Lord Winston (Lab)

My Lords, it is a huge privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, for whom I have huge respect. So often I tremble when I see her, but always with respect. This is an excellent report. The noble Baroness mentioned that it obviously has gaps, which there are bound to be. I want to start with the gap on early years learning, because it is relevant to what happens later in the rest of learning. I am reminded of something that happened some 50 years ago, experimentally, with neuroscientists who blindfolded a number of newborn kittens. What was interesting was that, depending on how long the blindfold was in place and for how long they were in darkness afterwards, within, say, three weeks of blindfolding, their visual impairment was permanent. Sometimes, they were virtually completely blind. In other experiments that were done, some cats showed that they could not identify geometric spaces, in spite of normal cognitive ability in other animals. The fact of the matter is that their eyes were completely normal. Their retinas, lenses and muscles were fine, but the visual cortex at the back of the brain was hampered. Indeed, in many cases, there were no proper connections with synapses. Those synapses are the result of experience. Experience is the basis of how we learn completely. These cats did not learn to see. Just as with children who, as they go on, learn by experience all the time, this is something that we have to understand educationally. What is so important is that this applies to early years learning. It is rather sad to think of SureStart, for example, which started under a Labour Government years ago and was highly effective. It was shown by my colleagues at University College London to be a really effective way not merely of improving learning but also social cohesion, behaviour and a whole range of other things, such as the ability to express oneself and to communicate and connect with other people. That it ended is sad indeed. This applies in primary schools as well, of course, and I want to devote time to them, although I have so little. We neglect primary schools at the most important stage of all education. I see this when I go around coastal areas, for example, where the issue is not just NEET young people but the number of children on free school meals who are damaged as a result. That is one of the things we try to do at Imperial College, with no interest in trying to recruit students. We simply want to provide a public benefit with our outreach. That is very important. To conclude, one of the things that the committee recognised was that connections with the universities are very important. It does not have to be local—in fact, at Imperial we go as far as the north of England with some of our outreach activity. This is something we should be expressing, but it is not properly funded, just as, indeed, primary education is not properly funded either.