WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:11.200 What I want to do is to try and help your debate by bringing some of the political context to the issue. 00:00:11.900 --> 00:00:23.360 I assure you I won't be partisan and I'm free now I'm no longer under the government whips to say what I believe personally rather than what the government believes. 00:00:23.360 --> 00:00:30.560 So my views are well known as being controversial, and I'd ask you to accept them in that context. 00:00:31.680 --> 00:00:42.720 For many years, I represented an area of Lancashire that became infamous for having segregated communities. 00:00:42.720 --> 00:00:48.140 mainly communities of white working class people 00:00:48.140 --> 00:00:53.280 alongside people from Azad Kashmir in Pakistan 00:00:53.280 --> 00:00:55.220 and from Bangladesh 00:00:55.220 --> 00:01:01.440 and you will remember about 11 years ago in May 2001 00:01:01.440 --> 00:01:05.420 there were a series of disturbances in a number of northern towns 00:01:05.420 --> 00:01:09.920 that had a profound effect upon the government's policy 00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:13.460 profound effects that are still felt today. 00:01:14.960 --> 00:01:22.240 One of the first reactions to those disturbances was, of course, to commission an independent inquiry. 00:01:22.920 --> 00:01:25.220 It's what we do in Britain when something goes wrong. 00:01:26.220 --> 00:01:31.500 The most important outcome of that series of inquiries, actually, was the Ritchie report, 00:01:31.820 --> 00:01:35.860 undertaken by David Ritchie, the former head of government office in the West Midlands. 00:01:35.860 --> 00:02:01.447 And over many hours he and I discussed what had gone wrong and what we could do to put it right And the main conclusion that we came to was that for decades in its relationship with non speaking people and therefore largely the immigrant communities we had ignored the issue of English language 00:02:01.447 --> 00:02:22.027 In fact, we'd done worse than that. With the best of intentions, we as a country had spent huge resource in translation and interpretation services with the good intent that that would help the non-English speaking community to get on in life and to integrate. 00:02:22.027 --> 00:02:28.167 and we came to the conclusion that perhaps it had had the opposite effect, 00:02:29.007 --> 00:02:33.707 that actually what had happened is that it had served to perpetuate the differences 00:02:33.707 --> 00:02:39.507 and not to help people to integrate and to aspire. 00:02:40.787 --> 00:02:44.347 The starting point in the debate has to be that on the whole, 00:02:44.627 --> 00:02:46.607 immigrant communities are aspirant. 00:02:47.167 --> 00:02:50.667 They want to get on. That's why they emigrate. 00:02:51.467 --> 00:02:55.387 So you have to put the policy in that context quite rightly. 00:02:56.567 --> 00:03:02.507 But one also has to recognise that if you take in the starting point, as I do, 00:03:02.507 --> 00:03:07.987 that English not being your first language is a disadvantage in educational terms. 00:03:08.487 --> 00:03:10.527 And I won't answer your second question, Bennett, 00:03:10.647 --> 00:03:14.427 about the impact upon the English language as the first... 00:03:14.427 --> 00:03:16.687 children with the first language as English. 00:03:16.687 --> 00:03:23.347 But if you take that as a red, what is the political context 00:03:23.456 --> 00:03:24.836 that that takes place in. 00:03:25.916 --> 00:03:29.076 Clearly, the segregation that takes place 00:03:29.076 --> 00:03:33.296 is a result of social factors which are self-perpetuated. 00:03:34.076 --> 00:03:36.496 The two policy levers that the government has 00:03:36.496 --> 00:03:40.616 to most influence this area are housing and education. 00:03:41.896 --> 00:03:45.596 Housing, of course, is a very difficult problem to crack 00:03:45.596 --> 00:03:48.216 because no government in a democratic country 00:03:48.216 --> 00:03:51.216 can force people to live where they don't want to live. 00:03:51.216 --> 00:03:55.456 I suppose I could make a snide remark that this one's trying to 00:03:55.456 --> 00:03:57.876 but that would just be partisan wouldn't it 00:03:57.876 --> 00:04:02.116 you can't use housing policy in that way 00:04:02.116 --> 00:04:05.296 when it comes to education policy 00:04:05.296 --> 00:04:06.136 you can 00:04:06.136 --> 00:04:09.716 the difficulty of course in areas such as mine 00:04:09.716 --> 00:04:12.236 is that the segregation if that's the right word 00:04:12.236 --> 00:04:15.756 is at its most extreme in the primary schools 00:04:15.756 --> 00:04:19.176 and the Ritchie report identified a number of examples 00:04:19.176 --> 00:04:21.736 and we've heard some here today. 00:04:22.376 --> 00:04:24.916 For example, in Glodic Primary School, 00:04:25.496 --> 00:04:30.716 129 of the 133 children finishing that school 00:04:30.716 --> 00:04:34.696 have Urdu as their first language. 00:04:35.976 --> 00:04:39.816 When we scratch deeper into this issue, 00:04:40.576 --> 00:04:44.896 we find that it is very difficult for elected politicians 00:04:44.896 --> 00:04:47.596 to even address the subject. 00:04:48.156 --> 00:04:53.156 Any politician who addresses the issue of ethnicity and culture and segregation 00:04:53.156 --> 00:04:59.256 is immediately subject to headlines attacking him or her from the left and from the right. 00:04:59.256 --> 00:05:12.782 I found the most difficult task as immigration minister was as it were to get permission from the body politic to even talk about the issues such was the legacy that we had in this country 00:05:12.862 --> 00:05:19.922 I think we've got through that now. I think that there is a freer debate. But we come 00:05:19.922 --> 00:05:27.862 to the conclusion very quickly that the issue of culture is the issue that underpins this 00:05:27.862 --> 00:05:35.962 debate. If one asks the parents of a child who speaks Bangla or who speaks Urdu why it 00:05:35.962 --> 00:05:41.282 is that they want them to do that, the answer is obvious. At a very practical level, I remember 00:05:41.282 --> 00:05:47.142 being told very forcibly that the children couldn't speak to their grandparents unless 00:05:47.142 --> 00:05:53.102 they could speak to the mother tongue. They couldn't understand their heritage, and I 00:05:53.102 --> 00:05:59.822 see nothing wrong whatsoever, as the Ritchie report concluded, in that desire. But my point 00:05:59.822 --> 00:06:05.763 is that that does perpetuate the problem, the problem for those children in achieving 00:06:05.763 --> 00:06:14.742 their educational attainment. There are other cultural factors at play. One, particularly 00:06:14.742 --> 00:06:19.622 for the Kashmiri Muslim community 00:06:19.622 --> 00:06:22.542 is the level of formal education 00:06:22.542 --> 00:06:24.162 that takes place in madrasas. 00:06:24.782 --> 00:06:27.602 Typically, my constituents would study for two hours 00:06:27.602 --> 00:06:31.062 for each working day after they'd finished school. 00:06:31.782 --> 00:06:34.182 That had profound effects upon them, 00:06:34.643 --> 00:06:36.342 not just because they were tired out 00:06:36.342 --> 00:06:37.882 when they turned up to school the next day, 00:06:38.402 --> 00:06:41.802 but because it meant that the informal educational sector 00:06:41.802 --> 00:06:44.402 was having a profound effect on them 00:06:44.402 --> 00:06:46.802 almost in some cases as much in some cases. 00:06:46.911 --> 00:06:49.631 ...greater than the school itself. 00:06:50.631 --> 00:06:54.631 There are very difficult issues around this area 00:06:54.631 --> 00:06:58.831 as to what the language is that has been spoken. 00:06:59.471 --> 00:07:02.711 The majority of Pakistanis in the Pennine area in this country, 00:07:02.791 --> 00:07:05.311 and I think it's truly in your part of the world, 00:07:05.611 --> 00:07:08.371 are actually not Pakistanis. They're Kashmiris. 00:07:09.291 --> 00:07:12.871 And when you speak to a Kashmiri and describe them as a Pakistani, 00:07:13.051 --> 00:07:15.651 it's a bit like telling an Irishman that he's an Englishman. 00:07:16.571 --> 00:07:17.731 It doesn't go down very well. 00:07:18.831 --> 00:07:22.971 Perpetuated by the issue that the first language of the Kashmiris is Pahari. 00:07:23.351 --> 00:07:25.851 It's a spoken language, it's not a written language. 00:07:26.471 --> 00:07:30.811 The written language for that population is actually Urdu. 00:07:31.891 --> 00:07:36.751 So I found that my local authority was spending upwards of £600,000 a year 00:07:36.751 --> 00:07:41.291 translating English into Urdu to try to access services 00:07:41.291 --> 00:07:43.871 for a group of people whose first language was Pahari. 00:07:43.871 --> 00:07:52.011 It would be a bit like going into an Irish bar in New York, finding a Catholic Irish person and speaking to them in Latin. 00:07:52.931 --> 00:08:02.891 My point is that we perpetuate the problems because of our lack of cultural awareness as to the background of those students. 00:08:03.871 --> 00:08:09.191 I don't believe that this is incidentally an issue that is isolated to the South Asian population. 00:08:09.191 --> 00:08:14.791 You may be aware that there is currently a general election taking place in France to 00:08:14.791 --> 00:08:20.951 elect the National Assembly. You're most likely not aware that one of the constituencies that 00:08:20.951 --> 00:08:36.578 is being elected is those of the French people who live in Britain There are 450 of them in London I told 100 people registered to vote There will be a Member of Parliament for the National Assembly for Britain I 00:08:36.578 --> 00:08:42.198 not quite sure what the Daily Mail is going to make of that, but there you go. The most 00:08:42.198 --> 00:08:46.858 contentious issue in that election that's taking place now is the provision of French 00:08:46.858 --> 00:08:49.878 for their children in English schools. 00:08:51.498 --> 00:08:54.558 There are consequences of these problems. 00:08:55.618 --> 00:08:57.638 The majority of secondary schools... 00:08:57.638 --> 00:08:59.258 Which you only have one minute to do. 00:08:59.638 --> 00:09:04.118 I've been well-chiped by the speaker in the house, 00:09:04.218 --> 00:09:07.158 and the gavel is about to come down. 00:09:08.018 --> 00:09:11.558 The conclusion that I draw 00:09:11.558 --> 00:09:14.978 is that we need to make a number of radical changes to policy 00:09:14.978 --> 00:09:21.278 which recognise that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. 00:09:21.958 --> 00:09:26.338 I believe with good intent we've had a policy of integration that hasn't worked 00:09:26.338 --> 00:09:29.798 and it is in fact served to segregate, not to integrate. 00:09:30.438 --> 00:09:32.618 And that we must put the children first 00:09:32.618 --> 00:09:35.478 and therefore we must take a number of policy measures 00:09:35.478 --> 00:09:41.938 such as, for example, if a secondary school child is learning a modern language 00:09:41.938 --> 00:09:47.518 whereas my white English constituents would be learning French or Spanish, 00:09:48.118 --> 00:09:51.518 my Kashmiri kids would be learning Urdu. 00:09:52.078 --> 00:09:55.278 I think that is not the right way to do things. 00:09:55.278 --> 00:09:58.278 So I think we need some controversial changes 00:09:58.278 --> 00:10:03.498 and that's why I was delighted to see that Cambridge Assessment were discussing this problem. 00:10:03.598 --> 00:10:08.278 And if I can help your debate from the policy point of view, I hope I have done so. 00:10:08.358 --> 00:10:09.198 Thank you very much indeed.