Ms Fiona Mactaggart (Slough, Labour)

I should like to praise the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South (Ms Moran), who represents a town that has much in common with my constituency of Slough—apart from the fact that Slough's airport is rather larger than Luton's. The hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) spoke passionately in claiming that the Bill is kicking away opportunity from people, but that is rich coming from a supporter of a Government who, for 19 years, stamped on children's opportunities to get the best of their education in towns such as Slough.

It is traditional in a maiden speech to say nice things about one's predecessors, but, for me, doing so will be not a duty but a pleasure. I sought the Labour nomination for the Slough constituency because I knew that, if there were a queue of parliamentarians that included Joan Lester and Fenner Brockway, I jolly well wanted to be in it. I knew Fenner when he was frail and elderly, and occasionally I made the mistake of telling him, "Take care, Fenner." He would reply, "Don't take care—LIVE!" I only hope that, in representing the town of Slough, I have the same boldness, courage and principle that distinguished both of those former hon. Members. I am very proud that Joan has followed Fenner into the other place, where I know that she will distinguish its debates, particularly on the issue of children, which we are debating today.

My most immediate predecessor, John Watts, belonged to the Conservative party, but I know from my constituents how hard he worked on their behalf, especially when they were embroiled in the travails of Britain's immigration law. I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department has already started to unravel some of the most unfair aspects of those rules.

John Watts had close relationships with many of the diverse communities in Slough, and I know that some of them were very disappointed when he went off on—as my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions calls it—"the chicken run." Unfortunately in John Watts's case, he ran into a fox's lair. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Ms Griffiths) on occupying what John Watts had hoped would be his place.

Slough is one of the few towns in the south-east which, despite 18 years of decline in manufacturing industry, still makes things, such as Mars bars, Badedas bath products and Dulux paints. Everyone has used something made in my town. Although jobs in many of our traditional industries are gone, we pioneer new technologies and are proud to be the gateway to Britain's silicon valley.

The work available in Slough has made it a town of immigrants—from south Wales, the north-east, Poland, Ireland, Punjab and Kashmir—who have travelled to Slough in search of work and a better life. For their children, education is the key to that better life. The assisted places scheme, however, does not give most of those children the key.

We have heard about how assisted places are regionally unequally distributed, but we have not heard about the degree to which most children who benefit from the scheme already have educational advantage within their families. More than two thirds of those pupils' mothers have themselves received a private or selective education, and their mothers are four times as likely as members of the general population to have an A-level. It is also not true that the assisted places scheme is the only way in which to achieve quality in education. In my county of Berkshire, more than 25 of the comprehensives have better A-level results than Pangbourne college, for example, as do my grammar schools in Slough.

The wonderful thing about the Bill is that the money that will be saved will benefit pupils in their youngest years in education, and investing in something that will take such a long time to repay shows the Government's courage. Who will benefit from such long-term investment? Every infant in a class of over 30 will benefit. I cannot list all the schools in Slough which have such classes, but they include Wexham Court combined, Cippenham Infants', Priory, Ryvers, Holy Family, Marish, St. Mary's, St. Anthony's and many others.

Teachers also will benefit from the Bill's provisions. I have been a primary teacher in an inner-city school, and I remember how much more exhausted I was in the year in which my class numbers increased by five pupils over the previous year. I also know how much better I did my job when I was teaching 24 children. Earlier this year, I was visiting the Lea school, in Slough, and a journalist asked a teacher at the school how she would vote. She simply said, "I am a teacher." For her, the choice was obvious, because no self-respecting teacher could vote for the Conservative party, which has shown such contempt for teachers' talents and efforts.

Our new Labour Government are already working with teachers. The letter that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State sent to schools and colleges emphasising that every school was good at something and that, in order to deliver high standards in education, we depended on working in partnership with teachers, was very welcome, and it has done much to provide the foundation for our initiatives.

I will tell the House about the reception class in one infant school in Chalvey which I know well. It has 28 five-year-olds in it, many of whom live in overcrowded homes with parents who are on low incomes. Twenty-five of those 28 five-year-olds can already do something that I, with many years of expensive education, cannot; they can communicate in two languages.

Children with English as a second language, however, are less likely to have access to reading materials and English at home, and they tend to perform below their ability in reading tests. I hope that the initiatives that we are taking to invest in the early years of education will provide those children, at the time when they can most benefit from it, with the key to open the educational doors which have been closed to them until now.

It is not just teachers and children but all of us who will benefit from our initiatives. Research such as the Perri/High Scope work in the United States shows that, for every £ 1 spent on the early years of education, we save £6 later in preventing crime and in remedial education.

Schools in my constituency are showing other ways in which the infant school can contribute to a harmonious community. Our Lady of Peace infants school uses its close links with parents to run an excellent parenting education class. As the consultation document "Preventing Children Offending" issued by the previous Government showed, such initiatives contribute not only to a happy home but to keeping children out of trouble. I commend them to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.

Crime and youth disorder have brought Slough to the headlines. I dispute the Daily Mail claim that a "culture of violence" pervades our Britwell estate, but it is certainly true that many living there have been victims of violent crime, which has more than doubled since 1979. We need action that works on that issue. Young people themselves, including those who have been involved in violence in the streets of Slough, know what kind of action is needed. When asked by their peers, something like one in five of them said that the priority for action was improving their educational opportunities.

Many of our Government's plans focus on human rights. I commend to my Front-Bench colleagues one human right that will never be written into law, but which we have a responsibility to deliver. I refer to the right to read. The Bill is a crucial step on the road to delivering that right. Smaller infant classes and early intervention for children who do not do well with reading are the first steps to delivering the right to read.

If those children do learn to read, they may use their skills to read the poem by John Betjeman which seems to encapsulate the public view of Slough. I wonder, however, how many hon. Members have read beyond the invitation to the friendly bombs to destroy my town. The poem goes on to condemn the lecherous business men and to lament the ignorance of the clerk who makes his profits and drinks in the bars—mock-Tudor bars, as I recall—of the constituency of the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), but who dares not look up and see the stars.

Slough's great astronomer, Herschel, used a telescope to see the stars, but the stars of hope and ambition are revealed to most of us through the power of the written word. The Bill will mean that more children can raise their sights, achieve more for themselves and achieve more for our society. I commend it to the House.

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