World Book Day

I am very, very proud that since 2010 the Conservative Government have made improving children’s literacy a major priority, and results are paying off. The most recent OECD programme for international student assessment international literacy tables saw the UK climb from 25th in 2009 to 13th in the 2022 rankings. I fully support the Government’s reading framework that is designed to increase the focus on reading for schoolchildren. Moreover, the Department for Education has invested an extra £24 million to support children’s literacy skills over the past year to help pupils’ recovery from the pandemic and to work towards achieving the target of 90% of primary school pupils reaching the expected standard in literacy and numeracy.

When I finished university and was looking for a job, I volunteered to teach people who had just arrived in the country how to read. I will never forget the most amazing Somalian woman, who was so eloquent and wanted to learn to read to help her children. It was the most humbling experience of my life to see the passion she had for learning to read. I hope she was able to go on to help and support her children and herself.

Books are not only invaluable for their positive impacts on readers, they also play a vital part in our economy. Across the UK, there are more than 1,000 bookstores, and the publishing industry is worth £7 billion a year to the UK economy. I hope that following the excellent Budget just delivered by the Chancellor, the publishing industry will be able to grow its economy with a number of the initiatives announced today.

It would be remiss of me in a debate on reading not to mention the Publishers Association, the member organisation representing companies of all sizes involved in publishing in this country. I have worked closely with it since entering Parliament, setting up the Conservative women’s book club for MPs; I think my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) is a member. She and I are the only ones in this debate who are able to join, because we are women and Conservatives. It has been a joyous experience to bring Conservative MPs from all intakes to talk about a book, and to enjoy fiction again. Some of the MPs involved told me it is the first time they have read a fiction book since entering Parliament. It is so important to put aside time to read books for our health and wellbeing.

I have also worked closely with the Publishers Association to establish a summer reading list for parliamentarians. I thank the MPs and peers who have given us their favourite book recommendations over the past few years. Last summer, my choice was “Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad” by Daniel Finkelstein. I hope that everyone in today’s debate will provide us with their summer reading choice this year.

We all have a part to play in supporting World Book Day and encouraging everyone, whatever their age, to pick up a book. I know I will be doing just that when I visit the schools in my constituency later this week. Sometimes, it really can be as simple as this: one book can change someone’s entire life for good.

When my boys were younger, we used to go on holidays, but very quickly the boys grew up and they did not want to go on holidays with their mum and dad any more. I genuinely could have read five or six books while I was away. Reading enables you to put your busy mind somewhere else; it is just phenomenal. When I was listening to the hon. Lady, it was quite clear to me that reading books helps her. I believe it helps us all, transporting us to a different place.

The world is open to anyone through a book, which is just wonderful. That is why I love to see World Book Day coming round. Yesterday, there was a World Book Day event in Portcullis House. It was lovely to go, as I do every year, in support. This year, the celebration was in the Boothroyd Room; I believe that is right. That room is much bigger than Room R, Room S or Room U, where the event has sometimes been held, which tells me that World Book Day is expanding. Yesterday it used at least half the Boothroyd Room—and what an exercise it was in how to promote books to children. All being well, next week or the week after I will take the half a dozen or so books that I was given yesterday to one of the primary schools in my constituency and give them to some of the children there. I hope that they will read them.

I love to see pictures of children dressed up as their favourite characters: from Disney princesses to Marvel heroes; from Bananas in Pyjamas to Toad of Toad Hall; and from characters in the Bible to war heroes like Blair Mayne, who was always my hero as a young boy in Ballywalter and Newtownards back in the ’60s and early ’70s.

World Book Day is a day to encourage children to immerse themselves in the world of reading, to escape from the world we live in and perhaps travel elsewhere. One of my local primary schools, Victoria Primary School, this year has an initiative whereby children wrap up one of their books and swap it with someone in their class. I think that is a fantastic idea: a child reads a book and gives it to someone else, who gives them their book in return. All of a sudden, their knowledge becomes greater and they become even more avid readers.

My parliamentary aide is an avid reader—she must be to be able to read up on every topic that I speak on! Her knowledge is encyclopaedic; with respect, it is perhaps much greater than that of other people who do speechwriting. She has passed that joy on to her children. Indeed, this year Santa brought her two girls a bookcase with books on it for their rooms. Every Saturday morning, they go with their grandad to the library, which conveniently has a park beside it, and the staff watch their wee dog while they get their new book. Every Saturday, they go to the library with their grandpa to get a new book—what an insatiable desire to read! Their school has a rewards programme: the children progress from belt to belt until they end up with a black belt—not in judo, but in reading. That is encouraging.

I tell these stories not to boast, but to explain what schools in my area are doing to progress reading. All these things make it interesting for children to get engaged. However, the fact of the matter is that literacy is a challenge that has to be met head on, and for that schools need funding. I am pleased to see the Minister in his place, although he does not have responsibility for Northern Ireland. I will tell some stories about what we have done in Northern Ireland. What I wish to do in this debate is encourage people: I wish to encourage the Minister and highlight the importance of reading; and I want to encourage the two Opposition spokespeople. I know they will all encourage me in return.

It is great for children to have grandparents who can take them to the library or a dad who has the time to read to them before bed each night, but the issue is that that scene is not replicated everywhere. That is why many children are in reading recovery, as schools attempt to fill the breach and help children not only to attain an average level of reading but to improve more easily.

There is a duty on us, and a real interest in this issue. We are blessed to have so many teachers whose vocation is to educate children and make them better. Everyone here advocates that—in particular, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who has just arrived. Reading recovery needs teachers, and that needs funding. In the gentlest of ways, I remind the Minister and others in the Chamber that reading levels are largely based on the funding that schools can access.

The other day, someone in Westminster Hall—I cannot remember who—said that some schools do not have a library at all. I was quite amazed; I did not think any school did not have a library. I think it is important that they do. Giving those on free school dinners book tokens, and paying for teachers dedicated to helping with reading and encouraging others to be more passionate about it, can be done only if the prioritisation—the focus, demand and drive—is right here.

Thankfully, Northern Ireland is ranked fifth in the world for reading proficiency among primary school children. Data from the 2021 progress in international reading literacy study revealed that children from Northern Ireland significantly outperformed those in 52 of the 56 participating countries. I am very proud to be here to tell others about what our schools do, what our education system does and what parents do in Northern Ireland. That is something we can be very proud of on World Book Day, but we cannot be complacent. There are still children who cannot read well, children who struggle and children who have no enjoyment of reading. The fun of World Book Day is a time to focus on all that. Collectively and singly, we should attempt to do better.

When it comes to reading, I always try to leave with a quotation. This quotation is from my favourite book in the whole world—the Bible—and it is Proverbs 22:6:

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

What are we doing for our children through books? We are teaching them about the world, about life, about social engagement, and about how they can be great adults in a world that may seem incredibly strange and, for some, may even be a world that they are not sure they want to be in. If we give our children a love of books, that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives. For me, that is a definite priority, and one that we should all, collectively, try to achieve.

It is important that we thank all the people who have been instrumental in creating the structure for World Book Day. We must also thank all the teachers, teaching assistants, support staff and parents, and the children themselves, who make World Book Day the living, wonderful, beautiful thing it is.

However, I met my match when I got married. My wife, Fiona, is such an avid book reader that she once managed not to realise that the toast under the grill had gone on fire when she was standing next to it, because she was so engrossed in her book. She also caused consternation at the then Glenwood library in Glenrothes in the days before computers. I do not know how many people are young enough to remember this—I think it is an ever decreasing number—but library books were once managed using wee card envelopes that we had to put a tab in. [Interruption.] I see the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster nodding—she obviously learned about that in history at school. Fiona used to get four books out of the library in the morning, read them and take them back in the afternoon, which completely knackered the system because the tickets were still in the “Issues” and were not ready to be taken back in the “Returns”. They came to a compromise: when she went in in the morning and got books, the library staff would leave her tickets to one side, because they knew she would be back later in the day.

Something else that not many Members here will remember—this was actually on my fifteenth birthday— is that the BBC started a programme called “On the Move” to encourage adult literacy. A big part of it was trying to get adults who could not read, or who were not confident in their ability, to learn that that was not something to be ashamed of. If, for whatever reason, they had not had the chance to learn to read adequately in childhood, they would be given the chance in adulthood. That programme launched the careers of people such as Bob Hoskins and Martin Shaw. Those who have seen it will immediately recognise the wee logo that went with it, although they might not be able to describe it now. My uncle, Alex Mackenzie, designed that wee logo for “On the Move”. He has never received a single penny in royalties for it, but he did it for the love of adult education.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) suggested that we all chip in with nominations for a summer reading list, and I notice that no one has risen to the challenge. I am going to suggest a book called “On the Come Up” by Angie Thomas, which was recommended to me not on World Book Day but at a summer reading event in Parliament a few years ago. One of the volunteers asked me what kinds of books I usually read, and went and picked it out. It is the story of a young, black, inner-city American girl who is a very talented rapper. The only one of those words I would identify with is “young”, and that was quite a long time ago. I said, “That’s not what I usually read,” and the volunteer said, “Exactly.” Sometimes it is important to encourage ourselves and others to read something completely different. People say that travel broadens the mind, but reading can broaden the mind a great deal without us having to travel very far.

I often make a point of reading about things I think I am not interested in, just to see whether I become interested in them. But we all like to go home sometimes, and I still love finding books by Val McDermid, a great Fife author; books by Ian Rankin, who was brought up in Cardenden, in my constituency; or some of the Scottish books of Sara Sheridan. The two books on my bookshelf that are falling apart because they have been read so often are “Yes Minister”—that was before I got interested in politics, by the way—and “Hamish’s Mountain Walk”, which was written by another person with a long association with Fife. Hamish used to teach in a school in Buckhaven, and was the first person to do a continuous non-powered journey across all 278 Munro mountains in Scotland. “Hamish’s Mountain Walk” is a about that, but there is a lot more in it than just mountain walking, and it contains a phrase I have always remembered. He encourages people not just to walk up and down a hill, or to cycle around the roads, but to take in as much of what they pass through as possible. He writes:

“Any book can be ordered from the local library where a whole world of vicarious fun lies ready to hand.”

That is as true today as it was when Hamish wrote those words almost exactly 50 years ago.

The difficulty is that, because so many local libraries have closed or restricted their opening hours, they are sometimes not that local any more, which is very sad. Although local authorities in Scotland—and I think elsewhere in the UK—have to provide for library services, there is no minimum standard of provision, and there is no statutory inspection system, in the way there is for policing, education or social work. Inevitably, if councils get squeezed but want to avoid going bankrupt, they have to keep providing the services for which there is a required standard of provision, and, sadly, the things that are not an absolute legal requirement start to suffer. That often means that cultural services, library services and so on are the first to suffer, which is sad.

Getting read bedtime stories by a parent or another adult is a great thing, but the earlier that children learn to read for themselves, the quicker they will learn to start thinking for themselves. That is vital, and it is something that modern society seems determined to stamp out. People are not encouraged to think for themselves enough, and reading a book allows them to do so. I have seen evidence that children who read a lot of fiction, regardless of whether it is, in the eyes of middle-class folk like us, worthy or trashy fiction, are less likely to grow up to be psychopaths—I mean clinically diagnosed psychopaths; I am not using it as a slang term. When someone reads fiction, they have to put themselves in the position of somebody else. We cannot read a book of fiction without putting ourselves in the shoes of one or more of the characters. Simply by reading what looks to be just a story about spacemen, ballet dancers or whatever, children learn to be empathetic.