reject other aspects of schooling. I remember teaching children in an inner city school whose lives and behaviour could have been desperate had it not been for a particular talent in, for example, dance or music.

Performing in the arts trains qualities essential in general education and for life—qualities such as self-discipline and team work. Performing in an aspect of the arts can raise self-esteem and confidence. Our National Youth Theatre, opera and orchestras are inspiring examples of young people's enthusiasm and commitment. Importantly, involvement in the arts while very young not only cultivates performance talent but creates an audience base for the future, as my noble friend Lady McIntosh said. While some people may not be talented in the arts, they can be encouraged to enjoy the arts and to come to them with discernment.

I want to consider, first, how the new national curriculum framework for primary and secondary schools will contribute to education in the arts. I am not here discussing specialist schools for the arts, of which there is a growing number, but generalist maintained schools.

At key stages 1 and 2, the primary school age range, it is stated that children should have an entitlement to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes in subjects including the arts, and be expected to reach certain standards. The first enthusiasm and critical faculties are developed at a young age.

I can give only one or two examples here lifted from the curriculum frameworks for young children. In English, children are expected to learn to appreciate how speech varies, to organise what is said and take account of the needs of the listeners, to sustain concentration, to ask questions to clarify their understanding, and, in group discussion, to give reasons for their opinions and actions. In drama, they are expected to use language and actions to explore and convey situations, characters and emotions and to comment constructively on a drama they have watched or taken part in. In art and design they are expected to investigate a range of materials and processes, review their work and learn about visual and tactile elements, including colour, pattern and texture, line and tone, and form and space. In music, they are expected to create musical patterns, explore, choose and organise sounds, use voices expressively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes, rehearse and perform with others, listen with concentration and learn about pitch, tempo, texture and silence.

As I said, that is for the youngest children. The kind of arts education promoted here is far removed from some of the ideas around when I was young, when I remember tracing shapes, and tunelessly and monotonously singing, "The British Grenadiers". I do still remember it—and perhaps we can have the chorus at the end of the debate with trumpet accompaniment!

The curriculum develops in a spiral way, encouraging more complexity and depth in performance or appreciation of the arts as the child matures. I am also aware that, outside the statutory curriculum, many enthusiastic teachers are running writing and reading clubs, producing school plays, dance events, and so on.

I am a governor in a school which has an intake from many different cultures. The schools capitalises on that and exposes children to literature, art, dance and drama from around the world. A recent Gulbenkian report, Latent Talent, reminds us that children living in limited social and economic conditions should have access to the arts. This access may come from outside the school, from organisations which encourage creative performance and critical thinking.

One such organisation—I am aware that there are many—is Opera North, based in Leeds, which runs an energetic community outreach programme. It works with students in primary and secondary schools and in further and higher education, with special needs schools and with deaf students. It carries out in-service training for teachers. Every year in the north of England it carries out around 30 projects aimed to increase access to existing opera and to devise new work. For example, in 1999 a new opera involving 90 students was performed on the stage of the Leeds Grand Theatre. The students, with help from Opera North, wrote the music and text and rehearsed and performed the piece over a five-week period.

Another exciting example was when 30 young people aged between 12 and 15—some deaf, some hearing, and of mixed ability—worked with singers to understand and explore the opera "Carmen". All then attended a sign-interpreted performance. The comments from young people attending the special projects are proof of success. Two students aged 14 from Bradford said, "You changed our perspective of opera, which was one of total boredom, into elements of compassion and commitment".

The Opera North Community and Education report for last year states:

"Providing access to opera goes beyond offering cheaper ticket prices for young people; it includes the demystification of the art form itself, and full participation in the creation of meaning. [We] strive to provide opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to engage with opera in a real and significant way".

It seems to me that keys to access and education in the arts are about involving people as young as possible in ways to which they can relate and cultivating enthusiasm, making the arts exciting.

I should like the Minister to comment, first, on how progress in arts education in schools will be maintained and monitored, if that is within his brief. Secondly, what support are the Government giving to educational programmes developed by theatres, in particular in the regions outside London?

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, on introducing this important subject. I agree with every word of her excellent speech and will probably largely echo it.

The case for promoting access to, and education and training in, the arts should be overwhelmingly obvious. But it is rather like being in favour of world peace. It should be a "given"; but reality is often far different. In education, in the world of work, among minorities of all kinds, and in deprived areas of this country, the arts are seen at best as peripheral and of secondary importance, or as an optional extra. There is often a perceived division between various traditions in the arts—classical, modern, traditional, popular and others—and those splits are often reflected and echoed in generational and social class divisions.

To take an obvious example, the perception of opera as elitist, inaccessible, expensive and an irrelevance is familiar to us all. My husband is chairman of the Scottish Arts Council. He took recently a young man, devoted to SKA music and at home in some very peculiar low dives, to his first Wagner opera. It was a great performance of "Parsifal" by Scottish Opera. The young man emerged saying that it was one of the best things he had ever been to.

Access, education and training in the arts in vastly greater amounts are not only desirable but essential if those perceptions are to be broken down. They are not only desirable but essential for the health and welfare of our society. I use three examples to argue an apparently overwhelming case referring to areas where the arts are particularly important but often inaccessible: to the disabled, the disadvantaged and those in remote communities.

First, I want to talk about my school. It is a specialist school in Scotland catering for educationally fragile children. Those children are classic under-achievers, drowning in mainstream education, who have the lowest possible perception of themselves. In my school, the arts are central to the school's ethos. Being good at music, drama, dance or art is irrelevant. The arts are a means of finding a voice; of expressing yourself and feeling good about yourself.

I should like to tell your Lordships about Elizabeth. After her father had been killed by the "shining path" terrorists, she was brought to Scotland from Peru by a friend of his. She was a virtual mute and very shy. We discovered that she loved dressing up. In fact, it was on the stage that she found her voice.

The first Christmas at my school we performed a nativity play and Elizabeth was the Archangel Gabriel. Towards the end, I stood beside her adoptive father who was a tough explorer and adventurer. I heard him say almost to himself, "This is wonderful". I saw tears pouring down his cheeks. That first nativity play brought all the children together as a team and helped Elizabeth to find her voice and to express herself as never before. It reached us all, including her tough father. That was achieved through drama. None of the children would have been on any kind of stage elsewhere. Suddenly they were stars shining for the benefit of us all.

My second example is very different, but it relates to another school. Dog Kennel Hill school in south London used to be a famous under-achieving, tough school. The vast majority of pupils received free dinners; above the average number had English as a second language; and bullying was rife. The police were a familiar presence at the school. The new headmistress, recognising the potential of music for her children, developed music and drama. She introduced it as a core element of her curriculum and in so doing turned her school around. The approach was totally inclusive; it was not just for those who were good at music and drama, but for everyone.

When I visited that large school during an assembly, the children sat in neat rows while six performances from different groups took place. The audience was rapt; you could have heard a pin drop. The child sitting next to me—he was quite a big boy—was almost in tears. He was clearly unhappy. I asked a member of the staff what was the matter with him. She said, "Well, the trouble is that he has been impossible all week and so we had to tell him that he couldn't perform today". That was the greatest and worst sanction that could be applied.

I was later introduced to an Arab boy called Iliass who, I was told, had special educational needs. He spoke three languages: Arabic, English and Shakespeare. Shakespeare was his first language because he had taken part in a production of "The Merchant of Venice" at the Globe. That was a wonderful experience for him.

However, that is not the end of the story because that clearly under-achieving school recently completed another Ofsted inspection. The results were glowing and it was stated that,

"overall standards were above the national average".

Not surprisingly, while other schools are dropping the arts in favour of concentrating on tests, this school has held on to the arts as one of its priorities—and it is shining.

Finally, I shall give a different example from my home country of Scotland. It is a story of the Feisean movement. "Feis" in Gaelic means festival and the movement has taken off with a vengeance. It was started by a priest on the island of Barra. He was worried that his community was dying and that the young people were leaving. The Feisean movement is targeted at young people in the area who are brought together for three or four days at a time and taught traditional music, dance and storytelling by established dancers, musicians, singers and the like. That culminates in public performances. The movement has now spread to urban areas such as Bishopriggs.

That initiative illustrates how the arts can bring together communities and generations, resorting a sense of identity, self-worth and shared pride. Fragile communities, such as those West Highlands communities, have been regenerated through such artistic experiences. What could be more important than that sense of empowerment through the arts? And because it is through traditional art forms, there is a very clear sense of holding hands with our cultural past while also developing our present and future traditions.

Some research on the outcomes of the Feisean movement were recently conducted and are most interesting. Seventy-eight per cent of the respondents reported that they had developed more self-confidence; 79 per cent discovered new skills in their daily lives; 93 per cent felt more creative and able to take more risks in their lives; and 96 per cent had made more friends.

For a sense of self-worth, confidence and pleasure, the arts are vital. They can inform every aspect of our lives and should never be regarded as something apart. As a society, as a nation, and as individuals, we express ourselves most potently and creatively through the arts—and we ignore or marginalise them at our peril.

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady McIntosh for introducing this important and entertaining debate. I also thank her for the great expertise which she brought to it in her opening remarks.

There can be no doubt that the access of young people to the performing arts and to cultural life more widely enables them to reinforce talents, skills and enthusiasms which can result in them becoming tomorrow's communicators, achievers, entrepreneurs and innovators. As a former youth theatre leader, I do not need convincing of the towering benefits of investing in access to the arts for young people. I know that my students went on to become the most communicative milkman, nursery nurse, market gardener and council worker in their town.

The skills required for tomorrow's world are, as many colleagues have said, human resource and communication skills. They will rely heavily on the creativity which training in the performing arts can bring. The benefits of the arts to the business world, as my noble friend said, have long been recognised because the arts enable perceptions to be challenged and minds to be opened. An arts-based approach can free up corporate thinking to recognise the untapped skills and talents of people in the workplace. An arts-based approach can help explore how businesses can develop their leadership skills and address their management of change within companies. It can also provide an entertaining and inspiring experience as a catalyst for action and implementation.

In order to prosper as a country, we need highly motivated people who are unafraid to look at alternative approaches to organisational and leadership development in business. That can be achieved through training in the performing arts. The security of arts in formal education has never been more important, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, so eloquently said, in order to raise standards of cultural education and training in its own right and to highlight the role that the practice, enjoyment and study of cultural subjects can bring and make to raising the standards of academic achievement.

It is vital that we have high levels of cultural activity in school, starting with well-resourced pre-school children's play and moving through primary and secondary education in support of improved educational standards. It is equally important that we give young people who are to work in the theatre, creative, cultural and leisure industries—and we must remember that the creative industry is a major growth area in our economic life—the necessary skills. Organisations such as Metier do excellent work in this particular area, and I am proud to be a patron of Métier.

We must also make sure that culture fulfils its huge potential for contributing to social inclusion and the well-being of the wider community. DCMS has established a new education unit to articulate the aims and champion the contribution of cultural education and training. Its establishment has led to new initiatives, such as the £180 million of new money to preserve and extend music in schools, the £70 million from the New Opportunities Fund for the public library IT network, and the £180 million from the New Opportunities Fund for out-of-school hours activity and childcare.

We need to ensure that the work of DCMS with DfEE on the revision of the national curriculum from September 2000 leads to arts education being placed firmly at the heart of our education system for the future. These initiatives are to be welcomed and must be given as much cross-party political support as possible if the benefits of the performing arts and cultural activity generally are to be rooted in our educational system.

Recently the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport established regional cultural consortia in each of the English regions. The aims of the consortia are to bring together the cultural and creative industries in each of those regions, including tourism, sport and lottery providers, to forge links across the spectrum of cultural and creative industries and to create a common view and a common vision expressed in the delivery of a cultural strategy for each of the eight English regions by the end of this year.

Tomorrow I shall be the opening speaker at a West Midlands conference—the first of its kind—which will bring together lottery distributors as a forum and will focus on community building strategy. It will be partnership in action to open up access. As chair of the West Midlands Regional Cultural Consortium, I see one of the most important aspects of this new regional activity as being the opening up of access to the arts for those who have previously been excluded from them. We know that participation in the arts has a beneficial social impact. The arts can contribute to neighbourhood renewal, build confidence and encourage stronger community groups.

In the past, those benefits have often been overlooked both by arts providers and by those involved in area regeneration programmes. That cannot continue. In their guidance to those charged with regional cultural strategy, the Government made it clear that, while not every artist should be a social worker by another name, or that artistic excellence should take second place to community regeneration, they want the benefits of the arts to be widely spread and the pool of talent available to be as wide as possible. I express our thanks again to my noble friend Lady McIntosh for giving us all an opportunity to speak out for the soaring benefits of the arts to human achievement.

My Lords, it was the part about "education and training" in my noble friend's Motion that set me thinking about this debate. I am most grateful to her for setting me that task.

My noble friend Lady Rendell suggested that some would consider

"education and training in the arts"

to be a non sequitur. How can one train people to be creative? Moreover, is it not a waste of money to train thousands of people for professions which perhaps can absorb only hundreds? The higher education statistics tell us that in 1997–98, 25,676 students graduated from United Kingdom higher education institutions in creative art and design. We can be sure that that is far more than the number who actually work as artists, designers, actors, writers or musicians. Is that a waste? My response is a firm "no". It is money and effort well spent. I agree with the many noble Lords who said that skills acquired in the arts are transferable to other aspects of life which benefit greatly from that transfer.

So far as creativity training is concerned, my noble friend Lady Crawley is right. The explosion of courses is a welcome sign that creativity is rewarded and welcomed in British life, especially in business and industry. In his report, All Our Futures, Professor Ken Robinson put it rather well:

"Many businesses are paying for courses to promote creative abilities, to teach the skills and attitudes that are now essential for economic success but which our education system is not designed to promote".

People who are trained in the arts enrich our lives in many ways. Perhaps they do so in rather everyday and mundane ways; for example, the John Lewis department stores have always had a high standard of window display. I happen to know that the person in charge of that was a very promising artist who graduated from the Slade. Noble Lords who have communicated with company call centres or telephone sales offices will be impressed by the manner in which they have been addressed. The telephone operators were probably trained by a graduate of one of our leading drama schools who never made it on to the West End stage. Those things improve the quality of our lives. Perhaps even the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, drills teeth in a more gentle and pleasing way thanks to his training as a jazz musician!

Neither do I believe that all the money spent on creativity courses is wasted. Of course, not everyone will be a Laurence Olivier or a David Puttnam; but creativity also means bringing fresh interpretation to familiar concepts, to familiar processes and to ordinary tasks. Creativity detects gaps in our knowledge and tries to fill them. Those incremental steps are responsible for 95 per cent of the improvements to our quality of life. The stroke of genius occurs very rarely.

Of course, many of the people on whom money has been spent will enter the creative industries and benefit our economy, especially now that we are in a digital and knowledge-based economy where there are whole new areas to be explored by people educated and trained in the arts. Again, Professor Robinson put it rather well:

"The new knowledge-based economies in particular will increasingly depend on these abilities".

Does all this education and training produce excellence? I honestly do not know. As the noble Lord, Lord Crathorne, told us, excellence in the arts is very complex. It is based on imagination—one of the least tangible of assets. I believe that we must maintain the kind of environment that supports artistic endeavour and creativity because that is more likely to produce excellence.

The opposite is also true. If we encourage conformity, that is what we shall get. The more we encourage education and training in the arts, the greater the chance of producing excellence. My noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney—I am sorry that he is not present—wrote a book reflecting on his years as Minister for the Arts, and expressed it rather well:

"Geniuses do not spring out of nowhere: art reflects the society that begets it".

He is right. Creativity and excellence reflect our society and spring from it. But who knows where to find excellence?

I was interested to note that the BBC—a great patron of the arts and one of our greatest artistic assets, which takes training very seriously—is currently spending £5 million on advertisements looking for new talent. It obviously thinks that new talent is out there somewhere. It is necessary to seek out creative people with the gift of excellence. There seem to be no fixed rules for training them.

Another advantage of education and training in the arts is that it promotes artistic literacy. Artistic literacy helps us to recognise creativity and excellence when they are presented to us. We all know about excellence not being recognised during the lifetime of artists. There was a time, many years ago, when the National Gallery rejected work by living artists. There was a time when Cezanne and Gauguin were called frauds; so were Debussy and Strauss. People said that they could not hear a single melody in Wagner or RimskyKorsakov. Perhaps they are saying the same sort of thing today of Harrison Birtwhistle and Chris Offili, last year's Turner Prize winner. But what shocks us today is accepted tomorrow. The noble Lord, Lord Crathorne, reminded us that this is what happened to the "Angel of the North".

Education and training in the arts makes us more able to respond to these challenges, by virtue of our artistic literacy. It also has the big advantage of helping us to bridge the gap between high art and low art. Most high art was low art at some time or another. History teaches us that.

So I think it is important to remember that history is not over; it is happening all the time. We should remember, too, that education and training in the arts is not only about acquiring skills, knowledge and information. It is also about giving students the confidence to challenge what they are learning. I suspect that those who make this challenge are the creative people who produce excellence and make history.

My Lords, I chair the British Council, which has the role of promoting Britain abroad. In recent years, we have been conducting research into perceptions of Britain in other countries. One of the resounding success stories for our nation is that we are seen as being pre-eminent in the arts. Some of our finest ambassadors for Britain are our artists, our actors, our musicians, our designers—indeed all our arts professionals.

Your Lordships will be familiar with the art exhibitions and the theatrical productions that the British Council tours abroad. What is less well known is that many creative people go from Britain, under the Council's sponsorship, to other countries to work collaboratively with artists there. They go to teach in the field of the arts and to take part in all manner of creative exchange, which greatly strengthens our reputation in those countries.

World-wide we are also recognised for the excellence that we achieve in our schools of music and drama. Many students seek places here in Britain because they want to take advantage of those opportunities. World-wide, Britain is considered, still, an exemplar in arts education and training. There has been phenomenal growth in this area over 25 years.

I too thank my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Hudnall for the opportunity to pay tribute to our artists and arts professionals, and also to our arts educationalists. As my noble friend said, there are many ways in which arts professionals give themselves and their time to schools and colleges to assist and support them in delivering a dynamic, culturally diverse curriculum. What they provide is education through the arts as well as education in the arts. Many of our children, pupils and students are learning about history, politics and governance through the medium of the arts.

This passion and commitment from arts professionals is reciprocated by the schools and colleges. Arts-led projects in schools are frequently born out of complex creative and financial partnerships nowadays. Diverse partners—local theatres with schools, orchestras with schools, indeed even, as we have heard, our opera houses with our schools—can be brought together to ensure that educational institutions are a hub of learning, not just for the pupils and students, but for the community beyond, a community that is increasingly recognising that lifelong learning can be made a tangible reality.

The only warning I would give is that that ecology of complex partnerships is very fragile, and it needs to be nurtured by governments. It is—and I say this with sensitivity to the great pressures on government—the responsibility of government to ensure that the structures, both organisational and financial, are in place to reap the maximum benefit from this passion and commitment of the arts community and education providers.

I know that the Government recognise the importance of the arts, but, as others have said tonight, there are always competing demands for resources, and so often the arts are nudged to the back of the queue. Because of cuts in earlier decades, it has been recognised that local education authorities have more than halved the advisory posts in the arts. Advisory services are under-staffed by two-thirds in arts expertise. Only one quarter of LEAs have a full complement of full-time advisers or inspectors for each of the four main arts subjects—art, music, dance and drama. Less than half of LEAs fund schemes to put artists into schools, and only one-third support theatre in education work. Indeed, infant pupils now spend less than half the time on arts that they did 10 years ago.

So there are many challenges for us. I ask us to examine the way in which the national curriculum is organised and how schools interpret its requirements with regard to the arts and learning. Should we not be looking at the training, employment and expertise of teachers? I, like others who have spoken, also have concern about the funding of schools and the advice and support services and other resources available to them.

Like many in the House, I suspect, I often receive letters from students facing hardship, particularly students in the arts who, if they are from underprivileged families, find it very difficult to proceed with training in drama, music or dance. I am concerned too about the funding for our wonderful music and drama schools, some of which face very real pressures.

Extraordinarily innovative and radical work in arts education and training is taking place but the economies in which they operate are fragile. I chair an arts organisation here in London—the London International Festival of Theatre—and it is a wonderful arts organisation. Anyone who knows it always speaks with great enthusiasm for what it has achieved. It has pioneered an innovative education programme that places arts education initiatives not just in a local context but in a global context. It works in many of the most underprivileged parts of London. At present, it has a project in Hackney called Style of our Lives. It is extremely exciting to see the way in which it brings together children of different school ages—secondary and primary school children. It brings together the parents working around those arts initiatives. It provides an extremely imaginative access to the arts.

We have discovered that such projects not only introduce young people to the arts and improve their creative talents but they also introduce them to arts venues which may have been extremely frightening to them and which they would have said were not for the likes of them before being introduced to them through arts organisations and through their schools. The projects help them with communication skills; increased ability in planning and organising; problem-solving skills, about which we hear employers talk so frequently as being essential to modern employability; improved ability to collect, organise and analyse information; and many other talents.

I recently received a communication from the London Sinfonietta, which again was talking about the great way in which organisations and musical institutions like themselves take a pride in the role that they play for others. But it points out that it is all the other additional skills which come from arts education which are of such assistance to young people.

The arts cannot be an add-on. They are an essential part of our national sustenance. We should be creating an ethos of creativity, not a compartment of creativity within our schools and educational institutions. We talk about a creative Britain but it will continue to be a creative Britain only if we make sure that future generations are given better opportunities in the arts.

My Lords, this has been an unusually distinguished debate. It is the first time that I have spoken in a debate in your Lordships' House when there has been absolute equality between the number of noble Baronesses and noble Lords who have spoken. That is the kind of balance that I like to see in this House.

This debate on the arts was most ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, who is ideally equipped to open a debate of this kind. It is extremely appropriate that there should be so many noble Baronesses in it. A speech which I particularly liked was that of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. She made me wish that not only my children but I myself had had the kind of inspiration and stimulation which she gave us through the benefit of the virtuoso display of language in her speech. I was stimulated in that regard by my mother, so again it is appropriate that there are so many noble Baronesses speaking in the debate. I believe that if we are lucky, most us have our initial interest and exposure to the arts from our mothers. It is unusual for that to be from a father, but it happens from time to time. My father was interested in the arts but only in a rather limited sense.

This debate was originally on the performing arts and I prepared my remarks for a contribution about the performing arts, not least because it is one area about which I know something, or about which I did know something because I spent some years working in a theatrical agency. So I had a good deal to do with young actors and students. My responsibility was for young actors who joined the agency if we were lucky enough to secure them. My employer scoured the drama schools for suitable talent and we then had to compete with other agencies for those talented youngsters. I had no training to do that, apart from an enormous enthusiasm for the performing arts.

All of those competing against me would say the same thing. We noticed immediately at RADA or the Guildhall or LAM DA the people whom we wanted to watch. It struck me—and I still hold the view—that a talent to perform and project yourself is a talent with which you are born. But it is not enough to have that. Many people have that talent and use it in many different ways. To make a living out of that talent is an extremely difficult path to follow. I recall asking a rather technical question in the House about actors' tax anomalies and national insurance stamps. I made a plea that such anomalies should be corrected by government. A couple of days later, out of the blue I received an irate letter from someone who had picked up on the matter on television asking why I was standing up for people who were rich, pampered parasites and so on. There is a mistaken perception—on which the noble Baroness touched—about performing artists. People think only about successful and famous artists. They forget the great deal of work done by those who do not reach such high levels. We cannot all be stars.

The noble Baroness mentioned the need to encourage audiences for tomorrow. That is an important point. I am extremely concerned even about my own children and grandchildren. With all the other distractions such as the Internet, the new technologies and the new game—with which noble Lords may be familiar—called Pokêmon, which seems absolutely to transfix children between the ages of six and 10 almost 24 hours per day, how will we get them to begin to read and to appreciate the traditional arts in order that they may be the audiences of tomorrow? It is a difficult and challenging problem.

I spoke in an education debate on the importance of drama teaching in schools because I had benefited from it, having been a rather recalcitrant student. I was invited by someone enthused by the debate in general—not about my contribution—to a production in a south London school. It was the first production at that school. The play was "Macbeth". It was an ambitious production full of deprived children, mostly from ethnic minority communities. I was most impressed. One would not have said that any particular child would have gone on to greater things as a professional, but the enthusiasm, involvement and imagination were extraordinary to see. That point ties in with the moving speech of my noble friend Lady Linklater who talked about her experience with the little girl.

It has been a fascinating debate. In winding up I should like to mention many of the speeches. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, is not with us. He withdrew earlier because he was not feeling well. I met him at supper, which meant that I was a couple of minutes late for the opening speech of the noble Baroness, for which I apologise. I am happy to tell your Lordships that he had recovered by supper time, but of course by then it was too late. He told me that he wished to pay tribute in his speech to Viscount Esher's contribution to theatre. I wish that he had done so. Of course, had he spoken, we should not have had the balance about which I held forth earlier.

I have always marvelled at the training of drama students in this country. The drama schools have done a most extraordinary job. I used to go to see performances at the drama schools. I wondered at the limited resources available to the students and the schools and at the complexity and thoroughness of the courses. That was more than 30 years ago, I am sorry to say. But the same still applies today. There are now four major drama schools in London. RADA is still—if I may say so, not wishing to upset Mr Mandelson—the Grenadier Guards, as it were, of the drama schools. The others are LAMDA, the Central School of Speech and Drama—which was always a wonderful school—and the Guildhall. The latter two are both attached to universities.

The difficulties students face in gaining admission to those drama schools are extreme. They take only about 2 per cent of applicants to their three-year courses. That is tough. Many children are enthused by acting and, perhaps rather like the daughter of Mrs Worthington, they believe that it is a glamorous career. They soon learn that it is not once they become involved in the training. It is physically gruelling and a strain on the imagination and on one's other resources. Those who succeed and go on to lead a professional life have gone through the mill. That is why we have such excellence in this country. It is admired worldwide. Students come out of that exacting mill and entertain audiences from all over the world in our theatres, on television and on the screen—not so much on the screen, I fear, but that situation may improve, although several of our actors have had success in the English-speaking cinema in the United States.

The worrying matter that I should like to bring to your Lordships' attention is the question of funding. Funding through discretionary grants was always inadequate. That situation has now improved; there is more money for the drama schools. It used to be administered by the Arts Council of England but it is now being shared with the funding councils for higher and further education.

The standards for drama schools are set by the National Council for Drama Training, which has always been stringent and demanding. That is why so few pupils are selected for and go through the system and why such demands are made of them. At leading drama schools, for example, there must be 34 to 36 hours contact work per week; that is work with teachers.

Many drama courses are available to students at training colleges, which is excellent. However, the admission to such courses is much more generous, with about 45 to 50 per cent of applicants being accepted. Those students are able to apply for grants from the same pot of money to allow them to continue their training as the students at independent schools.

The Higher Education Funding Council has gladly admitted and received the wisdom that the standards set by the council should remain; it is happy to do that. The independent schools are happy to share the pot of money in such a way, provided that the exacting standards are maintained in order to retain the excellence we have always had from our drama schools.

The Further Education Funding Council has not accepted that. It says that it sees no evidence of any qualitative difference between any kind of drama training whatever. I do not think that is right. The admissions percentages are an indication of the difference between those courses and others.

I do not want to see disappointed young people entering into drama courses, admitted too easily and thinking that they can come out and gain employment. It is rather like media studies in universities. Young people are misled because often such studies do not lead to qualifications which allow them to make a living.

I see that I have run out of time. However, that issue needs to be addressed. I do not know whether the Minister will be able to comment on such funding. I believe that what I have said would not in any way mean that any students will be deprived. However, the keeping of high standards is crucial.

My Lords, I too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for giving us the opportunity to examine why there is a special case for promoting access to the arts and education and training in the arts. There has been general agreement around the House tonight that the answer is simply that the arts make us what we are; that must be right.

The arts and artists play a vital role in society. They not only reflect a society's culture but help to make it. They represent the greater part of what is left behind for future generations. They are not an optional extra, as many noble Lords commented tonight. The arts can bring immediate and tangible benefits to our communities, such as reduced crime, a greater sense of purpose, identity and fellowship. Pupils who engage in music or drama perform better across the whole range of academic subjects.

It is no wonder that over the centuries, especially the last one, authoritarian politicians have made a bee line for the arts. They have used the arts to promote social and cultural uniformity. As soon as any government start to talk about using the arts as a vehicle for promoting social inclusion, all of us are then at risk of treating them as therapies, not as disciplines of excellence. One must take the greatest care that the arts are seen as valuable in themselves and not just valuable if they deliver the social order and prosperity we all want. In promoting participation in the arts as something we can all do, we must not forget to promote the arts also as pursuits that only a very few people can do extremely well. That was a point I first mentioned in a debate on a similar subject brought before the House by the Earl of Clancarty.

As the report, Crossing the Line, points out, the arts sector is wide. It encompasses dance, drama, visual arts and crafts, music, literature, combined arts and new media. It involves a medley of partners from cultural venues to schools and communities, the youth service, government bodies, the private sector and the arts funding system, about which a great deal has been said in this debate. Furthermore, cultural venues themselves vary, not only from large to small, but also from touring to building-based. Regional differences of course present further contrasts. My noble friend Lord Colwyn was right to remind the House that the arts encompass jazz as well. I shall always try to remember his admonition to take note of the fourth "R", rhythm. Having danced to his music, I know that he has certainly got it!

Perhaps I may turn first to the question of access. When the Minister answered a Question recently about free admission to museums, he said that access meant a great deal more than just admission. Of course he is right. However, this Government have promoted the issue of free entry in their speeches both before and after the election. Whatever the semantics of the matter, what has happened is that they have led the public to believe that they would introduce free entry to all national galleries. Indeed, their press release of 24th July 1998 referred to universal free entry in 2001. But the closer we nudge towards 2001, the more the Government seem to shy away from fulfilling that commitment and the more the buck is passed to the trustees.

However, as has already been said in this debate, the VAT anomaly bedevils trustees' attempts to offer free entry to all. As the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, has explained, the National Art Collections Fund recommends what appears to be a straightforward and comprehensive solution; namely, that Section 33 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 should be amended. Do the Government accept that recommendation?

My noble friend Lord Crathorne was right to draw attention to the importance of ensuring that disabled people are able to gain access to the arts. Here I declare an unpaid interest as patron of the Tourism for All Consortium. As my noble friend pointed out, access is not only a matter of easily getting into a building, important though that is. It also concerns layout, signage and so forth. All those elements must be appropriate. Often, it is disabled people themselves who can offer the best advice on these matters.

I should be grateful if the Minister could respond to the following questions. Are disabled people represented on all our regional cultural consortia? How many museums have a disability policy and a disability action plan? Will this become a requirement for applicants for Heritage Lottery Fund funding? Is access for disabled people being built into the new quality standards that are being developed by the Quality, Efficiency and Standards Team, QUEST? Finally, it has been reported in the press that disabled access at the new Royal Opera House is not adequate. Does the Minister have any news of progress on that matter? Because these are questions on matters of detail, I have given the Minister advance notice of them.

When we come to examine education and training in the arts, we must ensure that the needs of both the enthusiast and the professional are considered. Several noble Lords have spoken in detail on that matter in the debate. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, I took note of the briefing from LAMDA. I shall not try to repeat his eloquent argument on their behalf in a timed debate, but would say simply that I endorse the points that he has put forward in support of the need for students of drama to be able to train and know exactly how their funding is arranged so that they have an opportunity to achieve excellence.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned accreditation in the world of dance. I believe that there is a loophole here whereby students of dance have, in a sense, a government department that takes responsibility for them. However, their teachers and the qualifications they hold are not officially recognised. The Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing sent me a briefing which pointed out that they believe this puts professionally qualified teachers at a disadvantage. Can the Minister give an undertaking that he will look into this in the near future?

In January this year the Government made a somewhat belated response to the report on creativity in schools published last spring by the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education. The announcement of the Artsmark Scheme is welcome; indeed, how could I avoid welcoming it? After all, it puts into effect one of our own policy proposals published in the summer of 1996 in the policy document, Setting the Scene. That set out a comprehensive programme to promote the arts in schools. The NACCCE report makes 59 recommendations in all. How many of those do the Government intend to support and when will they be implemented?

When we promote access to the arts and educational training in them, we need a flourishing arts sector as a backdrop. I was rather intrigued therefore when I read in a newspaper before Christmas a speech by Gerry Robinson, the chairman of the Arts Council, in which he said,

"The arts in England are dramatically under-funded. We don't fund them to half the degree we should and in the sharpest cases we need more than double".

Just a month after that I read the report of the Commons Public Accounts Committee which accused the Arts Council of wasting millions of pounds of public money on bungled projects. The report said that the Arts Council seems,

"all too ready to give more money to ailing projects",

and,

"reluctant to do the things that could save money by avoiding problems in the first place".

Those statements are not exactly complementary to each other, or indeed to the arts world. Which does the Minister believe to be right? Is it Gerry Robinson, the Public Accounts Committee, or both?

Tonight we have had an important debate to which I am sure we shall return. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred to the fact that we came on somewhat later than expected and that we might turn into pumpkins. Perhaps I should give the noble Baroness advance warning that arts subjects can be moved to even later hours. I recall, as I am sure the Minister does without too much fondness of the subject, that at one stage we debated the New Opportunities Fund between two and three in the morning. Let us hope we do not do that again.

I am genuinely grateful to the noble Baroness for introducing this debate. I hope we have the opportunity again to emphasise the fact that we must never sacrifice what this country achieves; that is, excellence in the arts.

My Lords, my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, in her excellent introduction to this debate, quoted the Prime Minister's Romanes Lecture in Oxford last December. I had planned—and shall not abandon my plan—to use that as an introduction to the rather complicated list of comments I should like to make in response to this wide-ranging debate.

The Prime Minister's views have been echoed in all parts of the House over the course of the past couple of hours. He described the fundamental goal of the Government in education as being,

"an education system combining diversity with excellence".

That is a good way of describing, in particular, the objectives we must have for education in the arts. He said:

"Once we have achieved excellence in basic skills, we need a proper diversity of opportunities beyond so that the aptitudes and abilities of every individual are developed to the full. Education is for life, not for jobs".

The Prime Minister quoted a report from a commission in Singapore which described the need to instil qualities such as curiosity, creativity, enterprise, leadership, teamwork and perseverance, developing young people in the moral, social, physical and aesthetic domains, and said that that was our ambition too. My noble friend Lady McIntosh said very much the same thing when she talked of self-confidence.

The Prime Minister referred specifically to music and to the work that David Blunkett has been doing to promote music in our schools. He referred to the opportunities to develop talent in other branches of the arts and expressed warm appreciation of the work for the arts that is being, and can be, done in our schools.

My noble friend was very generous in her speech with her description of the work being done by the Royal Opera House and by Glyndebourne. Indeed, the children's production of "Zoe" has been visited by the Minister for the Arts, who was very impressed by it. My noble friend Lady Massey described the outreach work of Opera North, and the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, described work being done with schools in partnership with arts professionals in other parts of the country.

However, my noble friend is too modest. She did not describe the excellent access and education work that is carried out by the Royal National Theatre, which has taken on board the need to promote the widest possible access through its programming. It ensures that it has a mixture of programming that appeals to a variety of different audiences, while always maintaining high quality. It is not just about shows aimed primarily at children, such as "Peter Pan" or "Honk! The Ugly Duckling"; it is also about access for children to shows for adults. I believe that we should pay tribute to that.

If we look at the outreach work of arts organisations that are funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the funding agreements we have made with them will, in the course of the next year, be providing an additional 200,000 education sessions. That is evidence of the importance that we attach to the educational role of our leading arts organisations.

I have been briefed to talk about the creative industries as vital to our economic and social life. Of course, that is true. We should not ignore the fact that our creative industries generate revenues of £60 billion a year. They account for 1.4 million jobs; they make a contribution of over 4 per cent to the domestic economy; and they are growing at twice the national average—5 per cent as against 2.5 per cent.

However, the debate has taken the focus the other way round, and I am rather pleased about that. My noble friends Lady McIntosh and Lady Kennedy talked about the excellence and the world-wide reputation of our artists. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Kennedy described them as our ambassadors to the world, which is true. In addition to the economic importance of our creative industries, we should recognise that arts training, which is what we are talking about in particular this evening, makes people better at other things, as well as providing them with professional education in the arts.

I believe that there is some misunderstanding about government polices on education generally, as well as on education in the arts. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, seemed to think that there was no longer a place for the arts in the primary curriculum. That is very far from being the case. As the Prime Minister said, we are ensuring with our numeracy and literacy strategies that we achieve excellence in basic skills. But Ofsted says that there is little inspection evidence to support the concern, which I assume the noble Lord was expressing, that literacy and numeracy strategies are undermining standards in the arts.

Similarly, concern has been expressed that the national curriculum could be too prescriptive and could freeze out our arts education. The national curriculum is being made less prescriptive and the contribution of the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, referred, is being taken very seriously by the Department for Education and Employment; and, indeed, is being incorporated into the review of the national curriculum. The noble Baroness asked me specific questions about our views on that report. I should tell her that we have published our response, which I suggest she reads because it covers far more than I have time to cover this evening.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, turned from the pressure which he has put on us previously to increase the time devoted to sport in the curriculum to say that the same thing should apply to the arts. We are under heavy pressure from all sides, but I think that a proper balance is being maintained.

A number of very valuable points were made about initial teacher training, notably by my noble friend Lady Massey who has expert knowledge in this area. She vividly described the improved teacher training in the arts compared to that which existed a number of years ago. The Teacher Training Agency is carrying out a root and branch review of the circular of requirements for courses. It is consulting extensively with teachers, trainers, colleges, LEAs, subject associations, and arts, music, dance and drama organisations on ways to ensure that the initial teacher training framework gives teachers the resources to teach the arts in schools.

Similarly, there has been some misunderstanding about what is happening in out-of-school activities. The noble Lord, Lord Crathorne, spoke as if the New Opportunities Fund is taking money away from the arts. That is doubly wrong. First, the New Opportunities Fund is additional to the original funds for the original causes and does not take money away from them at all. Secondly, it is actually putting money into, for example, supporting out-of-school-hours learning projects. Many NOF grants include projects involving arts, dance, music and media studies. These are in addition to the lottery grant made by the Arts Council for England for arts purposes. In addition, the standards fund of about £20 million will be available to include a study support element. The Government are encouraging creative partnerships between schools and other organisations by providing £2.5 million to fund innovative and inspirational out-of-hours learning projects over a two-year period from April of this year.

I turn back to the issue of partnership between artists and schools. My noble friend Lady Kennedy described that relationship as fragile. The Arts Council and the regional arts boards have published Partnerships for Learning, a guide to evaluating arts education projects, which will help them to learn from the best examples and, I hope, reduce the fragility to which she referred. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the Arts Council are preparing a document to help schools to develop an arts policy and to establish partnerships during and out of school hours. I hope that that will reassure my noble friend Lady McIntosh, who referred to that point with an example from the Netherlands.

It should be recognised that there is a new national award for schools called Artsmark which is to be a benchmark of excellence for schools to aim for and a symbol of recognition when they achieve it. My noble friend Lady Massey asked about the monitoring of arts education. Artsmark is being developed by the Government with the Arts Council, the QCA and others, to recognise, promote and disseminate good practice in the arts in schools; to encourage improvements in standards and an expansion of arts education opportunities; to raise the profile of arts education nationally within schools, and arts organisations in communities; and to encourage effective partnership. This is part of our response to the All our Futures report to which I have already referred.

Without wishing to neglect others, perhaps I may turn to the particular points to which attention has been drawn. The first is dance and drama training which was referred to by my noble friend Lady Kennedy and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, who quite properly paid tribute to our drama schools. The new dance and drama awards, which were announced jointly by the Department for Education and Employment and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in November 1998, provide access for up to 820—at the moment the figure is 830—talented students annually, regardless of their means, to pursue their chosen course of study. That is quite new and is of very great importance.

The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, was worried about FE provision. In November 1999, the DfEE announced an increase in the hardship fund for FE dance and drama students from September of this year; FE student support will rise by 300 per cent, with scholarships of up to £3,000 available. I hope that will reassure my noble friend Lady Kennedy, who spoke about hardship among dance and drama students.

The Government are contributing up to £20 million a year to fund these new arrangements. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, expressed concern about the accreditation of dance teacher training. That is very largely provided by the private sector, but in most cases it is accredited by the Council for Dance Education and Training. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is putting these qualifications into the national qualifications framework.

Perhaps I may again pick out one area of which we are particularly proud. I refer to music education. In June 1999, the Prime Minister officially opened the National Foundation for Youth Music, an independent charity set up by DCMS Ministers and core-funded by £30 million of ACE lottery funds—I invite the noble Lord, Lord Crathorne, to recognise that as being a contribution from the lottery to the arts—over a period of three years. Its aim is to improve opportunities for young people to access music-making. It will work in partnership in both formal and informal education in music sectors to attract and distribute funds to provide strategic advice and guidance and will act as the national advocate to raise the profile of the debate on music education. My understanding is that jazz is included in the definition of "music". I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, will know that the Arts Council for England funds jazz to the extent of about £1.5 million a year.

The work of the National Foundation for Youth Music is not the only thing. It is complemented by the improved provision by the Department for Education and Employment for LEA music services through its music standards fund, which is £150 million over three years. The second-round allocation was made in December of last year.

Before I leave particular art forms, perhaps I may turn to my noble friend Lady Rendell, who spoke with great knowledge about creative writing. The Arts Council for England provides £1.5 million a year for literature. My noble friend was concerned about student grants. She referred in particular to the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. Student grants are available for that course, as for other postgraduate MA courses. I agree that that is not the most generous form of provision, but it is the responsibility of the Higher Education Funding Council and the universities concerned.

We should not leave the education side without talking about lifelong learning, to which my noble friend Lady McIntosh referred. The provisions in the Learning and Skills Bill for a single body and a unified youth support service is very much welcomed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. We have some significant economic sectors under our wing in the shape of the creative industries, including the arts, film and broadcasting. We want to see these sectors fully engaged in the new learning and skills councils.

There is also the question of ongoing training in the arts. My noble friend Lady Crawley, as a patron of Métier, talked about that national training organisation which has a remit for the arts and entertainment industries. There is also, of course, Skillset with the same responsibilities for film and television. My noble friend Lady McIntosh also referred to the need for management skills in the arts. I would add the need for arts skills in management. Her references to Charles Handy and Ben Zander were appropriate in that context.

A number of noble Lords, particularly, of course, noble Lords from the Government Benches, have paid tribute to the increases in government funding of the arts. This applies particularly in respect of access to the arts. Funding agreements place a clear responsibility on arts bodies to deliver a clear return on our investment in that work. The New Audiences Fund, developed by the Arts Council for England, provides grants of about £5 million a year to pilot projects aimed at increasing access to the arts. One of the key aims of the New Audiences Fund is to encourage children to enjoy the arts both in participation and in visits. Both of those are essential elements.

The Gulbenkian Foundation report, Crossing the Line, was important in that respect. It described the psychological barriers which some children have to classical music and classical theatre. However, we have heard some excellent rebuttals of that in the debate this evening, which are welcome. We should pay tribute to the Hamlyn subsidised performances at the National Theatre and the Royal Opera House. The Hamlyn Weeks, which my noble friend Lord Hamlyn subsidises, are enormously successful. I wanted to say more about free tickets for schools but I think that that comes under the heading of the Gulbenkian report which we have welcomed. We have an independent scheme managed by the Learning Circuit, New Generation Audiences, which was launched last year by Chris Smith. There are many other relevant examples.

Many noble Lords have quite rightly paid tribute to the contribution which the arts can make to dealing with social exclusion, neighbourhood renewal, health, crime, employment and education. I make it clear to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that we do not think that this is delivering social order, any more than we think, like Goebbels, that we should reach for our guns when we hear the word "culture". However, we believe that the arts have a great deal to contribute in what is, after all, a concern of all of us, and that they allow us to invest in individuals who might otherwise be socially excluded.

I have little time in which to deal with disability policy, but I shall answer the specific points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. Not all regional cultural consortia have been appointed yet. We only know of one disabled person on them, but the Government are looking sympathetically at special provision for disabled people who might become members of cultural consortia. Some 29 per cent of museums have a disability policy, but 15 out of 17 DCMS-funded museums have a disability policy. It is not a formal requirement for Heritage Lottery Fund funding, but all applications must conform to the legislation against disability discrimination. Access for disabled people is being built into the quality standards that are being developed by the department because all applications must conform to the DCMS access strategy and must provide for diversity of audiences. Disabled people cannot get into the stalls at the Royal Opera House but it has received the "two ticks" award from Margaret Hodge, the Minister for the Disabled, and there are 20 to 24 wheelchair spaces in other parts of the house.

I do not want to go over the well-worn debate about free admission to museums and galleries. The fundamental point is that access is wider than has been recognised. If I may, I shall respond to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, on VAT when I respond to his debate on that subject in two weeks' time.

I apologise for exceeding the amount of time allowed, but I wanted to respond to as many as possible of the fascinating and well-informed points that have been made in this excellent debate.

My Lords, I have learnt a great deal from the debate. It is late and, like a good play, it needs no epilogue. I thank all noble Lords from all sides of the House who have taken part in the debate. They have contributed enormously to an important, but relatively infrequent, opportunity to vent these issues. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.

rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what are their objectives for the forthcoming Lisbon Special European Council.