My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, the main assumptions are that there could be a significant surplus of United Kingdom oil production over United Kingdom consumption in the 1980s; that we shall become net oil importers again in the early 1990s; and that the real price of crude oil will continue to rise over the longer term. But there are many uncertainties in all this. That is why the depletion policy which the Secretary of State for Energy announced last July is a flexible one, with decisions being taken on a case-by-case basis as they arise.

My Lords, in thanking my noble friend for that instructive and comprehensive reply, may I ask him whether he accepts that the policy is based, as he said, on the belief that oil prices may rise considerably in real terms over the coming years, and does that not seem to contradict current experience, which is that there is a glut, that there is a depression and that it may be a long while before oil prices really rise significantly again? Would he perhaps take that point back to the department?

My Lords, I will certainly take that point back to the department, but I should say that we are in a totally market situation in this particular case. However, the Government's oil demand estimate, as I am sure my noble friend will know, is that future oil demand will, of course, depend on many factors, including the rate of economic growth, developments in oil prices and the prices of competing fuels. Of course, the uncertainties associated with these factors are considerable. For this reason, it would be unwise to adopt any single view about future oil demand over a certain time period relevant to depletion policy considerations.

My Lords, does the noble Lord the Minister realise that the proposed break-up of BNOC would make conservation difficult and costlier?

My Lords, there are many things which will make depletion policy and conservation difficult, but I do not think that is one of them.

My Lords, would my noble friend take one other point on board for the department; namely, that if there has to be a cutback in production in the coming years it might well come from that part which is reserved for the British Government's royalty of 12½ per cent. and might also come from the production of the state oil company, BNOC? Perhaps he would ask the department to consider that.

My Lords, again, my right honourable friend and the department will, of course, consider that point.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, the British Waterways Board decides its own priorities within the resources available to it. We are aware of the importance that the board attaches to repairing and reopening Blisworth Tunnel. We are already considering a request by the board for extra grant towards maintenance in future years.

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for that reply. Does he realise, first, that the repairs to Blisworth Tunnel are estimated to cost £1¼ million, which is far beyond what anybody originally budgeted for? Secondly, does he realise that the only alternative route north is the Oxford Canal; that maintenance of that canal is poor, to say the least; that it suffers from water shortages in a dry summer, making it virtually unusable, and that this factor makes the repair of Blisworth Tunnel vital? Can the noble Earl at least give some hope of helping in this very expensive repair?

My Lords, the British Waterways Board has a large number of items requiring urgent attention within the limited public funds available to it. My understanding is that the repair work on this tunnel could spread over two years at a possible cost of £2 million. The board intends to start as soon as its budgets allow, but is unlikely to commence this year. I was aware of the Oxford Canal and I know that it remains an alternative, but not a very happy one.

My Lords, would the Minister not agree that this is very hard on hire firms on either side of the tunnel?

Yes, my Lords. I do, indeed, agree. I think it is hard on all the cruising public who wish to use this tunnel.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that this has very much more to do with the nation's economy than it has to do with the cruising public, whoever they be? The Minister said that the Waterways Board is free to decide its priorities within the funds allocated to it. Is it not true that that is no answer at all to the Question? If heavy freight is not carried on these waterways, then it will aggravate the situation that we now have on the M1, the M4 and I would not know how many other roads, which are breaking up because heavy freight, which could go on the canals, cannot go on the canals because the Government will not decide upon a priority. May I therefore ask the Minister to go back to the Question, which is whether the Government, using their judgment about priorities, will make more funds available for the Waterways Board so that the Waterways Board can more sensibly use its judgment about its priorities?

My Lords, like the noble Lord who asked the question, I will go back to my original Answer, which says that the Government are already considering a request by the board for extra grants towards maintenance in future years. Therefore, we are considering the matter. So far as the noble Lord's diversion into the commercial aspect is concerned, I must stress that this is a cruising, not a commercial canal.

My Lords, will the Government take into consideration the fact that this kind of work gives a great deal of employment? Does not the cost therefore amount to much less when the employment given is taken into account?

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that suggestion. I am sure that the department will bear it in mind.

My Lords, although I appreciate the readiness of the Government to give some assistance, is the Minister aware that the annual report of the British Waterways Board states that the arrears of maintenance work now amount to £120 million and that this amount is growing each year? Is this not, therefore, false economy? And has not the board said that because of the 10 per cent. cut in its grant it could not carry out essential work during the last 12 months, which included the work on the Blisworth Tunnel? May I therefore ask the Minister whether or not the question is one of urgent work on some of the tunnels which are 200 years old?

My Lords, this comes back to the question from the noble Lord on the Cross-Benches; it is a question of where the priorities for money lie. Looking at the figures which I have in front of me, over the past eight years there has been very little change, so both parties have a guilt complex about long-term maintenance.

My Lords, speaking on behalf of the Social Democratic Party, may I say that we have no responsibility for either party's policy.

No, my Lords, and the noble Lord is not likely to have any such responsibility.

My Lords, the noble Lord may say that, but having just read the policy of the Social Democratic Party, I did not know that there was anything about waterways in it.

My Lords, can the noble Earl confirm that the British Waterways Board are getting about one-quarter of what was considered necessary, according to a report made some years ago, to bring the canals back to a state in which they could be properly maintained? Therefore, as has already been pointed out, the situation is extremely serious and unsatisfactory.

My Lords, I imagine that the noble Lord is referring to the Frankel Report of 1974 which said that a lot of money was necessary for what one might call long-term maintenance, and it still is.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, in England, out of 69 structure plans submitted, 59 have been approved. In Scotland, out of nine plans submitted, seven have been approved. In Wales, out of 10 plans submitted, six have been approved.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that encouraging reply. Can he say how many draft plans are still to be submitted? Can he give us a reason why these plans take so long to be submitted? And what is the material effect if a structure plan becomes out of date?

My Lords, in answer to my noble friend's three supplementaries, the numbers of plans still to be submitted are, in England three, in Scotland seven, and in Wales none. The structure plans take some time to be submitted because the introduction of the new system was delayed by local government reorganisation and often, I regret, by over-concern for detail. My noble friend asked what happens if a structure plan becomes out of date. The structure plans give a general indication of where developments should be located, and on what scale, and will usually remain operative for some time. However, alterations will be needed from time to time and it is clear that structure plan policies are no longer adequate. A number of alterations have already been submitted.

My Lords, can the noble Minister tell us whether a summary of all these plans is available anywhere? I asked for one today in the Printed Paper Office and they do not have a copy. Is a copy which we can have available in the Ministry?

My Lords, I do not know the answer to Lord Leatherhead's question. I will certainly find out and let him know.

My Lords, on a point of order, it is not"Leatherhead". It is"Leatherland".

My Lords, my apologies for the geographical slip.

My Lords I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, in the event of a nuclear attack on this country there would be bound to be very heavy casualties, at whatever time the attack occurred, but these could be greatly reduced by sensible protective measures.

My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for the courtesy of his reply, may I ask him to take note that once again he has simply failed to answer the Question? May I sit down and give him the opportunity to answer?

My Lords, something tells me that the noble Lord would like a little amplification. The attitude of the noble Lord is that in some way the Government are looking upon those who would die in the event of a nuclear attack purely as statistics. That is not the case. The Government never make light of the effects of an all-out nuclear attack on this country. In that event, millions of innocent people would die. But that is very far from saying that people cannot be saved by taking precautions and that nothing can be done for the many millions who would survive.

My Lords, will the Minister make it clear to the noble Lord (a) that this Question could not be asked in Moscow and, (b), that the chances of any people dying over a weekend, midweek or at midnight are a jolly sight less if we keep up our deterrent against the Muscovites trying it out?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown. The objective of civil defence, of course, is to endeavour to reduce anxiety and to increase our state of preparedness, and I must leave it to the judgment of the House as to whether the attitude of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, is liable to achieve either of those objectives.

My Lords, whatever the casualties might be from a direct nuclear hit, is it not the fact that civil defence in this and other countries is designed to protect people against fall-out, in respect of which protection is possible, and also that civil defence precautions should be made in case there should ever be a conventional attack, which is just as likely as a nuclear attack?

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Renton. It is along those lines that the Government have endeavoured to give advice to the general public, and I think it was high time that such advice was given.

My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that it would be a very sad day for this House or for any other part of the United Kingdom if we took for a yardstick what we could only ask in Moscow? Is the noble Lord also not aware that according to recent public opinion polls there seems to be a considerable majority of ordinary people who desire that these hideous weapons should be banished and outlawed? Would it not therefore be a good thing if the Government of our country were to take a lead in this matter and, for a start, make very certain that no other power should have their hideous weapons based on this island?

My Lords, nothing would please this country or the Government more than if there could be general agreement on disarmament—but not unilateral disarmament.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the Government have now changed their policy from asking us all to stay at home, to a policy of deep shelters? If so, has his attention been drawn to the background paper of the inquiry of the British Medical Association, which says that shelters would be useless owing to the blast heat in most of the United Kingdom and that—and I quote:

"they would become ovens for their occupants. The great surface heat would cook and asphyxiate them"?

Is that the prospect?

My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive me for saying so, the premise on which the noble Lord's question is based is not entirely correct. The Government have carried out a survey on the possibilities of designs for domestic shelters and have made those available to the public in order to try to combat the effects of fall-out, to which my noble friend Lord Renton drew attention. But may I make it clear that there is no question at this stage of recommending householders to acquire nuclear shelters of that kind or of any other kind, although, as I have said, we have made the information available; and that, I believe, is one of the responsibilities of the Government.

My Lords, I suggest we should now pass on to the next business.

My Lords—

My Lords, I am sorry. The noble Lord did ask a supplementary question and there have been a number of other supplementaries. We have spent 17 minutes on this Question and I think it is time we moved on.

My Lords—

My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that dinner will be available today at the usual time. The Committee stage of the Education Bill will adjourn at approximately 7 o'clock for a short period. During the adjournment the European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (Yugoslavia Agreements) Order 1981 will be taken. At a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon, my noble friend Lord Belstead will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement which is to be made in another place on violence in Southall and Toxteth, Liverpool.

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 1, line 12, after ("age") insert ("and ability").

I should like to support this amendment. The definition as it stands would seem to me to be in danger of making 49 per cent. of the children suffer from special educational needs. Obviously a majority of the children of their age who have an IQ of 50 or below could be argued to have learning difficulty because they would not be learning as well as children of their age. It seems to me the important thing here is omitted if the word"ability"is not included. The educational needs problem surely arises at every level of ability, whether low, average or high. lf, compared to children of his age and ability, a child has difficulty, he is falling behind; this applies whether he has limited ability or very high ability. Merely to take age seems to me to be omitting the much more important factor.

I very much appreciate the point that the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, is seeking to make by this particular amendment. I should like to assure him that the Government have given a great deal of thought to the definition clause in this Bill. As he will see, the definition of"learning difficulty"has three parts to it. I have also very much sympathy with children who suffer difficulties in reading and writing although they have ability that is just as good as that of their contemporaries. Such difficulties lead to great distress, or can lead to great distress, and they can certainly cause great anxiety to the child's parents.

What I hope I can show the noble Earl, and the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, is that exactly the point the noble Earl is making about such children is in fact covered in this definition because in fact this definition of a child who has,

"significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of his age",

has been deliberately widely drawn. It would cover children who were termed dyslexic and it would cover other children who have learning difficulties. The more one restricts this, the more one goes back to the concept of special categories of children with particular learning difficulties. Therefore, it has been drawn in this way to catch children in precisely the way that I believe Mrs. Warnock and her colleagues wished to do. I hope the noble Earl will accept that his amendment is unnecessary, that the children he is concerned about will come under the definition as drafted in the subsection.

I am not absolutely happy, but I am prepared to accept that they will come under the definition. I think with my wording they would have come under the definition a little bit more strongly. I am quite prepared to withdraw the amendment now that it has been aired, and in view of the fact that there is an amendment coming on later which might monitor this particular aspect as it progresses. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I regret to say that there are a couple of errors regarding Amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 4 on the Marshalled List. Amendment No. 3 refers to page 1 and therefore comes next. Amendment No. 4 should read"page 2, line 7", not"line 34", and therefore will come after Amendment No. 3. So the order in which I shall call the next three amendments will be No. 3, No. 4 and then No. 2.

moved Amendment No. 3:

I wonder whether I could ask the noble Baroness a question on this. Supposing this amendment were accepted, what in fact does she imagine would happen to the child? Would the child be sent to a residential special school or a foster home? I do not quite see what would follow from acceptance of the amendment.

Obviously, if the child cannot stay at home there are several courses that would be open. In the case I cited, the child might go to a home from Mondays to Fridays and be at home from Fridays to Mondays when the father was at home and could support the mother. In other cases it would mean going to a residential school. In yet other cases it might mean a foster home, or it might mean day care, with the child coming home in the evenings. These are the avenues which are open, but if it is not in the Bill there will not be the terms of reference for payments to be made.

I should like to support my noble friend in this amendment. I have knowledge of a family where the eldest child is autistic and the result of him being kept at home is that the other children in the family are"making noises"and are not speaking at all, except very badly, to his parents. Therefore, the provision of this particular amendment would, I feel, enable the eldest child who is autistic not to be sent away—he has adoring parents—but to receive education other than in the home and from the home.

While having some sympathy with the point which the noble Baroness has made, I also should like to ask her a question. She says in her amendment:

"suffers from a disability with which his family are unable to deal".

There are different sets of circumstances that make it difficult for a family to deal with a particular disability. I am thinking primarily of perhaps a child suffering a disability who lives in a multi-storey block of flats where the family would not be able to cope but who, if they were given the opportunity of living in a house with a garden, could quite easily cope with the disability. I am wondering how the amendment would work in practice. I am asking for information.

I agree with the noble Baroness; this is a problem and it is a difficulty. However, if good work is to be done in this area each case must be treated to meet its needs. If the needs are that the child should be in a small house with a garden, then it is to be hoped that the social workers, working with the housing department and the education department will be able to meet those needs. However, strangely enough, there are some parents who are very robust and who can deal with a quite severely handicapped child in the home without damaging the other children. There are other parents who are less robust —and that is nothing against them at all; it is just the way they are made—who cannot deal with a handicapped child, who perhaps has not a serious disability or impairment. Therefore, I think that every case has to be treated according to its needs.

I have a great deal of sympathy with the noble Baroness after listening to what she has had to say. I see the problem to which she is referring, but I am not clear that it is an educational problem. It seems to me that it is certainly a problem that affects the welfare of the child, but it is not really to do with that child's ability to learn, that child's ability to take advantage of whatever educational facilities might be there. It is a question of whether the child can continue to live in that particular household. I am not quite clear whether this is a matter affecting the education of the child apart from his general welfare and that of the whole family.

I have, of course, listened with great interest to what my noble friend Lady Faithfull has had to say in speaking to her amendment, because I know that her views are based on her very considerable experience in the social services. However, I hope that I can show once again that in fact her amendment is unnecessary. The definition in Clause 1 is based on the perceived needs of the child, and therefore the definition in Clause 1 is concerned with special educational needs defined in terms of a learning difficulty. If a child has a disability or a learning difficulty which arises from any cause which could include home circumstances, and precisely the kind of circumstances that my noble friend Lady Faithfull has identified, then he or she will come under either subsections (2)(a) or (2)(b) of the definition in Clause 1, and therefore would be recognised as having a special educational need. Once they have a special educational need, then the other provisions of the Bill will come into play.

I hope, therefore, that my noble friend will recognise and be assured that her amendment is unnecessary for the same reason that I gave to my noble friend Lord Radnor as regards the first amendment. I should like to say that the more one defines precisely the circumstances, the more one tends to narrow the Bill rather than to widen the definition. In these particular circumstances the rather wider definition covers the point that my noble friend would like to make. I hope that with that explanation she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

I should like to thank the Minister for her reply. I should also like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, that I have met many children who away from their families can learn, but who with their families cannot learn. It was for that reason that I moved the amendment. However, I shall read what the Minister has had to say very carefully tomorrow. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 4:

Let me say straight away that I very much welcome the fact that the noble Baroness has said that this is a probing amendment. She is right in saying that this is an important matter and one which was discussed at considerable length in another place. I should like to explain as fully as I can the kind of problems that one faces in definitions under the Bill because the Government are in fact faced with a choice of either including or excluding problems deriving from language of the home within the scope of the Bill. One simply must face the fact that whichever way the decision is taken there will inevitably be some criticism. If, for example, we had included some definition that involved language, we might well be accused of calling all children who do not speak the language of instruction,"handicapped children", and we should then further be accused of adopting an approach which might be racialist to their educational problems. On the other hand, if as in this case, we have excluded them, we can be equally well accused of ignoring their educational needs.

I think that these are very difficult arguments to speak against, and so it might be helpful to remind the Committee of the kind of difficulties that we met over pupils of West Indian origin who had, in fact, been placed in special schools for the educationally subnormal. The noble Baroness herself has referred to problems of that kind. I do not think that anyone would now deny that it was inappropriate for some of those children to have been placed in those schools and, furthermore, for them to have been left in those schools without a proper review of their educational needs. This is a state of affairs which the department has been trying to put right for the best part of a decade and one which no one from either side of the Committee wishes in any way to encourage.

Therefore, when we came to draft the Bill we decided that it would be wrong to introduce legislation which allowed this kind of misunderstanding and inappropriate placement of children to continue. But in drawing up a definition of"special educational needs"to cover the Warnock concept of up to one child in six, we continually found that any form of words which was broad enough to achieve that also ran the risk of including pupils whose only problem was that their mother tongue was not the same as the language of instruction in their school. The only way to make our intentions clear was to make a specific exclusion, as subsection (4) does. That is why it is so drawn in the Bill. We have deliberately drafted subsection (4) so as to avoid any confusion between children whose only problem is one of language and those with special educational needs in the Warnock sense.

However, this does not mean that the needs of the former group will be neglected. Local education authorities will continue to have a duty to provide for them under the general provisions of Section 8(1) of the Education Act 1944. They will not, however, fall to be dealt with under the provisions of the Bill, unless, of course, they have special educational needs arising from a cause other than language.

I hope, as the noble Baroness has indicated, that she will withdraw this amendment, because, in fact, if it were to be accepted, it would go against the Government's intentions in this area. Children with language problems would be brought within the scope of the Bill and we think that their communities would immediately fear that their children were all going to be educated in special schools. I should like to assure the Committee that the only form of discrimination in this subsection, as drafted, is positive, and it is aimed at avoiding the misunderstandings of the past. I hope that all noble Lords will understand what is the purpose of this clause.

Perhaps I could comment on the last points which the noble Baroness made. We have just seen the publication of the interim report of the Rampton Committee, which is still being considered. On the question of mother tongue teaching, various research projects are going on into this matter, and at this stage it is too early to draw firm conclusions on the outcome. But, of course, these are all matters which the Government need to consider very carefully. The whole question of children having one language at home and another at school is a complicated educational matter, but it is not one that falls within the remit of this Bill.

I should like to support the Government on this matter. I am sorry slightly to disagree with my noble friend who has just spoken to this amendment. As an example perhaps I could take myself. I came to this country at the age of 4. My father knew a certain amount of English, but my mother knew none. What happens to such a child between the ages of 3 and 4? What happened to me was that I fell in love, absolutely spontaneously and at once, with the English language. It was no good my parents being consulted on this because they did not understand the language, and this must very often apply to immigrants in this country. I happened to go to a very ordinary but good school. It was rather a poor school to begin with but it taught well and there was no need to consult the parents. I do not see how parents such as mine could know the English language better than their children. Children learn a language extremely quickly and I honestly do not think that this amendment is necessary.

I do not want to fall out with my noble friend Lady Gaitskell. I hoped that I had made it clear that this was intended purely as a probing amendment and that I shall be withdrawing it. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for what she has said and I shall read it again with interest. However, as I said, I am withdrawing this amendment. I beg leave to withdraw it.

moved Amendment No. 2:

I wish to support the amendment which has been so excellently moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy. This is an excellent clause. It is the friends of all that is intended by the clause who seek to make absolutely clear further improvements to certain things in it. This amendment seeks to make clear that learning disability does not mean disability because one local authority is unable to provide the kind of treatment that that learning disability warrants. It is as simple as that. I hope that all of us who are interested in the wellbeing of handicapped children will support this amendment and will then support the new clause which strengthens it—Amendment No. 5. I am happy to support it.

I think it is rather difficult to discuss these two amendments separately; I was rather hoping that they would be taken together. As I understand the amendment which we are now discussing, it concerns the suitability of the buildings where the child is to go, which is also the case with Amendment No. 5. When I occupied the position now occupied by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, I had to deal—as I am sure she has to deal now—with disagreements which arose between parents and local authorities regarding the education of their children. I always found that, so far as physically handicapped children were concerned, the difficulty lay not so much with the child as with the building to which the child was supposed to go.

I remember that, just as I was about to leave the Department of Education, I was dealing with a particularly difficult case. It concerned a girl of very high intelligence who had a serious heart defect. Incidentally, this was in an area where the 11-plus examination and grammar schools still existed; I am pleased to say that that situation no longer exists within that particular authority. This schoolgirl passed the examination to go to grammar school but unfortunately in the particular grammar school to which she was to go, and to which her parents insisted she should go, all the classrooms were on the first floor. The ground floor of the building contained only the kitchens, the dining hall, bicycle sheds, and so on. The headmaster said that it was impossible for his staff to help the girl upstairs, in case there was an accident. I could see his point of view, but I could also see the parents' point of view—although, as is well known, I disagree with separate grammar schools and secondary modern schools. However, I could appreciate the parents' point of view; that their daughter was an exceptionally intelligent girl who had passed the examination to get into this grammar school, and so that was where they wanted her to go.

There was an absolute impasse. The local authority offered the girl a place at a boarding school for physically handicapped children of very high intelligence, but it was 300 miles away from her home. Again, the parents turned this down bedause their daughter had this very serious heart condition and they wanted to see her frequently—yet the school she was offered was 300 miles away from her home.

I am not quite sure whether the speech I am making really ought to be made on this amendment or on Amendment No. 5, because they do overlap to some extent, but I do hope that the noble Baroness the Minister will accept the amendment which has been moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth).

I should like to support the amendment. In speaking to Amendment No. 5 I shall simply say that I hope my noble friend the Minister will feel able to accept it. I was not able to be present in your Lordships' House at the Second Reading but, in a previous debate which dealt with the disabled, I did make the point that, so far as possible, buildings should be suitable for the disabled, in addition to any aids or equipment. I hope the noble Baroness the Minister will support this amendment.

With your Lordships' permission, I feel I must say a word about Amendment No. 5 because, so far as local authorities are concerned, Amendment No. 5 is the sting in the tail. What these amendments are really doing is trying to speed up the implementation of the Warnock Report. We all want that to happen as quickly as possible, but I must point out that it is inappropriate in the present financial circumstances to impose extra duties more quickly. Local authorities are trying their best to implement Warnock's proposals. These amendments would have great cost consequences and, while we are absolutely ready to understand the urgency, it must be left to the normal building programmes within our financial resources.

l had not meant to speak to this amendment but what has just been said forces me to do so. If Amendments Nos. 3 and 5 are not accepted, there will be a perfect excuse for a local education authority not to make schools suitable for physically handicapped children but to rely on special schools for handicapped children to come to its aid. If the present amendment is not accepted, it will enable local authorities to say that such children are suffering from a disability which makes it necessary so to provide for them. In other words, the simple absence of physical access would cause these children to be categorised as having special educational needs when in fact they do not have special educational needs. I hope that the noble Baroness the Minister will look at this point very carefully.

I listened with very great care to what was said about this amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), and indeed to the support which it has had from many speakers in your Lordships' House, including the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill. Again, I believe there is a misunderstanding here about the meaning of this definition. It is not a definition simply about physical access to buildings—I should like to make this quite clear. What we have sought to do is to draw definitions as widely as possible in order to express in legal form the continuum of special educational need which Mrs. Warnock mentioned in her report from those who are very severely handicapped to those who might have a slight learning difficulty at one time in their lives but not at others. There is a continuum of experience which anyone who is familiar with this world can see.

It is very difficult to convert this concept into law, which is what one must do in a Bill such as this one. That is why I said at the beginning that a great deal of thought had been given to this matter, and, if I may, I should like to try to explain what it is we are attempting to do. In subsection (2)(a) there are those children whose common feature is that they have greater learning difficulties than the majority of pupils in their age group. This part of the definition will catch, for example, children who are mentally handicapped and hose who are suffering from reading difficulties, as a general statement.

Then we go on to make another general statement, which is subsection (2)(b). This subsection catches those children who have, as the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), quoted from my letter to her, no learning difficulties as such. They are quite capable of learning as well as their peers. These are children who have physical defects but who are perfectly well able to learn. The distinguishing factor with this group of children is that some positive intervention is required so that they may receive instruction. These children might suffer from a hearing or visual impairment, or they might have problems of mobility, but it is not correct to view subsection (2)(b) as being concerned with access to buildings. Children with hearing difficulties could perfectly well manage access but at the same time, clearly, might have other difficulties.

When referring to access, subsection (2)(b), concerns itself much more with access to the curriculum, and it embraces children who fall within the 20 per cent. of children whom the Warnock Committee believed might have special educational needs at some time during their school life. Subsection (2)(b) will catch the learning difficulties both of the child who needs to sit near the blackboard or the teacher and of the child who is both blind and deaf. Subsection (2)(c), of course, covers a third group of children under the age of five.

The definitions are drawn in this way in order to cover all these groups of children. If I may say so, the effect of the noble Baroness's amendment would be that a child who might otherwise be taken to have a learning difficulty, and hence a special educational need deriving from a physical disability, would be excluded from the provisions of the Bill if suitable buildings and aids could not be provided to enable such a child to attend an ordinary school. Learning difficulties defined in the Bill, as I have explained earlier, are about both mental difficulties and difficulties in gaining access to the curriculum.

I appreciate that this is a concept which it is not always easy to understand. It is not always easy to translate into the cold words of law, but we have somehow got to try to do it and to do it in a way which will give a flexibility for local education authorities. The noble Lord, Lord Alexander, will be far more familiar than I with the terms of the 1944 Education Act, and he will know that they are very widely drawn and how grateful everybody has been subsequently that they were drawn in this way, because it has enabled local education authorities to develop the type of education which they thought to be right. Precisely the kind of points that the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, brought up, which are the sort of problems which will and do arise, can be met better by this wider definition than by a narrower one.

I shall be glad to write to any noble Lord on this point who feels that I have not explained it fully, so that I may go into it in more detail, but I genuinely believe that if the noble Baronesses' amendment were to be included in the Bill, far from widening the definition and helping the children it would be likely to narrow it and make the terms of the Bill less applicable to groups of children. I cannot believe that that is the intention, and I would ask the noble Baroness to consider carefully whether she wishes to press her amendment. I hope she will feel able to withdraw it. If I could help by writing to her before the next stage of the Bill or by considering the matter further, I should be glad to do so.

Before the noble Baroness withdraws her amendment, may I ask the Minister one thing? She mentioned children who are deaf. What happens in the case of a child who is partly deaf—not wholly deaf, but deaf enough to need the help of earphones, perhaps, and some form of electrical amplification? Mentally that child may be perfectly normal and perhaps even more brilliant than others, but what happens in that case?

If a child has a hearing impairment he may have learning difficulties, because if you are born slightly deaf of course it is difficult to learn as quickly as others how to speak and therefore it is more difficult to learn to read and write, although the child may be just as intelligent as his contemporaries. Under the Bill, before the child reaches the age of two the parents could, if they so wished, ask for an assessment to be made of him and his special educational needs. At any rate by the time he got to school an assessment would be made. If it was decided that a statement should be made about him, which is what we are talking about in regard to some of these children, then that statement might say that the child should go to a special school, or it might say that he could be educated in an ordinary school with special help, or perhaps in a deaf unit attached to an ordinary school. There might be a whole variety of arrangements that could be made for the child. The Bill does not say what they would be. It simply says that it is important at this stage to identify what is causing the learning difficulty, without necessarily giving a kind of blueprint for the way that that child, his special educational need having been identified, should be educated.

As my name is to this amendment too, I should like to say a word. I was not entirely convinced by what the Minister said in so far as it covered just physical access. However, as far as I am concerned, I should be prepared to withdraw the amendment, if Lady Darcy also is, but I should like to reserve the right to come back on this matter at Report, having read and studied what the Minister has said. It of course depends on the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy.

I should first like to thank the Minister for her reply, but I am inclined to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady David. I, too, am not totally convinced by what she said. I should very much welcome it if we could have further correspondence on this subject and see whether we can clear up the incongruity of the wording of this clause in relation to the purely physically handicapped. I should like to thank noble Lords for their great support for this amendment, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Alexander. It is a rather complicated amendment and it deals slightly in semantics, which is why I did not speak to it at the same time as Amendment No. 5 which is an extremely clear cut amendment. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I beg to move that the House do now resume.

My Lords, with the leave of the House I will now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will report to the House on the violence which occurred on Friday, 3rd July in Southall, London, and on 4th-5th July in Toxteth, Liverpool. The violence in these two places arose in different circumstances.

"The disturbances in Southall began when a group of white skinhead youths began smashing shop windows in the Broadway. Word of this soon passed within the local community, and groups of Asian youths gathered near a public house where skinheads were listening to a pop group. The pub was attacked, and the police, in their attempts to keep the two sides apart, were assaulted with petrol bombs, bricks and other missiles.

"As the police were increasingly reinforced they brought the disorders under control. But 105 officers, 2 firemen and 3 ambulancemen were injured. Twenty-five members of the public were treated in hospital. There was damage to property, and 23 arrests were made. There were some further disturbances in Southall on Saturday, but the scale of the violence of the previous evening did not recur.

"In Toxteth in Liverpool on Friday evening, a group of police officers attempting to arrest a youth whom they believed to have stolen a motor cycle, were set upon. The following evening, when police were called to an alleged incident in the area they were again attacked, on this occasion ferociously, with bricks and other missiles. Reinforcements were called as buildings were set alight and the police were assaulted with petrol bombs. The area in which the disturbances occurred was cordoned by police, and brought under control: 75 police officers were injured, one of them seriously; 15 arrests were made.

"The worst violence of the week-end occurred last night in Toxteth, and the House will be aware of its main features. The police were faced with concerted violence by white and black youths, hurling missiles, including petrol bombs, and setting fire to, and looting, buildings. The cordons the police had formed to prevent violence spreading to other parts of the city were attacked by having stolen vehicles driven at them. The Fire Service were unable to bring their equipment into the area to control the buildings that were ablaze. The 92 occupants of an old people's home had to be evacuated. In order to prevent further violence and damage, the chief constable authorised the use of CS gas. This was effective, and the rioters were rapidly dispersed. The Merseyside Police were reinforced very quickly by officers from the Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire forces. None the less, the injuries sustained and the destruction of property were serious: 128 police officers were injured, and 47 are still detained in hospital; 53 arrests have been made.

"This week-end, particularly in Liverpool, the police were attacked with an extraordinary ferocity. Violence at such a level must be firmly met if people and property are to be protected. I wish to make it clear that chief officers of police will have my full support in taking positive action when necessary. In the circumstances of Sunday night the chief constable of Merseyside had no alternative to using CS gas. Distasteful though this was to him and to me, I believe he was totally right in that decision. In the light of the new ferocity of the violence I have decided that better protective headgear and fire-resistant clothing must be available to the police. And steps will now be taken, with police authorities, to this end. The working group, which I set up after the Brixton disorders, will carry these decisions forward.

"Throughout the week-end, I have been in close touch with the commissioner and the chief constable of Merseyside. They have both reported to me personally today. As far as the events in Southall are concerned, the commissioner will present a detailed report to me, and Southall will form a part of the study into racist attacks which is currently under way. The chief constable of Merseyside will, of course, be making the report he presents to his police authority available to me.

"Mr. Speaker, the House will wish to pay tribute to the officers of all the forces involved and to those from the emergency services who sought to carry out their duty in the face of such determined opposition. Violence of this nature cannot be tolerated in a free society. The Government are determined to see that our people are protected. For that to succeed, those to whom we entrust this task must have the full support of all our leaders, and all our people".

That, my Lords, is the Statement.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, for repeating that Statement, a grave one, the gravity of which is compounded whether or not the various incidents are in any way connected—and we must be careful to distinguish between them—by the fact that it is the second time in less than three months that a Statement of this kind has been necessary, and again there has been a serious breakdown in law and order. I ask the Minister to accept that we join in condemning in the strongest possible terms the criminal acts, violence, arson, looting and wanton destruction; and let it be clearly understood, whatever were the immediate or underlying causes of tension, frustration, anxiety or indeed provocation, that there can be no justification or excuse whatever for these appalling acts. Nothing at all can condone them.

We all deeply regret and share the Minister's regret that CS gas—riot gas, so-called—had to be used and it must be said that that brings a new dimension to these outbreaks of lawlessness. But in the circumstances, the decision was absolutely correct. Equally, it must be said once again, and perhaps more loudly than we have said it before, that we must not tolerate no-go areas in this country. It is the plain duty of the police to combat crime and maintain the peace, and it is essential that they be enabled to do so, and I welcome what the Minister said about the new protective measures to be introduced.

We join the Minister in commending the police and the other essential services for their courage in dealing with these incidents. We also express our sympathy for the victims of this mindless violence, and their families and those who suffered damage and other forms of disruption; and it was indeed deplorable that people, including elderly people, were actually forced to leave their homes.

Would the Minister accept that clearly there is an urgent need, arising from the various inquiries which have been carried out recently and before into the problems of the inner cities, to act on the outcome of those inquiries? There is a need to be clear, of course, about the immediate causes and the underlying causes as well, and there is a need to deal urgently with the growing and increasingly disturbing problems of the inner urban areas and the extent to which racial tensions have played a part. I would particularly ask the noble Lord whether the Government will look again to see what can be done to help especially on problems of unemployment, particularly among the young, housing and other social shortcomings.

I think it also needs to be said that, in inquiring into these matters, we need to assess clearly and fearlessly whether there were any, and if so what, shortcomings regarding the actions of the police during the incidents and in terms of their more general community relations; what warnings were given by community leaders and what action was taken about them.

I have on a previous occasion asked the Minister this question, but I ask it again because it is of particular assistance to the people concerned, and the more publicity that is given to it the better: what provision is there for compensation under the Riot (Damage) Act 1886? And so far as the Minister's reference to the inquiry into racist attacks is concerned, may I ask him to say how that is going and how soon we may expect it? Whatever longer term action must be taken to deal with these problems, the overriding and immediate concern must be to ensure that law and order is maintained and that the police have the means to do that. People in this country must be protected.

My Lords, the final words of the Statement indicate that the police must have the full support of all our leaders and all our people. I am sure that noble Lords in all parts of the House would agree that no amount of unemployment, social deprivation or inner city squalor could even remotely begin to justify, the sort of criminal violence we have seen in the last few days.

There are three matters on which I should be obliged if the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, would comment. First, my information from both my noble and honourable friends who were in Liverpool in recent days is that it was clear that extremists, both from the Left and Right and particularly from the Left, had come into the area from outside and were quite deliberately stirring up trouble. Has the noble Lord any information about that, and may we have an assurance that, if that is so, the people responsible will be ruthlessly rooted out and dealt with for the various offences of incitement that there is no doubt they have committed?

Secondly, may I ask the Minister to say when the working group on police equipment will report? In particular, can he say how quickly now the measures indicated in the Statement in relation to police equipment can be put into effect? Thirdly, while I have no desire for one moment to seek to suggest that the heavy burdens on the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, should be increased in any way, may I ask the noble Lord whether the Government might consider asking the noble and learned Lord if it would be equally convenient to him to issue an interim report at the end of part one of his inquiry into the Brixton disorders, dealing with the policing problems of inner city areas where there are ethnic minorities, and leaving aside for the moment part two of the inquiry where he will go on to consider at some length the longer term problems?

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their reply to the Statement. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boston, for his clear condemnation of the violence. I suggest that we must wait and study carefully the detailed accounts which will come from both the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the chief constable of Merseyside so far as looking for the underlying causes are concerned. I am also grateful to the noble Lord for his support for the very difficult decision which was taken by the chief constable for the use of CS gas, and indeed for the general support he gave for the work of the police and the sympathy he expressed for the injured.

The noble Lord asked me whether the Government will accept the urgent need to act on the outcome of the inquiry at present taking place regarding inner cities. I think it would be helpful if, as a matter of fact, I were to reveal that during the present financial year the Liverpool Inner City partnership will receive the sum of £17·6 million, and in addition a further £17·2 million is to be available this year to the Merseyside Development Corporation. The money is to be spent on economic and environmental projects. The economic projects will include, among other things, the work of the South Liverpool Personnel Employment Agency, which is specifically designed to help those with difficulties in finding employment.

The noble Lord, Lord Boston, also asked me specifically about the payment of compensation. Claims for compensation will be dealt with under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886, which provides that, subject to certain conditions, the police authority shall pay out of the police fund compensation to any person whose house, shop or other building has been injured or destroyed, or the contents of which have been injured or destroyed or stolen by persons who riotously and tumultuously assemble together. Claims should be made within a period of 14 days. The consideration of claims in respect of the disturbances in Southall is a matter for the Receiver of the Metropolitan Police District, and in the case of Toxteth it is a matter for Merseyside County Council.

I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, for his clear statement to the effect that nothing can excuse this appalling violence. The noble Lord asked me whether there was any understanding or intelligence that extremists of any kind were involved in these incidents. I think that the investigations by the commissioner and the chief constable will address themselves to this very important question which the noble Lord has raised. I think that all I ought to say in this respect at the moment is that anyone who seeks to ferment disorder in these communities, or in any community, does a very grave disservice. I can certainly respond to what the noble Lord said to me. I feel sure that where persons are apprehended, charged and found guilty, the courts will take a severe view.

The noble Lord also asked me about the bringing into effect of my right honourable friend's decisions on police equipment. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary will seek to make available as quickly as possible helmets which will resemble the crash helmets worn by motor-cyclists, and which have protective visors and padding for the neck. With regard to the use of fire-resistant materials for uniforms, and rapid means of extinguishing fires, and equipment for immediate first aid, the introduction of the use of these will go forward with all possible speed. Those decisions are being taken ahead of the final studies that are going on in the working party on police equipment.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, asked about the inquiry of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scar-man. The second part of the noble and learned Lord's inquiry, which is to consider the problem of policing areas where the community is multiracial, will look at areas outside Brixton. The noble and learned Lord will no doubt wish to take account of the situation in Liverpool.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, especially in the light of the heavy list which he gave of police casualties, many of us are deeply concerned about the effect of these events on the police and their morale? Can he say what steps, other than those that he has already outlined, the Government are taking to show in the most conspicuous way possible the support for the police which exists in all responsible sections of our society? Can my noble friend go a little further than he did a moment ago and say when, in particular, the fire-resistant clothing is to be issued? Is he aware that it is really horrifying to see on television pictures of petrol bombs exploding near policemen wearing ordinary police uniform? Is he also aware of the need for war-time type measures of urgency in order to get this particular clothing into issue? Finally, can he say whether, in the light of the very proper use of CS gas in Toxteth the other night, the Home Office has now altered its view against the use of water cannon?

My Lords, with regard to the Government's support for the work of the police, the most direct answer that I can give to my noble friend is to say that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary was with, and was talking to, the chief constable of Merseyside at a quite early hour this morning, and a little later he was with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I believe that those two senior officers were as glad to be talking to my right honourable friend about these really appalling occurrences over the week-end as he was to be talking to them. I believe they feel that my right honourable friend supports the work that they are doing. Of course my right honourable friend for his part is deeply appreciative of the difficult work that the police do.

My noble friend asked me about bringing into use fire-resistant materials for uniforms. Such materials will be brought into use with all possible speed. My noble friend also asked me about the use of water cannon. On this question I would say simply that it is most important that the Government, the police and the local authorities should try to go forward hand in hand, and these matters, too, are also being discussed at present.

My Lords, I wish to raise two brief points—and they will be brief. One of them concerns the question of what weapons the police should use. May I ask the Minister to accept from a very large number of us that there is no regret, no hesitancy, over the use of CS gas, or water cannon, if these methods prove to be the best way of breaking up these mobs? I do not weep any tears for those who would be on the receiving end, and I ask the Minister whether he believes that that is in fact the view of most of the people of Brixton? I know Brixton, I know Southall. I do not know the"scousers"in Toxteth but I suspect that they, too, believe much the same.

My second point concerns the question of proper riot gear. The Minister says that this matter is going forward with all speed. By an accident I happen—I declare an interest—to represent a commercial organisation concerned with both the production of headgear which policemen can wear for any reasonable period of time and the invention of flame-resistant overalls (long coat and trousers) which they can put on when the time comes. Will the Minister please consider representations from me to the effect that we, private enterprise, are not receiving the encouragement that we need to proceed with this matter? Indeed, only a couple of weeks ago a senior official of the Minister's department said that it was outrageous that a company which wished to manufacture these items should offer its advice to the Governent on the kind of material that should be used. Will the Minister be willing perhaps to discuss this matter with me and with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, and any other Members of your Lordships' House who are particularly concerned with it?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, for the two points that he has put to me. On the first point, about what I think I would call needs must, I would not wish to add anything to what the noble Lord has said. With regard to the second point that he raised, of course on behalf of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary I would be ready to discuss with the noble Lord and any other noble Lords who might so wish, this point or any other point connected with policing. My right honourable friend appointed this working group on protective clothing and equipment for the police following the serious disorders at Brixton last April, and certainly that group is going to take account of the urgent new dimension which has been presented over the weekend. But may I repeat to the noble Lord that even before the work of that working group is finished the decisions which my right honourable friend has taken so far as helmets and flame-resistant clothing are concerned will go ahead with all possible speed.

My Lords, I, too, should like to have the opportunity to thank the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, for having repeated the Statement, which the Government had the courtesy to circulate to us in advance. Of course, we associate ourselves fully with all the condemnations of this appalling violence which have been expressed so far in the House, and also with the need for reviewing the whole question of protective clothing for police in these terrible situations. But there is also another, non-police point which the noble Lord, Lord Boston, touched on when he spoke of underlying causes, and when we are thinking about police measures we should also, I think, not allow ourselves to forget the underlying causes.

It was reported on the"Today"programme this morning that the figure of unemployment in Toxteth is 40 per cent., as against a city average of 16·3 per cent., which is high enough in itself; and, as the noble Lord is I am sure aware, the percentage of youth unemployment is normally higher than the unemployment figure for the population as a whole. Would the noble Lord therefore not agree that these events give particular urgency to the speedy implementation of a coherent further education and training programme for all 16-to 19-year-olds as envisaged in the Manpower Service Commission's recent publication, A New Training Initiative?

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right to voice his concern, but at the same time I do not think either the noble Lord or the House would wish to leap to conclusions. The Government—concerned, as the noble Lord is, at the high level of ethnic minority unemployment—believe that the best single thing that they can do for the minorities is to control inflation and try to create real jobs, and to see that in that way unemployment will fall. Meanwhile, may I remind the noble Lord of what I ventured to say to the noble Lord, Lord Boston: that at the moment massive funds are being injected into Merseyside.

My Lords, would my noble friend accept my grateful thanks? Having asked a Question on 1st June about the subject to which my noble friend Lord George-Brown referred, I am most grateful for the speed with which the Government are moving.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend.

My Lords, as one who was intimately concerned with the affairs of Southall for a very long time, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware—I am sure he is—that the Asian population of Southall generally is no less law-abiding than the native population? In fact, in my experience they are every bit as law-abiding. Therefore we have to look to some extent at the causes of the present situation. There is undoubtedly—I do not know whether the Minister is aware of it—a growing feeling among the Asian population in Southall that they have got to defend themselves against fascist and skinhead attacks, and they appear to be grouping for this particular purpose. I know that the police position is extremely difficult, but the Asian population in Southall get the impression that the police are defending these fascist elements—who, after all, are imported into the district; they are not native to the district generally speaking—and I believe that this is one of the basic causes of the trouble.

Will the noble Lord ask the police to look very carefully to see whether they can find means to control these hooligan elements, which are the basic cause of the trouble—for which trouble, in the end, the Asian population are getting a good deal of the blame although they do not initiate it? What they are saying particularly at the present time is that the police do not appear to be able to defend them from attacks from skinheads and people of that kind, and therefore they have got to do it themselves. I hope that great care will be taken to see that this aspect of the matter is looked at in order that these people (who are, as I say, in the main, as law-abiding as any other citizens in Southall) may feel that they have the protection that they need from the police, so doing away with this desire to gather up into groups in order to counter-attack (which is what it really amounts to) against those elements who are imported into the town.

My Lords, the important point which the noble Lord has raised is, of course, forming a major part of the inquiry that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary set up into racialist attacks; and, of course, that inquiry includes racialist attacks which have occurred in London. But I cannot let the noble Lord's question pass without making the point, with which I think the whole House will be familiar, that it may sometimes seem as though the police are not able to prevent attacks when in fact it is the duty of the police, through the oath which they take when they take up their police duties, to discharge those duties without fear or favour. In other words, the police service is often left standing in the middle. This is what makes their job so exceptionally difficult, and I ask the noble Lord, as I know he will, to bear this in mind.

My Lords, in joining in the distress at the damage and injury that have been caused, and looking beyond the current discussions and remedies at the root of the trouble, I should like to make a suggestion to the Minister; but may I first, with the indulgence of the House, explain that I believe there is in this country very strong anxiety about the insufficiency of the reduction of the inflow of ethnic groups other than British. My Lords, for the last 30 or 40 years, perhaps, in this House I have supported those who have felt very strongly on this matter and who have had concern for what may happen as a result of too large a proportion of other ethnic groups in our country. I was brought up in the Victorian era, when the very presence of a policeman commanded respect and order and at a time when"patriotism"was a noble word and developed the most respect for Britain in the counsels of the world. That is what I wanted to say by way of preamble—

to explain why it seems that these riots which have taken place recently do not contain people who have any respect for Britain, the police or the monarchy and what it stands for.

My Lords, it is for that reason that I now urge the Minister that he requests his right honourable friend to give consideration to the establishment of a generous fund to encourage voluntary repatriation, so lessening the pressure on the services in this country.

Of course, my Lords, most of the ethnic minority community in Liverpool come from families which have lived in that city for some generations. They are British citizens by birth, and there can be no question of their repatriation. But the more general suggestion which my noble friend makes for repatriation of members of ethnic minorities is not a part of the policy of Her Majesty's Government. Having said that, I agree with my noble friend on one of the final points that he made—that is, the necessity for all of us to support the authority of the police; because it is as"authority"that the police exist. The final words of my right honourable friend's Statement were:

"For that to succeed, those to whom we entrust this task must have the full support of all our leaders, and all our people".

My Lords, may I ask whether, while echoing the expressions of sympathy for the police in the appalling casualties they sustained in Southall and in Liverpool, the noble Lord does not think that sympathy ought to be expressed also for the Asian community in Southall, who were terrorised, insulted and assaulted by the influx of a very large number of skinhead thugs to appear at this pop concert? Would the noble Lord look into the question of how these events come to be arranged, since it may be that no one has deliberately attempted to foment disorder but that people who ought to have known better arranged a concert by groups such as the"4-skins", who were known to have a skinhead fascist following, in an area where their presence was likely to be provocative?

My Lords, so far as the general point that the noble Lord has made is concerned, that is part of the inquiry into racist attacks which is going on at the moment. So far as concerns the specific point that the noble Lord makes about the incident which started the trouble in Southall at the beginning of the weekend, I think we should await the report of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

My Lords, perhaps it is time that we got back to the business of the House.

moved Amendment No. 5:

After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:

I should like to support this amendment. There is a danger in the present situation. I accept totally the Minister's concern to keep definitions broad and to avoid rigidity or narrowness, but the 1944 Education Act placed a duty on local education authorities to provide for the physically handicapped, the deaf and the blind. That duty under the 1944 Act was in almost all cases fulfilled by the creation of special schools. That was the method adopted. The basic purpose of the Warnock Report is to get away from that concept, to broaden the definition of children with educational need, to make a major contribution to integration so that these children, as far as possible, can be educated in an ordinary school.

I accept the point made on an earlier amendment about costs. At the Second Reading I pointed out that we have to face a rather unusual situation. The present building regulations only require accessibility for disabled in new buildings and not in existing buildings. Therefore, unless we make special provision relating to existing buildings, the possibility of integration just disappears. This is the reality. I do not think that this amendment in any way restricts the definitions and purpose of the Bill. It merely says to a local authority that, whereas under the 1944 Act they had a duty to provide for the physically disabled and they could do that by providing for them in special schools, they now have a duty to see that at least one of their ordinary schools is so equipped that physically disabled children can attend there and pursue their education.

It may well be that guidance will be issued by the Department—I hope so—that at least one school should be equipped for the partially-hearing group or one for other forms of disability which are not sufficiently extreme to justify keeping those concerned out of the ordinary school. Obviously it is an unreasonable expectation that an ordinary school can be equipped for all of these groups—the physically handicapped, the partially-hearing, the partially blind. That is not a reasonable proposition. To include this amendment gives a lead to local education authorities, a lead different from the 1944 Act and one which is a necessary provision, in my judgment, if the Warnock Report purpose is to be fulfilled.

I should like to support this amendment. I do not intend to repeat the speech which I made on a previous amendment, but to the noble Lord on the other side of the Committee who raised the question of expense I should like to say that this is sometimes very exaggerated. In the instance which I quoted, the local authority was willing to pay thousands of pounds to send the particular girl to a very expensive school 300 miles away from home when, I am quite sure, a small lift could be arranged in the school at perhaps only a fraction of the cost that would have been entailed to keep that girl in that special boarding school for seven years of her life. In addition, it would have been useful for other people in the future. I agree with this amendment and I hope it will be accepted.

There is only one further comment I should like to make about it. One of the ideas at the back of this Bill is that handicapped children should be educated wherever possible in an ordinary school among other children. If, as I hope she will, the noble Baroness accepts this amendment, I hope that in any regulations which are drawn up or in any instructions which go out to local authorities it is made clear that the catchment area should not be too big; because I foresee that if the catchment area is very big then an ordinary school could very soon become a special school for the handicapped. With that proviso and that understanding, I should like to support the amendment.

I should like to join in supporting this amendment for the reasons which have been so well expressed by previous speakers. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), described this as a minimum commitment, and it seems to be a minimum commitment. The concern which many of us have on this Bill is that the good intentions of which it is full will lead to very little, or not enough, in practice. This is one of the amendments which seeks to prevent that from happening. I am happy to support it.

It is with very great regret that I feel bound to support the amendment. I say"with very great regret"because I well realise the difficulty of the circumstances. I do so feeling slightly encouraged that my noble friend the Minister and the Government have chosen such good timing for this Bill at a time when we are told the school population is falling dramatically. It surely would do less than justice to their skill if there were not suitable ordinary schools where physically handicapped pupils with learning difficulties could be accommodated. To have just one such school in an area seems essential if we are to believe that this Bill is going to work. While recognising all the complications, I am hoping that my noble friend the Minister may find it possible either to accept the amendment or to seek the best possible good practice from education authorities to achieve this end.

Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, I have no regrets in supporting this amendment. It is an absolute minimum. It is a very necessary provision and it is not asking a great deal of local authorities which, after all, are perfectly capable of dealing with it. I sincerely hope that the Government will accept the amendment.

While supporting the amendment, I consider that the points raised by my noble friend Lady Bacon are important to remember, bearing in mind that the wording is"at least one ordinary school". Those local authorities that do not want to do very much will quite easily say,"We have a ramp in that school and we have a classroom in that one that will take those that cannot see very well". We shall find that the units will be segregated once again by the disabilities, and that is not what integration really means.

I do not want to concentrate on that part which other noble Lords have mentioned. With regard to the physically handicapped, paragraph (b) is more important because the majority of children that have to be integrated are those classified as ESN(M). They comprise the category of children which are now classified as children in need of special education. They will need the aids and equipment and help in the ordinary schools in the same way as special laboratories are there for science and teaching languages. These children will also need facilities in the ordinary schools. These will be equally necessary for their learning as well as physical access arrangements.

I should also like to support this amendment. I believe that integration, where possible, is the best answer. I think that I was one of the first fully disabled students to go up to Oxford University after the war. I count myself very fortunate indeed to have been able to do that. I would have suffered if I had had to go to some special institution elsewhere.

I should like to support this amendment very strongly; it seems the very minimum that we can do in this Bill to make it a little better. I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Digby, that if he is really going to jib at making one ordinary school in an area fit for some handicapped children, that is a very mean attitude indeed of the local authorities.

I should like to remind the Committee of a few words from the report of the working party of the noble Earl, Lord Snowdon, Integrating the Disabled. It says:

"We believe that the time has come to evince in action rather than words the commitment to integrating the 'hard core' of more severely handicapped children".

Later it says:

"The aim should be to ensure that there are throughout the country ordinary schools at all levels, properly staffed, serviced and equipped to meet the needs of handicapped children. This could be of enormous benefit not only to many of those children at present in special schools but also to those who are now in ordinary schools without adequate help".

The report continues:

"However, local authorities only have autonomy within limits laid down by national policy and we believe that on the question of integration the Government must give a clear and decisive lead, since the alternative is inevitably a development which is likely to be patchy, unsystematic, unco-ordinated and 'un-integrated'.".

I think we have in various areas authorities which are doing very well. I mentioned Haringey with its deaf children in ordinary schools when I spoke on Second Reading. In my own city of Cambridge we have two schools which have deaf children who have integrated very successfully. I hope that the Government will accept this amendment.

I have listened with very great care to the many speakers in support of this amendment. Of course I looked at it very carefully when considering what the Government's response to it should be. I do not want to go over what I said on Amendment No. 22, which in a sense is linked to it, when I explained why Clause 1 has been drawn in the way that it has. I must tell the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), and other noble Lords who have spoken in support of this amendment, that although the Government accept the principle—and indeed the Bill makes the principle clear—that children with special educational needs should, wherever possible, be educated in ordinary schools, the actual effect of this particular amendment is to have identified a group of children with special educational needs and to have said the local authority must have a duty to establish a school to meet those particular needs.

The effect of the amendment would therefore be to require a local authority to make available one ordinary school in the LEA area capable of catering for blind, deaf and physically handicapped pupils. It does not have to be capable of catering for other pupils with special educational needs, although they too might require special equipment, and it does not cover the full range. Yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, quite rightly said, there are a lot of children who are now in the category of an ESN(M) child about whom education authorities could quite legitimately have very great doubts as to whether those children are better educated in an ordinary school or in a special school. I have visited a number of schools in which the head teacher has said,"Some of these pupils will be going on next year to the ordinary school, and we shall receive some pupils from the ordinary school in our school". This is the kind of flexibility that we want.

Furthermore, I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon,made a very real point about one of the difficulties of this amendment because, of course, to consider a large geographical local authority area—and some counties are quite large—if it had one such school it would, in any event for some, be quite difficult to reach because of the actual distances that would have to be travelled. It would once again establish itself as a kind of special school. It is precisely to get away from this that the Bill is drafted and we are looking to a new type of educational system.

So when I say that in a sense I think it is putting the clock back, it is grouping three categories of handicap and saying that local education authorities ought to make a special school suitable for these particular handicaps. We believe that we cannot legislate in this way for a particular range of factors which would have to be taken into account before a child with serious learning difficulties can be admitted to an ordinary school. I certainly accept the point that is made that we shall make progress towards integrating handicapped children by the provision of specialised units attached to ordinary schools. Indeed, I am certain that every noble Lord taking part in this debate—and I think we have all visited many schools; I have visited some in the noble Baroness's Cambridgeshire where there are very good examples of integrating deaf children into schools—knows of examples where there are ordinary schools with a unit attached where children with special educational needs go from the unit into the school and back to the unit again. It is a very good way of getting integration, and one which is much to be encouraged. Many authorities are doing that, but I do not think they are simply limiting it to a certain range of handicaps. This is more often done with deaf units and in some cases it is done with blind children, but there are children with other handicaps as well. I hope that as a result of this Bill we shall see a continuing integration of handicapped children into ordinary schools. The pace of change will be gradual and it will inevitably be in line with available resources. Of course, very much will depend on the willingness of the local authority and the teachers concerned to have this kind of mix of children: but I do not believe if I may say this quite sincerely to the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), who is so expert in this matter, that her amendment will achieve what she really wishes.

May I conclude my remarks with a true story. About two weeks ago I visited a local authority and a headmaster said to me:"I am taking into my comprehensive school next September a spina bifida child."I thought that was a very good thing to be doing, and he was talking a bit about the sort of difficulties that will arise not because the child is not intelligent enough to do the work, but because of the difficulties which any child with spina bifida clearly has. This is the sort of thing we should like to see, but it would be a pity if, because somebody can do this with willingness and co-operation in one area, one would have identified a school in the area to which anybody with these sorts of handicaps was going. It is far better that they should be going to schools which are regarded as appropriate where the staff want to see them, where there is a great willingness to co-operate and where everybody is working together to make it a success and not, as I say, putting the clock back to define a certain group of categories of handicap and saying:"These children must be in one specific school."

I hope that, with that explanation, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment. As I have said, I am trying to think positively about the points concerned, and certainly the Bill is trying to help with the integration of handicapped children wherever possible into ordinary schools.

Before the noble Baroness sits down, perhaps I may just take up one point. I did not make the point about an ordinary school becoming perhaps a special school in order to oppose this amendment, but rather to say that wherever possible any ordinary school should be so fitted and built as to take handicapped children if they can benefit from the education there, and to ensure that the area is not so big that the school would become a special school; and indeed it does not say only one school in one area. If we read this amendment properly it says:

"…at least one ordinary school in their area … made suitable".

But this is only to apply if the other schools in the area cannot, because of structural or financial reasons, so change the building and equipment as to make it possible for the children to go to the ordinary school. It does not mean that we want to designate one school to which all physically handicapped children should go.

Before the noble Baroness considers the question of withdrawal, I should like to ask the Minister whether I have understood correctly what she has been saying because, if I did, she seems to have completely misunderstood the amendment. The noble Baroness seems to suggest that an ordinary school is to be equipped to meet the whole group of handicapped children. This amendment does not suggest that. It says that, where a child is deemed tohave special educational needs, because the ordinary school is not equipped to meet his needs at least one school in the area of the authority should be so equipped. So you might have one school which was made suitable for physically handicapped children, and there might be another which had some special equipment for this or for that purpose. In other words, what the Minister was seeking—units attached to ordinary schools that provided special facilities—would emerge from that. There is no question of one school trying to meet all the needs. The amendment does not suggest that for a moment.

I must apologise to the noble Baroness if I misunderstood her remarks. I did not intend to do that; I was trying to explain some of the difficulties about this. Regarding the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, I think we are going back to the confusion that we had on Amendment No. 2, concerning the definition of special educational need in Clause 1(2)(b), when the noble Lord was arguing that you had a special educational need if there was not physical access to the building, and I tried to explain that in fact that is not what this subsection means. This amendment is designed to put right what the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy, thinks is wrong with that first definition and to alter that one to put in this.

As I tried to explain on the earlier debate which we had on Amendment No. 2, I think she has misunderstood the definition, and I hope very much that we shall have an opportunity, either by correspondence or discussion, to cover the ground again. I am happy to do so this afternoon but, having just given a lengthy explanation as to what that definition is, I feel the Committee may not wish to hear it all over again on another amendment. I think the difficulty arises that because there has been a misunderstanding of the definition we then have a further amendment to put right what the noble Baroness thinks is wrong but what the Government are convinced was the right definition the first time round. It is for that reason that I could not accept this amendment.

I should like to thank the Minister for her reply, but I am not really convinced by it. She is right in saying that in a sense this amendment was trying to put right what was wrong with the other one, but, as I said earlier, it can very well stand on its own.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, summed up the argument much better than I could. I can see what the noble Baroness is getting at when she says that it is only trying to amend the situation for the children under Clause 1(2)(b), and as the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, pointed out, a large number of the children we are talking about are the ESN(M) and perhaps at another stage we ought to try to do something about them. But from the point of view of the physically handicapped, such as a spina bifida child, the amendment very clearly refers to access and to age, equipment and other help. It does not specify what may be the particular need of a particular child in that category.

I take the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, and I realise she was not trying to speak against me in any way. Indeed it is at least one school in the local authority area, and I should like to draw attention to the amendment which is coming soon—Amendment No. 7 put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Banks—which might go even a little further to put things right.

The noble Baroness said she hoped we would not put the clock back, but I feel we must go a little way towards starting the clock. We really must make a start because in 1976 Section 10 of the Education Act reversed the policy of the 1944 Act, stating that where possible the physically handicapped should be educated in ordinary schools. As Mrs. Williams said at the time in 1976, that was only reflecting what had been Government policy for many years. That section was never put into force and so we have already waited five years for this start. I regret that I must press the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 6:

Page 2, line 19, after ("needs") insert ("and to secure that the teachers of these children have sufficient and appropriate experience and/or qualifications to meet these special needs.").

I sympathise entirely with what the noble Baroness has said. It is, of course, essential that where there are cases which require special education there should be teachers who are properly qualified, but I am beginning to wonder whether or not this point is already covered by the Bill as it stands. The Bill refers to the need to secure that special educational provision is made for pupils who have special educational needs. Surely the phrase"special educational provision"includes the provision of teachers. I cannot imagine providing education without providing the proper teacher. I should have thought the Bill already covers that point, but perhaps the noble Baroness will be able to enlighten me.

I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, has done us a service by moving this amendment. As she so rightly said, the provision of the necessary number of teachers with the necessary specialised qualifications is at the heart of the implementation of this Bill. But I, too, doubt whether the amendment is necessary. Also, I doubt whether it is technically adequate, if I may say so, and I shall explain what I mean in a moment. The amendment places a duty—and rightly so—upon the local education authorities, but I do not think that the local education authorities can provide all the kinds of specialised training that would be required.

Perhaps I may just mention something from my own experience. Some years ago, we found at MENCAP that there were no specific facilities in teacher training colleges for training teachers of the mentally handicapped. So, with the aid of Sir Frank Price, the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, and generous help from others, and with funds that we raised ourselves, we started at Selly Oak, part of Birmingham, the first ever college for training teachers of the mentally handicapped. It was opened by Her Majesty the Queen Mother some years ago. Other arrangements have been made elsewhere since then, but still, I fear, not enough. What we had in mind was that we should take in to this college only teachers who had already been qualified in their initial training in the ordinary way who would then do an extra year getting the special qualification as trained teachers of the mentally handicapped.

In moving the Second Reading of the Bill, my noble friend Lady Young said at column 978 that there were three kinds of teacher training: initial training, specialised training for specific handicaps and in-service training. When I expressed doubt in that debate, at column 1006, as to whether enough teachers were being trained, or would be available, for teaching the mentally handicapped, I said that it would be helpful if at some time we could have statistics. In replying to the debate, my noble friend said that in due course she would hope to provide some statistics. I have given my noble friend no warning of this, and I hope she will forgive me: I hope I am not taking an unfair advantage. It may be that she is still not ready with the statistics that I am about to ask for, but if she happened to have them, and could provide them now, of course if would help very much in the debate on this amendment.

So far as the mentally handicapped are concerned—and I cannot claim to be speaking for any other kinds of handicap or disablement at this moment; I must confess that I am speaking only about the mentally handicapped—I should like to ask four questions: The first is, how many such teachers will be needed in order fully to implement the Bill? Secondly, how many are now available? Thirdly, how many more are being trained? Fourthly, how many places are there already for specialised training?

I think those are the four crucial questions so far as the mentally handicapped are concerned and I hope that my noble friend may feel that this interesting amendment is a good peg on which to hang some further information which she might give to the Committee. Having said that, as I said in starting, I seriously doubt the need for the amendment.

I want to speak in favour of the amendment, which I think was extremely ably moved by my noble friend Lady Jeger. I do not think there is nearly enough in the Bill about teachers, which was one of the main Warnock priorities, and, if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Somers, I think he is very optimistic if he thinks that subsection (1) means that there will be enough properly qualified teachers for the various numbers and variety of children who will be in the schools needing this extra help.

With regard to the local authorities, the noble Lord Lord Renton, picked on the deficiencies of the drafting but even if we say that this applies only to local authorities, they are extremely well equipped, if they wish to do so, to take on in-service training, and, when a later amendment is moved by me with regard to special schools and special resource centres, that of course will bring in an opportunity for in-service training, too. I remember one of the early meetings of the special committee in another place when they were taking expert evidence. I cannot remember who it was, but one person giving evidence said that very often it was better if the teachers had some in-service training after their initial qualification. They probably learned a good deal more having first had some ordinary teaching experience.

When we look at this clause, we see that the only mention of teachers in it is in subsection (5)(c), where it says:

"to secure that the teachers in the school are aware of the importance of identifying, and providing for, those registered pupils who have special educational needs".

I do not think, really, that awareness is enough, unless they have the necessary skills that go with it. In relation to that, at Second Reading, the Minister said:

"What I believe is required is a greater student awareness of the kinds of special educational needs likely to be encountered in the classroom. I am pleased to say that there has already been a response among colleges of education and universities to meet this need".

But I do not really think that awareness of needs is really adequate. In fact, the teachers may even feel frustrated, feeling that they are aware of the needs, but they do not know how to cope with them. So I would press strongly for this amendment to be accepted, or at any rate to be accepted in principle. If the wording is defective that can be put right at the next stage.

I should like to support what the noble Lord, Lord Somers, said, because it seems to me that already there is provision for this, as indeed in a later amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady David. I am a member of the council of Dr. Barnado's, and we have, as resource centres, schools—residential and day schools—for handicapped children at which teachers are already attending and receiving tuition.

The improvement of the facilities for training teacherss of course one of the priority areas identified by the Warnock Committee, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger has quite rightly said. I should like to assure her that the Government recognise the need to improve the spread of knowledge about special needs and special education among all teachers and to provide for more opportunities for teachers who wish to acquire extra qualifications or training to do so. We do not agree—and this is the difference between us—that this kind of requirement should be imposed by primary legislation.

It is not even a requirement of the Act that teachers should hold any qualification at all. This has always been accepted as one of the matters to be regulated by statutory instrument, under which the Secretary of State could make such requirements as were appropriate from time to time. This principle was endorsed as recently as last year, when Parliament passed Section 27 of the 1980 Education Act, giving the Secretary of State power to make regulations requiring teachers to possess such qualifications as might be determined. It is under those regulations that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will prescribe not only the basic qualifications needed for teachers, but also any additional qualifications for special purposes, such as those at present required by teachers of blind, deaf and partially-hearing children. This is the way in which we think it is right to continue to prescribe teachers' qualifications, since it allows the Secretary of State to take account not only of what may be ideally desirable, but also of what is possible, given the availability of courses, and of the precise needs of different situations. It also means that, since specific qualifications are prescribed, the local authorities, the governors and the teachers are in no doubt whether or not a particular teacher is qualified for a particular post.

May I therefore turn, with that background information, to the effects of this amendment. The amendment bites on that part of Clause 2 which itself amends Section 8 of the 1944 Act—the point the noble Lord, Lord Somers, made. That section is the one which sets out the responsibility of the local education authorities to ensure that there are sufficient schools available for the children in their area. Section 8(2)(c) requires them in carrying out this duty to have regard to the need for securing that provision is made for pupils who suffer from any disability of mind or body by providing special educational treatment. What this Bill does is to bring that duty up to date by substituting the new terminology.

The noble Baroness asked me a quite specific point about the provisions under the Burnham Committee for teachers' pay. I would like to confirm that all teachers in special schools are on special scales, which means that they are paid more than other teachers. Teachers of the blind and deaf have to undergo extra training to acquire a special qualification which entitles them to one increment above other teachers in special schools. Other teachers in special schools who undergo recognised extra training voluntarily also receive one extra increment. I regret to tell my noble friend Lord Renton that I have not got the statistics but I will write to him about them. I know he asked about the matter at Second Reading and I will get them to him before we proceed to the nextstage of the Bill.

I think the difference between what has always been accepted as present practice, which I have outlined and which the Bill brings up to date, and this amendment is that if the Committee were to accept this amendment local education authorities would be under a duty when considering the provision of schools for their area to take into account the supply of suitably qualified or experienced teachers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, will know, when they are considering their provision, a local authority does not decide, if there is a shortage of mathematics teachers, that it will not have a secondary school. Naturally it is the job of the authority to provide the teachers, but it is not done that way round. We would be providing a completely new system under the Education Acts. We would be moving to amend the Education Acts in a way which is certainly not intended under this Bill. I think that without extensive consultation with all our partners in the education service it would not be possible to accept an amendment of this kind.

I hope, however, that the noble Baroness will recognise that we are mindful of the importance of training, and quite particularly the point she raised about in-service training, which will, of course, be very necessary particularly for schools that are going to accept handicapped children.

When identifying within their own schools children with special educational needs, teachers will need some training in identifying and then meeting their educational needs. As the Government are aware of the importance of in-service training, our expenditure plans for 1983–84 make provision for the release of teachers for in-service training at a similar level to that in the recent past. Local authorities are fully aware of this, though it is, of course, for local educational authorities to determine their priorities for expenditure within the resources made available to them.

If I may summarise the arguments about this, I hope I have set out what the present position is under the Education Acts with regard to the requirements for teachers, to indicate that we have amended the 1944 Act to bring the terminology up to date. In this way we believe the provisions of the Bill are those which have been accepted as the proper way to make arrangements for the employment of teachers. It is for that reason that I cannot accept the amendment which the noble Baroness has moved.

I thank the noble Baroness for her clear exposition of the difficulties, of which I am well aware. In fact, I was encouraged by Section 27, which gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations, to hope that we might have heard that she proposes to make regulations regarding the training of teachers who will work within the scope of this Bill.

On the question of the Burnham payments, of course I know that teachers in special schools get slight increases of money, but I thought the intention of this Bill was not only to get as many of the children as possible out of the special schools but that some of the teachers will have to come over too; we shall need their expertand their experience. Are we saying that a teacher, who has been working in a special school and getting the extra allowance, and who then goes over to teaching perhaps even more difficult children in an ordinary school, is to have a cut in salary? I am sorry if I did not make that clear. That is one of my anxieties, and I know it is shared widely.

I wish I shared the faith of the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and the noble Lord, Lord Somers, in thinking that telling the local educational authorities to make special education provision is automatically going to mean a generous release of their teachers for in-service training. I am afraid many of them may wish to do so—and I was glad to hear the noble Baroness say she was doing her best about their financial difficulties—but at the end of the day they are under a lot of pressure to economise. I very much hope this will not be one of the fields where they cut back. The noble Baroness spoke of keeping the level up to what it was in the recent past. If that is all we are going to do we are not taking the system further forward at all—we are standing still—so we could put this Bill on one side. I will read carefully what the noble Baroness has said, and of course there are a lot of discussions to be held about this. I would hope that in the near future she might be able to tell the House of some plans, some intentions, some consultations which will make us feel that something is really happening in this field. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Before I call Amendment No. 7, I should point out that if this amendment is agreed to I cannot call Amendments Nos. 8, 9 and 10.

moved Amendment No. 7:

I find myself supporting the noble Lord, Lord Banks, in what he has said. So far as I can tell at this moment, and subject to what my noble friend may say from the Front Bench, I should have thought that his amendment probably does achieve the purpose which he has designed for it. As I said on Second Reading, we at MENCAP are very unenthusiastic about integration. We realise that integration has many advantages for many of the physically disabled and for many others, but not so far as the mentally handicapped are concerned. I have discussed this with a great many people: with parents of the mentally handicapped; recently with two headmasters of special schools; with two advisers to local education authorities on special education; and, indeed, with a director of education as well, and I cannot find any one of the people with whom I have discussed it who says that there ought to be integration into ordinary schools of those who are suffering from mental handicap.

As the noble Lord, Lord Banks, pointed out, if that becomes the emphasis in the Bill there are some local authorities, a minority perhaps, who will regard it as an excuse for ducking their responsibilities as fas as special schools are concerned. But of course there is also the point that besides adding to the intellectual difficulties of the mentally handicapped on finding themselves in an ordinary school, it could add to their sense of inferiority, which is there anyway, and therefore sometimes create emotional and psychological difficulties for them. Therefore I feel very strongly indeed about this matter.

The noble Lord, Lord Banks, said, and I think, that subsection (2) as it stands, even when read with subsection (3), gives too good an opportunity to local authorities to lean upon integration instead of going for special education. I hope that my noble friend will understand that there are very strong feelings indeed about this, and even if she cannot accept the amendment, I hope that between now and Report stage she will undertake to see whether the two subsections of this clause can be modified in a way which meets the case which has been so clearly made by the noble Lord, Lord Banks.

I, too, would like to support the amendment. I do not in the least mind if Amendments Nos. 8, 9 and 10 cannot be called because, if this amendment is carried, the points will be carried admirably. This amendment reflects provisions already made in the United States 1975 legislation concerning the education of all handicapped children. That was six years ago, and it is high time that we had it here too. It also appears to have other advantages. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, would agree that it covered her ESN children. The point which the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, made about the danger of one ordinary school in the area becoming virtually the special school would also be covered. The noble Lord, Lord Renton, seems to think that it would cover the points about the mentally handicapped as well. Therefore, I give it my wholehearted support.

We have heard from both the noble Lords who have spoken that local authorities would use this as an excuse. It seems to me that the present two subsections are very clear. The one which it is proposed to put in their place is much more vague. It says:

"except where the nature or severity of the child's special needs".

It is not as clear as subsection (3)(a), (b) and (c).

I think that there is quite a misconception as to how local authorities view their responsibilities. Everyone in your Lordships' House always tries to say that locally elected representatives should be free to follow their own ways and not be dictated to the whole time by central Government. The present wording includes"the efficient use of resources". That essentially is something which local authorities must take into account. It is all very well to say that we are so mean that we will try to use it as an excuse for not doing something. The fact of life is that if one thing is put into the programme something else almost certainly suffers. It is the job of the local authority to weigh up the alternative uses of their resources and to consider the best way to use them. They are the locally elected people. I feel that subsections (2) and (3) (a), (b) and (c) give quite clear instructions to local authorities and I hope that the Government will resist this amendment.

I should like to follow up what the previous noble Lord said about "the efficient use of resources". I find it quite disturbing because the Bill does not contain any resources at all. So the Government are saying to local authorities "Let us have some efficient use of resources". Is not that what local government are doing all the time? That is what they are doing all the time without the Government telling them to do it. They try to use as efficiently as possible the money that they are allocated. It may be that some local authorities will decide that the most efficient use of their resources would be in connection with grammar schools and assisted school places. However, it may be that another local authority would take the view that, because they have a large urban population with a lot of children who are suffering deprivation, the efficient use of their resources would be in connection with greater provision for special education.

I should have thought that the deletion of "the efficient use of resources"was a good thing. The right word does not come quickly to my mind, but to be quite candid I think that it is a cheek for the Government to include it in this way when they are not offering us anything. In fact, in the other place it was said time and time again that there is nothing new in the Bill: it is building upon the good practice of local authorities. What it is saying to those authorities who are not very good is, "Take a leaf out of this authority's book or that authority's book". I would suggest that some local authorities could quite easily take a leaf out of the City of Birmingham's book. I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Banks, because it is much more positive than the clause that we have in the Bill.

I, too, should like to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Banks, because it seems to me that it gets rid of the three discriminatory limitations contained in subsection (3), which I find not at all satisfactory. The amendment makes the whole Bill very much more positive, which I think is a good thing.

I was rather surprised at the reception given to the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, because he seemed to think that it greatly strengthens the special school side of things. Obviously, we must have special schools; we all agree about that. But I thought that the main point of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Banks, was to make the whole thing very much more positive, that as far as possible children should be educated in ordinary schools. The amendment strengthens the Bill where, in my view, it is weak now.

I think that it would be helpful to the Committee if, once again, I attempted to explain what it is that the Government are trying to do in Clause 2. The importance of Clause 2(2) is that this is a statement—a central statement—of intent about integration. It makes it clear that provided certain conditions are met, children with statements must be educated in ordinary schools. This, as I have understood it, is a point that I thought would have been welcomed by all noble Lords from all parts of the Committee, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy, and others who have taken an interest in this matter. After all, it goes some way towards Section 10 of the 1976 Act, which is repealed by this Bill, but it gives this central statement of intent which Mrs. Warnock and her committee recommended on special education. It refers, of course, only to children with statements, because other children with special educational needs will be educated in ordinary schools as a matter of course. By and large, if the ordinary school can cope with a child's needs, there will be no point in conducting a full-scale assessment and making a statement for that child.

Therefore, we are talking about children with statements. I would be very sad if, in fact, I thought that local authorities would lean on the concept of integration instead of special education as a kind of cheap method of helping children with special educational needs. I am, of course, aware that this is a fear that has been expressed many times during the passage of this Bill, but I think what the noble Lord, Lord Digby, said is true; and although it is some years since I was in local government, I do not have the slightest doubt that when this Bill is on the statute book and it has its accompanying circular, or whatever goes with it, local education authorities will sit down and consider what provision they will make.

I really do not think that I want a lecture from the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, or from anyone else on the subject of resources because, after all, her Government presided for over three years during which time there were cuts in the resources provided for the education service. The noble Baroness and I, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jeger and Lady David, and everyone else who is concerned with this, know that whatever Government are in power, when there is a 30 per cent. drop in the school population, that Government will almost certainly look at the amount of money that is going into the education service. We all know that to be true.

What is equally true is that all the evidence that we have is that local education authorities have not, in fact, cut back on the money that they have been using for special education but, I think that it is because—the noble Lord, Lord Digby, is perhaps too modest to say so—people in local government are actually interested in service, and they are particularly interested in service to children with special educational needs. Whatever other economies have been made, they have not been made in this area. Indeed, quite considerable amounts of money are available. We estimate that approximately £240 million is spent on maintained special schools annually, and between £50 million and £60 million is spent on fees in non-maintained and independent schools. Of course, further money is spent on health service support and on education for children with special needs in ordinary schools; we believe that altogether this may amount to a further £200 million spent on various support services to special education. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to give the figure, which I gave on Second Reading, of £500 million annually as an estimate of the amount of money that local authorities spend on special education.

We are saying to local authorities: "You have this money; this is what you are currently spending. Are you spending it in the wisest possible way? Should you look at the provision that you have and perhaps get better value for it? Can you do more with it? Can you alter the way in which you spend it?"It is a very considerable sum of money, and I do not have the slightest doubt that when the Bill goes on the statute book local authorities will look at this aspect. Many of them are already implementing the spirit of the Bill because the Bill builds on best practice in local authorities now.

The conditions in subsection (3), which qualify subsection (2) and with which everyone has been concerned, are those which must be met before a child with special educational needs, of a degree which require the protection of a statement, can be educated in an ordinary school. First, the local authority must take account of the views of the child's parent. This is important because not all parents will wish their child to attend an ordinary school, and it must be acknowledged that whatever the nature of the child's handicap not all children will thrive in an ordinary school setting—a point which the noble Lord, Lord Renton, made very well.

Subsection (3)(a) states that an ordinary school must be able to make the special educational provision required for the child. This applies not only to the facilities and resources already available in the ordinary school, but also to any specialised educational or health services which it may be possible to arrange in support of an individual child in a particular ordinary school.

Subsection (3)(b) makes the placement in an ordinary school of a child with a statement conditional upon it being compatible with the provision of efficient education of the other children already in that school. This seems to me to be a reasonable condition. Clearly, if we take the case of an emotionally disturbed child who has failed in an ordinary school setting, it would not be right to have that child put back into the school and to continue in that school to disrupt the work of other children.

Finally, there is the condition in subsection (3)(c) where the placement is compatible with the efficient use of resources. This, of course, is a term which is used in other Education Acts and I suggest that it is reasonable. We are talking here of resources of all kinds: equipment, teachers and the deployment of other specialised services. These cannot, in fact, just be dissipated overnight, and I do not think that any Government could afford to duplicate resources in every school in support of individual children. That is not to say that planned integration cannot take place, but it will come about in small units attached to ordinary schools, or with one school perhaps specialising in admitting a particular kind of handicapped pupil.

These then are the conditions which must be satisfied, and the amendment makes no reference to consultation with parents. It contains no mention of the effect on the education of other children in a school or the efficient use of resources. I should like to make one further point on that. We must remember that we are referring to all sorts of children with special educational needs. One fact which has emerged is that special educational needs are now changing. For example, very few children are now classified as"delicate", which is one of the 10 categories of handicap which was not at all uncommon 30 or 40 years ago. Sadly, there are many children who would now be categorised as maladjusted, disruptive or as suffering from some sort of emotional difficulty. We must take into account in this Bill the kind of handicaps that we are looking at and how they would be dealt with in ordinary schools or in special schools, as appropriate.

I have gone into this explanation in some considerable detail. I appreciate the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Banks. I hope he will recognise that I have tried to answer the points that he has raised; to explain why the Bill is drafted as it is, why we have accepted Mrs. Warnock's main statement of intent, that wherever possible children will be educated in an ordinary school; but we have felt it right to qualify it in these three ways to take account not only of the needs of parents, but also the education of other children in the schools and, clearly, the efficient use of resources.

Before the noble Lord, Lord Banks, replies, if indeed he is going to do so, I should just like to say a few brief words. Having heard what my noble friend the Minister has to say on the matter, I now have a better understanding of subsection (3) and of the implications. Speaking for myself, rather than having this matter brought to a decision as this moment, I should like to consider what my noble friend has said. I believe it would be an advantage if your Lordships did not reach a conclusion this afternoon but were to consider the matter further—especially in view of the criticism that has been made of the drafting of the amendment. Therefore, I make this plea to the noble Lord, Lord Banks.

I should like to thank all those noble Lords who have supported this amendment. I believe that the object which I mentioned at the beginning, of provoking some discussion as to whether the limitations contained in this particular subsection are in fact desirable or not, has been achieved. We have had some useful discussion. The object I had in mind was to draft and present something that was less restricitive than the Bill. I was not convinced that the three restrictions imposed in the Bill were necessary. I am not fully convinced now that they are all necessary.

I do not agree that the reference to resources is essential at this particular point, when one is stating these principles. The position in respect of parents is dealt with very thoroughly in other parts of the Bill, but nevertheless I should like to consider further what has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I am grateful to her for the trouble she has taken and for the detail into which she went in order to reply to the points which were mind. With that said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 8:

Page 2, line 27, after ("is") insert ("or could reasonably be made").

I listened very carefully to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Banks, but I am not at all sure how one would test" reasonableness" in the context of this amendment. If the provision in an ordinary school meets the requirement set out in this subsection, then the local education authority has a duty to make such arrangements. On the other hand, if provision cannot be made in an ordinary school because it is incompatible with those conditions, then the local education authority would have to consider special educational provisions for the child in another setting.

Each individual case will have to be judged on its merits. If the local education authority can reasonably meet the conditions in subsection (3), then it will obviously do so. If the parents feel that the authority is acting unreasonably in proposing a special school rather than an ordinary school for their child, then they have an opportunity to appeal to a local appeal committee, and subsequently to the Secretary of State under the provisions in Clause 8 of the Bill. I have looked at this amendment very carefully but I do not feel it adds anything that is not already in the Bill. I believe it would be difficult to test the meaning of "reasonable" under those circumstances, and I therefore hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw this amendment.

I would ask the noble Baroness, Lady Young, if she feels that, were it possible to test "reasonableness"and to satisfy her on that one point, it would be desirable to have some provision of this kind, which would indicate that local authorities are supposed to take some action to put schools into a position whereby they can meet some needs which they may not be able to meet at the time of the first consideration?

I believe it is always a most dangerous thing to answer a question on a hypothetical situation. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, I am too old a debater to be caught quite so easily—although because of the way that the noble Lord puts his argument it all sounds very convincing. If the noble Lord looks at this clause and considers his amendment as it would read if written into the Bill, and addresses himself to the situation as it would be in a local education authority, he will see that his amendment is actually unnecessary.

If under subsection (2) a local authority has this duty towards the child and believes that it can make provision in an ordinary school, then the local authority must make that provision. The difficulty is that what may be possible in one set of circumstances may not be possible in another. The noble Lord might say that this might be the definition of "reasonableness", but the definition might possibly hinge on a particular teacher with the qualifications to manage a particular child in a particular school. Therefore, it might be appropriate in that case but the same circumstances might not apply in another school, which might have advantages in some other respect.

When I say to the noble Lord that I do not believe that "reasonableness" would add anything it is because, in the context of an exact situation in a local education authority, I do not believe that the officials or the committee taking the decision would take a different decision if this amendment were incorporated into the Bill than they would if it were not. They will have to consider each case on its merits, taking into account the needs of the child, the views of the parents, the circumstances of the school and the nature of the handicap—all of which must be reviewed each year if the child has a statement. The circumstances could change and the officials or committee might come to a different conclusion at a later stage, because that would be quite proper in their reconsideration of the case. To add "reasonableness"—which would have to be applied to the first case, the second case and the third as the child progresses—would not improve the Bill. It would simply add to the Bill itself without necessarily adding anything to the decision.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for her further elucidation. I should like to consider her remarks at leisure, and with that in view I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 10:

I should like to support this amendment. It has been said to me on a number of occasions when I have been discussing this Bill with people actively involved in special education, that the 1944 Act deliberately discriminated in favour of children with special educational needs. If we are not careful, this Bill is going to do exactly the opposite. This amendment is one chance for us to redress the balance a little, so I hope that we shall have support for it.

As the noble Baroness has said, this amendment in effect works on the same principle as the amendment that she moved earlier, which we discussed and upon which the Committee voted. The effect of it would be to qualify the condition that the education of a child with a statement in ordinary school should be compatible with the efficient use of resources. In fact, it would require local education authorities to provide a suitably equipped ordinary school for children with physical disabilities, and this amendment would then have had the effect of allowing local authorities to direct the child to that school and not to another ordinary school selected by the parents. I think that is how this would work.

We had a long discussion on the earlier amendment and I tried to indicate the view of the Government upon it. Again there is some misunderstanding of this term "the efficient use of resources". This is a term which is used in the 1980 Education Act: I am sure that the noble Baroness will recall our discussions upon it. Interestingly, one of the firm impressions I came away with after the discussions on that Act, and the many discussions we had particularly on the needs of children with special educational needs, was that as far a possible we should make things, and make the Bill we were thinking of, apply in a similar way to children with special educational needs as, for want of a better term, to ordinary children.

In this sense, using this particular terminology is in fact using the terminology of that Bill. Where it applies, the efficient use of resources does apply. At the end of the day I hope that the noble Baroness will take comfort from the figures I gave about resources; about the attitudes of local education authorities in the use of them; about their concern for children with special educational needs. I am bound to say, from having visited a number of local education authorities and having looked quite particularly at the provision they make for special education, that although there is a variety in it—and clearly authorities vary in the provision that they make—I am always conscious of the dedication of the people working in this field.

If it is the implication that somehow local authorities will not use their resources to the best of their ability to help children with special educational needs, I think that is not so. I think they will use their resources as well as they can. I agree that we should like more resources, but one of the objects of this Bill is to get local authorities to look at what they have got—and it is a considerable amount—and make quite sure that they are using it in a way which fulfils the wishes of Mrs. Warnock and her Committee and the others of us who would like to see those principles carried into law.

I should like to thank the Minister for her reply. I am not sure that I agree with her. I perhaps did not make it clear when I was explaining the amendment that I really did not think that the choice for the ordinary child and the choice for the disabled child were anything like the same. Although the 1980 Act and this Bill use the same words about resources and education, we are choosing in the case of the ordinary child between two schools within the same school system, and for the disabled child whether it is forced into a special school where it might be educated in an ordinary school, or whether it can go to the ordinary neighbourhood school.

One of the facts that Mrs. Warnock identified is that we are talking about perhaps one in six children about 20 per cent. of children, who may, at some stage or other, have special educational needs. We are also talking about those children who are currently in special education and who, under this Bill, would be subject to a statement, and that is about 2 per cent. of the school population. It is very much smaller. So there are quite a number of children whose parents will state a preference for a school and will therefore, although those children have special educational needs, be able to choose from a number of schools.

What we have tried to do is to give parents whose children will be subject to a statement again the opportunities to be consulted about the statement; to comment on the statement in draft; to comment on the statement when it is finally made; and if they are not satisfied with the arrangements that are being made with their child to take that case to an appeal committee, and finally to the Secretary of State, if that should prove to be necessary.

I would hope that during the course of this long process the parents of children with statements, would have a great many opportunities on which they could talk about their children and the provision that is going to be made for them with the local education authority, so that there would be the maximum understanding about how their needs would be met, and the provisions that the local authority would be making for them. Those are the ones with statements, and there would be others who will not be subject to statements but who will still have special educational needs. They will be in the majority, and they also come under this Bill. Therefore, for them it is even closer to the provisions for ordinary children.

I can appreciate that the whole difficulty of this Bill is that we are embracing such a vastly differing lot of children. But the noble Baroness would agree that with the failure of my Amendment No. 5, if a purely disabled child happened to live in a local education authority area where there was not a suitable school, that would be a child who would have a statement and would thus be treated in this different way in the judging of resources as to where it goes.

It is difficult to make a generalisation about all children with physical disabilities. I have seen a child in a wheelchair in a primary school, and clearly in those circumstances the local education authority was able to make completely adequate arrangements for that child. I should like to see more children so educated. Indeed, it is probably rather easier in primary schools, which are nearly always one-storey buildings in any event. I cannot possibly speak for all local education authorities, but it may well be that there will be others where such suitable arrangements can be made. What I think we cannot write into the Bill is the compulsion to say that all this must be done as soon as the Bill is passed. We must work towards this aim.

We are both in agreement about the long-term provision and what the efficient use of resources means. As resources allow, so I think more schools will become available for children with physical disabilities, or deaf children, or blind children, as the noble Baroness said, or indeed other—ESN(M) children, who can be taught in these schools very effectively.

I am obliged to the Minister for her reply and think I shall have to be guided by the noble Baroness, Lady David, in this matter, as the amendment is also in her name. She hoped we would be able to get it through with a reasonable amount of support, but I wonder whether she agrees with me that that may not be the case and that, in any event, the Benches are not very full.

It might be wise for the noble Baroness to withdraw it; we can, if necessary, return to the subject at the next stage.

In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 11:

The difficulty with this amendment is that so many factors would have to be taken into account that it would be very difficult for regulations to cover all eventualities. I believe that local education authorities will understand the term "efficient education" in subsection 3(b) when they are faced with a decision whether or not to propose a placement for a particular child with a statement in a particular ordinary school. Their aim would be to secure that the proposed placement would not cause the education of the other children in the school to be impaired, for example by requiring the teacher to give such attention to the child that the needs of other children were neglected or where the child was a persistently disruptive force during learning activities. There would of course be a variety of other factors which would need to be considered arising from the individual circumstances of different schools, and regulations could never cover all eventualities.

It would be very difficult to take all such conditions into account, but I am sure the noble Baroness. who is well-versed in the difficulties there are in school, will know that there are teachers who find children who are persistently disruptive, who could well be said to have special educational needs and who, if taught in an ordinary school, would make it impossible for many of the other children to learn, because so much of the teacher's time would be taken up with the one disruptive child. That would be the kind of circumstance in which the needs of the other children would have to be taken into account before such a child was placed in an ordinary school. There is, therefore, that side to it and it is an important factor.

It seems to me that the factors to be taken into account in determining what constitutes "efficient education" would have to be so broad in individual circumstances that they could almost become meaningless; therefore, such regulations would be very difficult to frame and we believe they would be quite unnecessary. I hope the noble Baroness will feel she can accept this argument. I do not know, of course, the circumstances which, when she had some responsibilities for these matters, were considered in relation to the 1976 Act, but I imagine they would have been very difficult to frame and, as she will know, that part of Section 10 was not brought into effect. It may well be, therefore—although I do not know whether this has been the case—that the difficulty of framing such regulations prevented it being done. If the noble Baroness considers the matter, I think she will agree that it is better to leave it as it is than go further. I hope she will accept that explanation of the reason why I cannot accept the amendment and will feel able to withdraw it.

I accept what the Minister says—that it is an extremely difficult area to put into words, so to speak—but I would ask her whether, if I withdraw the amendment, we could have a guarantee that consultations and discussions will take place with local authority associations so they may all have a general view of what is expected and what is meant by these phrases.

I understand that following the measure becoming law there would be a circular and, as the noble Baroness will be aware, these matters are always discussed with local authorities; so I would imagine, as one would be explaining things in much more detail than the primary legislation can give, that these would be the sort of things that would be discussed with local authorities, as we are doing with a whole variety of matters all the time.

I do not know whether there is anything more I can add. I shall read in Hansard tomorrow what the noble Baroness said, and then I could either have a word with her before the next stage of the Bill or write to her on the subject, when I might be able to say something further, but what I have explained is my understanding of how we should carry out the consultation procedures under the Bill. We have, of course, already discussed with local authorities the framing of the legislation and we have no reason to think that they will not understand the term as it is written in the Bill.

With that partial assurance—that there will be consultations and a circular, which will at any rate outline some of the factors that are to be taken into account—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 12:

I can understand why the noble Baroness put down the amendment, since, as she quite rightly said, Mrs. Warnock and her committee made this point very firmly in their report. I appreciate that the objective of the noble Baroness in the amendment is to secure not only effective advisory staff, but also a special school which might be a resource centre. However, there is a difficulty about the amendment. If it so wishes, the local education authority can employ advisory staff with experience and qualifications in special education, and I have no doubt that most, if not all, local education authorities do so. The local education authority also has power to designate a special school as a resource centre, and equally I have no doubt that many do that, too. However, it would be going very much against our devolved system of education if in primary legislation we were to lay down that local education authorities must have such an officer on their advisory staff and that they must designate a special school as a resource centre. I feel that it would very much go against the basis of our relationship with our partners in the education service—the local education authorities—if we attempted to lay down in legislation detailed descriptions as to how LEAs should develop their services.

It is for that constitutional reason that the Government cannot accept the amendment, though, as I say, I have no doubt that many authorities in fact do precisely what the amendment seeks. I quite see that this is very desirable to do in principle, but that is very different from saying that we should incorporate it into primary legislation in this way in the Bill.

That is not a very satisfactory reply. It seems to me that when it suits them the Government constantly place duties on local authorities, yet do not do so at other times. In some instances the local authority is given some freedom, but on other occasions the situation is very much reversed. I should like to think about this matter, since I might return with the amendment, or something very similar, at Report stage. For the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 13:

Page 2, line 36, at end insert ("by submitting on a prescribed form to the Secretary of State an annual report which shall be analysed, either in his Department or by a relevant organisation.")

I should like to support the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, in what she has just said; and I think she has outlined her amendment in a very practical way. I am also concerned especially as, if Warnock is taken to its final conclusion, we shall abolish categories altogether, which I think will be very difficult at the beginning. But if we are abolishing categories, there will be no way in which we shall be able to see whether there has been, for some reason, perhaps, an influx in, say, spina bifida, or an influx in blindness arising from the drugs being used in childbirth. If we do not have categories, that is going to cause a difficulty, I can see, but no doubt the noble Baroness will explain that at a later stage.

But why I am interested in the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, is because it will give an opportunity to the Government to say to a local authority, "We really feel that perhaps you ought to be doing a little better"—especially because (as, I repeat, was said so often in the other place) what is hoped from this Bill is that local authorities will learn the good practices, and they will not learn those good practices unless statistics and information are kept. Therefore, I should like to support the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull.

Before turning to the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, it might be helpful if I explained a little more what Clause 2(4) means. The Committee will see that, as the Bill stands, it places local education authorities under a duty to keep under review their arrangements for special educational provision. That duty cannot be discharged without positive action somewhere in the authority. As I see it, local education authorities will have special education sub-committees which from time to time will consider aspects of special educational provision, and all authorities will conduct an annual appraisal of their provision in the context of their estimates.

I would see this as being the most probable time when a local education authority will in fact review their arrangements for special educational provision each year. They will also review them, I can imagine, if, for example, in the context of falling rolls, they find that there are empty classrooms in a school; they may consider that this is an appropriate moment at which to make some kind of provision for children with special educational needs in that school because there is a classroom that is empty. I therefore see that the opportunities for making provision will occur at the time of the annual estimates, but might also occur at other times.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, raised a rather separate point, but a very important one, about the dissemination of good practice. Although authorities can of course learn from statistical information which the department publishes quite regularly, I think that mostly they learn from the dissemination of good practice either at conferences, from HMI publications or from the meetings of professionals. This is important, and if standards are to rise it is very important that this good practice should be known among local authorities.

If I may now turn quite specifically to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, I should like to assure her that comprehensive statistics are already collected and programmed on the department's computer, and we shall continue to require annual information on pupil numbers and on placements after this legislation has been enacted. We do in fact collect statistics on education otherwise than at school on Form 21M; we collect information on the education of children in hospital, on Form 7M, and for that at special schools on Form 21M, as for others. The basis of the statistics in future is being reconsidered in the light of the abolition of the categories of handicap.

In addition, of course, the department receives and considers bids for the special education building programme annually; and, of course, we talk regularly to local authorities about their plans in this context. So I can assure the noble Baroness that my department has a great deal of relevant information from local authorities, and I believe that, with this, we can meet the point that she feels is not being met by subsection (4). But, as I say, in putting subsection (4) into this Bill we are not simply relying on that. I hope I have said enough to indicate that we shall continue to collect these statistics, and this will give her and local education authorities generally the information that they require. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

I should like to thank the Minister for her explanation and for her comments. I have to say that I am not wholly convinced or happy because these facts and figures have been known to the DES, as she herself has said, and yet many of us know of children in mental hospitals, for instance, who have not been educated even if the facts have been known. However, this was a probing amendment. If I may, I should like to read in Hansard tomorrow what has been said, and reserve the right to bring the matter up again at Report stage, if necessary. I therefore beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

moved Amendment No. 14:

Page 2, line 36, at end insert ("and to submit to the Secretary of State within one year of the coming into force of this Act, for his approval, development plans detailing the systematic arrangements which will be made throughout the authority over the five years following the approval of the plan for the meeting of special educational needs in ordinary schools.").

I should like strongly to support this amendment. I think everyone wants to see a bit of flesh on the bones of this Bill. People will begin to believe that the Government are serious in their intentions if the Government ask local authorities to submit to the Secretary of State some sort of development plan. I believe that some authorities are already making these plans, but we must encourage all authorities and not just the best ones to do this. This would not involve local authorities in more than a minimum amount of expense, but it would be something for them to aim at and would help them when they were applying for capital grants and so on to show that it was to fit in with a plan to make this Bill a better Bill and to make the Act work. f hope very much that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, will press this amendment. I think it is an extremely important point.

I, too, should like to give this amendment my strong support. It is essential for ensuring integration. We have talked about the importance of the review. A five-year plan is even more important. I hope that the Government will accept it. It will be helpful to them. You need a systematic plan, particularly where resources are at a premium. No one would argue that integration can be achieved satisfactorily over night. It is important to encourage the LEAs to plan for what they hope to accomplish over a reasonable time. Without a planned approach, integration is unlikely to work satisfactorily.

I hesitate to oppose an amendment in this field, but I wonder whether, in fact, a five-year plan is going to be helpful. Shall we know the resources available in five years' time or not? Are we to guess at them? The important thing for this Bill is to alter the attitude of the local authorities and to use the resources, as they emerge from year to year, to the best advantage. I do not believe that making a plan for five years ahead would help.

May I reply to the noble Lord, Lord Alexander? Maybe five years is the wrong length of time, but I think a plan is important. Maybe it should be a ten-year plan. But it is in line with a Warnock recommendation in chapter 7, paragraph 48. I quote:

"'We therefore recommend that each local education authority should have a comprehensive and long-term plan for special educational provision within which the arrangements for individual schools will take their place.".

It has good backing there. I hope that the coolness with which the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, received this proposal will not affect the rest of the Committee. I think it would show good intentions and I am sure that if five years is not a suitable time, we should be happy to change it to ten years. I think the principle of a plan should be supported.

I think that the principle of a plan is magnificent; but in reality, it has not worked in the past for those of us who have been in local government. I remember that in another area we were asked to get out a ten-year plan. The officers of the local authority spent hours getting out a ten-year plan when suddenly the whole thing was reversed by a change of policy. All of our ten-year plans and all the work involved went for naught. Therefore, I think that it is important to have a plan within the local authority, but to produce a ten-year plan is quite unrealistic, based on experience.

Perhaps I can add some warmth to Lady David after the coolness of Lord Alexander. I think that my noble friend Lady David said clearly in support that many local authorities were already looking at their special educational needs. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, all the educational authorities are having to look at the needs not only for special education but for primary and nursery schools, because of falling population. The need to look at special education, as Lady Young has said, is that there is a change of emphasis on the needs of the handicapped now. It is for this reason that many local authorities are looking forward to make sure that they are taking into account the new kind of education that is necessary, bearing in mind that many authorities are going to have to deal with more multiple handicaps in the future than they have in the past under special education.

To warm the ears of my noble friend Lady David, I would say that I have before me the report of the working party on the future of special education in Birmingham, which was published in March 1980 and is a thoroughgoing document. There are a few hundred pages with proposals for schools that they have got, the schools they might go into, the research which might be carried out. If the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is interested, I can let her have a copy of this, but no doubt her office already has one. It is important for local authorities to be looking forward into what is a real change of emphasis on special education which this Bill and the Warnock Report are showing to us.

I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Young, will not brush this on one side. I think it would be very much out of character, with respect, if the noble Baroness were to do this. I accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, has just said about a ten-year plan. That is much too long. But I do not see how we can plan the future without having some kind of guide as to the direction in which we are doing. Some of the difficulties we have encountered in the social welfare field have been due entirely to the fact that it has been so haphazard, that we have not sat down and thought about next year and the year after and the year after that.

Money will be tight for a good many years to come. We ought to know what our basic needs are for the future. We ought to say what we are prepared to do, having regard to the needs of the disabled and the importance of their being integrated as far as possible in our educational system. I hope the Minister will say that we need a plan. Whether it is of three or five years is relatively unimportant, but it is important that we get the local education authorities thinking of the problem in their own areas and what they could do along the lines suggested by some of my noble friends on this side.

I think we ought to remember in what capacity we are operating now. This is not a Second Reading debate; it is Committee stage, where we are writing in detail the words of a statute. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady David, is, in a way, letting down the noble Lord in what was a general admission. She seemed to be accepting the practical advice given by Lord Alexander with his great experience and then said that we ought to indicate our general good intentions. We ought not to try to generate genuine good intentions. We have to write into the statute, which people will adhere to, things which are practical and will pass the test of being realistic. To commit local authorities to have to work out detailed plans for a general intention which cannot, for practical reasons, be given effect to is wasting the time and diverting the attention of the authority from other things that they ought to be doing.

A general intention is very good. Who could disagree with the noble Baroness in wanting generally to give the impression as to how things ought to be better? But we are working out a statute which has to be hard, real and practical. I do not believe from the short debate that I have heard that it has passed that test. I hope that my noble friend will resist the appeals that come from the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, who always speaks with such charm, but on this occasion I am certain that he is asking somebody to give statutory authority to people virtually to waste their time.

I always listen carefully to what is said in these debates, and particularly so on this Bill because we are not talking here about major party political matters. These are discussions on the best way to implement a Bill that we all wish to see on the statute book. Clearly, the Committee is divided upon this particular amendment. I was very interested in what my noble friend Lady Faithfull had to say about plans generally, because when I first became a member of an education committee in 1960 (which was a very long time ago now, I realise) one of the first documents put into my hand was the development plan that was required under the 1944 Education Act which the City had drawn up and which everybody on the education committee clearly ought to have read.

It became very clear on first reading it that it was already out of date, and it became increasingly out of date as year succeeded year. This has been the fate of development plans: they have tended to restrict rather then encourage development. I believe that there is a danger that the welcome developments which suddenly come about because of better practice or better medical skills or what-you-will, which cannot be foreseen when the plan is drawn up, are not considered because they fall outside the plan. Indeed, development plans for primary and secondary schools which were required by Section 11 of the 1944 Education Act fell into disuse for precisely this kind of reason, and Section 11 was repealed last year in the 1980 Education Act.

Similarly, one of the problems with the law as it now stands in relation to the provision of further education—a matter to which we shall be turning our attention later—is that the general duties of LEAs to provide further education are couched in terms of schemes of further education which require the approval of the Secretary of State and then are mandatory upon the LEAs. Developments in the further education field have in many cases outstripped the schemes. This is one of the issues which the department are considering in their review of the law governing the provision of further education.

So there is this general difficulty about development plans. There is also a further detailed objection: the amendment deals only with special educational provision in ordinary schools. In other words, it is directed solely at plans for integration and the development of existing provision for the majority of children with special educational needs who are already receiving education in ordinary schools. The amendment leaves out the continuing development of special education which we have all agreed, and special schools will still be necessary in the future; yet, with declining rolls, this is an area where most changes are likely to occur in the next five years.

We believe that local education authorities must be given the maximum amount of flexibility in the use of their resources and we would not wish to place them under any undue constraint as to how and where they use these. This freedom will enable LEAs to develop imaginative schemes to integrate some of the pupils now in special schools.

I am quite certain that the document to which the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, referred, is an example of what a local authority has decided to do, and I am sure will do very well. But I have already indicated that the pace of change will often be directed by the availability of both human and financial resources. There is a great deal of difference between local authorities that have looked at this matter and decided that they wish to make provision in a certain way by a plan, or whatever it may be, and the Government writing again into primary legislation that they should make such a plan. We feel that this would be a mistake. It would go against our constitutional relationships with our partners in the education service. We have found from practical experience that development plans have not always worked out as their framers intended and have had in effect a restricting influence rather than one that encourages important new developments.

I hope therefore that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, will feel that in making these remarks I am trying to answer the points that he has raised, the concerns which I know a lot of people have raised in another place as well as outside it about what provision local authorities are going to make, but to say that we believe that the Bill, as drafted, will cause local authorities to look at their arrangements to determine the best way to carry out the provisions of the Bill.

I should like to express my thanks to those who have supported this amendment. I have listened with great interest to the comments from those who did not feel able to do so. The noble Baroness, Lady David, pointed out at the very beginning an important fact: that this would involve a minimum of expense and that it would provide something to aim at, which was underlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), when she said that we need a systematic plan. It is our attitude to those two statements, that we need something to aim at and a systematic plan, on which our approach to this amendment turns.

There are those of us who feel that getting the Bill on to the statute book as an Act is the first step, but unless there are some pretty positive moves taken after that we shall not really take full advantage of it. The obligation on each local authority to produce a plan to say what they are going to do in the next five years would start the process of getting action taken to see that ordinary schools are gradually and progressively better fitted to deal with handicapped children.

The noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, asks: "Would we know what the resources are?" Well, we should not necessarily know what the resources would be at the end of five years. The plan might be necessarily amended; other things might occur which would need further amendment. At any rate, the vehicle would have started on the road by the obligation to think at the very beginning of the enterprise exactly what one was going to do to make it viable and advance it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, spoke about the possibility of a change of policy. I do not think that we are going to have a change of policy in this field. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, was right when she said that there is a change of attitude now—a complete change of attitude. I think that the new policy line is one that is going to command general support for so far ahead as we can see. The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, made a very important point when he said that we were suffering from a haphazard approach in many of our welfare policies in this country and that we needed a bit more standing back and planning what we were going to do rather than just being pushed along by events.

The noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, rightly pointed out that it is no good just having good intentions. I think that this would be something more than just having good intentions. It would be a target; it would be something to aim at. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, made some play out of the fact that—as I have already mentioned—a plan can become out of date. It provides a target initially and it can be amended. She pointed out that continuing development is left out. If she likes to produce an amendment at the next stage of the Bill covering that point, I am sure that we should all listen to that most sympathetically. I understand the force of some of the arguments which she put forward, but it did not seem to me that they outweighed the great advantage of plans being made throughout the country to take this Bill when it becomes an Act and carry it forward so that it really makes a change in our system. For that reason, I should like to test the feeling of the Committee.

Before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to make just one comment. I think he said I said that there might be a change of policy with regard to the treatment of the integration of handicapped children. I was not referring to that: I was referring to the change of resources because, on the one hand, if you bring out a ten-year plan and the resources are very much less than they were before, your plan is wasted. If, by happy chance, your resources double, equally your plan is out of date.

I appreciate the point made by the noble Baroness. It is of course possible to have various contingency plans for differing amounts of resources, and no doubt that would be a sensible thing to do. I did think she had used the phrase "change of policy", and if I was wrong I apologise.