House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Liddle
Introduction: Lord Deben
Death of a Member: Lord Quinton
The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)
My Lords, I regret that I have to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Quinton, on June 19th. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Health: Cancer
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Gardner of Parkes
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have proposals to use photodynamic therapy (PDT) for the treatment of cancer, particularly oral cancer.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, it is for clinicians to decide on the suitability of treating a patient with photodynamic therapy—PDT. It is then for primary care trusts to consider whether to fund that treatment, taking into account the available evidence. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has issued interventional procedure guidance on photodynamic therapy for nine cancer indications, including oral cancer.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he agree with me that the most important thing, whatever the type of cancer, is early detection? Will he encourage the research that I hear is being done and which we read about in all the newspapers, which entails a very simple blood test that detects cancer at the earliest stage?
Earl Howe
My noble friend is absolutely correct. It is now generally agreed that the most important reasons for the lower survival rates in England compared with other European countries are: low public awareness of the signs and symptoms of cancer, delays in people presenting to their doctors, and patients having more advanced disease at the time of diagnosis. We are looking very carefully at how best to achieve earlier diagnosis. There are some key messages on the NHS Choices website and the national awareness and early diagnosis initiative has been under way since 2008. As for my noble friend’s second question, on the blood test, the newspaper reports in recent days have been extremely exciting in terms of the potential. However, it is clear that researchers will have to demonstrate improved clinical outcomes for patients before any large-scale rollout can be applied.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
My Lords, given the Minister’s reply, does he agree that targeted screening remains the best way to prevent growth of oral cancer? Given the success of the previous Government in cutting the overall rates of cancer deaths, is he prepared to guarantee that the current investment and screening programme will continue?
Earl Howe
The noble Baroness is quite right that screening plays a very important part in the detection of cancer. However, it is not universally applicable to every cancer. In terms of oral cancer, which was the particular subject of my noble friend’s Question, there are difficulties. For example, there is considerable uncertainty about how the disease progresses—its natural history—and we cannot predict which lesions will be malignant and which will not. We need clear guidelines—for dentists, for example—and we do not have those. There is also no clear evidence base for the management of malignant lesions when we find them. However, the National Screening Committee will review its position again in about three years’ time and will no doubt take all the current evidence into account.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, does my noble friend accept that when we are trying to improve treatments for cancer, we are looking for non-invasive approaches and specific and, so far as possible, less expensive approaches? Photodynamic therapy has been very useful not just for oral cancer but for skin cancers of various kinds, particularly squamous cell carcinoma. Does he accept that encouraging not just dermatologists but also general practitioners to move in this direction will mean that we can have specific, non-invasive and generally quite efficient treatment, and that that is to be encouraged by the Government?
Earl Howe
I am very grateful to my noble friend. It may help the House if I briefly explain what PDT is. It is a technique that uses laser or other light sources combined with a light-sensitive drug, which in combination destroy cancer cells. When the light is directed in the area of the cancer, the drug is activated. As my noble friend indicated, although this is an invasive procedure, it is minimally so; and its advantage is that, unlike radiotherapy, no cumulative toxicity is involved, so someone can be treated with PDT repeatedly. However, there are difficulties, one of which is that there is no obvious clinical leadership in this field, and that has to be addressed. There need to be centres of excellence in order for the right lessons to be learnt and the right research to be done.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, there is no doubt that, once patients are at the hospital, they are likely to get the treatment, but can the Minister assure us that GPs will be encouraged to make speedy referrals? In the cases that I know of, the difficulty has been in getting from the GP to the centre of excellence in order to get the treatment.
Earl Howe
The noble Baroness is quite right, which is why in the NHS there is such an emphasis on speed of referral when a GP first suspects that cancer may be present in a patient. This is an area to which we are very alive, and I hope that we will be able to make further announcements about it in due course.
Baroness Thornton
Does the Minister accept that new cancer treatments such as PDT have benefited both from crucial investment by the Government and from partnership with leading cancer research charities? Is he prepared to guarantee that this crucial research will continue to be funded by the Government so that more deaths from cancer can be prevented in the future?
Earl Howe
The noble Baroness is quite right. This is a partnership effort, and she may know that a systematic review of PDT has been undertaken as part of the Health Technology Assessment programme, which is an element of the National Institute for Health Research. The final report on that will be published in August, but the institute has already identified that there are not enough high-quality research studies in this area. We know from experts in the field that there are at least three or four areas where further research should be prioritised.
Baroness Deech
Is the Minister aware that this month is the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser? At that time its use in medicine could not have been foreseen. Does he therefore accept how important it is to enable universities to continue to do research in this field, in the hope that there will be future inventions, and not to cut them back in this area?
Earl Howe
The noble Baroness makes a crucial point. I am sure she will agree that neither basic research nor translational research should be neglected when we look at the research effort. Indeed, my own department is looking carefully at how the barriers to clinical research can be reduced. Therefore, she is absolutely right to focus our attention on the importance of continuing research.
Dangerous Dogs Act 1991
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to amend or to improve the operation of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, on 1 June a wide-ranging public consultation on dangerous dogs laws closed. This consultation received 4,250 responses, which will need to be analysed before any action relating to dangerous dogs legislation is considered.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, given the explosion in the number of attack dogs in London, with the number seized by the Metropolitan Police—I declare an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority—rising 22-fold in five years and with the Met having to budget £10.5 million for kennelling costs alone, when can we expect the Government to complete this review of the legislation? What, in the shorter term, is going to be done to expedite the processes that can often mean that dogs have to be held for many months before a final decision can be taken by the courts on their disposal?
Lord Henley
My Lords, the noble Lord is right to draw attention to the growth in such attacks and in the number of people who have to seek hospital treatment as a result of attacks by dogs. The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 is not the only piece of legislation available to local authorities and others dealing with those matters. There is the Dogs Act 1871, the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Animal Welfare Act 2006. We will certainly consider carefully the consultation started by the previous Administration and make appropriate decisions afterwards.
Earl Cathcart
Is not one of the problems of the Dangerous Dogs Act the unintended consequences of listing four types of dangerous dogs? Thousands of responsible owners have had their pets destroyed not because of how they behave but because of how they look. Surely new legislation should concentrate on irresponsible dog owners rather than on only the breed.
Lord Henley
My Lords, we will certainly look at the problems of irresponsible owners, but there are certain advantages in breed-specific legislation. The police are of the view that without the restriction that that legislation gives, particularly on pit bulls, there would be many more serious dog attacks.
Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior
Does the Minister agree that many of the dangerous dogs are imported from overseas, especially from Europe? They are imported into Ireland initially, and from there go to Northern Ireland and then to the mainland. If the dogs were microchipped, as they are under the Pet Travel Scheme on the importation of dogs, it would be known to whom they belonged and whether people were training them to be attack dogs. The ownership and movement of those dogs could be followed by a simple procedure of microchipping. It would also help to identify, as has been mentioned, whether the dogs are dangerous.
Lord Henley
My Lords, compulsory microchipping was considered in the consultation. I do not think that it would necessarily solve all the problems because those who possess such dogs might not bother to get them microchipped and they would still be in breach of the law. The evidence from abroad is that where there is compulsory microchipping only 50 per cent of the dogs are microchipped.
Lord Corbett of Castle Vale
My Lords, can the Minister confirm that one of the problems facing the police in dealing with dogs which they suspect to be pit bulls is the pit-bull-type dog? It can take many months for the police to establish exactly the breed or the type of dog and at enormous cost to public funds. Some of the dogs’ homes are considering refusing to take these dogs because of the time taken and the cost to the charities. Is that part of the consultation?
Lord Henley
My Lords, there have been problems with dogs being kept in kennels for rather a long time as a result of the legal processes. We will certainly want to talk to colleagues in the Ministry of Justice about whether the legal processes can be speeded up so that the dogs need not be kept in kennels for so long. We have heard from the Metropolitan Police in particular that the costs are very high and rising.
Lord Elton
My Lords, what action is available to the courts for disposal of dangerous dogs and prohibited breeds? While the owners await decisions of the court, is it the case that a number of the dogs disappear?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I am not aware that any have disappeared from kennels while waiting for the court’s decision. If my noble friend has any evidence of that, we would be grateful if he would pass it on to us. The Dangerous Dogs Act deals not only with specific breeds but, under Section 3, allows action against a dog of any type or breed if it is deemed to be behaving dangerously.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, following my noble friend’s point about timing, can the Minister tell us when the Government will respond to the consultation and whether they will publish the results?
Lord Henley
My Lords, as regards timing, I do not think that I can help the noble Baroness much more than by saying that we will do that as soon as is possible—we have all said that before—but we will certainly publish the results of our consultation when we make the appropriate decisions about how we should respond to it.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I asked my noble friend what disposals were available to the courts respectively for dangerous dogs and prohibited breeds. Perhaps he could remind me.
Lord Henley
My Lords, the courts can order the dog to be put down if they find that it is a prohibited breed or if it is dangerous, but that will be done in the most humane manner possible.
Lord Addington
My Lords, has the noble Lord considered that resources and the number of people trained to deal with the Act might be one of the most important factors in whether this or any other piece of legislation works?
Lord Henley
My Lords, Defra offers guidance to police forces, and all police forces have to have a designated dog legislation officer who knows what the law is and how it can be used to best effect. We certainly assist in providing training for those dog legislation officers, so that local authorities can enforce the law in the most appropriate manner.
Justice: Legal Fees
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Lester of Herne Hill
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to exercise the power conferred by section 58(4)(a) of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 to reduce the maximum success fee chargeable under a conditional fee agreement in defamation proceedings.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
The Government are currently considering the recommendations from Lord Justice Jackson’s report, Review of Civil Litigation Costs, published in January 2010. The Government’s analysis of Sir Rupert’s recommendations, once completed, will determine the next steps on the success fee in defamation proceedings.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, first, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and the right honourable Jack Straw, who began to focus on the abuses created by conditional fee agreements with 100 per cent success fees. I urge the Minister and his colleagues not to wait for consideration of the vast Jackson report before taking urgent action to deal with what I think is a scandal, where some fellow members of my profession charge inordinate fees through the conditional fee agreement so that the costs far outweigh any damages that NGOs, individuals or the press may have to pay. That is a very urgent matter.
Lord McNally
My Lords, we recognise the sense of urgency, but also the complexity of the issue. As my noble friend will know, the proposals made by the previous Government ran into trouble at the other end of the building. We are looking at the Jackson report and we will treat the matter with the urgency that my noble friend said that it deserves.
Lord Bach
My Lords, the Minister knows that on 25 March last, this House agreed the statutory instrument that would have given effect to the intention of his noble friend Lord Lester. Will he please use his undoubted great influence in government to ensure that that intention is fulfilled and that that happens soon? It needs to. This is a bit of a scandal. We cannot wait for Jackson. We look forward to the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, in due course but this needs quick government action. Can the Minister please do his best to ensure that that happens?
Lord McNally
I can give assurances that we will treat the matter with all due seriousness. Whether we will follow the same path as the previous Administration is more questionable. As the noble Lord will know, Lord Justice Jackson has made a different recommendation about how to deal with this problem. We will weigh up what he has argued in his report and consider the debate in this House and other views on what the previous Administration was proposing to do.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, can the Minister confirm that a very large proportion of success fees are paid in defamation cases brought by claimants who are sufficiently wealthy themselves to pay a proper professional fee for their action? Therefore, success fees make no contribution whatsoever to proper access to justice. In asking that question, I declare an interest as I act for Mirror Group Newspapers, which is bringing proceedings in the European Court of Human Rights relating to success fees in the case of Naomi Campbell and her privacy complaint.
Lord McNally
Having spent some years treading the line between public relations clients and what I could say in the House, I am always very envious of how my learned friends manage to tread that line so well. This defamation area produces great scandals, and I think that the balance of Lord Justice Jackson’s report will point us in the direction of urgent action. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, who has made available to my department his not inconsiderable research and preparation for a Defamation Bill, which will, I hope, enable us to move forward very quickly on this. I do not think I will say any more about the Mirror Group case.
Lord Bates
Can the Minister confirm whether this change in success fees would apply to cases heard in the High Court? If so, is he aware of a ruling in the High Court this morning that the decision of the previous Government to impose unitary authorities on Norwich and Exeter was unlawful? Given that this is a victory for common sense, will he ensure that there is no maximum in the success fee available to counsel?
Lord McNally
I thank the noble Lord for bringing me up to date on that saga. I think there should be a limit on success fees or, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, suggested, that the success fee should be borne by the successful claimant.
Lord Clinton-Davis
What are the views of the Bar Council and the Law Society about this issue? Do they think it can wait or do they demand urgent action?
Lord McNally
We are taking the advice of the Bar Council and the Law Society. Nobody has suggested that the issue should wait. Lord Justice Jackson has produced a 500-page report which even due courtesy would suggest should be studied before the Government proceed to action.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Would my noble friend look more widely at the conditional fee situation now prevailing? As he may know, there are large commercial purchasers of cases from the public—they are not subject to any Law Society or Bar Council rules—who then sell them in bulk to solicitors for a fee per case plus a proportion of the conditional fee gathered in the course of it. Would he not accept that that is a gross problem for justice today?
Lord McNally
The way the conditional fee regime has grown up has produced a number of abuses and anomalies. Right from the beginning, from those Benches across there, I raised some of the actions of the companies to which my noble friend referred. I know that Lord Justice Jackson has looked at the actions of those companies in his report and has made some recommendations. I think that right across the House, there is a general feeling that there are abuses in the conditional fee system. We have to get the balance right between the access to justice that conditional fees give and some of the anomalies and, indeed, abuses that have grown up in practice. We will do so after consideration of Jackson, but with all due urgency.
Economy: Eurozone
Lord Trimble
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to members of the European Union to protect the British economy from the financial situation in the eurozone.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Treasury Ministers attend regular meetings of EU Ministers, including the Council of Economic and Finance Ministers—ECOFIN. These discussions cover a wide range of issues, including the ongoing situation in sovereign debt markets.
Lord Trimble
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer, and I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests. I have two points to raise with him. Funds have been established to try and help countries in the EU that are in difficulties, but one of the underlying causes of those difficulties is the loss of competitiveness. Is that likely to be solved before the money and time run out? If it is not solved by then, what then happens?
Secondly, I draw my noble friend’s attention to the alternative investment fund managers directive that is currently being imposed on us. The European Parliament estimated that that directive would cost the European Union as a whole roughly 0.2 per cent of its GDP, but, as most of the alternative investment funds are in the United Kingdom, the potential cost to us is much greater. Have the Government managed to draw any of this directive’s teeth? If not, how much is it likely to cost the United Kingdom?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I will deal first with the question of competitiveness. The UK Government, the European Council and the Union well recognise that competitiveness must be improved in parallel with steps that are being taken to deal with the immediate financial situation of a number of member states. I draw my noble friend’s attention to the EU economic taskforce under the leadership of the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, which will report to the October Council. As well as dealing with crisis resolution matters, it has competitiveness indicators very much on its agenda. Indeed, it considers competitiveness absolutely in parallel with crisis resolution issues, as well as more broadly as part of the Europe 2020 exercise.
On the alternative investment fund managers directive, the European Council and the European Parliament have each taken positions that do not agree with each other, so the UK Government and the industry have a short window up to the end of July in which to make final representations and attempt to make sure that we get the best deal for what is a very important industry for the City of London out of this trialogue process.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that a good way in which to protect the British economy would be to refuse to underwrite massive sums for Brussels, such as the £8 billion mentioned by his noble friend Lord De Mauley on 8 June, which are illegal under the treaties? How many billions are we going to be exposed to through the illegal breach of Article 125, which forbids member states to bail out others?
Lord Sassoon
I thank the noble Lord for his questions. First, to be clear, it is the view of the UK Government that no illegal action has been taken under Article 125 or any of the other relevant articles. On the UK’s exposure, we have not as a country participated in the €440 billion special purpose vehicle for assistance. We do, however, participate in the €60 billion finance facility, which is available to any member state under Article 122.2 and which we think strikes an appropriate balance between the eurozone taking primary responsibility for stabilisation within the eurozone and the important part that we have to play as part of the wider EU 27. For completeness, we participate in the IMF standby facilities.
Lord Myners
Can the Minister confirm categorically to the House that the Government will in no circumstances divulge to European institutions the thinking behind or the detail of proposed Budgets or the work of the OBR? Does he agree that if that categoric assurance cannot be given, there are grounds for a referendum?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I can give an assurance that any request to submit the UK Budget to Europe will not be completed until the Budget has been submitted to and approved by the UK Parliament.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we want to see growth in Europe and businesses growing, expanding and being given the opportunity to borrow money from the banks? Is it therefore a sensible time to think about taxing the banks and reducing their ability to make that money available?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I think that we will probably come back to the question of bank levies tomorrow after my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget. He has made it completely clear that the UK supports bank levies. We will take unilateral action, but we want to seek international agreement to make sure that the bank levies are, as far as possible, introduced on a common basis.
Lord Barnett
My Lords, the noble Lord will have noticed that he did not answer the Question on the Order Paper. Does he recognise that there are serious consequences for the UK if there is any major collapse in the economy in the eurozone, not least to the UK banks which have large numbers of debts owing from many countries within the eurozone? In those circumstances, should we not seek to help rather than hinder them and gloat over their difficulties?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I am grateful for the reminder that not only are 40 per cent of the UK’s exports exposed to the eurozone—so we want to see a stable eurozone—but that through financial linkages the whole financial system, including the banking system, is exposed. That is why we believe that the forthcoming publication of bank stress tests is an important part of the support going forward.
Allhallows Staining Church Bill [HL]
The Chairman of Committees
That the Commons message of 16 June be now considered; and that the promoters of the Allhallows Staining Church Bill [HL], which was originally introduced in this House in Session 2009–10 on 25 January 2010, should have leave to proceed with the Bill in the current Session according to the provisions of Standing Order 150B (Revival of Bills).
That the Commons message of 16 June be now considered; and that the promoters of the Kent County Council (Filming on Highways) Bill [HL], which was originally introduced in this House in Session 2009–10 on 25 January 2010, should have leave to proceed with the Bill in the current Session according to the provisions of Standing Order 150B (Revival of Bills).
Works of Art Committee
The Chairman of Committees
That Baroness Maddock be appointed a member of the Select Committee in place of Lord Smith of Clifton, resigned, and that Lord Roberts of Llandudno be appointed a member of the Select Committee.
Business of the House
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That leave be given to advance the Motion in the name of Baroness Verma from Monday 28 June to Tuesday 22 June.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, in moving the Motion, it may be helpful if I say a few words about the scheduling of business in the next few weeks. The Motion on the Order Paper today seeks leave to bring forward from next week to tomorrow the debate in the name of my noble friend Lady Verma on progress towards meeting the millennium development goal on universal primary education. This proposed change has come about as a result of discussions on the Academies Bill, which the House will begin considering in Committee today.
Last Wednesday, the Chief Whip published Forthcoming Business, which set out three consecutive days for Committee stage on the Academies Bill. I must confess that there was a misunderstanding as to how this came about, which led to some feeling that this was not the optimum way to proceed. As a result, there were further and very constructive discussions between the usual channels, which led to the republication of Forthcoming Business. This revised edition sets out three days for Committee stage on the Academies Bill—today, Wednesday 23 June and Monday 28 June. I am sure that these revised dates will be welcomed by all sides of the House. Furthermore, the usual channels have agreed to take Report stage on Wednesday 7 July.
The usual channels are a vital part of self-regulation in this House and we remain committed to ensuring that they work effectively on behalf of the whole House. I beg to move.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I warmly welcome the statement and the clarification from the Leader of the House. The usual channels provide a very important function for and within this House, although sometimes some noble Lords think that perhaps the system is too opaque. However, I believe that it works very well. For the smooth running of business and the well-being of the House as a whole, it is crucial that the whole House has confidence in the system. The noble Lord’s statement demonstrates that we agree on the importance of a fair system which respects the role of the Government and the Opposition. I thank the noble Lord.
Arrangement of Business
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, at a convenient point after 4 pm today my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford will repeat an Urgent Question as a Statement on the free schools policy, followed immediately by my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, who will repeat a Statement on the European Council.
Academies Bill [HL]
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
We begin today the first scrutiny in Committee of the first Bill from the new coalition Government. The Government have tried to present the Academies Bill now before us as non-controversial, as an extension of Labour policy on academies, and so as something that should be easy for reasonable people on this side of the House to support. It is to be a decentralising measure, devolving more power to local people to run their schools and making a contribution to improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools, with all the benefits to children’s life chances and to our wider society that that implies. This Bill is also being presented as a contribution to the big society—the idea which the Conservatives promoted a little in the general election. I suspect that we will hear less about that as we go forward, but nevertheless it is a very interesting idea.
I believe that the Bill is nothing of the sort. We on this side recognise it for what it may well turn out to be—highly centralising, potentially damaging to children’s education, damaging to communities, and a device more to establish free schools by the back door. The Bill does not seek to improve our education system. Instead, it may well be shown that it seeks to make fundamental and damaging changes to it. The Government would not increase the number of Labour-designed academies, designed when we were in government; rather they seek to create a new class of school with a motive which is entirely different from the laudable aims behind the Labour academies. The schools that they would create are not necessarily appropriate to bear the name “academy”. That is why we seek to deny that name to these schools. They should be called what they will be: direct maintained schools.
Ministers have spent so many years attacking local government that they have forgotten something about which their own Conservative-controlled Local Government Association has reminded them:
“Councils don’t run schools and haven’t done for many years”.
That is a quotation from an LGA Bill briefing. Schools run themselves, which is how it should be, but councils do have a range of statutory duties to protect the welfare of children in their area, including a duty to promote,
“the fulfilment by every child concerned of his educational potential”.
Councils make sure that there are enough school places for all the children who need them, and their top priority is to make sure that the same high standards of education are offered to all students, whether they are taught in a community school or an academy. Councils make sure that the admissions process operates fairly so that every child gets a chance to go to a good local school. They oversee the distribution of funding in conjunction with local schools in a cost-effective way. They provide support for children with special educational needs, something I know that the Committee is concerned about, and they are the champions of children in care.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, the noble Baroness rightly reminds the House of the accomplishments of the academies that were set up in the past decade. We pay generous tribute to the success of those academies. Because we have been able to observe how strongly they have raised the standards of so many young people, this Government have decided to build on that success and create even more academies and much more quickly.
I find it very sad that the noble Baroness, who played such a major part in the growth of the academies when her party was in power, should now seek to denigrate the attempt that is being made to spread that much more widely. I will not attempt for a moment to answer all of the very many questions that she asked and the very many criticisms that she directed at the policy, but at one point she asked whether she had misunderstood. I would like to pick on one particular area where she has misunderstood. It is perfectly true that the intention is to allow those schools that are rated outstanding by Ofsted to come through on a fast track, but the main thrust of the policy is exactly as it has been before: to establish academies in those places with the least successful schools—the most failing schools in the most deprived areas—so that the standards for those children who have been educationally so poorly served can be greatly improved. That is a misunderstanding.
I realise that it is a common misunderstanding because I have had it said to me by many people and many friends in the education service over the past few weeks. I am sure that my noble friend will underline the fact that it is important to recognise that just because there is a fast track for outstanding schools, it does not mean at all that schools that are educationally failing so many of their young people are not still the main focus of our policy in the Bill.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I do not intend to make a Second Reading speech, but I understand why the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, did so. She makes a good case for keeping on academies. Even though one or two of them have not done quite so well, most of them have. However, she did not make any case for not allowing other schools to have the freedoms that her Government felt were so important to give to schools that needed to improve. That is what this Bill does. My breath was taken away to hear her comments about centralisation given the track record of the new Labour Government.
At first glance, the amendments look as though they are about labels. I have always been of the view that a label should say what is in the tin. Indeed, in the Liberal Democrat policy paper about our version of academies, we decided to call them exactly what was in the tin, which was “sponsor-managed schools”. Our version of academies was slightly different from the one that we are considering today, but now we are in coalition.
Indeed, the amendments would return us to the new Labour version of academies. In particular, Amendments 39 and 40 would remove the ability of outstanding schools to apply for academy status. When the Labour Government first introduced academies, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches asked why other schools should not have the same freedom to innovate as was being offered to these schools. We believe strongly in the importance of the professionalism of teachers, and schools have a duty to provide a curriculum that is appropriate to their particular cohort of students. Most schools actually do not use the range of freedoms to innovate that they were given in legislation passed under the previous Government. We are very much in favour of allowing professionals to innovate and provide appropriate education for their children. Those sort of freedoms should be given to all schools, but I can understand why my noble friend wants to approach first those schools that have already proved the professionalism of their leadership and their staff by becoming outstanding, to allow them to run with those freedoms and use them well in providing a good education for children. There is a lot of logic in adding to the cohort of what were failing schools, which will now get special attention under the academies scheme, those schools that have already demonstrated that they can provide an outstanding education, and in giving them the freedoms that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, introduced in the first place.
I do not support any of these amendments. They are not just about labels, of course. They are about removing a very important group of schools from the Bill.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, the Church of England has the largest family of academies under the existing provisions, as noble Lords will be aware, and is currently educating 34,000 children from relatively poor areas, so we are interested very much in the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, is making. As it stands, the Bill encourages her in the line that she has taken. However, as I look through the amendments tabled for us to debate in Committee, I see real potential—if the Minister is minded to accept some of them—for the Bill to enable us to recognise clearly the family resemblance between the new wave of academies and the ones that are now in existence. I await with interest the way that this debate develops. At the moment, I would find it quite easy to support the amendments, but I hope that I will find it very difficult by the end of this process.
Lord Adonis
I begin by paying tribute to the Church of England for the outstanding work that it does in promoting academies. As the right reverend Prelate said, the Church of England is the largest single sponsor of academies. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool and I worked closely on the development of academies in Liverpool and the area around, and they are making marvellous progress, extending opportunity in an area that has not had it in the past.
This is my first opportunity in the House to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on his appointment, which I do very warmly indeed. I should also say how glad I am that my noble friends Lady Royall and Lady Morgan are leading on this Bill for the Opposition. They bring a wealth of talent and experience to the task.
My noble friend Lady Morgan raised a number of policy issues about the extension of academies, which I shall leave the Minister to respond to. However, on the specific issue about the legal name that should be given to a certain category of school, I find myself in surprising agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. She and I are survivors from the interminable debates on the Education Act 2005, on which our views did not coincide all the time, particularly on the issue of academies. But she is right that, in terms of legal category, the schools to which the Bill proposes to accord that status have all the essential characteristics of existing academies.
I know that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet but, for two reasons, I do not support this amendment on the name that it gives to a legal category of schools. First, the schools which we are talking about in this Bill are academies in all their essential legal characteristics. They are managed independently of the local authority, on a contract with the Secretary of State that regulates a whole host of their policies and funding and which will be similar to that of existing academies. My noble friend says that academies are schools largely in deprived or challenging circumstances, and she is correct, although I need to point out to the House that that is not the exclusive preserve of academies. A number of entirely new schools have been set up as academies in very mixed social areas and a number of successful schools, including successful independent schools, have come into the state system by using the legal category of academies.
The legal status is clearly set out in Section 65 of the Education Act 2002, which is cast in similar terms to Clause 1. I emphasise the fact that the 2002 Act, which was passed by the last Government, does not specify that academies, in legal terms, can only be schools that pass a threshold either of deprivation or of low achievement. On the contrary, I invite Members of the Committee to look at Section 65, which says:
“The Secretary of State may enter into an agreement with any person under which … that person undertakes to establish and maintain, and to carry on or provide for the carrying on of, an independent school in England with the characteristics mentioned in subsection (2)”.
Those characteristics are that the school,
“has a curriculum satisfying the requirements of section 78 of the Education Act 2002”,
and that it,
“provides education for pupils of different abilities who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated”.
Those provisions are almost identical to those in the Bill.
If there is no legal distinction between the schools that we are talking about in this Bill and those referred to under the Education Act 2002, is there another public policy reason for us to give a different label to certain schools within a similar legal category? I urge your Lordships not to do so. We already have an alphabet soup of different names for schools within the state system: community schools, foundation schools with a foundation, foundation schools without a foundation, voluntary aided schools, voluntary controlled schools, trust schools, city technology colleges, grammar schools, maintained special schools and non-maintained special schools. If the schools that we are talking about are academies, as they are in their essential legal characteristics, the right thing to do is to call them academies and not to add to the alphabet soup.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, paid tribute to the right reverend Prelates, so I shall pay tribute to him. He was a most excellent Schools Minister and was largely responsible for the success of the academies programme. As the Minister said, the party opposite has every right to be proud of what it achieved. I also praise the noble Lord for starting off his life as a Back-Bencher exactly as I hope he will continue, feeling free to disagree with his Front Bench. As my noble friend Lord Hill will discover, feeling free to criticise one’s own side when one feels that it is getting it wrong is the mark of respect that every Back-Bencher seeks to attain.
I feel that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, although she was in turn an excellent Minister, is getting it wrong. It was always inevitable that the academies programme, once it had proved itself and gained momentum, would be open to existing schools. The idea that schools have to fail in order to become academies is not tenable. The substance of the amendment is political phooey and should be disregarded.
The noble Baroness raised a number of points that I suspect I will agree with later—or at least I will share her concerns. This is a new phase for the academy movement and it raises questions which were left in abeyance when the academies were few and had strong sponsors but which need examining now. However, a change of name, with further confusion for parents and everybody else, is not required.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, at Second Reading many noble Lords pointed out that most parents want a good local school, whatever it is called, and that good schools depend on good leadership, good teachers and good classroom practice, none of which I see mentioned in the Bill. My noble friend made some interesting points about academies, as did the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—I quite agree with him about the alphabet soup of schools. However, this is not just discussion about a name.
I have never particularly liked the name “academy” for a school, despite my respect and affection for my noble friend Lord Adonis. To me, the term has always meant a Scottish secondary school, the garden where Plato taught or, as in the Brixton Academy, a nightclub. As I understand it, we are talking about names that have legal and constitutional significance. No doubt we will tease out some of these legal and constitutional issues, such as buildings, charitable status, admissions, inspection, employment, VAT regulations, freedom of information and data protection, throughout the passage of the Bill. My noble friend is right. If these apply to what are called direct maintained schools—in other words, if they have to obey the rules I have just mentioned—the name should be looked at again. Could the noble Lord please spell out—I am sure he will—the differences between the name “academies”, as referred to in the Bill, and other kinds of school which now exist, and tell us why the name should not be changed?
Lord Bates
I totally support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, about the name. The name “academies” followed from the creation of the city technology colleges. Although the city technology colleges were a wonderful idea in the Education Reform Act 1988, the name was a bit of a mouthful and did not describe well what those fine institutions sought to achieve. When the Learning and Skills Act 2000 first made provision for city academies, it was a clarification. In Greek learning, an academy is a place of high education and research. That is exactly the type of name and message that one wants in our education environment. However, the term “city academies” was then changed. The “city” part was dropped, which in many ways makes the point that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was presenting. At that point, in the 2002 Act, when city academies were replaced by the concept of academies, there was a distinct intention that the academy movement should be broadened. I think that is right. Therefore, what is being proposed by the Government is also right.
I make another point in support of my noble friend Lady Perry, who spoke about the Bill’s role in tackling failing schools. Clause 4 covers academy orders, which are directly targeted at the failure which exists within many local authority areas. The noble Baroness may have mentioned from the Front Bench that it is almost a divine right that every child in a local authority area will have access to good quality education. However, we know for a fact that that is not happening. That is why the Bill is necessary.
I register an interest as a former director of four academies. The other point is that the existing academies were invariably quickly oversubscribed. The notion that they were open to all was, again, not true. That is why we need a big expansion of the programme. We also need new schools. The other point was about ability. As I recall, there was certainly a provision, which still exists, to say that the academies could select up to 10 per cent of their pupils on the basis of aptitude in the school’s specialism. Again, that element is there. I see that the Bill has merely continued that.
The amendment probably falls into the category of “brave try”. As a former Shadow Front Bench spokesman, I know that brave tries are our lot in life. However, the term “academy” is a sound one, which should continue and be extended.
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool
My Lords, I declare an interest in that the diocese of Liverpool is a co-sponsor with the Catholic arch-diocese of three academies, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned. We have already seen remarkable progress being made in our first academy situated in an area of great deprivation. Within four years, the Academy of St Francis of Assisi has gone from 27 per cent to 66 per cent of its pupils gaining five GCSEs at Grades A to C. The one thing that I have learnt from the academy experiment—it is now more than an experiment as it is well established—is that children’s performance is improved through investing in the training and performance of teachers. There is a direct correlation between the performance of teachers and that of pupils. This surprised me, even though I began my professional career as a teacher. Investment in the head, the senior management team and the teachers in academies has made a remarkable contribution to improving people’s life chances, especially in deprived communities.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is right that under the previous Administration there was a shift from the original intention, which was to break the mould of education in deprived communities, but the policy has broadened out and schools have benefited. In the context of Liverpool, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, made a powerful point. The Government may resist her amendment and stick with academies, but I hope that they will share the aspiration of the previous Administration to change the nature of education in our deprived communities—whatever name we choose, that is what is at stake—as the academy programme has shown that we can do that. If the Government persist with the title “academy”, I hope that they will also persist with the ambition to improve the life chances of young people in our most deprived areas.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
My Lords, this is an interesting debate that has raised important issues. Legal status and legal titles are exactly that, but at the end of the day they are not the mark of success or failure in our education system. We may disagree on whether legal status is the measure that raises standards or whether it is something other than that. I very much agree with the previous speaker that standards are raised through the quality of teaching and of leadership rather than through legal status or title. However, whatever the relevant legal status was under the previous Government, the fact was that most of the effort and resources were put into the areas of greatest deprivation. I believe that is what academies should do. Once you spread the size of the club, you make it less special and you are not able to devote the same expertise to the schools that need it most. That is the decision that the Government have to make. In that respect, I wish to ask a very specific question about the impact assessment. On page two, it is estimated that over four years the net benefit will be £1.72 billion. I am surprised at that. The relevant figure is £282 million a year. The impact assessment states:
“Benefits are in terms of the increase in estimated lifetime earnings of the additional number of pupils attending academies and obtaining improved GCSE results … Evidence for impact of academies on pupil attainment is based on evidence from academies that opened before 2006”.
I find that very strange and would welcome an explanation of it. The schools that became academies before 2006 were situated in challenging areas. They were often failing schools that were letting down very bright students. The minute they got the chance, their grades improved, and over 12 to 24 months some schools went from fewer than 20 per cent of their pupils getting five A to C grades to as high a figure as 40, 50 or 60 per cent. The Government have decided to concentrate their effort, time and resources on outstanding schools, which may already have 90 per cent of their pupils getting five A to C grades, including English. Given that evidence, I am surprised at the impact assessment and the amount of money that is quoted. The maximum improvement that schools could make would be to increase from 90, 91 or 92 per cent to 100 per cent of all pupils. I like to think that I am an optimist in life, but I am surprised at how that could create a net benefit to the Exchequer and the nation of £1.72 billion over four years.
I have a further question on that. The figures relate to lifetime earnings. What measures or mechanisms are Ministers using, and in which years of these young peoples’ lives might that money accrue to the Treasury?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I should like to make some points which are, I am afraid, against the group of amendments. I accept that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, has a certain logic on her side, but I do not like the logic. I rather take the point made by the right reverend Prelate—at least I think it was his point—that, whereas academies hitherto have been for underachieving and underprivileged communities, henceforth they will, as far as I can see, be at the other end of the educational spectrum. I actively dislike the prospect that they would be called something different, as if to emphasise that they are of a different “class”—a ghastly word. I like the idea of these posh new future academies being linked to the existing ones.
I endorse entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said. So often in this Chamber we underestimate or forget how our legislation will impact in the real world. We underestimate the effect of the mishmash of new names caused by our astonishing excess of legislation and constant wish to change and refine. For goodness’ sake, let us not create another category of schools.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, much as I admire—and I really do admire—the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and the considerable strides made on education by the previous Government, we all should admit that whichever Government have been in power—the previous Government and the Government immediately previous to them—we have not achieved the best education for all our children. That is the aim we should go for. I am delighted that we have had this debate. I did not consider that it would begin our debates on the Bill, but it has totally confirmed my view that, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, we need to get away from this mishmash—this alphabet soup, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, called it—and stick to one name. Then we can get on with the business of looking at the many detailed amendments which will ensure that the Bill will achieve its purpose. We should vote here and now for the use of the name “academies”—and no other name for the way forward.
The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells
My Lords, from the diocese of Bath and Wells, I should point out that in Taunton we have just inaugurated an academy that will begin in September. It comprises two schools with a history of difficulty; we have spent a lot of time in preparation for them to become an academy, and we are very much looking forward to that.
Once the Bill was announced, one of our successful—indeed, our most successful—church secondary schools made a bid to become an academy. Listening to the reason given by the head of the school that it serves to produce an additional half-a-million pounds for his school budget made me a little cautious about motive. I have been a supporter of the academies since they began. I have no difficulty whatever with continuing with a single title, provided that we can ensure that none of this will make the more vulnerable in our schools less able to enjoy the benefit of full academy status.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I have listened to the debate with great interest and am prompted to speak by what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, said about the independent, and possibly isolated, schools. I want to ask the Minister one quick question, which may well fall within the ambit of later amendments. I recently met a social worker, whose job is to work with and support a number of schools in the local area. I also spoke fairly recently to a head teacher, who said how helpful it was to have a social worker support her in what she does. Therefore, I would appreciate an assurance from the Minister that in this legislative process we are not going to make it any more difficult for that sort of set-up to carry on working.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, I shall start by speaking to Amendments 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 65, 77, 86, 87, 93, 94, 194 and 195, which all seek to change the title and name of all existing and future academies to direct-maintained schools. Before I do so—perhaps with the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln ringing in my ears at the beginning—I should say that I know that the whole point of Committee stage is for us to tease out misunderstandings and to try to get clarity on various issues as we go forward. I am committed to doing that during this process and shall do my best to do so in the days ahead. I have already had lots of help and advice from all sides of the House over the past couple of weeks and I know that that will continue.
I am a little perplexed as to why the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, would want to turn her back on a policy and a name which, greatly to its credit, her party pioneered in government. I was even more perplexed when over the weekend I read the 2005 White Paper, Higher Standards, Better Schools for All, which clearly argued for the extension of academy freedoms. As I think we mentioned at Second Reading, the day before the launch of the White Paper, the then Prime Minister was even more explicit. He said:
“We need to make it easier for every school to acquire the drive and essential freedoms of Academies ... We want every school to be able quickly and easily to become a self-governing independent state school ... All schools will be able to have Academy style freedom”.
That, in general terms, is what the Academies Bill makes possible.
I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, argued that using the name “academy” for all schools converting to the programme might in some way dilute the original intentions, and she specifically mentioned grant-maintained schools. These were quite different, not least because they got additional funding and operated effectively outside the system, which is not what is proposed with academies. She spoke about the policy now being for outstanding schools, rather than the original focus of the policy, which was, she said, on the most challenging schools. That point has already been picked up by my noble friend Lady Perry. I know that there has been a lot of comment about this and I am sorry if I did not do a better job in explaining it at Second Reading. The fact is that the focus on failing schools remains and, if anything, is strengthened because the Secretary of State will be able to act more decisively without local authority consent, should that be necessary.
Secondly, in line with what we believe was the previous Government’s intention, all schools will be able to apply for academy status, should they want to. In other words, the outstanding schools are simply a sub-set of all schools. I hope that that provides some reassurance on the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool. In what we propose, there is no intention that the generality of schools should be excluded from the chance to take part in this programme. Because those schools are outstanding, we believe that conversion for them should be relatively straightforward, and therefore we are saying that, if they want to convert, they should be able to go first. They would not have to have sponsors, but all other converting schools would.
My main argument in resisting the amendment has already been made for me by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I am particularly sympathetic to what was described as alphabet soup—what I think of as Alphabetti Spaghetti—in that, as a new Minister trying to get my head round the descriptions of all the different kinds of schools, the thought of having one more to learn would be almost intolerable.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
Will the Minister please answer the specific question I asked?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, as I wrote myself a note to do so. The general point is related to the notion that all schools can apply for academy status, not just the outstanding ones. I can see the logic of the noble Baroness’s argument: that if a school is already highly performing, the ability to make the kinds of improvement that the original wave of academies have made may be slightly more reduced. Given the intention that in time all schools, not just those in the outstanding category, will be able to apply explains more broadly why there is the opportunity for that uplift. I will need to write to the noble Baroness on her specific question about the maths and how officials came up with that figure.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I thank the Minister for his helpful reply. I am happy to withdraw my amendment at the appropriate moment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for his comment, “Brave try”. As a Minister, being called brave was something I always used to worry about, but as an Opposition Front-Bencher, perhaps I will not mind that so much.
This debate has been helpful and interesting. I am interested in the point about academies as defined in the Bill being exactly the same as academies defined in previous legislation. Thinking about why we need the Bill focuses on the questions: what is the difference and what is the real motivation behind the Bill? Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, I want to be convinced, and hope that I will be as we go through Committee. I know that an awful lot of thought has gone into a wide range of amendments.
I have one question, which I hope I will learn more about in our debates today. If academy status will be exactly the same legally, I need to understand what Clause 1(2)(b) is all about. When we come to the Statement on free schools, I might understand that a bit more. Like all noble Lords, I do not see the benefit of increasing the number of letters in our alphabet soup. I am very interested in the comments that noble Lords have made. I have just learnt that outstanding schools will not be expected to have a sponsor, but those that come after will. That is a very interesting point.
I was also very interested in the point made by my noble friend Lady Morris about the focus of government policy. That highlights the challenge that we have when scrutinising legislation. We are looking at the Bill, but surrounding the Bill is government policy and how the Government promote their priorities. I am concerned that the Government continue to focus on poorly performing schools and coasting schools. I am very much comforted by the Minister's reassurances on that, but we will come back to the question of what the additional arrangements for academy financial assistance actually mean and whether that is a significant change in the legal instruments surrounding the legal definition of academies. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Free Schools Policy
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, I beg leave to repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to an Urgent Question in another place. The Statement is as follows.
“Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to update the House on our progress in reducing centralised bureaucracy in the education system, giving more power to professionals on the front line and accelerating progress on the academies programme begun, with such distinction, under the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and Tony Blair.
During the Queen’s Speech debate, I outlined in detail our plans to extend academy freedoms. I mentioned then that we had more than 1,000 expressions of interest. I can now update the House by confirming that more than 1,700 schools have expressed an interest in acquiring academy freedoms, with more than 70 per cent of outstanding secondary schools contacting the department—a remarkable and heartening display of enthusiasm for our plans from front-line professionals.
As I have explained before, every new school acquiring academy freedoms will be expected to support at least one faltering or coasting school to improve. We are liberating the strong to help the weak—a key principle behind this coalition Government.
As well as showing enthusiasm for greater academy freedoms in existing schools, I can also report to the House that teachers are enthusiastic about the opportunities outlined in our coalition agreement to create more great new schools in areas of disadvantage. More than 700 expressions of interest in opening new free schools have been received by the charitable group the New Schools Network, the majority of them from serving teachers in the state system who want greater freedom to help the poorest children do better.
That action is all the more vital because we are inheriting a school system from the previous Government which was as segregated and stratified as any in the developed world. In the last year for which we have figures, out of a school cohort of 600,000 children, 80,000 children were in homes entirely reliant on benefits. Of those 80,000 children only 45 made it to Oxbridge—less than 0.1 per cent—and, tellingly, fewer than from the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition.
Given that scale of under-achievement and lack of social mobility, it is no surprise that so many idealistic teachers want to start new schools like those American charter schools backed by President Obama that have closed the achievement gap between black and white children. In order to help these teachers do here what has been achieved in America, and in order to help philanthropists, community groups and parents set up new schools, we announced last week that we would recreate the standards and diversity fund for schools started by Tony Blair and abandoned under his successor. We are devoting £50 million saved from low-priority IT spending to this fund, which is less than 1 per cent of all capital spend allocated for this year, and we are sweeping away the bureaucracy which stands in the way of new school creation with reform of planning laws and building regulations.
Five years ago, the Prime Minister said outside this House:
“What we must see now is a system of independent state schools, underpinned by fair admissions and fair funding, where teachers are equipped and enabled to drive improvement, driven by the aspirations of parents”.
We have pushed higher standards from the centre. For those standards to be maintained and built upon, they must now become self-sustaining to provide irreversible change for the better. That is the challenge Mr Blair laid down, and this coalition Government intend to meet it”.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer to this Urgent Question from the other place. I have a number of questions to ask him, but before I do, I want to make the point that this Urgent Question followed a press release issued by the Minister’s department on Friday about the process for progressing the coalition Government’s free schools policy. Just a moment ago, we were in Committee looking at the Academies Bill, and it would be very helpful for the House if we could understand how the Government’s different policies and priorities fit together so that when we are scrutinising the legislation we have a full picture of what the Government are trying to achieve. It was therefore a bit of a disappointment that the Secretary of State for Education chose to announce the process for progressing the free schools policy in a press release on Friday when we could have heard more about it in this House. However, the Minister has repeated the Statement to the House, which I very much appreciate.
We have heard a great deal from the coalition Government about the challenging economic times that we are in. We on these Benches recognise that and the real challenge of having to make cuts in the near future. How will these new free schools be paid for? The Guardian suggested, possibly on Friday, that funding from the previous Government’s proposals to widen access to free school meals will be used to pay for the new free schools policy. Will the Minister explain what assessment has been made of surplus places? Surplus places might not be a very cost-effective way of funding school places. Indeed, creating surplus places through the development of a free schools policy could be quite an inefficient way of using what will be scarce resources.
I believe that the coalition Government are keen to broaden the number of providers that deliver education through the free schools model, and I am interested to know whether the coalition Government envisage new providers coming into education being able to make a profit from using public funds to develop free schools, or whether, under some enterprise model, any surplus that was generated through the use of public funds would be ploughed back into public benefit.
I was quite interested on Friday to see a little box on the form on the website that has enough space for 200 words that are designed to show what parental demand there is for a new free school. For the benefit of those who are interested in taking forward an idea such as this, will the Minister say what he is looking for in those 200 words that will give a really good picture of parental demand? Will there be published criteria? I know that the Secretary of State will have to look at each of these applications, and I understand that there have been many expressions of interest. When the Secretary of State looks at these 200 words, over breakfast on Sunday morning perhaps, what will he be looking for to assess parental demand?
There is also a space on the form to set out the premises that have been identified or to say what the premises would be like. The Minister mentioned planning requirements when he repeated the Statement, and I am interested to know how any legislation on this will work. Again, what is required in the box about premises? Will the new free school have disabled access, for example, or will a car park, office block or corner shop work just as well?
How will local authorities be involved? The Secretary of State for Education said very clearly in a letter that he sent to directors of children’s services that there would be a role for local authorities in that local authorities are central to the Government’s plans to improve education. It would be very helpful to understand what that vision is in relation to free schools.
It is also interesting that the coalition Government have made strong statements about a commitment to fairness in approach. How will the admissions code, which I think is all about fairness for children’s educational opportunities, work in the free school setting? How will vulnerable children and those with special educational needs, about whom this House cares very much, be catered for? I am aware that I have asked a lot of questions, but it is important that this House hears from the Minister the vision and the practicalities of how it will work.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I will try to answer all the questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin. On her first point, no disrespect to this House was intended. The view was taken that this was an announcement about practicalities. The principle of the policy had previously been announced and had been long trailed. Over many years it was in the Conservative Party manifesto and it features in the coalition agreement. As the noble Baroness knows—we will be discussing it in Committee over the next three days—free schools will be set up as academies under the Academies Bill. They will have the same framework, rights and responsibilities as the academies that we have just been discussing in our first group of amendments in Committee. The view was taken that this was a practical implementation and a first step of policy rather than a new policy announcement.
On the point fairly made by the noble Baroness about the challenging economic times, perhaps I may reassure her about the modest funding for what is, in effect, a series of pilots that we will look at over the next year to see how this policy works out. The £50 million will not come from free school meals pilot money. As the Statement in the other place made clear, the department is basically recreating a programme which the noble Baroness may know—the standards and diversity fund. The money has come from the harnessing technology grant. Therefore, as the Statement made clear, it has come from money that was put aside for IT, not from free school meals.
As regards the noble Baroness’s question about profit, the school or trust must be non-profit making. As now under existing legislation, a school can subcontract to a provider of a service, which, if a commercial operation is providing that service, will charge what it needs in order to make a profit and a living. As now, the school cannot make a profit. There is nothing here which will enable free schools to be profit-making schools.
As the noble Baroness will understand, parental demand, and the Secretary of State’s breakfast, is work in progress. We have made clear that a demonstration of parental demand might be, for example, a petition. An interested party can make the application and then work with an official in the department who will work up the detailed application. As part of that process, some of the noble Baroness’s fair questions on how these things will be demonstrated will be worked through.
On premises, revised planning guidance will be issued by CLG in due course, which should free up and remove a lot of the bureaucratic systems that currently make the establishment of a school for anyone extremely difficult to countenance. The noble Baroness’s point about precisely what the requirements will be needs to be worked through.
On the role of local authorities, I have somewhere another letter—we in the department are busy writing letters at the moment—written by the Secretary of State to local authorities specifically on the free schools announcement, which is subsequent to the previous letter to which the noble Baroness referred. It makes clear that part of the process under which he will judge the criteria for whether an application to be a free school should be able to go forward will include consultation with the local authority.
The admissions code for free schools will work just as the code for academies because the free schools will be set up under the academies legislation. All the safeguards and requirements that were put in place for academies will apply to free schools. That remark also applies to the noble Baroness’s final and extremely important point about vulnerable children. All the safeguards, particularly with regard to vulnerable children and SEN issues, which will be discussed at greater length as we go forward with the Academies Bill, will be in place.
The Earl of Listowel
I thank the Minister for the Statement and welcome the Government’s general thrust, reflected in their announcement, of giving head teachers much more control over the environment that they teach children in. If I may say so, that is a very good direction to be moving in. But can he offer me a reassurance on the issue of stratification? There is some risk that if a significant minority of schools opts neither for academy nor free school status, many teachers will vote with their feet and go to work in these good schools. That might mean that pupils who would most need and would benefit from good teaching will actually be denied the best teachers because they will be in these other schools.
Elsewhere, the Government have proposed the introduction of independent social work practices in the style of GP practices and legal firms. Although this has been warmly welcomed by social workers who like the idea of running their own business and not being interfered with by local authorities so much, a respectable and experienced director of social services pointed out to me that if there is one service only for children with care orders, there is a danger that all the best social workers from the surrounding fields will want to work in that area and would be creamed off. We need social workers to support families where the children are not taken into care.
My second question is brief. Can the Minister assure the House that the complexity of taking forward these new measures will not distract him from maintaining a strong focus on the continuing professional development of our teachers and introducing the master’s in teaching and learning? This point was stressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to the noble Earl and hope I can give him the reassurances he seeks. On the broad point about fears of stratification—which I am sure we will come back to as we debate the Academies Bill more generally—I understand the anxiety, but I think that quite a lot of it is misconceived. I say that because on Friday, when the department made the announcement on free schools, I was lucky enough to meet beforehand a number of the teachers and teacher groups who are most interested in taking free school status forward. I have to say that those teachers could not in any way be characterised as people who are looking for a quiet life and want to teach in a leafy suburb, or who want to turn their back on vulnerable children. They formed an extraordinarily impressive and passionately committed group of people whose reason for going into teaching—some through Teach First and some through the Future Leaders programme which, much to their credit, were set up by the previous Government, who I will load with laurels as often as I can as regards those two wonderful programmes on which we want very much to build—arises out of a strong sense of social commitment. I found it immensely reassuring that those teachers see this legislation as enabling them to do more for the neediest, most vulnerable and most left behind children.
On the issue of CPD and the master’s, as the noble Earl knows, we will have further legislation coming forward later in the year. This comes back to a point made previously by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, but I do not think that the choice is between structures and teachers. Sometimes it is caricatured that people who want structural change are crazed ideologues who do not understand people, but that is not my view at all. My view, which was confirmed by meeting those excellent teachers, is that the structural change can give them the freedom to enable them to do more for the neediest children, about whom I know the noble Earl cares most strongly.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it would be churlish for the Church of England, in particular, to object in principle to what is being proposed? We enjoy relative freedoms in some of our schools and we would encourage those freedoms being shared more widely. However, as the Minister will recognise and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, has indicated, we will need to see the workings.
In relation to accredited providers, am I right in understanding that any parents or community groups seeking to establish a free school will be expected to work with an accredited provider? If that is the case, will the Minister welcome an assurance from the Church of England and other faith groups that we will make available all the experience we have as quite long-standing providers in the field of education? If accredited providers are required to co-operate with such groups, will he bear in mind the readiness of the church to co-operate? Perhaps I may go further and suggest that any prospective group of parents might be encouraged to co-operate with an accredited church provider. There will always be one near to where they are.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful for those observations. I would be very keen to discuss further the role that the Church of England can play in this. The general approach to providers currently is to make the system as open as possible. However, I shall follow that up further in the future.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of Future Leaders. I share the Minister’s position on the enthusiasm displayed by many teachers who are interested in setting up free schools. I also share his belief that they are passionate about trying to deliver for the most disadvantaged children.
My question is about money. We have heard about the changes in the planning rules, but that does not answer the money question. When will we get real details about the setting-up costs of these new schools, particularly in relation to capital? I am clear how the running costs will be met but, particularly where there is a shortage of school places and there are not obviously empty old school buildings, there is a real challenge about finding suitable building space and meeting the capital costs. We need facilities to deliver a decent curriculum, particularly for older children taking GCSE and A-level sciences, and I am anxious to know when we will have a little more detail.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, in particular for the work that she does for Future Leaders. On the issue of detail, that is work in progress and I shall keep her informed and posted. We made the announcement about the outline shape of the process on Friday, and we recognise that we have to provide this kind of detail. I shall keep her closely informed.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, can my noble friend give me comfort on two aspects? First, will he reassure me that the existence of surplus places in the vicinity of a proposed free school will not be a bar to the establishment of a free school? Secondly, can he tell me whether virtual schools may be established under this legislation—that is, schools which are to ordinary schools as the Open University is to universities?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I can certainly give my noble friend Lord Lucas the reassurance that he seeks on his first point. I shall need to write to him on the second point.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his post. Can he be more specific on the issue of the creation of surplus places by the development of one of these free schools? I still bear the scars from dealing—in Lancashire County Council many years ago—with the issue of surplus places. It is no good saying that there will be the same per capita per pupil for existing schools, because if there are surplus places, the per capita will have to go up to protect the curriculum.
Can the Minister also be a little more forthcoming about the relationship between the teachers, who he says have very good motives in setting up these schools, and potential conflicts with parents? Major parts of special educational needs in our schools are to do with behavioural problems. In my long experience of governing bodies where parents served, the parents would quite frequently wish to exclude the children with behavioural problems. This could totally wipe out the aims of the teachers whom he has described.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I hope that I can give the noble Baroness some reassurance at least on her second point. The provisions which we will be discussing in the Academies Bill, particularly in regard to vulnerable children, and which will be delivered through the funding agreement and will give these children broadly the same protections as are delivered through maintained schools, will also have to be delivered by free schools, which will be set up as academies and governed by the same safeguards. A free school could not decide to take an approach towards vulnerable children—statemented children—that is different from the approach of any other kind of school.
On surplus places, it was recognised as long ago as the 2005 White Paper that one of the effects of the policy was that, in some places where there was not parental demand, there would be surplus places. The whole point of the policy is to try to create something new for parents where there are surplus places.
Baroness Walmsley
Will the new free schools be eligible for funding under the financial assistance provisions in Clause 1(2)(b) of the Academies Bill, which in turn looks to Section 14 of the Education Act 2002?
Perhaps I may also ask the Minister about the New Schools Network. Interested groups are directed by the website to contact the New Schools Network. Does the Department for Education have any contractual arrangement with the New Schools Network? Are there any alternatives for groups of people who wish to set up a new school, or do they have to go through that process? If so, are there any financial considerations that the House should know about?
Perhaps I may also press the Minister a little more on local authorities. Whenever a new school is set up, it will have an effect on other schools, as no school is an island. Will the Secretary of State publish the criteria for the weighting that will be given to various consultations with the local authority, and the points that the local authority makes to him when there is an application for a new school?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I shall respond to my noble friend’s questions in no particular order. The funding mechanism can apply to all academies; it could well apply to free schools. The point of having a grant rather than a seven-year funding arrangement is that, particularly with a free school, which is a new and untried school, the Secretary of State might not want to be bound into an agreement for seven years and might prefer something that gives him greater flexibility. The department has entered into a contractual arrangement with the New Schools Network to provide support and advice. I will happily send to the noble Baroness the letter that sets up that arrangement. Forgive me, but I have forgotten the third point.
Lord Hill of Oareford
As I said earlier, the Secretary of State has made it clear that he sees local authorities having a role in shaping his thinking. We will need to reflect precisely on the criteria, how we set them out and what is then done with those criteria.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I apologise for missing the beginning of the proceedings, but I do not think that anything has been said so far about design standards. The Minister will know very well that the impact of the environment in which children study is extremely important from an educational point of view. What guarantee can he give that free schools will conform to acceptable design standards?
Lord Hill of Oareford
One point of the policy is to give schools greater freedom and flexibility over where schools are set up and in what kind of building. Overall, the department intends to look at the whole set of regulations around buildings for all schools because our view is that they are expensive and bureaucratic and the process of building schools takes too long. Some of the regulations do not seem to serve any particular purpose while others serve an extremely good purpose. We will look at them all and, as part of that, we will obviously need to take into account important points about design.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I want to pick up the point about planning. Is the Minister saying, in a technical sense, that the Government will issue a new planning policy statement referring to schools? Will that therefore apply to all schools, since planning clearly has to be neutral with regard to the question of who applies for a particular type of planning permission? Is it not the case that when the Victorians built a large number of new schools—first the churches and then the state—they discovered that setting up schools in odd corners of mills, factories, barns and other buildings was entirely unsatisfactory and that schools actually needed purpose-built new premises designed as schools, with playgrounds, playing fields and all the other facilities that schools need? Is that not still the case?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The overriding imperative in this policy is to attempt, where there is poor provision, to give teachers’ groups and parents the chance to improve the quality of teaching as rapidly as possible. Our starting point in this is that every year that passes is another school year that has been missed out and another generation of children who are falling behind. I understand entirely the points that my noble friend Lord Greaves makes. However, in the balance between perfect provision, carefully planned, and giving groups greater opportunity to start the urgent work of improving the teaching for children who need it most in areas of greatest disadvantage, we come down on the side of more flexibility over premises rather than going for the full, perfect Monty.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
My Lords, will the Minister say a little more about parent-led free schools? We all want parents to be involved in the education of their children, because the more involved they are the better, but I see two problems. If parents set up a school, the contract they let to a provider could be as long as seven years. Within that time, there could have been 100 per cent changeover of parents at the school. The further point is that the parents who are the original promoters of the school may not even get their children into the school if an oversubscription criterion of, for example, a ballot were used. So there could be a situation in which the original parent promoters do not have children in schools, and within three to four years the percentage of parents with any say or influence at all over how the school meets its contract is very low. Will the Minister explain his thoughts on that?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful for the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. The truth in this, as with a lot of these things, is that the announcement made on Friday kicked off the process. There will be all sorts of important practical considerations that that process will throw up. Officials in the department, assisted by the New Schools Network, will be thrashing through those considerations and coming to Ministers with recommendations on the back of the process. These kinds of points—which are extremely important; I do not belittle them in any way at all—will need to be thought through as part of the process.
European Council
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
This may be a useful point at which to hear a Statement made by the Prime Minister a few minutes ago in another place. The Statement was as follows:
“I am sure that the whole House will join with me in paying tribute to Trooper Ashley Smith from the Royal Dragoon Guards, who was killed in Afghanistan last week. He died serving our country and our thoughts are with his family and friends. We have also heard this morning news that a member of 40 Commando Royal Marines has died from his injuries. He is the 300th member of the British Armed Forces to lose his life as a result of the conflict in Afghanistan.
When such a tragic milestone is reached, we should re-emphasise our support for our Armed Forces, and for all that they do. Inevitably some will question our mission and purpose there, and we are paying a high price. Let me be clear that we are in Afghanistan because the Afghans are not yet capable of securing their own country from terrorists. It is for our own national security that we help them. When they can do it alone, we will leave. In the mean time, we will give our Armed Forces everything they need to get the job done.
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on last Thursday's European Council. It was rightly focused on securing the economic recovery, and it was unanimous that this required early action on budget deficits. The Council also dealt with Europe's growth strategy, the need to sort out the problems in the eurozone, and our approach to the G20. It also delivered important progress on Iran.
Let me take each in turn. On deficits, the conclusions could not be clearer. Delaying action would entail ‘major risk’, and the Council called on member states to meet budgetary targets ‘without delay’. Since the last European Council, the problems in Greece and the scale of the sovereign debt crisis have become apparent to almost everyone. That is why there is such unanimity across the EU on early action, and it is why President Barroso paid tribute to the efforts that the UK coalition Government are taking and said:
‘Consolidation is necessary for confidence and without confidence there will be no growth’.
On growth, the Council agreed a new strategy called Europe 2020. This follows on from the Lisbon agenda, whose aim was to make Europe the most competitive market in the world. The document has some worthwhile objectives, including raising the level of research and development, and improving education. This should not interfere with national competencies. So I secured explicit agreement that the new strategy must be,
‘fully in line with the relevant treaty provisions and EU rules and shall not alter member states’ competences’.
We should be clear that all the strategies in the world should not conceal the fact that EU countries all need to get to grips with the real problems that harm our competitiveness, not by endlessly setting targets but by taking action. This includes action on the extent of our debts, the affordability of our pensions, and on the scale of our welfare dependency.
Europe has never lacked strategies, but European countries have frequently failed to deliver them. We will continue to press for the real stimulus that European economies need—more trade, more international investment and breaking down barriers to business. This means pushing for agreement on Doha, reforming and completing the single market and making the process of trade easier. Even without Doha, there is a huge amount that countries across the world can do to facilitate trade. I want Britain to be one of the driving forces in helping to bring this about.
Next, the eurozone: Britain is not in the euro and—let me be clear—we are not going to join the euro. However, a strong and successful eurozone is vital for the British national interest. Already about half our exports go to the EU, fourth-fifths of this to the eurozone. However, as this House is aware, with the situation in Greece and the need for a support package from other eurozone members, there is no doubt that the eurozone as a whole faces real challenges. I was generally supportive of the Council’s efforts to strengthen the eurozone governance arrangements, but I was equally determined to ensure that our national interests are protected.
On budget surveillance, let me be clear: the UK Budget will be shown to this House first and not to the Commission. Of course, we will share projections and forecasts, just as we do with the IMF and other international bodies. Co-ordination and consultation, yes; clearance, no—never. On sanctions for those who breach their economic obligations, the Council agreed that:
‘Member States’ respective obligations under the Treaties will be fully respected’.
Because of this and because of the special opt-out negotiated by the last Conservative Government, under the current framework sanctions cannot be applied to the UK.
Sorting out the eurozone and adding to its governance arrangements are clearly vital for Europe. There may well be significant changes coming down the track. Whether they require treaty changes or not, our position will be the same. We will back measures that help to sort out the eurozone. We will not back measures that pass power from the UK to Brussels and, as we are not a member of the euro, we will not back measures that draw Britain further into financial support for the euro area.
On the G20, the Council discussed our priorities for the upcoming meeting. As well as taking action on the deficit, the Council also agreed about the importance of reforming the financial system. It is vital that the meeting in Canada backs the right action on reserves and capital.
On the issue of a banking levy, the Council conclusions were helpful. We wanted the European Council to endorse the idea of countries introducing a levy on financial institutions to ensure that they make a contribution to rebuilding public finances. We did not want the Council to mandate a particular form of levy or how the money raised should be used. I am pleased to say that the Council conclusions reflect that approach.
On Iran, we have argued that it is time for actions, not just words. Following the UN Security Council’s recent adoption of Resolution 1929, the Council agreed to step up the pressure, issuing an unequivocal leaders’ declaration. This refers to measures including restrictions on trade, banking, transport and the oil and gas industry. Final agreement will be reached at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting.
The Council also reached important conclusions on Iceland’s application to join the EU. This country should be a good friend to Iceland and a strong supporter of EU enlargement, but Iceland owes the UK £2.3 billion in respect of compensation paid by the Government to UK investors following the collapse of its banking sector. We will use the application process to make sure that Iceland meets its obligations, because we want that money back.
Finally, it is important that, even in difficult times, we should be supporting people in the poorest countries suffering from severe poverty. The Council reaffirmed its commitment to achieve development aid targets by 2015 and, supported by the UK, to review this annually.
This was a Council that delivered good outcomes for Britain. Our citizens do not want new structures to talk about things; they want a new resolve to actually do things, such as getting to grips with our massive budget deficits, developing the single market and building the conditions for strong, sustainable and balanced growth. That is what this Council was all about”.
I commend this Statement to the House.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I join the Leader of the House, in repeating the Statement made by the Prime Minister, in paying tribute to the two soldiers who lost their lives, Trooper Ashley Smith from the Royal Dragoon Guards and the Royal Marine from 40 Commando Royal Marines. As the Prime Minister said, 300 members of our forces have now given their lives in Afghanistan in the service of our country. We pay tribute to their bravery, we honour their sacrifice and our thoughts are with their families. I strongly agree with the Leader about the cause for which our soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan. They are fighting there to keep our streets safe here. That is why the Opposition are united with the Government in support of our troops and their mission. As we approach Armed Forces Day, let us remember all our service men and women, whether they are stationed abroad or at home. Their skill and courage are unsurpassed.
I thank the Leader of the House for repeating the Prime Minister’s Statement. I start by welcoming the continued EU focus and government commitment on two important issues. First, on Iran, I endorse the support for the European Council’s declaration, which again shows that on issues of international concern, we who are EU member states have a bigger impact when we combine our efforts. Does the Leader of the House agree that while the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran remains a matter of utmost concern, the international community is now more united than ever before in searching for a peaceful solution; and that the very act of EU diplomacy that we have seen in recent years has played an important part in this? He says that the Prime Minister tells us that it is time for action, not just words; is there a timetable for further EU action on Iran? Can he confirm the importance, not only of sanctions and diplomatic pressure, but of international engagement with the people of Iran? Will he therefore give an undertaking that the BBC Farsi service will be protected from any cuts in the BBC World Service?
Secondly, I also welcome the strong commitment of the EU summit to meeting the millennium development goals by 2015. The terrible crisis of drought and food shortages in Niger is a vivid reason why there must be international action on development. Will the Prime Minister be a stronger voice in the EU for the whole EU to make development a priority, if his Government continue to prioritise development? Following our Government’s commitment, the European Commission recommended that all EU member states should consider legislating to enshrine the 0.7 per cent aid target, which we established. Will the Government now take forward, in this Session of Parliament, the Bill we introduced to make the 0.7 per cent legally binding?
Is it not the case that you can only be effective in Europe if what you say and do there is matched by what you do and say at home? In that regard, I commend the Leader on the Prime Minister’s reference in his pre-summit article to the shocking inequality of women in many parts of Europe, and the urgent need for change. If the Prime Minister recognises shocking inequality of women elsewhere in Europe, can the Government act on it here? Will the Prime Minister show the rest of Europe that he means at home what he says in Brussels by giving us a commitment that he will implement the Equality Act as soon as possible, and commit to pressing on with the plan to make employers publish their gender pay gap?
I welcome the fact that the summit adopted the European 2020 strategy for growth. The summit said:
“Priority should be given to growth-friendly budgetary consolidation strategies”.
It also said:
“Increasing the growth potential should be seen as paramount to ease fiscal adjustment in the long run”.
In other words, do not undermine growth when you are cutting borrowing and need growth to bring borrowing down. According to the official summit conclusions, one of its main objectives is to,
“unlock the EU’s growth potential, starting with innovation and energy policies”.
That is what the Prime Minister signed up to in Brussels. However, he is doing something rather different at home. On growth, the Leader of the House said that the Government will continue to press for the real stimulus that the European economies need, but the reality from the Government here is very different. How does it help growth to cut business investment support? How does it help unlock the EU’s growth, starting with energy, to cancel the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters to build the next generation of nuclear power stations? Does this not mean that Europe, as well as the UK, will lose out to South Korea and Japan as they take this work forward? On the important question of financial services, we welcome the intention to implement a new system of levies and taxes on financial institutions, and the intention to explore an international financial transactions tax. Will the Government commit to maintaining the UK’s strong leadership in advocating these reforms?
This was the Prime Minister’s first European Council. The Leader of the House, in repeating the Prime Minister’s Statement, says that the Prime Minister believes that this is a Council which delivered good outcomes for Britain. The Prime Minister is no longer the leader of the Opposition, grandstanding to his Back-Benchers. He is now representing our country in Europe, so perhaps it is time for him and the Government as a whole to have a sensible think about continuing to exclude themselves from the grouping of centre-right political leaders. The European People’s Party includes President Sarkozy, Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Prime Ministers of Sweden, Italy and Poland. However, instead of meeting with them to prepare for the summit, the Prime Minister had a meeting with one Polish MEP to prepare for Britain’s contribution to the summit. The election is over. Will the Prime Minister now put aside his pandering to his Europhobic Back-Benchers and agree with his Lib-Dem coalition partners on this vital issue of Europe? That is in Britain’s interests and would be a good outcome for Europe and Britain. We on these Benches invite the Conservatives on the Benches opposite to join the Liberal Democrats on the Benches opposite—and, indeed, we on these Benches—by getting serious about Britain’s interests in Europe and putting practicalities and policies ahead of prejudices and politics. That is what Europe needs from Britain. That is what Britain needs to do in Europe.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for welcoming the Statement, at least in part as I accept that she became slightly less welcoming as she continued her speech. However, she started extremely well by congratulating the Government and the Council on our position on Iran. She was right to do that because our position on Iran is unequivocal. It underlines the clear view in Europe that Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon is unacceptable. Europe has asked Iran to return to the negotiating table and has made clear that the alternative is further isolation. I am unable to give the noble Baroness the timetable that she sought, but my understanding is that we await the next Foreign Ministers’ Council, where final agreement will be reached. I am hopeful that there will then be quick action to put in place the various sanctions that have been recommended.
The noble Baroness asked me rather a good question about the BBC Farsi programme. If I had an answer to that, I would give it to her, but perhaps I can write to her on that point. The Government have rightly been congratulated on continuing with the millennium development goal commitments, as the noble Baroness recognised. In our view it is very important that these commitments talk about European countries meeting and achieving their targets by 2015. There has certainly been no slippage on that on our part. Even in difficult times when we are having to make tough decisions in our own economies, it is important that we should support people in the poorest areas of the world suffering severe poverty. It is important that we maintain that commitment. The European Council reaffirmed its commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on development aid by 2015, and agreed to monitor progress towards this target annually. I cannot at this stage give a commitment on the legislative proposals that we will make as regards the 0.7 per cent target, but it is our intention so to do.
The new European 2020 strategy is focused on promoting conditions for growth and improving the single market. A stronger European economy is overwhelmingly in Britain’s interests, given that around half of the UK’s exports go to the EU. However, noble Lords will no doubt agree that action in Europe clearly needs to recognise the different circumstances faced by different member states and strike the right balance between European and national action. The conclusions that we came to at the Council thus make clear that the strategy will not affect member states’ competencies on, for example, education. However, it will help Europe recover from the crisis and come out stronger internally and at the international level by boosting competitiveness, productivity, growth potential, social cohesion and economic convergence. It was kind and thoughtful of the noble Baroness to show her concern about the EPP. I assure her that we are happy with the current arrangements.
Lord Higgins
My Lords, I welcome the forthright attitude taken by the Prime Minister regarding the eurozone, but clearly the situation there presents considerable risks to the United Kingdom, even though we are not a member of the euro. Are we to understand that there was no detailed discussion at the Council on the widespread discussions taking place outside on the possibility that some members of the eurozone might find themselves in a position whereby they have to withdraw? Indeed, it has recently been suggested that it might be disruptive in that context if Germany were to withdraw, rather than the countries in the weakest position. At all events, the scheme was designed to prevent people withdrawing and it is important that we should not hide our heads in the sand regarding that possibility and we should make contingency plans. In particular, there is a major practical problem. Is there not perhaps some case for setting up a contingency fund of what we might call euro-exit notes and coins, which would be used if a particular country had to withdraw? Surely it is better that we should plan for that possibility, whatever our position might be on whether it is likely to happen, rather than suddenly finding that we are in a situation where nothing can be done because of the practical point that I mentioned.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, my noble friend raises an important and interesting issue. The eurozone is of course extremely important to the British economy. We want a strong and competitive eurozone area, but it is clear to anyone who has been following this subject in recent months that there are substantial problems with the euro and, most notably, with Greece. However, I am not in a position to speculate in any way on what may or may not happen in any other eurozone country or, indeed, on what contingency plans are envisaged over the next few months. The G20 has recognised that countries with serious fiscal challenges need to accelerate the pace of consolidation. In that regard, we welcome the recent announcements of further consolidation plans by the Governments of Spain and Portugal. It is important that to rebuild confidence all Governments implement in a rigorous manner the measures that they have announced. It is that confidence which will provide strength again to the eurozone. That in the long term will be to all our benefits.
Lord Dykes
My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House for repeating the Prime Minister’s Statement in the other place. He highlighted the fact that, on a number of occasions, the Prime Minister repeated that we were going to play an active and engaged role in working with our colleagues to solve the international financial and economic crisis that affects all countries. Even if, under the coalition agreement, we are not for the moment committed to joining the euro—and a lot depends of course on what happens to the euro—does the noble Lord agree that the logic of the single market means that a single currency is really necessary later on? Conservative Ministers frequently enunciated before 1997 that you could not have a genuine single market without a single currency. That reality prevails.
Does the noble Lord not agree that we in this country should be careful not to be too complacent or gleeful about the apparent crisis in the eurozone, given that we have the only currency that was driven out of the preliminary arrangements before the euro was created? A notable and spectacular devaluation ensued; in fact, we have had seven devaluations since the war. That was always the easy way out, rather than solving problems with a disciplined currency system. Does he agree that this is as much a crisis of the banking statistics and asset bases of the commercial and investment banks as it is of sovereign debt, and that we need to deal with both on an active basis? Will he therefore emphasise that the UK Government are supporting the suggestion of the Spanish Government that stress-test figures should be published in the second half of July showing the different states of various banks in the member states, within and without the eurozone, including, I think, five or six banks from the United Kingdom? Furthermore, as the Prime Minister was, quite rightly, warmly received in Brussels, does the noble Lord agree that that adds to the arguments for his party rejoining the EPP, as the shadow Leader of the House suggested?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I can give my noble friend no encouragement whatever that we are about to join the euro any time soon—an answer that he may find rather disappointing. However, all the evidence over the past few years indicates that we were entirely right not to join the euro, as the former Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor, ensured would be the case. That was the right decision then, it is clearly the right decision now, and we shall continue with that. However, that does not mean that we should not play an active and engaged role, as my noble friend Lord Dykes said, and we will continue in the way that we started. Indeed, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister was very much welcomed in Brussels for his positive attitude and constructive approach to a whole range of extremely difficult issues that face Europe. I say to my noble friend, as I did to the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition, that the EPP issue is not one that we shall reopen.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, will the Minister accept my thanks for allowing a question from Benches other than the government Benches after six minutes?
I congratulate the Government on the confirmation of the millennium development goals, which I think is a very positive step. However, do they not recognise that some members of the European Union—not the United Kingdom—are not fulfilling their obligations to move to 0.7 per cent of GDP? To give an example, Italy is cutting back on its aid. Does that not demonstrate the necessity for proper co-ordination at the European level when these commitments are entered into and the need to ensure that they are followed? Simply saying all the time that we are not going to do this or that in co-ordination has its disadvantages when we are in the lead and other people do not follow.
The noble Lord mentioned education. Does he not recognise that our higher education sector is the leader in Europe, that we have four of the world’s top 10 higher education establishments and that we are extremely well placed to give the lead in this essential part of making Europe more competitive? I hope that the Government will take that to heart and will see how, without transgressing any transfer of powers, we can make more of a reality of co-operation in the higher education sector and make it a more competitive part of the European economy.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, with regard to the millennium development goals, the Council reaffirmed its commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2015. The important point that I think will encourage the noble Lord is that the Council also agreed to monitor progress towards this target annually. Therefore, if a country lags behind, no doubt this will be brought to the Council’s attention at the time and appropriate action will take place in that member country.
I agree with the noble Lord about the excellence of Britain’s university education system and that we have a lot to contribute to this debate, at least by example. That is why we believe that this matter should remain firmly as part of the national competencies and not be raised to a higher level through command and control and instruction by the European Commission and others. That is precisely why we got the conclusion in the final report with which we were happy—namely, that education would remain part of those national competencies.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
I share with sorrow the sentiments expressed from the Front Benches about the two latest deaths in Afghanistan.
Turning to the Statement, does the noble Lord agree that it really is beyond belief that the EU should presume to examine our Budgets before Parliament debates them when its own internal auditors have been unable to sign off its own accounts for the past 15 years? Can he comment on that? Will he also comment on Mr Van Rompuy saying last week that the Government’s refusal to submit our Budget to Brussels is unfinished business? How will the Government react if they are outvoted on this in the autumn? Finally, and more widely, the Government’s protestations of their innocence do not exactly chime with the wording of the Council’s conclusions. I shall read three extremely briefly. First,
“we fully agree on the urgent need to reinforce the coordination of our economic policies”.
Secondly,
“All Member States are ready … to take additional measures to accelerate fiscal consolidation”.
Thirdly,
“The crisis has revealed clear weaknesses in our economic governance, in particular as regards budgetary and broader macroecononmic surveillance. Reinforcing economic policy coordination therefore constitutes a crucial and urgent priority”.
Which one is right—the Government’s Statement or the Council’s conclusions?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, is right when he says it is beyond belief that the EU should wish to inspect our Budget before it is presented to Parliament. He is entirely right. In that there is not a cigarette paper of difference between him and the Prime Minister, or I suspect even the Opposition. We would all agree that the EU has no role and no place to look at our budgetary arrangements and, indeed, our parliamentary procedures. That position has been made entirely implicit in the Statement that I repeated a few minutes ago. It is not unfinished business; it is firmly finished business and we will be leaving it entirely the way that it is currently.
The noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, made great play of looking at the conclusions and the Statement that we made. This is an old game to play and the noble Lord does it with great skill. I assure him that again there is no difference between the conclusions and the Statement that we made. They can live together entirely side by side and there is no difficulty for the Government.
Lord Grocott
The Leader of the House has reported, quite rightly, that there were extensive discussions about the ongoing problem of Iran. Were there any discussions on the wider issue of the region and the ongoing problem of the blockade of Gaza? How can the suffering of the people of Gaza be relieved? How and when will there be discussions at some stage, as surely there must inevitably be, between representatives of the European Union and representatives of the current Administration in Gaza?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, there was a discussion on Gaza. Generally speaking, the conclusion was positive about the steps that have been taken and we very much hope that the measures taken by the Israeli Government will be part of reducing tension in the area.
Lord Hylton
Are the Government aware of the very delicate situation now existing in Kosovo? This is already sub judice at the European Court of Justice. In addition, it so happens that the new Patriarch of all the Orthodox Serbs will be enthroned in the historic monastery of Pecs in October. This event could be seen by the Albanian majority as provocation or an act of cultural assertion. Do the Government agree that this makes it urgent to normalise relations between all the Serb monasteries and their Albanian neighbours? These have been tense since 2000—10 years ago. Will the Government ask the European Union to commission and pay for an independent third-party attempt at conciliation, which has already, I am glad to say, been invited by both parties in the conflict? I conclude by declaring a non-financial interest in the NGO in question.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I cannot confirm that there was a discussion at the European Council but clearly the situation in Kosovo is immensely tense and the noble Lord has great expertise on it. The words that he has spoken today will of course be taken fully into account by my colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Lord Trimble
Further to the point made earlier by my noble friend Lord Higgins, I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to what happened under the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates whereby on occasions Germany revalued the deutschmark upwards, thus taking account of the changes between it and other countries on competitiveness. Surely what we need in the eurozone is some mechanism of that nature whereby one can adjust for changes in competitiveness rather than force countries, as is proposed to be done, through incredibly tough measures which they probably are incapable of sustaining.
Lord Strathclyde
My noble friend raises a point that we could debate and discuss for a very long time. He is right to mention the Bretton Woods arrangements. As to whether there should be an automatic mechanism to adjust for competitiveness, that is a matter not for the Government but the European Bank. It must take into account all the needs of all the economies within the eurozone and it is one of the reasons—only one—why we supported the view of the then Government that we should not join the euro in 1999.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
I want to make two points. First, with regard to the reference to budget surveillance on page 4 of the Statement, this does not go far enough. It says that,
“the UK Budget will be shown to this House first—and not to the Commission”.
It is not a question of showing the Budget to the House; it is a question of the House of Commons agreeing the Budget before the Commission has its way. Surely that is right.
Secondly, why on earth do the Government continue to harp on about 40 per cent of our trade being with the European Union? The world is a much bigger place than that these days, so would it not be better if we expanded our trade with China, South America, India and indeed the Commonwealth, instead of concentrating on the backyard of Europe?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, on the question of the Budget, the noble Lord is in danger of tilting at windmills. We are not playing any verbal gymnastics that somehow when we say that it will be presented to Parliament first it means that round at the back door we are busily presenting it to the Commission. We are not. Tomorrow there will be a British Budget which will be presented to the British Parliament first. After it has been presented it will be a matter of public record and knowledge. I dare say that the Commission may be interested; it may indeed be very interested in looking at it before it is finally agreed by Parliament. Therefore, I do not think that there is a fundamental difference between the two of us on this issue. Neither, incidentally, is there about what the noble Lord Stoddart of Swindon, said about trade with the rest of the world. It is an important plank of British foreign policy to expand our trade beyond Europe. That is vital to our long-term prosperity and the creation of jobs in this country. We are using all the natural advantages that this country has built up over many decades—centuries even—with countries whose economies are growing extremely quickly. To ignore them would be an enormous mistake. So I hope that I can put a smile on the face of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, by saying that I very much agree with what he said.
Lord Martin of Springburn
My Lords, the Statement mentioned the banking sector. We all agree that, less than two years ago, young couples with children, first-time buyers, were sometimes offered a mortgage of more than 100 per cent. It is understandable that the banks have to tighten their belts—or, perhaps, to behave themselves—but young couples are now being required to find 25 per cent of their new mortgages. For young couples with children to find £25,000 to £30,000 is very difficult. Can the Prime Minister speak to the banking sector to make the point that if young couples can buy homes, that will help the building industry and relieve tension on community-based housing associations and local authorities?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, that may not have been quite a matter for the European Council, but the noble Lord, Lord Martin, raises an important point for young people and people starting families who are trying to purchase a house. The background against which we operate is now extremely different from what it was only two or three years ago vis-à-vis the whole question of mortgages and deposits. I assure the noble Lord that the President of the Board of Trade, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister himself are very involved in trying to ensure that lending is allowed and encouraged to people who can pay it back, not just in the commercial and business sector but in the domestic sector.
Academies Bill [HL]
(13 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
We turn now to the issue of free schools. As I said a moment ago, I am very grateful to the Minister for making the Statement repeating the Answer given to the Urgent Question asked in the other place, and for taking such a comprehensive set of questions. However, the Statement has generated more questions than answers. I am sure that as we go on in Committee we will learn a lot more.
Even the disinterested passer-by cannot help but notice that free schools are a flagship policy of the coalition Government—or at least of the Conservative part of the coalition Government. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State were clearly delighted to be photographed during the election campaign with parents celebrating their promise of a new school on demand. It was great campaigning, I am sure that noble Lords will agree. A whole page of the Conservative manifesto was devoted to a case study of the Swedish education system, the model for the Government’s free school proposals. Actually, when I looked at it, most of the page was taken up by photographs—very nice too—but at least nominally there was a page on the subject.
The Chancellor cited the reform as key to the Government’s plans to close the deficit, as it would see free schools use money more efficiently. The Secretary of State says that he has seen the future in Sweden and it works. The Government seem to want a great deal of attention focused on this policy, but considerably less scrutiny about the practicalities of it. We may be changing that today.
Nowhere, however, in the pronouncements of the Secretary of State in connection with the Swedish-style free school reform, of which we have heard so much, has the Academies Bill been mentioned—until today. The Bill was announced under the headline, “Legislation to give more schools opportunity to become academies”. The Department for Education website carries a document outlining the purpose of the Bill. It states:
“The Academies Bill will enable more schools to become Academies and give them the freedoms and flexibilities they need to continue to drive up standards”.
The document makes no mention whatever of new providers entering the school system. The Explanatory Notes to Clause 1 state:
“This clause replaces similar existing provisions in section 482 of the EA 1996. It enables the Secretary of State to make ‘Academy arrangements’ with another person, to establish and run an Academy. That person will be funded by the Secretary of State further to either a contractual agreement (an ‘Academy agreement’) or, by new subsection (2)(b), through grant funding under section 14 of the Education Act 2002”.
There is no mention of new providers here either, merely an oblique reference to previous legislation and “other persons”.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, Amendment 3 in this group is tabled in my name. It is similar to the amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, has just moved. I tabled this amendment because I have read the Bill several times—more times than is good for me—and I cannot work out whether the Government intend to include free schools within this legislation, and this is meant to be the legislation that will apply to free schools, or whether it is just about converting existing schools. My confusion, which is similar to that of the noble Baroness, arises because all the Government’s statements about the Bill relate to converting existing schools into this new kind of academy. That is how the Bill was promoted. I read the Second Reading debate, and that was largely what it was about. So I was confused as to whether Clause 1, in particular subsections (1) and (2), could apply to free schools. The Bill states:
“The Secretary of State may enter into Academy arrangements with any person”.
That seemed to me to provide an ability to include any group of people who put themselves forward to set up a so-called free school.
Then there was the announcement at the weekend and the Statement that we have just had, and it now appears that the Bill includes free schools and that they will be set up within the terms of the Bill, if and when it becomes law. That is the real reason I put this amendment down for clarification. Will the Minister confirm that that is the case? Or do the Government think that free schools can be set up under existing legislation? In that case, they have a choice. If free schools are included in the Bill, a great deal of unanticipated extra discussion and debate is required, particularly in Committee.
I thank the Government and Ministers in both Houses for the amount of discussion they have been prepared to enter into with all Members of the House, and in particular with the Liberal Democrats, concerning the Bill. However, going over the notes I have made of meetings, I see that free schools have hardly been mentioned. The meetings have all been about conversions. Suddenly this weekend, the terms of the debate on the Bill seemed to change substantially. At this stage I do not want to enter into detailed debate about free schools. However, if there are to be free schools, the legislation and rules under which they are set up will need to be laid down at least as clearly as the rules for conversions are set out in the Bill. Given the quantity and detail of the amendments that have been tabled, we may feel that the detailed rules and regulations for conversions are insufficiently set out in the Bill and need improvement.
The system for setting up free schools does not exist in the Bill, as far as I can see, unless there is stuff that I have read without understanding what it means. This amendment is a means of getting from the Minister some clarification of these matters so that, in the rest of this debate in Committee and when the Bill goes back to the House, we can understand exactly what we are talking about. It may be that amendments that noble Lords might want to see in the Bill will be different according to the answer that the Minister gives. The basic questions are: do free schools need new legislation; can they be set up under old legislation so that the Bill does not apply to them; and, is the Bill necessary and fundamental to the setting up of free schools?
Lord Adonis
I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that entirely new schools can be set up, and indeed are set up at the moment, as academies. So, to the extent that that is true, free schools can be set up at the moment under existing academy legislation. I warmly welcome the suggestion made by my noble friend Lady Morgan that free schools should be called academies. I hope that the Minister is able to accept that suggestion, which my noble friend makes with great generosity of spirit, to make clear that we have a much more uniform nomenclature available. I am very keen to see all categories of schools that have the legal characteristics of academies called academies.
Lord Low of Dalston
I shall speak to Amendments 13 and 76, which are tabled in my name. When we debated the Bill at Second Reading, there was widespread concern throughout the House that academies should have obligations to meet the needs of pupils with special educational needs that are no less rigorous than those which apply to maintained schools. The Minister was very clear that he was fully committed to this, and I am grateful to him for the trouble he has taken in meeting Peers with these concerns and also in writing to provide assurance that that is what the Bill achieves. However, there are still areas that remain unclear, where the commitment could do with being spelled out more fully or where gaps in the obligations to which academies are subject need to be plugged. These amendments are directed at remedying these deficiencies.
Amendment 13 is a probing amendment with two purposes: first, to ascertain whether academies receiving academy financial assistance will be required to have funding agreements in place; and, secondly, to ascertain whether meeting the needs of children with special educational needs and disabilities will be included as a standard requirement within arrangements for academy financial assistance, just as it currently is in funding agreements.
Currently, academies are principally accountable through and governed by funding agreements signed with the Secretary of State. Clause 1(2)(b) introduces a new form of funding for academies—
“arrangements for academy financial assistance”.
These are not found in the original academies legislation. Arrangements for academy financial assistance are a form of direct funding from the Secretary of State granted through powers conferred by Section 14 of the Education Act 2002. Arrangements for academy financial assistance are an alternative to funding through an academy agreement so that it appears possible that, where arrangements for academy financial assistance are put in place, an academy may not be required to have a funding agreement.
While it is possible to have reservations regarding the scope and effectiveness of funding agreements as accountability mechanisms, there has none the less been clarity in funding agreements signed after 2007 that academies should have regard to the SEN code of practice and use their best endeavours to ensure that special educational needs are met. There are concerns that this new form of academy funding—arrangements for academy financial assistance—will bypass the safeguards contained in funding agreements in relation to SEN provision. This amendment gives the Minister an opportunity to make the position clear and to reassure us that academies receiving academy financial assistance will be required to have funding agreements, and that meeting the needs of children with SEN and disabilities will be included as a standard requirement within arrangements for academy financial assistance.
Lord Northbourne
My Lords, I very much support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Low as I follow his interest in special educational needs. I have tabled Amendment 24 in this group, and I intend throughout Committee to introduce amendments and to speak about a particular form of special educational needs: those of children who have grown up in severely disadvantaged and chaotic families and who so often end up being statemented with emotional and behavioural difficulties.
In that context, I ask who will govern these new academies. Who will make the decisions on the ground? I fully acknowledge that parents sponsoring and running a school may be a good idea, but I am not convinced that a whole or even a majority of the governing body composed of parents of children at the school is at all desirable. My own modest experience in the independent sector has certainly indicated that short-termism tends to dominate decisions that are taken when there are too many parents with children at a school. Parent governors will obviously want the best for their children and are right to do so. Indeed, we want the stimulus of parents who push to get the best for their child, but there is a real danger that, if we get the governance of academies wrong, they will end up with the same fate that has unfortunately befallen so many of the admirable Sure Start centres which the previous Government introduced. Money was put to serving the community, the community was encouraged to consider how it wanted the money to be spent and the money was then spent in that way. What has tended to happen is that the brighter, pushier and more intelligent parents have jumped on the bandwagon and got the kind of input and outcomes that they wanted, and the parents with disadvantaged children who have no experience of addressing leadership or influencing events—the hard-to-reach parents—have gone to the bottom of the pile and the funding that was intended to go to them, if it is not wasted, at least does not reach them.
What is the Government’s intention for governance? I refer to all the different kinds of school: free schools, parent-sponsored academies or academies sponsored by existing schools.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Low, has set out the case for reconsidering special educational needs, as this is a very important and complex issue. I am also pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, mentioned governance, and that my noble friend Lady Morgan talked about standards, which are key. I understand that some academies have been allowed to opt out of publishing data on pupils’ achievement, which we will no doubt talk about later.
Amendments 2 and 3, in the names of my noble friend Lady Morgan and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, respectively, deal with consulting governors. I am a governor of a primary school in Wandsworth, and I think that school governors are important people in all this. I know that some later amendments deal with consultation, but for now I want to talk about governing bodies.
I understand that academies are required to have only one elected parent member on their governing body, while the existing principle is that a third of governing bodies should be parents. Parent governors are crucial. I am a governor at a school in a deprived area of Wandsworth, which attracts parent governors who are very helpful and useful to the school. This is particularly important in early years institutions if they are to become academies. Parents on those bodies will be essential. If parents are not involved in the early years, the children and the school suffer. I should like to ask the Minister about consultation with governing bodies. How is the future governance of schools foreseen?
Lord Lucas
I apologise for the misprint in my Amendment 33. For the word “roles” noble Lords should read “rules” and they will get a greater, if not absolute, idea of the sense of it. I am concerned about how the governing bodies of these academies will be dealt with when they go wrong. They can get into a mess from time to time when they are captured by strong individuals with very particular ideas. They can become at odds with parents and heads, and can contribute to poor performance in the school. I understand what happens under current academies with sponsors. But in an academy without a sponsor, what process will be gone through to set the governing body back on the right path? Who complains to whom? Who reaches a judgment as to what is happening? Who takes action under what powers?
What general powers will parents have to set things right if they see things going wrong? I do not think that there are any contractual arrangements with parents. So, if a school is failing to provide education, what is the route for the parent to enforce the right to education for their child? Finally, at Second Reading, I asked whether we might be circulated with a model funding agreement. I have not seen that yet and I am keen to do so while we are discussing these matters.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, the debate so far has been extremely interesting. It started with a clear indication that we will go down the academy route for all schools. I supported that direction very strongly before the break. To add free schools, when clearly they all fall within the same family, does not make any sense. I was slightly surprised at the amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, addressed, to replace “person” with “governing body”. No noble Lord has said one word about the governing body and its role.
I must declare an interest as president of the National Governors Association. Therefore, all these areas interest me quite a bit. Given all that and the rather confusing and conflicting view that noble Lords around the Chamber seem to have about whether governors and parent governors are a good or a bad thing, it would be extremely helpful if the Minister—to whom I also add my thanks because he gave up a lot of time before we even began debating this Bill—could indicate how important he thinks that the role of the governing body is. It will have a hugely important role in seeing that these new academies—however many of them there are—come to the conclusion that I think many of us would see as an important step in British education.
Baroness Warnock
My Lords, I support the amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Low. Rightly, they were narrowly focused. At Second Reading, he said:
“Academies are independent schools that are funded directly by the Secretary of State and are accountable mainly through the funding agreement, rather than”,—[Official Report, 7/6/10; col. 514.]
through educational legislation. I am interested in accountability. I strongly support Amendment 13 because it requires that any other—to me, rather mysterious—mode of supplying financial assistance to academies should be as equally open as the contracts that are agreements between the applicant and the Government. I entirely endorse the desire that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, expressed to see a copy of one of these model agreements.
The issue is about openness and accountability of how much money is being handed over—it will be a considerable amount—and exactly what the academy is committed to providing with that money. This is where I come to my noble friend’s main interest; namely, to seek an assurance that the money must be spent on provision for children with special educational needs. I think that we will come to more detail on that later. I share his feelings that the local authority must retain a good deal of responsibility for the provision of educational facilities for children with special needs, especially in very difficult cases of rare disabilities or multiple disabilities where individual academies could not afford to spend the money required.
There is a good deal of unclarity regarding special educational needs. Parents will be very much confused—perhaps more so if they read today’s Hansard than they were before. Amendment 13 would clarify the position with regard to the accountability of an academy, whatever way it receives its money from the Secretary of State.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, on this group of amendments, the issue about whether these free schools will be academies could be a trifle academic if the Government are saying that the point of the future trajectory is that all schools should at least have the opportunity to be academies. We need to see this debate within that context.
Much more seriously, I endorse the recommendations that the security of those with special educational needs be affirmed in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Low, referred to the avoidance of doubt, and bishops are always up for the avoidance of doubt. There are some issues where it is too risky to leave matters simply to good will or mutual understanding, and special educational needs is one of them. We need to ask the Minister if he will look at ways in which that dimension of academy life can be secured clearly in the Bill.
My third point is to do with governance—not with who can be a governor, but with the purpose of school governors in this brave new world. Many of us have lived through various recensions of governance. I go back to when I was first ordained in the early 1970s and I was a governor of a school. It seemed that the main purpose of the governors was to meet quarterly, hear the head teacher tell us how good the school was, and to pat the head teacher on the head saying, “Jolly good. Keep it up”. It was not long before we saw the development of teacher governors and parent governors. Governing bodies became representative bodies that articulated the range of interests of those with any connection with the school. The role of governors changed quite significantly. Then the most recent Bill of the last Government, just before the election, looked dangerously as though it was tipping towards having governors acting as the Government’s narks. There were going to be requirements for governors to be able to spill the beans and blow the whistle when they thought the head teacher or someone else was not quite up to it. I am sure it will be said that that was not the intention, but that was how it looked. Certainly there was a shift going on in our understanding of governance.
What I ask the Minister is this. Before we even start nailing down categories of people who should be governors, what will we be asking them to do? What will be the role of governors in this new world of academies that is now emerging on the back of the primary wave? I cannot make a decision about the issue of who until I have some understanding of what it is that the governance of academies will entail. What will be the function of the governors? What gifts and qualities will be required of them? We will then be able to answer the question of who might be the most competent people to fulfil that vital role.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I support, first, the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low. It is important that special needs are recognised. I also support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I have been a governor of a girls’ school and am now a governor of a boys’ school. As a governor of the school to which my daughter went, I was not actually asked to take on the role until she had left. That seems to be the ideal situation because you then have a parent with a real interest in the school but without the rather special interest which is local and time-limited. To have a predominance of parent governors while their own children are in the school would be a retrograde step, so I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I also support my noble friend Lord Northbourne’s amendment. I emphasise that there is much to do. Some children need smaller schools and special teachers to work with them, but others do not, even though they may face serious challenges at home. Good support can be offered in schools to include these children to the benefit of all. I give one example: the charity Voluntary Reading Help, which works in over 1,000 schools. It recruits volunteers to work for one or two lunch hours a week with particularly difficult or challenging children. I have seen for myself in a primary school nearby how the volunteer will sit down and read with a child for half an hour and then play a little game. The child chooses the book and they enjoy their time together. A significant number of these volunteers are men, which is particularly valuable given that we have so many young boys growing up without fathers. These are important relationships that can be built up over the course of a year, which is the minimum commitment. This is the sort of thing that helps to include children who might otherwise be challenging. It is important to consider who should make up the governing body and what its function is. It should take a strategic view and be able to adopt sensible approaches like the one I have outlined.
I was encouraged when Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said last week that he intended to recruit more men into early years childcare. I hope that he will also look at primary schools and how initiatives like Voluntary Reading Help might be developed. The charity is keen to expand in order to be able to help more children.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My Lords, I follow directly on what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has said, as well as what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. The House has been concerned about the position of children with special educational needs. It is one of the areas where a good governing body can make it very clear indeed that the school must make provision for children in this group. Indeed, the force of governing bodies has been one of the pressures that has encouraged the move towards children being educated at least partly in mainstream schools if they possibly can be. Not the least of this has taken place in primary schools, where the governing body is often a crucial factor in ensuring that these youngsters are given the education they need and deserve.
I do not want to detain the Committee for long. First, I ask the Minister whether more assurances can be given on the position of children with special educational needs, about which we have learnt a great deal more in the past 10 years. Far more children are now helped in schools, in some cases through one-to-one assistance, to overcome the obstacles they encountered as very young children so that they often catch up with their cohort. In the long term their special educational needs are not a handicap to them. We would like to associate ourselves closely with what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Low, and of course by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock.
I want to make one other point quite strongly. It was the former Secretary of State for Education who brought in the requirement that governing bodies had to include representatives of parents, teachers and non-teaching staff. Will the Government consider very carefully whether we should not consider, as is implied in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, widening somewhat the requirements in the Bill so that governing bodies are rather more representative than the single parent governor that is presently required for the academies? In the country as a whole, there are some 300,000 governors, or at least vacancies for governors. This seems to be a perfect example of what the Prime Minister meant when he talked about the importance of the big society, because these are men and women who volunteer their time and energy and make a fantastic commitment to ensuring that their schools are as good as they can be. I have seen it over and again, particularly in respect of smaller primary schools through what I should declare as an interest in my capacity as the chairman of the judges of the Teaching Awards. Among others, we give awards directly to the governors of schools. It has been striking to see governors from often deprived parts of the country committing themselves deeply to getting their communities involved in their school. It would be a tragedy to see that go.
With regard to special educational needs, can the Minister say a little more to ensure that such children get the care and attention they need? Given the large number of academies that are to be created, I also ask him to consider again whether we should not ensure, at the very least, representation of parents—I share the view that it should not be a majority—and staff, including non-teaching staff, on the governing body in order, to put it bluntly, to ensure that those non-teaching staff members are strongly committed to the successful outcome of the school. That is a very important part of making education responsible and responsive to the community and the country as a whole.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I am sure that none of us wishes to extend the debate any longer, but I feel strongly that the support being shown for the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, may be misplaced or perhaps misunderstood. I say that because I am disappointed that we should in any sense offer support to the idea that a governing body with a majority of parents is not a delightful and wonderful thing. I hope that the free schools will include those started by groups of parents because surely parents more than anyone else care about the welfare of their children and know what they want for them.
The commitment that you get from parents involved in the running of a school where their own children are present is one of the solid gold threads of education in this country. Many years ago I was involved in the early days of the pre-school playgroup movement. This was established entirely by mothers for their children and it was absolutely wonderful. The way in which the mothers organised themselves and their children—they wanted the absolute best playgroups and so set up training courses for themselves—is exactly what the big society is about. I hope that some of the free schools will generate that excitement again.
The idea that it is only sharp-elbowed, middle class parents who have this kind of excitement is extraordinary. Many of the pre-school playgroups were—
Lord Northbourne
Will the noble Baroness accept that I am prepared to withdraw the phrase “middle class”?
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I am grateful to the noble Lord for that because, certainly, many of the parents came from different backgrounds. I have seen pre-school playgroups on council estates organised by single mothers and so on which were inspiring. So perhaps we should reconsider the idea that a governing body composed of a majority of parents is not necessarily a good thing.
Lord Rix
My Lords, as the grandfather of a splendid little lad with Down’s Syndrome who is nine years’ old, perhaps I may say that the massive support that my noble friend Lord Low has received from around the Committee is music to my ears. I should like to add my support to the amendments.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I hope that I am not going to spoil the party by referring to the first two or three amendments in this odd group. The debate seems to have become about the composition of school governing bodies which, as far as I can see, is the subject of a later group of amendments. Never mind; we soldier on.
The first two amendments in the group seek to amend the words at the start of the Bill:
“The Secretary of State may enter into Academy arrangements with any person”.
“Any person” seems an unambitious expression and one wonders why it should not, for example, say, “Any charity”. I understood the Minister to say earlier without equivocation—this is how I read the Bill—that only a charity can be “the other party” for the purposes of academy arrangements. If we were to get technical—which is what we are supposed to do in this House—we would consider the Interpretation Act, which states, I think I am right in saying, that “any person” is any corporate entity or any individual person. It does not, for example, cover unincorporated trusts—and a great many charities are just that.
If I had been kinder I would have raised these issues with the Minister before the debate, so I do not expect him to answer directly. However, I strongly recommend that the phrase “any charity” should be substituted for “any person”. That would be happier, clearer and avoid the technical argument I have touched on.
Lord Bates
Following on from the previous speaker, I should like further clarification on the rules concerning the new schools. It is desirable that the Bill should encompass all three types of new schools. This would, first, allow the best schools to become better by freeing them up; secondly, tackle the failing schools through the academy orders in Clause 4; and, thirdly, make provision for the new schools so that they, too, can become academies. It would be tidy if those three elements could be within the Bill.
We do not need to be too anxious about the burden that this will place upon the Government. Taking things in context, the brief on the Bill pack prepared by the House of Commons includes two or three helpful sections on new schools. It states that currently 19 per cent of the 3,200 secondary schools are judged to be outstanding and will qualify for the fast track. So that is potentially 600 schools out of 20,000. At the other end, depending on how you define inadequate Ofsted reports for longer than a year, there are about 100 failing schools. So, added together, that makes approximately 700 schools out of 20,000.
In the document Raising the Bar; Narrowing the Gap, which was the discussion Green Paper of the Government when they were in opposition, it was anticipated that the total number of new schools—roughly about 300 to 400—would be equivalent to about 220,000 places. I mention this for two reasons. First, all of the proposed changes might touch upon, potentially, 5 per cent of the total cohort of schools within the country. Therefore, the sense that this will send shockwaves through the entire system is unfounded and it is perhaps unfair to concern people about that. Secondly, the catchment areas of the new schools—
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
When the noble Lord refers to “new schools”, does he mean free schools?
Lord Bates
The terminology is getting to us all. I do mean that. I come from an inner city urban area on Tyneside and it happened quite regularly that, where you had a failing school in a suburban area, dissatisfied parents who could afford to, or opted to, would take over an old large Victorian terraced house and its grounds—we have all seen them—and set up a new independent fee-paying school. The parents who could afford to opt out of the system would then pay fees for their children to go to that school. This movement still exists and is happening within the private sector. I cannot understand how anyone who has a passion for narrowing the gap and giving greater opportunity could possibly object to it. We should do all of these things in inner city areas and make them free and available to everyone. That would be entirely laudable.
I wish to make two other brief points, the first of which relates to catchment areas. If there is going to be a greater number of schools, broadening catchment areas would be a good thing. When the city technology colleges were established, they covered not only one entire local education authority area but often encompassed two or three. In other words, if the parents were prepared to undertake the duty of getting their child to school and it was not going to damage the child’s education, it was deemed acceptable for the child to attend there. Where there is greater choice the catchment areas need to be broadened. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, rightly made the point that narrow catchment areas could have too severe an effect on neighbouring schools.
The final point on which I seek clarification from the Minister concerns the properties that could be used. There are many buildings in inner city areas—including, many educational buildings—under the control of local authorities. Indeed, where they have a surplus of places they are paying additional money for them. Does my noble friend agree that local authorities should look at their existing stock of prepared educational establishments, embrace this change and, where there is a surplus, hand over existing buildings to a new school provider? That would give the authority an additional income and would mean that the provider was not forced into premises that might not be suitable.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, it has been wide-ranging debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, pointed out, we have in some ways already got on to some of the issues that we will discuss in later groups of amendments. We can pursue them in greater detail then. Given how wide-ranging the debate has been, it would perhaps be helpful if I briefly restated the amendments and their purpose.
Amendments 2 and 3 would mean that academy arrangements could be made only with the governing body of an existing school rather than any other group. They are linked in this group to Amendment 24, which would mean that, for future academies, the academy proprietor would have to ensure that its governing body was not controlled by a majority of parents of pupils at the academy—which was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.
Amendment 13 seeks to ensure that the SEN annex of an academy agreement, which sets out the school’s detailed obligations in relation to pupils with SEN, would apply also to the arrangements for academy financial assistance. Amendment 33 seeks to prescribe in the Bill that the academy agreement includes details of the roles, composition and continuance of the governing body. Amendment 76 seeks to ensure that academy funding agreements include additional provisions on SEN, including a requirement to comply with special educational needs legislation and regulations as if it were a maintained school.
Perhaps I may start with Amendments 2 and 3. The Government want to make it easier for teachers, charities, educational groups and groups of parents to start new academies. As the 2005 White Paper stated:
“We believe parents should have greater power to drive the new system: it should be easier for them to replace the leadership or set up new schools where they are dissatisfied with existing schools”.
We debated that earlier. I do not feel that I need to go through much of it again.
I should make it clear to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan—I think that my noble friend Lord Greaves also raised the point—that a free school could be regulated either through a funding agreement or a grant under Section 14 of the 2002 Act. In both cases, similar requirements will be placed on free schools as are placed on academies which convert from a maintained school. The only difference would be more flexibility in relation to the length of the funding period, a point that I made in our earlier debate on the Urgent Question. The more flexible arrangement would be used mainly in cases where new providers did not have a previous track record.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
It would be helpful if the Minister set out in greater detail in writing what he has just said. We received a letter from the Secretary of State today—I am scrambling around to find it among my papers—stating not only what he has just said but also that academies funded through grant would have the conditions of their grant outlined in a letter. It states that the provisions would be in line with those in the funding agreement, as the Minister has just said. However, there is anxiety that, for issues around SEN, vulnerable children and all the areas set out in the funding agreement, the provisions might well be “in line with” but not the same. The Minister has just made a strong statement. It would be helpful to have that more clearly set out. My noble friend Lord Adonis said that the Secretary of State can already fund schools in this manner under the 2002 Act. If that is the case, and all the instruments exist, why do we need this additional route? If all the instruments exist, are we not just confusing matters? Around the Chamber, we are starting to understand the importance of the academy agreement. If we introduce another way of doing things, will it not confuse things further? Perhaps a letter would be helpful.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am very happy of course to write further and set out what the noble Baroness seeks, because it is absolutely our intention that the two forms of funding should be on a completely equal footing. I recognise that many Members of this Committee want as much reassurance as they can have on that. If I can help in making it clearer, I will be delighted to do so.
Amendment 13, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low, seeks to ensure that the SEN annex of an academy agreement, which sets out the school’s detailed obligations in relation to pupils with SEN, would apply also to the arrangements for academy financial assistance. In a way, that is a variant of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. The amendment is unnecessary, because academies whose arrangements take the form of an academy agreement and those whose arrangements are for financial assistance will both be under the same obligations in relation to special educational needs. I shall pick up again on special educational needs in connection with Amendment 76, although I know that a later group of amendments has been tabled on SEN.
Lord Northbourne
Might the Minister perhaps think a little more about the composition of governing bodies and write to me and the Committee? Just to say that there will be more than one parent governor, but, apart from that, that it is a matter of chance, is not quite enough.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am not sure that I would say to the noble Lord that it would be totally a matter of chance. Fundamental to the Bill are trust and the principle of freedom. Throughout the Bill, we are seeking to be as enabling, permissive and as little prescriptive as possible. That principle would obtain also in our attitude to the question of governance. Our starting point would be that people wanting to set up these schools and exercise these freedoms would have a view as to what the most sensible membership of a governing body would be. The noble Lord will know from his experience that the best kind of governing body has a broadly drawn membership, bringing in expertise and experience from many areas. I am happy to discuss with him outside this debate whether there is anything further I can do.
Baroness Walmsley
Notwithstanding that my Amendment 82 in a later group deals with this very matter and I would like to talk about it then, does the Minister not agree that if a school is set up on the demand of, and by the organisation of, a group of parents, it seems a little strange to have only one of them as a governor?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am being helped by noble Lords opposite who know far more about this subject than I yet do, so I am grateful for their prompting. The proposal is that there should be at least one parent governor. In practice, if one were to draw up a list and look at what happens on the ground, one would find that academies tend to have varying numbers of parent governors, often many more than one. That is because academies have worked out for themselves that having those parents involved is a good thing. Parental involvement is a good principle. It is sometimes thought that academies are conspiracies against their local area and against local people, but I have seen no evidence of that whatever. In the academies that I have seen, it has been exactly the opposite. It would be wrong if I have given my noble friend the impression that I consider one parent is correct. The statutory requirement is for at least one, but in practice it would be many more than that. However, we will return to this debate later.
Picking up on that point, it is the Government's view that there should be broad representation on the governing body of academies. That is rightly a matter for academies. We are seeking not to be too prescriptive in setting down what those freedoms should be.
Free schools will have to have a fair and transparent admissions policy, just like other academies. They will have to provide places to pupils of different abilities drawn wholly or mainly from the local area and we would expect parent governors to reflect that intake. The arrangement for the election of parent governors will be set out in the articles of association of the academy company. It will make clear that the election of a parent governor should be by the parents or pupils attending the academy and, once elected, they will be appointed to the governing body of the academy trust.
On Amendment 33, moved by my noble friend Lord Lucas, I first apologise that we have not yet been able to circulate the model funding agreements. I want to do that as soon as possible. We are proposing to be able to circulate specifically the elements that deal with admissions, SEN and exclusions, which I know are of particular concern to many noble Lords. We will do that as soon as we can and I am sorry that we have not been able to do it in time for today.
On the question asked by my noble friend Lord Lucas about intervention powers, the Secretary of State has power to intervene when educational standards are in question, if health and safety is an issue, and where governance, including financial management, is at issue. Of course, parents can complain to the Secretary of State and ask him to intervene.
On the substance of Amendment 33, all academies are managed by an academy trust which, before it can enter the funding agreement with the Secretary of State, must have finalised and lodged at Companies House its governing documents, with the memorandum and articles of association which set out the governance arrangements and the governing body. That prompts me to respond to a question asked by my noble friend Lord Phillips. Because of the technical detail, I feel I should write to him to follow that point up.
In the case of outstanding schools converting, we will discuss and need to agree with the governing body of the converting school who will be responsible for establishing the academy trust and the proposed composition of the board of the governing trust. We envisage that the composition of the governing body of the trust may therefore be very similar to that of the governing body of the converting school. The effect of Amendments 2 and 3 would be to deny teachers, charities and parents the opportunity to set up new schools. It would be wrong to deny them that choice, which the previous Government themselves intended to give them and that the Conservative Party promised in its manifesto and restated in the coalition agreement.
Lord Greaves
I am still confused. Either free schools can be set up under the 2002 Act or they cannot. If they can, why do they also need to have provision in this legislation?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The point of having two ways of establishing an academy is that in addition to the current funding agreement route, it was thought to be sensible also to have a flexible way of approaching the subject, particularly in so far as the new free schools might be concerned. We believe that it is necessary to have that extra flexibility in the system.
Lord Greaves
So is it the Government’s intention to use this new legislation and not the 2002 Act for free schools? That is the clarity that we need.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I will need to make that clear subsequently to my noble friend Lord Greaves. I will do that as soon as I am able.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Of course.
Amendment 76 in this group would ensure that academy funding agreements would include additional provisions on SEN, including a requirement to comply with special educational needs legislation and regulations as if it were a maintained school. Academy funding agreements already include and will continue to include, as will grant arrangements, provisions setting out the responsibilities of academies in relation to pupils with SEN and disabilities. These include the responsibility of the governing body of the academy trust to consult the local authority and the governing bodies of other schools in the area to the extent that that is necessary for co-ordinating provision for pupils with SEN.
Academy funding agreements also already include provisions that require academies to use best endeavours to meet any special needs of pupils, have regard to the SEN code of practice and have an SEN policy. Academies are already required to appoint a suitable person to co-ordinate SEN provision, but they currently have the freedom to decide who that should be. Nevertheless, academy funding agreements are clear that the key elements of this role are to ensure that the special educational needs of those pupils with such needs are met, including through the co-ordination of specialist provision within the local authority. Where an academy fails to meet its SEN funding agreement obligations, the Secretary of State has the role of ensuring that these obligations are met. Academy parents and pupils also have the same rights of access to the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability).
I hope that the setting out of those measures will go some way to reassuring noble Lords on this issue and I know that we will return to debate it further. However, I have listened to a whole range of noble Lords speak eloquently in this House and elsewhere about the need for absolute parity between academies and maintained schools and those points have been forcefully made again this evening. I have had meetings on SEN with a number of noble Lords from the Cross Benches and all sides and I have been particularly impressed by my noble friends of the Lib Dem Benches on this issue. I am conscious that the expertise in this House on special educational needs and vulnerable children is considerable, and I am certainly not an expert in these areas myself. I have tried to approach the question of parity from first principles rather than from having the depth of knowledge that many Members of this House have. Having thought about it from first principles and reflected on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Low, endorsed by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and underlined by my noble friend Lady Williams and many other Lib Dem noble friends, I can say to the House that I will commit to think about how best to achieve parity. In principle, that seems the right way to go, and I shall come back to the House on Report with proposals.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I thank the Minister for giving way. Will he also think in his deliberations about both routes for academy designation—through an agreement and through the grant letter?
Lord Hill of Oareford
One is approaching this from first principles, and first principles are first principles. I give an undertaking to come back at Report with proposals as to how one could put the principle of parity into effect.
Lord Rix
I had intended to thank the Minister for the letter that he sent to many of the Peers who spoke at the Second Reading of the Bill and to ask that he at least acknowledge some of these points. The Minister has already done this, which means that he has shot our fox to a certain extent, because a lot of us have a lot more amendments to make. I trust that the Minister will take them in the spirit in which they are offered, consider them and perhaps meet us again before Report. If he could do that, we would be extremely grateful.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I would not like to deny the noble Lord, Lord Rix, the pleasure of the hunt. I had no intention in shooting his fox, but it struck me in listening to the debate that, given that was my view, it made sense to make that clear sooner rather than later. I know that the noble Lord and others who know huge amounts about this subject will want to make many points, and I am always happy to have them made to me.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
I have just one small point. The Minister indicated that having given very full consideration to all these points he will come back at Report with proposals. There are strictish rules about the sort of questions that can be asked at Report. Given that the Minister will be making almost a Committee stage announcement, will it be acceptable if some of the questioning flows back into the allowance given to Committee stage?
Lord Hill of Oareford
We have two more days to debate these issues, and I am sure that we will come back to them. The answer to the noble Baroness’s question is, as much as it is possible, yes, of course.
Having concluded on Amendment 76, I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, the noble Lords, Lord Greaves, Lord Lucas, Lord Northbourne and Lord Low, and the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, not to press their amendments.
Lord Lucas
I thank my noble friend for his reply and look forward to the model agreement, or the bits of it that we will get. Yes, charities do evolve, generally, a self-sustaining model for their governing body, but those that do not, die. Schools that do not either die, as many have this year, or the bursar very quickly puts other arrangements in place. It does not seem that those triggers are there for a straightforward maintained school with no sponsor. I shall return to this matter again in another context but, before the passing of the Bill, we need to know how we can stop schools getting into a real mess and how we can pick it up early and do something about it.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
We have had a very helpful and full debate, and I thank the Minister for replying so comprehensively and in such a helpful way. To return to my earlier remarks, and picking up on the point that my noble friend Lord Adonis made, I think that it would be helpful—now that we know that free schools will be academies, and being in favour of reducing the alphabetti spaghetti, or soup, as the House was earlier—if the proposal forms for the free schools were called proposal forms for academies. We should get that clarity and consistency, so that those outside, who have not had the benefit of listening to the deliberations that we have had, can be clear about the relationship between new schools, free schools and academies. That would be very helpful.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I hesitate to prolong this debate, but after all that has been said on this group of amendments, is it not sensible to have the phrase “free school” somewhere reflected in the Bill? The Government themselves refer to these new academy schools as “free schools”. I should have thought that, in trying to make the legislation as helpful as possible to the poor devils who have to implement it hereafter, that would be a useful thing for the Government to contemplate—and I should be grateful if he would.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, in moving Amendment 3A, I shall speak to Amendments 4A and 101. My noble friend Lord Adonis drew our attention to the similarity between Clause 1 of the Bill and the relevant Section of the Education Act 2002. However, the difference between this Bill and the section devoted to academies in the 2002 Act is the scale of the new initiative and the fact that this Bill will encompass so many new schools. Therefore, it is right that there are more safeguards and stringent checks than were perhaps required in the past.
Amendment 3A and the first part of Amendment 4A in some ways refer back to the debate on the previous group of amendments, but they are still pertinent. It is surprising that there is no provision in the Bill for any “fit and proper person” test to discern whether a board of governors or anyone to whom they may contract the running of a school are appropriate persons to take on the role of governing an autonomous school without local authority support—and, seemingly, much reduced inspections. This lack of safeguards would be concerning, but it might be understandable were there provision that the concerns of the community were taken into consideration in conferring this significantly increased responsibility or even power on existing boards of governors. This Bill appears to compound that lack of safeguards rather than tempering it by cutting out any right of these obviously vital stakeholders to be consulted. Amendments 3A and 4A are designed to address that crucial gap in the proposals.
The issue of consultation should be central to the Bill. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, said at Second Reading, consultation is a serious hole in the Bill. Amendment 101, in the name of my noble friend Lady Morgan, would ensure that the requirement to consult various interested groups in the community is in the Bill. This is not a delaying tactic—I am not attempting to put any delaying hurdles before the Bill—but I believe that consultation is an imperative.
The amendments are also intended to temper an effect that the Minister of State for Children and Families in the Department for Education identified some time ago, when she said:
“Unless you give local authorities that power to plan and unless you actually make sure that there is money available ... it’s just a gimmick”.
I am sure that this Bill is not a gimmick, but local authorities have a role in planning and delivering education in the community that remains far more democratically accountable and responsive than a system that relies on the Secretary of State sitting at his desk in Whitehall. As was pointed out at Second Reading, there is difference between political rhetoric and reality in relation to the Bill. The Prime Minister said some time ago:
“So we will take power from the central state and give it to individuals where possible—as with our school reforms that will put power directly in the hands of parents”.
The coalition programme—in section 4, on communities and local government—says:
“The Government believes that it is time for a fundamental shift of power from Westminster to people. We will promote decentralisation and democratic engagement”.
I believe that consultation is a vital part of democratic engagement. However, this Bill is not so much about decentralisation as about centralisation. Power is being taken away from the people and given to the Secretary of State.
Community cohesion is dealt with in the next group of amendments, but at Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made the important point that the wider views of the community should be taken into consideration in relation to decisions about schools, as the education system must serve the whole community. I believe that the community should be included in any consultation. Consultation, apart from being the right course of action, enables time for reflection about governance and accountability and about how schools can best use new freedoms to their advantage but without disadvantaging the rest of the community. Local authorities, parents, children and the staff—both teaching and non-teaching—see issues in the round and, unlike the Secretary of State, are aware of local circumstances and sensitivities. They are best placed to know the needs of the community and to express concerns that might not have been considered about the consequences of a conversion. They can reflect on the impact on neighbouring schools.
I also believe that there must be parental involvement from the first if the schools are to succeed. That means involvement in a parental consultation process. To have one or possibly two parents on the governing body that makes an application to the Secretary of State is not enough. Wider consultation with parents is needed.
The Secretary of State has said publicly that he hopes that some schools will be able to convert to academy status by the beginning of the new academic year this September. Some looking at this from the outside suspect that the haste and determination with which these schools are to be converted owe more to political considerations than to any particular urgency. I believe that there is more to this issue than politics. Introducing a proper measure of consultation would enable the Government to demonstrate that this Bill is not just about politics but about improving standards and improving our education system. However, time is needed for consultation. If that means that schools that are anxious to become academies have to wait a few more months before they can do so, so be it. Consultation is important for the schools and for communities.
In the Statement, I think that the Minister said—I may be mistaken—that there would be consultation on the setting up of free schools. Why is there to be consultation on free schools, which will then become academies, but no consultation on academies in relation to this Bill?
In my view, consultation is the key to the success of these new academies. Consultation, when properly undertaken, is a means of ensuring that the right policy for a particular school is pursued and of ensuring the wider ownership of this policy. It will engender the confidence of parents, pupils, staff and the community. This is a means of ensuring the success of the policy.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, my Amendment 104 is in this group. I am not quite sure why Amendment 3A is in the group—I think that it should have been in a previous one—but the rest of the amendments are all about consultation. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that appropriate consultation, over a sufficient time, leads to good decision-making. The decision that schools have to make about conversion to academy status is terribly important, so I think that they should consult.
I have a few words to say about the amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Morgan. I am not sure why they felt the need to include CRB checks in Amendment 4A. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that all those who had dealings with schools had to have CRB checks anyway. Indeed, I know a young teacher who does both paid and voluntary work in a number of schools and has had four CRB checks. I hope that the coalition Government will smooth out that totally unnecessary duplication. Also, surely the Government normally do due diligence on anyone with whom they intend to sign a contract, so I think that the second subsection in the amendment may be superfluous, too.
The main point of this debate is consultation. Of course schools should consult all the relevant people and provide them with the information that they need to be able to respond appropriately. To become an academy is an enormous change in the governance and funding of a school. Indeed, I think that it is very risky, as Clause 1(2)(b) and Clause 1(3)(b) give enormous power to the Secretary of State without any scrutiny by Parliament. Perhaps we will get that changed during the Bill’s passage through your Lordships’ House. We will discuss the merits of these arrangements later, but the fact remains that a school that becomes an academy under the Bill does so entirely at the whim of the Secretary of State, so it needs to be sure about the potential benefits of the change to the education that it provides to all the children in its locality.
Incidentally, I do not believe that these schools should be called “independent”, as they have been described. They will be totally dependent on the Secretary of State for their funding and the terms of their operation. My noble friend Lord Greaves referred to them as “autonomous”, which I believe is a better expression.
The difference between our amendment on consultation and those tabled by the Opposition is that we do not include the trade unions. I thought that I should explain why that is. Unions are national organisations, whereas we have proposed consulting local people or organisations that have a keen interest in the school. No national organisation can have a relevant view of the merits of the application of every individual school. The local people matter here and it is they who should be consulted.
That is especially true of the children. I have been in your Lordships’ House for 10 years. At the start, when the Labour Government brought legislation before us, we had to put down a lot of amendments about what I call the voice of the child. Gradually, the Government got the message and, I am glad to say, such provisions started to appear in Bills, so we did not need to put down those amendments. I hope that the Minister will take into account the fact that, when you consult children about things that affect them, you get better decision-making. I also hope that, if he cannot accept these amendments, he will at least put this in guidance, so that schools have to consult the appropriate people.
On the matter of the documents that should be sent out to the people who are being consulted, Amendments 101 and 102 are far too prescriptive. We would leave it to the schools to judge what material it is appropriate to send out. On these Benches we intended to add something much briefer and less prescriptive but it got lost and did not go down in the end. The period suggested for the consultation is six weeks by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and four weeks by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. However, the school will have to make the TUPE arrangements with staff, which requires 10 weeks and should not be during the school holidays. Schools will have to take a lot longer than four weeks, and so they should. I have already urged my right honourable friend Michael Gove to hasten slowly, and I shall do the same to my noble friend Lord Hill. That should be the watchword. The decision does not need to be fast but it needs to be right.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
I support the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lady Royall. This is a very strange part of the Bill, and I am not sure what the rationale behind it is. The Bill purports to want to know the views of people in communities or schools where children’s lives are affected by what legislation says. However, it excludes from consultation at key points anybody outside the school. I wonder if this comes from the Government’s fears over what happened when they had ballots over grant-maintained schools. If so, I well understand that. That was a procedure that ended up causing terrible arguments and distrust between groups of people and communities who should have been working together. There is absolutely no way that I would want to return to that. Indeed, in my time at the department, we did not have ballots in that manner. I am sympathetic, but the Minister mentioned in the last debate that people are somehow suspicious of academies and free schools. There is no better way of making them more suspicious than to exclude them from being consulted. If the Minister accepts that that suspicion is already there, I am not sure why he wants to risk building it up by, as I say, excluding people from consultation.
I have two more points. When this issue was previously been raised in the course of the Bill, the Minister said that the previous Government did not have means of consulting anyway. Correct me if I am wrong, but the essential difference was that, under the legislation used by the previous Government, one school was closed and a new one was opened. The consultation took place as part of the school closure and opening. In the Bill, the conversion of a school—as far as I can see, there is no official closure and opening—excludes any consultation at all.
Finally, the amendments do not seek to take away from the Secretary of State the right to decide whether or not a school should be granted academy status. You might argue that they ought to, but they do not. I cannot see that they would delay any consideration. If I was the Secretary of State in this situation, I would want to put myself in a position where I took the community with me, just to give any new school the best possible start to its life. To load a school with potential suspicion when that need not be the case is really not acceptable. To accept amendments along these lines, if not in such detail, would be very good for any schools that become academies under this legislation.
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool
My Lords, as a supporter of academies, I very much encourage the Government to accept the spirit of these amendments. I have been involved with three academies. I chaired the first and co-chaired the second. The first academy arose from community consultation. When there was anxiety in the community over the other two, there was consultation which allayed people’s fears. I put it to the Government that the people who are being proposed for consultation—young people, parents, governing bodies—are the constituent parts of the big society. It seems a contradiction that if you want to build the big society, you then exclude the very people who are the essence of it. Consultation is called for here.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I refer to my Amendment 102. It is interesting that several differing groups have tabled more or less the same sort of amendments, calling for much greater consultation. The differences between us tend, perhaps, to reflect our own particular interests. The whole area of consultation is crucial and I agree entirely with what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said about consulting parents, children and young people. This is crucial in today’s world. They will certainly have a view. We can disagree about trade unions but they could be relevant on the ground in local areas.
The point I would like to stress in my amendment is that the governing bodies of other schools in the areas, which might reasonably be considered to be affected by the making of an academy order, should be consulted. This comes back to the wider issue of whether the academy will advantage or disadvantage the rest of the school population in the area. The Minister stressed that he is not disallowing consultation. He is no doubt encouraging it, but he is not giving the view that it should definitely happen. It is not compulsory. I would like to see in the Bill some degree of requiring that consultation take place. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is not very keen on the second half of our amendment. Nevertheless, if you want to set out a range of issues that need to be looked at and thought about before deciding whether to apply to become an academy, that half is important too.
Finally, there is the letter to Peers dated 15 June from the noble Lord, Lord Hill, in which he wrote about understanding the importance of parental engagement with the conversion process. Everybody is very pleased to see him acknowledging this in the Committee. However, the Department for Education’s guidance to schools wishing to become academies suggests only that schools consider how they might wish to inform staff, pupils and parents of the intended conversion. That is not what I would call consultation before a decision is made by the governing body. It is about informing stakeholders once a decision has been made. I gather, too, that this guidance has not been changed since the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Hill, advising schools to engage with parents. I would have thought that this would be something that the department should include and send off to the various areas that need to consider this issue. On that basis, I would certainly support what the noble Baroness said in moving the first amendment. All the points that she made are very important in making a decision.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I will not go through the full list of people to consult, but I will comment on two groups specifically. One is children, who were mentioned earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the other is schools in the area. On children, Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child so beloved of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, gives children the right to express views on all matters affecting them and to have these views given due weight. Failing to consult students on matters that may alter both the character and curriculum of their school is a backward step in implementing Article 12. The Government should seriously think about consulting children.
I believe that academies do not have to be part of the local family of schools and that there is no obligation to co-operate with other neighbourhood schools. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where the survey that I have in front of me came from. It was taken a few years ago and involved schools situated near academies. It appears that only 27 per cent of those schools were consulted about the academy proposals, 32 per cent said that the academy specialism was not shared with them, 23 per cent said that it had a negative impact on intake and 36 per cent said that it had a negative impact on the allocation of resources. In order to remove the suspicion about which my noble friend Lady Morris spoke, to get better decisions on these issues and to move slowly, we need to take communities along. Therefore, I urge the Minister to look again at involving local schools that may be affected by the development of an academy.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, there seem to me to be two distinct issues. The first is that of good practice in the establishment of academies, which was rightly raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool. It is clearly good practice that maximum efforts are made to engage the local community. Indeed, it is very unlikely that an academy proposal will be a success if it does not have a very wide measure of support from the parental body, the staff body and the wider community. As the right reverend Prelate rightly says, although the statutory consultation requirements are not present in the case of academies because very few statutory requirements apply in respect to academies, an elaborate process of consultation has taken place in relation to their establishment. In virtually every case consent has been given before an academy is established. I say “virtually” because, in the case of some failing schools, it is not possible to gain the consent of the parental body or sometimes even of the governing body. However, that is distinct from the precise provisions we propose to put in the law. As soon as you read Amendment 4A tabled by my noble friend Lady Morgan, you will see the difficulty of trying to put this into legislation. Having dealt with these issues at the Dispatch Box over a long period, I can say that they are only too clear to me. My noble friend’s amendment says that the groups to be consulted must include those it is perfectly reasonable to include, such as:
“(a) the parents of children of the school
(b) the children and young people of the school”.
I entirely agree with my noble friend Lady Massey about the importance of consulting pupils. One of the things the previous Government did which I think was a big step forward was strongly to encourage pupil engagement in schools, including with school councils, which were a very worthwhile development in schools in recent years. I would certainly expect to see school councils consulted before proposals of this kind came forward. However, paragraphs (f) and (g) of the amendment move into the land of the extremely subjective and difficult to determine. Paragraph (f) refers to,
“any local authority which sends a significant proportion of children to the school”.
What is “significant”? We shall be in the courts as soon as an application is challenged on the meaning of “significant”. Paragraph (g) refers to,
“the governing bodies of other schools in the area which might reasonably be considered to be affected by the arrangements”.
But who decides who might,
“reasonably be considered to be affected by the arrangements”?
Those who oppose proposals for schools to become academies will embark on months of litigation and will latch on to ambiguous wording in legislation that enables them to go to the courts.
While the spirit of these amendments is clearly correct and should be encouraged, as we want to see strong parental and community engagement in proposals for academies, I caution the Committee against seeking to put in primary legislation vague requirements which will open the floodgates to opponents to engage in litigation on the ground of ambiguous legal wording.
Lord Northbourne
My Lords, I should like to set down a marker. If academies are required to accept children with special educational needs, those who understand the needs of those children should be consulted to find out what the effect of the academy would be on their well-being.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, it seems to me that there is a good deal to be said for consultation in this area, in accordance with the spirit of what was said in relation to the big society, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool has pointed out. I am sure that we very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said about the desirability of reducing the impact of litigation in this area, as that could at best produce only bitterness. Although it might provide rewards for some, it is not a particularly attractive process. Perhaps the consultation should be the responsibility of the Secretary of State rather than of one of the parties given that consultation originated by the Secretary of State, on an application being made to him or her, would be more likely to be regarded as proper consultation than would consultation initiated by the party making the application. Open-mindedness is implicit in the notion of consultation and I am not certain that a party wanting to make an application would necessarily have sufficient detachment to make the consultation effective.
Lord Bates
My Lords, following that point, we need to be clear what we are consulting about. There has to be meaningful consultation in this regard. If we are dealing with a school judged outstanding by Ofsted, and the governing body and the head teacher have said that they wish to apply for academy status because they believe that it will give them greater freedom, then what exactly is there to consult about? There seems to me to be a strong case there. I noted the comments made about the right of children to be consulted under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, who consulted the children when a school was failing? Where was their voice then? Who came round with a clipboard saying, “Tell me what you think about the fact that you’re getting 20 per cent five A to Cs when the guys up the road are getting 60 and 70 per cent?” We have to be clear about what the consultation seeks to achieve and be absolutely sure that we are not trying to delay a process. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and his successor wrestled with that process in relation to the academy programme. Consultation could sometimes go on for years while schools were failing. Where a school body has an outstanding record, the process should be allowed to proceed on the say-so of its governing body. However, where a school is failing, in my view the governing body has forgone any rights in that regard and the Secretary of State has a right to intervene. That is in the best interests of children and parents.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I fundamentally disagree with the eloquent but mistaken case that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has just put forward. I discussed the matter this weekend with two chairs of school governing bodies in the area where I live. One of the schools is not sure what to do but has probably made further investigations and is therefore probably on the Government’s list of those schools that have made inquiries. It would rather not take this step but is wondering whether it will be forced to do so because otherwise it will be bad for the school. However, schools should not take this step for that reason. The second school has said plainly that it will not apply, no matter how good it is, because it does not want to break its links with the local authority. That is the school’s decision. Just because a school is outstanding does not mean that it is the right thing for that school to become an academy. A decision has to be made by the people connected with the school and, in my view, by the local community as a whole. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, if the proposal does not have considerable local support, it is unlikely to succeed.
I have a further amendment on this matter in the next group. As well as being confused about other things in the Bill, I am confused about today’s groupings, which all seem to be mixed up. Unfortunately I was stranded in Yorkshire this morning—the overhead wires were down in the Keighley area, and now I cannot even ask the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to intervene in the situation—so I could not get here in time to sort out the groupings in relation to my amendments. Noble Lords will therefore have to listen to me again on the next grouping.
However, the issue of the wider community—to which I referred at Second Reading, in comments to which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, kindly referred—is crucial and must be addressed. That would address some of the problems which the noble Lord referred to in terms of getting it right. Of course you have to get it right. However, I do not agree that the principle of consultation should not be in the Bill because the specific amendments which have been put forward are not quite right. I think that the Government will find it a great deal easier to get support for the Bill, and to get it through Parliament a bit quicker, if they are prepared to look very seriously at this issue.
The real problem is that the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, whom I admire in many ways, is a man with a rather revolutionary mission on this and other matters. Although I am all in favour of revolution, I am a liberal, and revolution must be based on two things. First, it has to be evolutionary—however revolutionary the end product is—and you must get there slowly or fairly slowly. Secondly, you have to take people with you. A sort of Leninist revolution whereby there is a leadership which everyone follows, and if people do not follow it someone such as Stalin comes along and makes them follow, is not the way forward. You must take people with you. A good process of consultation and debate locally among interest groups such as teachers, who have a legitimate interest in the school, and the wider community, is crucial.
The Secretary of State has impaled himself on a problem by setting September as the date by when the first new academies should be set up. Looking at the parliamentary timetable, I am not sure that this legislation can get through by September—not because it will be blocked or obstructed, but simply because of the time that it takes to reach the statute book. There is talk of bringing the Commons back, but if the Commons makes a few changes to the Bill, it will have to come back here, which would mean that it will not go through until we come back in October, unless we are all to be dragged back here screaming in September to get the Bill through in the interests of the revolution. I am not sure that the House of Lords is a body which usually marches behind revolutions—but who knows?
The Government must get themselves off this hook on which they have impaled themselves. They should accept that to do it properly—and it has to be done properly if it is going to work—it will take a bit longer. That is not delaying the legislation by years. Clearly that would be ridiculous. We need a sensible timetable, a sensible way of doing it, and a sensible way of getting local communities—all the people involved in the school, and other schools—to understand and to come to agreements on what is going to happen. If the process is done on the basis of a school selfishly and aggressively breaking away, it will not work. If it is done by agreement among people locally that this is an evolutionary way forward that will probably lead to other schools in the area becoming academies in due course, and if it is done in a sensible and organised way, then it might work.
Baroness Thornton
I cannot resist a comment on a division in the coalition between gradualist and vanguardist politics. I wish to make only one comment, which is that this coalition Government trumpet local responsibility and empowerment for local people. All that I urge the Minister to do is to pay heed to his noble friend Lord Greaves, not his noble friend Lord Bates.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I do not think that anyone who has spoken or, indeed, anyone in the House disagrees with the idea that consultation is a good thing and is probably right and proper. The only disagreement is on whether one needs to legislate for consultation or whether one trusts sensible and grown-up people to behave in a way which guarantees—or provides as near a guarantee as is possible—that their move towards academy status will be a success and will be accepted. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has said, there are very few examples where consultation does not happen—not because it has been legislated for, but because grown-up people have behaved in a grown-up way.
I wish that sometimes in this House we could avoid the temptation to think that every good thing has to be legislated for. Sometimes we should trust people to behave sensibly and in a way that guarantees that when an academy is set up it has the enjoyment and consent of local people.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I should say briefly that all the amendments we are discussing are relevant to maintained schools converting to academies. They do not address the issue of creating an entirely new school, when there will be no pupils, parents or staff. Yet the need for consultation when a brand new school is created is surely pre-eminently more obvious than for even a school which is converting. I merely make that point; maybe my noble friend will provide some reassurance on that issue.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, as has been the pattern today, we have had a good and lively debate, which has certainly given me food for thought as we go forward. Perhaps I may briefly restate the amendments.
Amendment 3A would change who the Secretary of State could enter into academy arrangements with from a person to an individual or organisation. This is an unnecessary amendment because in law, a “person” is taken to mean either an individual or an organisation.
Amendments 4A, 101 and 102 would require proper checks of any person who was party to academy arrangements and, with Amendment 104, require the governing body of a maintained school to consult certain persons listed in the amendments before applying to the Secretary of State for an academy order. These people would include pupils at school, parents, school staff, staff trade unions, relevant local authorities, other local schools who might be affected and any other person who it is appropriate to consult. It is important to be clear that current legislation does not address these issues. These would be additional legislative requirements that the noble Baroness is seeking to introduce, although I recognise the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, quite properly and fairly about the change in status; currently there would be an obligation to consult if the school was to close. The circumstances are different and she is right about that.
I will first respond to the broad thrust of what the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, asked—why the urgency? Why can we not take some time? That point was in some way echoed by my noble friend Lord Greaves. I know that I have made this point repeatedly, but part of the answer to the urgency question is that, five years ago, the Government of whom she was a member set out down this path. Five years later, we are still debating it and that represents another five years of children who have not been able to take advantage of some of these freedoms that I know her party, when in government, were keen to extend. In another part of the answer to the urgency question, I underline the point that we made in previous debates that our approach to this legislation is fundamentally permissive, rather than coercive. Simply by putting a flyer there and saying to schools, “Is anyone interested in this? Are these freedoms something of which you would like to avail yourselves?”, more than 1,750 schools have said that they would be interested. Thinking about the point that my noble friend Lady Perry made, that tells us something quite powerful about trust, which one always has to balance against our natural instinct to try to make sure that nothing goes wrong. One needs to listen to those who are clearly keen to get on and feel that there is a need for urgency. My starting point in this is not so much the question of why we need to move so rapidly as of what is preventing us getting our skates on.
I turn to a specific point which my noble friend Lady Walmsley has already picked up on. It is already part of our process to carry out full due-diligence checks on anyone who is party to a funding agreement, and regulations also require CRB checking of all governors. I, like many Members of the Committee, I suspect, have been CRB-checked more times than I care to remember—although not because there was a particular problem, I should make clear.
I was struck by the point that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, made about drawing a distinction between the spirit of consultation and making it a legislative requirement. He gave examples of the difficulty of getting a satisfactory definition in the Bill within which everyone could operate—and which did not have the problem alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, of the old system of ballots, which caused acrimony—and which would not give people who, for particular reasons, might want to frustrate this policy the opportunity to do so. I think that there is broad acceptance on her side of the Committee that the policy is fundamentally good, and these are the detailed questions that we are working through. I was very persuaded by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, concerning the dangers of being overly legalistic. However, I also accept the point made by him and many other noble Lords on all sides of the House about the spirit of consultation. It is something that clearly one must take seriously.
We certainly expect schools, in deciding whether to make an application to convert, to discuss their intention with students, their parents and the local community. A point that has been well made by a number of Members of the Committee is that that is what happens already, and it would not make sense for a school not to do so. The governing body of any maintained school that is considering converting does, and will, include parent governors, staff governors and local authority governors. These governors will all be part of the decision-making process. Currently, the employer of a school’s staff would also need to conduct a TUPE consultation with all staff and the unions as part of the staff transfer process. On a small point of fact—I know that this point has been raised before—I say to my noble friend Lady Walmsley that there is not a minimum 10-week consultation period; the time is not specified in law but there would clearly have to be consultation with all staff and the unions as part of the process.
In response to a point about informal consultation that I think was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe—I hope I shall be forgiven if it was not her—I shall try to be brief as I know that supper beckons. The departmental website will make it absolutely clear that we expect teaching staff, other staff, parents, pupils and the local community to be consulted. The question with which we are grappling—the debate has grappled with it this evening—is how far this process needs to be formalised, with the risk that that might either slow it down or make the process acrimonious. Our view is that there are clear disadvantages—
Baroness Walmsley
Does my noble friend accept that if schools want to convert by September, that will give them quite a lot of time as long as they get on with it? However, if he does not want to put this into legislation, will he consider putting it in guidance and not just on the website?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to my noble friend. The point about whether schools will be able to convert in time for September has certainly been raised, and there has been a suggestion that the timetable has been politically driven. As I said before, our approach has been to put out the idea and be permissive. Some schools may well convert in time for September, which we think is perfectly possible, as my noble friend says, but other schools will no doubt take longer, and that is also fine.
In response to my noble friend’s more substantive point, which is where my argument was heading, having listened to this debate I recognise that we have to be as transparent as possible in this process. As I said, I recognise the points that have been made about the spirit of consultation, and I can say to the Committee that I am willing to take that thought back to the department and consider how best we can ensure that the conversion process carries the confidence of all interested parties—a point made forcefully this afternoon. On that point, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, this has been an excellent debate and I am grateful for the Minister’s response. It is not that I do not trust people; I fundamentally trust human beings—that is my position. However, I recognise that the need for consultation was not enshrined in the previous Act and that, to date, academies have undertaken consultations because they have believed it to be the proper thing to do, which it is. However, there have been about 200 academies to date and we are now talking about a further 200, another 200 and another 200. If free schools all become academies, that will be an awful lot of schools. We are talking about a fundamental change in our education system. It is not a question of a lack of trust; it is a question of ensuring that proper procedures are undertaken.
I shall certainly reflect on the debate. I certainly understand the fears expressed by my noble friend Lord Adonis, and I would be the last person to want to be overly legalistic. I shall also reflect on the suggestions put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, suggested that consultation could be dealt with in guidance. That might well be an interesting way forward but, if that were the case—and, as I said, I want to reflect on it, as I shall certainly want to come back to this issue on Report—I would want to see some sort of draft guidance. I would want to ensure that the guidance came before, and was agreed by, Parliament. I believe that consultation goes hand in hand with confidence; it is a matter of dispelling doubts and suspicions.
This is a critical part of the Bill. I am glad that the Minister is going to reflect further, as I think we must all do, and I look forward to our debate on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Social Security (Claims and Payments) Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 2010
(13 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Lucas
To move to resolve that this House regrets that the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/870) have been based on an inadequate design which will be unable to produce reliable evidence.
Relevant documents: 17th Report, Session 2009–10, from the Merits Committee.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lord Freud for turning up to respond to this Motion. The instrument that I am praying against is not of his genesis and if I get hot under the collar I hope he will accept that I am not aiming at him in any way.
The instrument first appeared before your Lordships’ Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee with a very inadequate Explanatory Memorandum. When the committee challenged them we were given more data that not only amplified what had been there before but indeed said different things. The first thing I want to say is that I very much hope that my noble friend will see the importance of making sure that Explanatory Memoranda accurately and fully reflect the intentions and details of the instruments concerned.
Secondly, although this is not in my Motion, I wanted to take the opportunity to question my noble friend on whether he really thinks that the proposals in this instrument are an appropriate use of the department’s time. It seems odd to be conducting research into what is effectively how to shift money from one government pocket into another. Here we are concerned with people on benefits. Even with the generosity of the past 13 years, benefits are still pretty marginal. If we consider the list of deductions that are generally allowed, such as mortgage payments, rent arrears, fuel and water charges, child support arrears, and so on, they are pretty important and essential to life. Yes, we allow fines to be deducted too, but that is when a court pronounces that there is a serious punishment involved. I do not think that debts to the Inland Revenue rank alongside that. Given that social security payments are basically set so that a person can meet life’s essentials, how is someone supposed to find 15 per cent of their income spare to repay the Inland Revenue? They can end up only in a worse position by having to rely on the state to a greater extent. Hence my feeling that this is just shifting money from one pocket to another.
There are other problems with this. We are not looking at large debts, but what will be the cost of recovery of these debts? Are we not looking at a system that actually costs more in its administrative functions than the money that it will recover? Is that an appropriate use of time when it comes to poor people? What is a tax debt anyway? If one is moving in and out of employment, a tax debt varies with the month. You can start off appearing to owe the Inland Revenue a good deal of money because you have not paid. You are then unemployed for six months and your allowances accumulate and you end the tax year with the Inland Revenue owing you money. It is not at all clear whether we are talking about debts that are in some way established or whether they just appear to be debts at a particular moment but may well not be debts six months later. It is an odd thing to be spending time on. This is persecuting poor people when the department ought to be trying to extract money in ways that are more efficient and have less of an impact on the very poorest.
My reason for bringing forward this Motion is the statistical inadequacy of what is proposed even with the additional explanation that I have been provided with. I know, or at least I believe I know, that the Department for Work and Pensions has a number of good statisticians—I am assured by no less than Andrew Dilnot that this is the case—but they do not appear to have been involved in the design of this research. The first thing we get is that about 5,000 tax credit customers and 5,000 self-assessment customers will be approached to volunteer to take part in the trial. Those 10,000 will then be divided into those who agree and those who do not agree. Those two groups are fundamentally different. The group which agrees will have one set of motivations and the group which does not agree will have another set. You immediately get into deep statistical water in trying to draw any conclusions when comparing two groups with different motivations. There is an attempt in the design of this experiment to compensate for that by having a third group—a control group. Presumably one could try to work out the behaviour of the first group—those who volunteer for the trial—by subtracting the behaviour of the second group from the control group and supposedly having a control for the first group.
Given the wide diversity of circumstances, we are looking at a sample that to my mind is far too small to allow that kind of second-hand approach to generating reliable results. It is a daft way of going about it when we have a perfectly good and statistically valid way of doing it, which is to double the number who agree to take part in the trial and then put only a randomised half of them through it. You would then have a matched group which will give some pretty statistically valid results. Even then the experimental design will tell you how well it works only for those who are motivated to take part in the trial. It tells you nothing about the behaviour and circumstances of those who are not motivated to take part in the trial. We are not dealing with mere mechanics; we are dealing with the effects of different methods of reclaiming money on people’s behaviour, the trouble they get into, compliance, and so forth. We are dealing with human characteristics and you cannot read those across from one group to another when you have already separated them on the basis of a fundamental characteristic such as motivation. If you wanted to find out something about the second group—those who refuse, who I suspect will be the large majority—you have to conduct a pilot that is not sample-based but area-based. The previous Government did that on several occasions. I can remember the pilots coming through the Merits Committee. A particular office would switch to a new system and would compare its results with a neighbouring, similarly placed office’s results. If you have enough other data on your claimants, you can make that reasonably statistically reliable. You could even run a randomised control through an office. But what is proposed here would not yield any useful information on the behaviour of the second group—those who refused to take part in the trial—were they to be moved to be compelled to under the new proposed system.
There is no defence in the documents that I have seen of sample size, no discussion of anticipated errors, no discussion of what are the real targets, what is expected to be achieved and what are the expected problems. There is no demonstration of the validity of the methods being set out. We have here a simple case of garbage in, garbage out. A trial on those lines will not yield any useful results. If we proceed on the basis of the results that it yields, we will have no clue whether the full, scaled-up system will work. I am comforted that the Social Security Advisory Committee, at paragraph 4.16 of its report, shares my view.
I welcome trials—they are an excellent way to make progress in the area of benefits and social security, to find out what works before one commits oneself to a whole system—but I ask the Minister to ensure that the people who really understand what are the same sort of statistical operation as drug trials have control over what goes on, make sure that what is designed is fit for purpose and ensure that the data that the trials produce can be relied on for policy formation. I beg to move.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, very much for the comprehensive way in which he introduced his Motion and welcome him to this most exclusive of gatherings in London; the tiny number of us in this House who speak on DWP orders and the even tinier number who table regret Motions to them.
Before going any further, we have discovered from the response given by my right honourable friend Steve Webb to a letter from the chairman of the Merits Committee last Session that the new Government may decide not to go ahead with this pilot, but I suppose that we must carry on as though they will go ahead at this stage, unless the Minister wants to interrupt at this point to say that they will not. There is no interruption, so I shall carry on.
First, I am glad that the Government have listened to the Social Security Advisory Committee's recommendation, which urged them to bring the list of benefits from which HMRC debt recovery repayments can be made into line with the current list of benefits from which priority debts can be deducted. In other words, any deductions would be from means-tested and not contribution-based benefits. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about that being money from the poorest people in the country, whichever benefit it is from.
I am also glad that the SSAC highlighted the vital point that claimants understand the voluntary nature of the trial and the impact on their income of signing up for the trial. A lot of people will not know what “voluntary” means—although they may pretend that they do. The Government have responded positively to that point, saying that they will share copies of the letters sent to claimants with the committee, and that they will ensure that the letters, and contact centre staff, will direct the claimant, or customer, to the availability of independent advice.
The SSAC understandably believes that there is scope for confusion among claimants who receive letters from HMRC. Just seeing that letterhead is likely to lead to many claimants into thinking they are being hounded for recovery of their tax credit overpayments, whatever the letter actually states. If claimants then telephone HMRC, is the Minister satisfied that they will be told in every case that they do not have to repay their debts by having them deducted from their benefits? Will they be told in all cases that they might want to take independent advice, which might lead to some of their debt being overturned or even written off?
Before leaving the subject of letters from HMRC, perhaps the Minister can tell us why it does not provide an explanation of a tax credit overpayment to claimants in all cases; that seems not to be provided as a matter of routine. I cannot think why not. I know that the Minister does not speak for HMRC, but as this SI is a joint project between the two departments, I make no apology for asking him that on this occasion.
We must remember that the Government did not agree with the SSAC that repayment should be at a lower level than they are proposing in this trial, which is three times the normal amount per week. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, pointed out, benefits are not generous, and there are rumours that they will not be uprated as usual—we shall hear more in tomorrow's Budget. If claimants in debt have no other source of income except their weekly benefits, many of them will suffer severe hardship if they are being encouraged to repay their tax credit overpayment from those pretty meagre benefits. I may have got the wrong end of the stick here, but I find it horrifying that the SSAC understands that HMRC staff may suggest that debtors apply for a commercial loan to pay off debts—presumably they would never suggest a commercial loan to pay off a tax credit overpayment.
Turning to the design of the pilot, and first, to the aim of the pilot, this appears to be twofold: to find out if there is a demand from claimants for this method of repayment—that sounds almost like an oxymoron—and to see if the scheme is cost-effective. There is more information in the answers to questions from the ever-vigilant Merits Committee about how the scheme will operate. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, there are to be three groups for evaluation purposes. The first group will be those who volunteer to take part in the trial. The explanation goes:
“The evaluation will look at how much was recovered, the spread of weekly deduction rates, how long a person is in receipt of a relevant benefit and what could have been recovered had they been taking part in the trial for the whole two years taking account of expected levels of movement on and off benefit”.
That sounds fiendishly complicated with so many permutations that you wonder whether any comparisons will really make sense. The next two groups are about those who declined to take part in the trial who will form the control group. First, they have to agree to respond to a letter asking them to take part. I wonder how many will be keen to do that. Not very many, I imagine. Therefore, a key question is: how small does the sample size have to be to produce robust data? I note that the Government say:
“We accept that the smaller the sample, the less able we will be to draw definitive conclusions."
I also note what the Government say about those who go off benefit during the pilot period; namely, that there is no minimum number of weeks for which deductions have to be made in order to regard the participant and repayments made as significant for evaluation purposes. I would have thought that was a rather significant fact.
Perhaps the most encouraging sentence in the whole explanation is:
“In addition the performance of new joined up operational processes between HMRC and DWP will be assessed”.
Is the Minister really confident that this trial will produce a reliable result, in view of all the problems that the SSAC and others have pointed out?
Lord Goodlad
My Lords, I have very little to add to what has been said by my noble friend Lord Lucas. The Merits Committee reported to the House on this matter in April and again following a meeting last week. He has deployed all the considerations that we had in mind with his usual thoroughness. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, added to that. We will hear what the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench has to say. Whether to proceed with the trial is clearly a matter that will have to be considered in the light of, among other things, what is said tonight. A very large number of people, including the poorest people in our society, are involved in all this, and we look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, but it is an extremely important matter.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, I am pleased to be able to follow colleagues in this technical but important debate. I start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on joining the Motion-to-regret club. The bad news for him is that the chairman is my noble friend Lady Thomas, I am the secretary, and he will now have to be the treasurer because there are only three of us who have been through this process. He is a very welcome addition to the clan. It is a very distinguished group, as my noble friend said.
I will take a slightly wider look at the background to the order. I am very worried that it will become a default option for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, which would be a very bad thing. The first thing that we should bear in mind is that we are talking about recovering overpayments that have been made by the Treasury. A number of questions flow from that if it is true, which I believe it is. Why on earth is the department rolling out pilots of this kind at a time of real stress and difficulty, with administrative cuts and all sorts of pressure on DWP staff? I make no complaint about that because I think we are all prepared for it, but these are some of the most difficult financial circumstances that low-income households have ever faced. This is a once-in-100-years event—I have certainly seen nothing like it in the 30 years that I have been in public life—and we should not start spraying letters around to people who are in debt only to the extent that the Treasury has miscalculated the amount of tax credits that they are due. We have to bear in mind the fact that this is not just debt but an overpayment; it is a function of error at the hands of Treasury officials. We have to be very careful about the context in which we are sending these letters and raising these proposals, even though this is supposed to be a voluntary scheme.
Incidentally, I do not expect the department to have these figures available in the Minister’s brief this evening, but I would be very interested to know how many customers on benefit are affected by self-assessment error. There cannot be a big number of them across the country. Self-assessment is used mainly by people who are outside PAYE and who are self-employed and the like, so the question of self-assessment by people on benefit puzzles me, given the constrained nature of the benefits to which this order applies. How many people across the country in the system are in that position?
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, cares about this and is enthusiastic about reform. The complexity of the system is part of the reason why these overpayments are made in the first place, and rolling out pilots to mitigate the damage that is done by complexity and error is the wrong way around. We should concentrate, and I believe that he will concentrate, on getting the system right first time and on not creating the overpayments in the tax credit system that create these debts. We need a root and branch review, and I hope that he will not lose his enthusiasm for that. Knowing him, I think that that is unlikely. I would strengthen his hand to get this done. It will not happen quickly, but I hope that he will use his undoubted expertise in financial systems to help to bring that about.
Secondly, third-party deductions are a very important part of the social security benefit system. They were contrived in 1988 and were an anti-poverty measure to protect levels of benefits. The Social Security Advisory Committee’s report on this shows—at paragraph 4.4, table 1—that mortgage payments, rent arrears and fuel charges were the essential things for which deductions could be made. People needed a deduction for housing or they were evicted, and they needed a deduction for fuel charges or they became hypothermic. That was why the third-party deduction system was put into place. It has been extended as the SSAC memorandum suggests, most recently for child maintenance purposes in 2006. However, we must be very careful about why and when we use third-party deductions or we get into management objectives and not anti-poverty ones. Third-party deductions should be used absolutely only in circumstances in which they cannot be avoided. Benefit levels are already at poverty levels. Measured against average median household incomes, poverty levels are built into some of the levels of benefit that we have at the moment. We should interfere with third-party deductions only with great care. The SSAC memorandum says—an occasional paper was done on this in 2008—that we should look at all these things and indicates the part that the social fund should play in dealing with anti-poverty.
My noble friend mentioned the hardship rules, which are important. There are some circumstances, which I came across myself not that long ago, where write-offs would have been properly argued and could have been suggested in ways that would help the households. But they are able to be determined only by people who know what they are doing. Citizens Advice and independent financial advisers who specialise in this kind of work and who know what they are doing can make recommendations which otherwise would be left unknown to the households that these things affect.
Thirdly, this cannot be done without safe, independent financial advice. I know that the FSA has tried to roll out a financial capability scheme—it may have been caught by purdah during the general election campaign—but we can be sure that these debts are being recovered safely, even in a so-called voluntary capacity, only if there is independent advice to which people can be referred so that they know that what they are doing is sensible in the totality of their debts.
The excellent recent publication, State of the Nation Report: Poverty, Worklessness and Welfare Dependency in the UK, produced by the Secretary of State, states that 79 million people in the United Kingdom are in serious debt. An independent advisory service would serve not only the purposes of these regulations but would have a wider purpose as well. One could argue that some FSA rules about treating customers fairly would require people repaying debts to HMRC to be given a statement of what their repayments are doing in terms of extinguishing the debt over a period of weeks or months, but I hope not years. There are no statements. In my experience, a lot of people have no idea of how their benefit payments are made up or of what payments are being made to other parts of the system which may also have third party deductions on their benefits.
The treating customers fairly rules of the FSA should be applied if this pilot ever is rolled out across the country because £9.75—the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, effectively made this point—to a household operating on a weekly cash basis, as a lot of benefit families and households are, is a huge amount of money. Many of these households have to work on a cash basis from week to week, robbing Peter to pay Paul and trying to stay out of default. It is a very difficult balancing act for them to manage.
As regards the timing of this, the earlier memorandum and other papers suggested that a roll-out would almost be upon us even now. The response from Steve Webb to the committee at a later stage made it clear that there was some reconsideration of whether the thing would even start. This is an important moment to stop and think about whether the pilot is necessary and, even if it were was successful, whether we are creating a default option which just makes it easier for the Treasury and HMRC to correct errors that they should not have made in the first place.
Finally, the SSAC recommendations, taken together with the timing and the context into which these pilots are being introduced, are inimical to the interests of benefit households in the way that they are currently cast. I for one would recommend to the Minister that he suggests that this pilot is cancelled.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for the opportunity to discuss these regulations. As other speakers have said, he has joined the exclusive band of those involved in Motions of Regret, one that I myself have joined, although I have been on the receiving end of several. I should say that I find myself in the rather unusual position of dealing with regulations that were promulgated under the previous Government and for which I would have had some responsibility in terms of explaining and defending, but a responsibility from which I am now free.
In his introduction, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, talked about how these regulations would persecute poor people. If that was what they were about, the Government of which I was a member would have had nothing to do with them, and I am sure that that runs for the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud. The noble Lord also said that people can only end up in a worse position. Again, if that were the case it would not be something that I or the former Government would have wanted to have any truck with. This does not inevitably have to involve that position because it is a voluntary scheme with maximum amounts, and of course collecting debt in this way is cost-free to the individual, although there may well be administrative costs for HMRC and the DWP. One of the other ironies we are faced with is that my noble friend Lord Rosser, who joins me on the Front Bench, was previously chair of the Merits Committee. I think that he preceded the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, and in his time has been responsible for various Exocets, of which this may have been one.
I cannot support the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, because I do not think that he has made his case, but I accept that the explanations given in the Explanatory Memorandum and initially to the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Merits Committee could have done more to set out the detail of the proposal, especially the methodology and the evaluation, but in our view the response of Steve Webb, Minister of State for Pensions—I still have to pinch myself when I say that—to the Merits Committee has, in our view, gone some way to rectify that.
However, we have a timely opportunity to reflect on these regulations and to take the coalition Government’s mind on them. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, both mentioned, Steve Webb’s response indicated the possibility that the Government may choose not to proceed with the pilot at this time. Can the Minister give us an update on this and indicate the factors that will be taken into account in making any decision to defer? The proposed trial is of course partly focused on the recovery of tax credit overpayments. I am bound to say that, as I understand it, they do not inevitably flow from official errors—they are not necessarily the only cause—but we will have to see the extent to which the proposals might be affected by the cuts in tax credits that the Government are poised to announce tomorrow. We have heard the coalition promise to reform the administration of tax credits so as to reduce fraud and overpayments, and again we will have to see what that means in practice. If it can be accomplished in a fair way and without impairing take-up, all well and good, but the emphasis should be on the “if”.
It is accepted that the transition from work to benefits is a difficult one and can pose problems with budgeting for the repayment of existing debt, so these proposals offer help to those who cannot afford to settle their debts in one go. They provide a nil cost method of payment and are in addition to the other methods of payment available. Given our debate this evening, can the Minister tell us more about these other methods and whether there are any proposals to extend or restrict them? The principle of an additional voluntary method for people to repay tax overpayments has been welcomed by the SSAC and the respondents to the consultation undertaken by the committee were positive about the proposals.
One of the concerns expressed by the SSAC was the proposed maximum level of deduction for tax credits—three times the 5 per cent of the single over-25 rate for income support. The committee pointed out that this was greater than the maximum individual deduction under the third party deduction scheme. Although other recommendations were accepted, this was one area where the previous Government were unable to accept the SSAC recommendation, which was to limit the maximum amount deducted to 5 per cent of the income support rate. Have the current Government a different view on this? We know from our debates on the Welfare Reform Bill that the Minister is exercised about the impact of cash deductions from benefit levels—this was in the then context of sanctions—and he hinted at the prospect of other types of sanctions, possibly vouchers. Has the thinking developed further? How would such a system sit alongside the TPD scheme and these proposals—or can we take it that vouchers have been ruled out?
In its report in February to the then Secretary of State, the SSAC reflected on the history of the TPD scheme—and we have heard it from the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, today—where the type of deductions allowed from benefits has grown over the years. The last DWP response to the request for a review of the scheme was rejected, with the assertion that it had a twofold purpose: to provide last-resort rescue where a claimant is struggling with arrears of essential household outgoings, and to impose compliance with social and monetary obligations. Is this still the position of the Government?
We would all agree, I hope, that it is important that the manner in which the trials are conducted makes it clear that it is voluntary and that participants can withdraw at any time. It is also vital, as was envisaged when the proposals were devised, that the repayment from benefits should not be seen as the easy or default option for dealing with HMRC debts. In particular, it should not displace the HMRC code of practice which provides for overpayments to be written off in cases of extreme hardship. Access to advice therefore remains paramount. If the proposed free national advice service is to go on the back burner, then continued funding for those agencies, national and local, which work tirelessly at the moment to fill that gap will be critical.
As we have heard, the Merits Committee under the incisive chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Rosser did not question the objective of the regulations and the proposed trials but was concerned whether the proposed methodology would deliver sufficiently meaningful data to support its extension. I think that is the thrust of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Concerns were expressed around the control groups, the percentage take-up from those contacted, minimum levels and time spent on benefits. Like the SSAC, the Merits Committee was anxious to know what advice had been sought on the design of the pilots. Frankly, I think the reply from Steve Webb of 31 May covered these matters and should allay the fears of the Merits Committee, the SSAC and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.
The nature of the communication inviting individuals to participate in the trial is recognised as being critical to both emphasise the voluntary nature of the trial and to help individuals understand the impact on their income of signing up for trials. This was one of the SSAC recommendations which we accepted. We also agreed to share copies of proposed communications with the SSAC. I trust this agreement will endure with the new Government.
At the end of the day, whatever the methodology, what matters is implementation. Neither HMRC nor DWP lacks experience in implementing pilots, but these require resources and training. As the matters we are discussing by definition impact on the poorest and the most vulnerable—those which the coalition Government have pledged to protect—we seek reassurance that any pilot will be properly resourced.
Although we cannot support the noble Lord’s Motion, we agree on the importance of the department providing good information, generally in explanatory memoranda, and its engagement with SSAC and the Merits Committee—which might have obviated the necessity for our interesting discussion.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for tabling the Motion and for giving me the opportunity to explain how this voluntary debt recovery trial will be evaluated. I take the point about the numbers in the House for this debate—this is an exclusive group—but I can claim to be a member, albeit a new one, of the DWP regret club from earlier this year. I need, however, to apologise, albeit on behalf of the previous Administration, for the fact that the Merits Committee was not provided with sufficient information when the regulations came before it.
I should say by way of background that the amendment to the Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 2010 will enable voluntary deductions to be taken from a person’s social security benefit to repay certain HMRC liabilities of under £1,000. The types of debt included are those arising from overpayments of tax credits and those arising from personal tax liability.
The transition from work to benefit can be difficult. Before the previous Government introduced tax credits, it was possible for overpayments of in-work benefit, then known as family credit, to be recovered from other social security benefits. Once tax credits were introduced, this option ceased, even though many customers found it an easy and convenient repayment method. The regulations reinstate this option for those who wish to use it. As well as providing a convenient method of repayment for individuals, this will help those unfortunate enough to have a debt with both the Department for Work and Pensions and the HMRC. Under current processes, both departments could seek repayment independently and both expect repayment. Under the trial process, the departments will work together and ensure that customers have only to repay one debt at a time.
Participation in the trial is purely voluntary. There is therefore no question of excessive compulsory deductions being taken from a customer’s benefit. The option to use this form of repayment and the rate at which any deduction is made will be agreed with the customer before any repayment commences.
This brings me on to the issues raised by the Merits Committee and by my noble friend in this Motion. It is suggested that the trial has been based on inadequate design which will be unable to produce reliable evidence for evaluation. The real issue is perhaps rather that the Explanatory Memorandum failed adequately to explain the design of the trial and specifically the evaluation protocols. This is regrettable and I fully accept that the Merits Committee should always be given sufficient information in order fully to assess the validity of regulations coming before it. In fact, even before this Motion was tabled, the department had written to the Merits Committee, giving a much fuller account of the proposed evaluation methodology than was provided originally.
It may be helpful at this point if I give some details of how DWP and HMRC will work together to run and evaluate the trial. We intend to approach tax credit customers and self-assessment customers who are in receipt of a relevant social security benefit and have new debts to HMRC. My noble friend criticised the structure of the trial as being a case of garbage in and garbage out. I think that the issue is that it is rather more narrowly focused than a wider trial might be.
The aim is to assess whether voluntary deduction of debts owed to HMRC from DWP benefits is attractive to debtors and a cost-effective means of recovery. Outcomes of the trial will be compared to outcomes achieved through existing HMRC debt recovery methods. The trial will provide evidence to inform any future decisions on use of deductions from benefits. If the trial evaluation shows that this is a cost-effective recovery method for government and that it is attractive to customers, it will be retained post trial. However, if that proves not to be the case or there proves to be no interest from customers, it will not be continued beyond the period of the trial.
The objectives of the trial are, first, to test proof of concept. By that, I mean to ensure that the deductions process is operationally effective, that customer information is safeguarded, that customer records are updated and that additional cash recoveries are accounted correctly. The second objective is to assess levels of customer take-up and the factors which motivate customers to participate in the trial or to pay directly to HMRC. The third is to assess cost-effectiveness; that is, the additional recoveries achieved net of departments’ costs.
There will be three groups for evaluation purposes. The first group will consist of those customers who volunteer to take part in the trial. The evaluation will look at how much was recovered, the spread of weekly deduction rates and how long a person is in receipt of a relevant benefit from which deductions can be made. The DWP and HMRC will both analyse their costs in running the trial to permit an overall cost to Government to be calculated. In addition, the performance of new joined-up operational processes between HMRC and the DWP will be assessed. As part of the evaluation, HMRC will seek feedback from its customers on the effectiveness of the trial and their overall customer experience.
Lord Freud
I will not rise to that.
My noble friend Lord Kirkwood asked when the trial was due to start. It will start next month, and the first letters will go out then. We do not intend to cancel this trial; we will go ahead with it, although we will extend it only if it is successful.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked whether other methods of repayment would be available. Clearly, if the customer signs up for the trial, no other method will be used. If the customer does not sign up, the repayment methods could be lump sum or instalments by direct debit or standing order. He also asked whether the new Government stand by the decision to deduct at three times the 5 per cent rate. Yes, we stand by that, but it is the maximum rate and participants can choose a lower rate. Finally, he probed the question of other ways of applying sanctions. This is, of course, not a sanction—it is a repayment of a debt—although I can tell him that we are exploring non-financial sanctions.
I commend the principle of the trial as a convenient alternative repayment method for those who wish to use it and as an example of joint working. The design of the trial is adequate, but I accept the criticisms of the Merits Committee and of my noble friend Lord Lucas. We need to get this right in the future. We need to make sure that all our regulatory changes meet the standard expected by the Merits Committee and that we provide all the necessary supporting information in good time.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for that comprehensive and helpful reply. I shall not trade blows with him on matters to do with welfare, as I am merely an extremely junior acolyte at his feet. This has been a fascinating debate for me and I shall feel tempted, now that we have a Minister in this House who is so much at the forefront of welfare reform, to sit on the Benches and, at least, to listen. However, I am quite happy to trade blows with his statisticians.
The Minister has made me understand one thing that I did not understand before. The trial is clearly voluntary, but is he saying that the rollout will also be voluntary, even if the trial is a success? That certainly would remove a lot of my worries. However, the effort being expended to create a control group and to look at what is happening in the second, probably larger group of those who will not take part in the trial rather suggests to me that there was an intention—noble Lords opposite may know whether this is the case—that this should be a compulsory way of reclaiming HMRC debts.
If you want to understand how to operate this effectively with people who volunteer, you do a randomised control trial just with those people. You go on until you have a couple of thousand volunteers and you assign them randomly—half you monitor under the current system and half you monitor under the new system. You then have a conventional and statistically robust way of comparing behaviour. It might be fun and informative, and it might have a peripheral virtue to try to understand why the people who have not volunteered have not done so and to try to find out how to encourage them to do so in future, but you certainly would not bother with this functionless control group that sits as an appendage at the bottom.
As I say, there is a simple and statistically robust way of dealing with this if the trial is for a voluntary system, which would not have all the characteristics of the trial that has been put in front of us. If the Minister is prepared to set up a meeting with his statisticians, I should enjoy it very much, because I do not think that they have come up to the mark on this occasion if, as I say, this is a trial for a voluntary system. If I am wrong and this was designed as a trial for a compulsory system, I come back to my old criticism that it does not function as that. You do not get enough information on the likely behaviour of the people who have declined to take part in the trial to be able to predict how they would react if they were compelled to take part.
However, I cannot be churlish when I have received such a good reply from my noble friend, particularly if he sets me up with a tea date with his statisticians—and how could any statistician refuse tea in the Lords? Whatever the circumstances, I happily beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Academies Bill [HL]
(13 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
“( ) If the Academy arrangements are entered into other than in relation to a maintained school converted into an Academy, the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the new Academy meets a public need in the area concerned and will not cause undue detriment to any neighbouring school.”
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, this is a broadly good Bill, but in boldly extending academy status from underachieving schools to any school, we must surely ensure that the Bill does not inadvertently undermine its avowed purpose,
“to raise school standards for all”.
Michael Gove in the other place and the noble Lord, Lord Hill, in his accomplished Second Reading speech here emphasised that primary focus of helping the educationally underprivileged. Mr Gove put it this way:
“We believe that the function of the state is to promote equity … the power of the state should be deployed vigorously to help the vulnerable and the voiceless, those who lack resources and connections, and those who are poor materially and excluded socially”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/6/10; col. 463.]
My amendment is to ensure just that—that the coalition walks that talk and exemplifies its values. It addresses the risk that the free schools—the brand new academies—do not cause undue detriment to existing neighbouring schools. I accept that that would never be the purpose of any group promoting such a new school. However, sometimes any of us—indeed, all of us at times—can so concentrate on our own children and our own back yard that we overlook the needs of others. That is a particular danger when social considerations intrude, as they too often do in this country, vis-à-vis education. At Second Reading I gave an example from my own part of Suffolk of the proposal to convert a feeder middle school into a secondary academy school. That would devastatingly undermine the really good school into which it feeds by the consequent impact on its entry numbers and all that that would mean for finances, staffing, social balance and, ultimately, morale.
Britain is still a sorely disfigured country—disfigured by acute inequalities of life chances. That underlines, among other things, our social and law and order problems, and leads to huge financial and moral setbacks. It is against this backdrop that I very much hope that the Government—my Government—will accept this constructive amendment, which will provide an essential but practical safeguard against the unintended consequences of the Bill as it stands.
Lord Adonis
The noble Lord is a stickler in this House, and rightly so, for precision in language and comprehensibility in legislation. In his amendment he uses some very general terms. He talks about the Secretary of State being satisfied that an academy meets “a public need” and that it,
“will not cause undue detriment”.
Will he set out somewhere for us how he defines “public need” and “undue detriment”?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, the noble Lord made much the same point before the dinner break. If he looks back over some of the legislation that he introduced, he will find that it is peppered with considerations and language of that kind. You cannot legislate without using general terms. The amendment that I have put forward has a long-stop protection in that it is capable of being judicially reviewed. If the noble Lord were to suggest that that is the very evil against which more precise language would guard, I would have to tell him, first, that more precise language cannot be used in a situation such as this and, secondly, that to give a controlled guided discretion to the Secretary of State is a device used in every Bill in every month of every year in this place. I am confident that it will work in this case. You have only to look at Clause 1(6), which refers to,
“pupils who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated”.
You could argue till the cows came home about what “mainly” means and what,
“the area in which the school is situated”
means. As I say, at times legislative language must, and can only, resort to generalities. I think that the amendment I have produced is capable of being used practically and to effect. The alternative would be to have nothing in the Bill, which I suggest would be the worst of all worlds.
Given the backdrop that I have described, I very much hope that the Government will accept this amendment, which does not apply, of course—I have specifically excluded it from doing so—to maintained schools converting to parallel academies, which will be by far the larger number. However, there would still be a significant number of new free academies, which must surely also be expected to serve the higher purpose of educational justice for all, not just their own pupils. A big society, surely, must be an equitable society, particularly towards its most needy. My amendment may not be perfect, but something like it must be in the Bill if we want to end what Mr Gove called in his Statement today a “segregated and stratified” school system. I beg to move.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, Amendments 191 and 114 are intended to probe the Government’s view of the long term of this reform and speak to concerns expressed elsewhere in this debate. In answer to questions about the Statement on free schools, I think that the Minister spoke of pilots, although I may be wrong. The amendments to which I speak ask the Government to pilot the Bill’s approach in limited areas, or initially to cap the numbers of these new academies so that the effect on nearby schools can be considered in the light of experience. It seems reasonable to me that if the effects that have been forecast of the disruption and funding shortfalls for vital services transpire, we will know that proceeding further along this road would be an error. Other amendments in this grouping discuss the need for openness and the consideration of the wider effects of this policy when proceeding with changes of status on this scale.
Amendments 119 and 177 relate to the criteria for acceptance of an application for conversion to an academy. Crucially, they relate to the need to consider the local impact of the change in the round and to consider the impact on community cohesion of the change to academy status. These constitute very real concerns. The amendment to which the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, spoke also addresses the local impact of these schools. I support the amendment. Questions need to be answered in relation to the example that he gave of a school in Suffolk.
Amendment 76A seeks to introduce a requirement for academies introducing new or significant sixth-form provision to consult existing providers of sixth-form courses, including sixth-form colleges and FE colleges in the area. It also seeks to ensure that academies are part of regional and subregional planning groups for 16 to 19 provision. This will ensure that there is no duplication of existing provision within an area and avoid inefficiency.
Local authorities currently act as commissioners for courses for 16 to 19 year-olds funded by the Young People’s Learning Agency. They engage with all providers across local authority boundaries to ensure that courses are provided which meet the needs of students and provide the best value to taxpayers. We would need to be assured that that process would continue with academies, because there needs to be an overview.
Amendment 92A seeks to introduce a fair funding element to 16 to 19 year-old provision in academies to ensure that 16 to 19 year-olds are not treated more favourably than existing providers of education for 16 to 19 year-olds. Currently, if an academy provides or introduces new 16 to 19 year-olds’ education, the funding is top-sliced from that which is given via the YPLA to other providers in the area. This funding is provided on the basis that all the places offered by the academy will be filled.
That is not the case for other providers, which are funded on the basis of the places that they have filled in previous years. It can also create an anomalous situation whereby, if places are not taken up at an academy, but the students instead choose to go to a sixth-form college, it is still the academy rather than the college that receives this funding for those places. That creates a financial incentive for academies to offer courses for which there is no or little new demand. I am not an expert in these areas, but when I was alerted to these specific issues, it seemed that these were the very issues that we should be probing and seeking answers on from the Minister.
These amendments are not designed to shackle the Secretary of State and they do not prevent him continuing with his plan. They merely seek to assure those who have perhaps been unnerved by the speed with which he is pursuing an end to any form of community accountability for schools.
Lord Bew
My Lords, I shall address some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, in his Amendment 4. Much of this is an issue of context. I was struck by the example of the case in Sudbury, which he gave in his speech at Second Reading. It is of concern that what we are doing with this new second phase of the academies project will leave certain schools and communities behind.
However, I want to suggest an angle of vision on this which I hope will be helpful in a small way to the Committee. If you look at a very traditional elitist system such as that which prevails in Northern Ireland—the grammar school system—which is different markedly from the system that is being discussed, although there is a small grammar school element to it, you will see that the results achieved at A-level and GCE are by far the best in the United Kingdom. At the bottom, the results are not so good—but nor are they now so divergent from those in England. Girls are actually doing better in Northern Ireland. Boys in Northern Ireland are doing worse than in England. However, those results tell you something: the way that our system has evolved over a generation or more is that we now accept that Northern Ireland will for ever lead the academic attainment lists at the highest level in the United Kingdom unless there are changes in policies. They tell you that at the bottom level this elitist system is not as bad in relation to England as we once thought it was. It is actually very close indeed. It is bad to be at the bottom level in England and in Northern Ireland.
The point I am trying to make is that the Northern Irish grammar school system, for all its many joys, was not formed in a political culture whereby a Minister for Education talked, as he was talking today, about using the state as a weapon for equity. In other words, the context is enormously important. It is important that the context is right when we discuss these questions and that the policy of the Government is directed towards greater equality of opportunity, which seems to be, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, conceded, where the Minister is coming from. He may not be quite the Marxist-Leninist that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, talked about, but none the less that seems to be the approach. The status quo is leaving people behind. We already have a segregated system. The status quo is already having negative effects, and the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, whose point about unintended consequences I accept, is rightly concerned that they will become more marked as side effects of this new system.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, if I may—I have some amendments in this group. I should like to speak to Amendments 98, 136 and 177. I also intend to speak to Amendment 137 along with Amendment 98, as they go together. I apologise that with all the toing and froing with the groupings this morning, I did not notice that Amendment 137 had not been included in this group. However, I believe that I am able to speak to it all the same.
The purpose of Amendments 98 and 137 is to probe the application of the school governance procedures regulations 2003 to a resolution by the school governors to apply for academy status. The current regulations provide for special procedures for important governing body decisions about the future of a school—particularly ones such as this, which would lead to a decision by the local authority to discontinue supporting the school. The special procedures currently include a requirement that the decision cannot be delegated to a committee or individual, and the chair cannot direct that a period of notice shorter than seven days be given for a governing body meeting. Indeed, in certain cases, a second governing body meeting must be held within 28 days to confirm the original decision.
Therefore, can the Minister confirm that a decision to apply for academy status cannot be delegated to an individual governor or even a small committee of governors? Will the regulations require the local authority or parents to be informed of the date when the governing body proposes to make a decision? Should not the regulations be amended to this end if they do not already do so?
Amendment 136 is a different way of dealing with the same matter. Clause 5(9) disapplies current legislation. Conversely, if we remove subsection (9), as Amendment 136 does, the current situation regarding consultation, safeguards and time periods and so on regarding who can make the decisions remains.
Amendment 177 would insert a new clause that would extend to academies a current duty on the governing bodies of maintained schools in England to promote community cohesion in the discharging of their functions. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, touched on this in the earlier debate on consultation. I well recall our debates during the passage of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, which introduced a duty on all maintained schools in England to promote community cohesion and on Ofsted to report on the contributions that they make in this area. Both these duties have now commenced.
Governing bodies of existing new Labour academies are not subject to the same duty to promote community cohesion as applies to maintained schools, despite our protestations, as I recall, when the Bill went through your Lordships’ House, yet from September 2008 their contribution to community cohesion has been reported on by Ofsted. I think it is vital that the new academies are also required to promote community cohesion, especially where they are located in areas where the community is very diverse. This is particularly important given the concerns that academies may increase social division and inequality, rather than reduce them, which of course is the intention of the programme. That is not how we want academies to be. They should be part of, and serve, the local community.
On the question of new 16 to 19 providers, mentioned by the noble Baroness on the opposition Benches, I think that if an academy extends the age range which it intends to serve beyond that which it had when it first applied to be an academy, there may very well be a case for having to go back to the Secretary of State to renegotiate the terms of the academy agreement. Can the Minister let me know whether that is the Government’s intention? It would be a major change in the academy’s provision and the original consultations would no longer be legitimate.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I, too, have tabled amendments in this group—Amendments 116, 117, 119 and 129. Since this is the first time that I have spoken on this Bill, I welcome and congratulate the Minister on his position and the way in which he has hitherto dealt with the Bill. However, I cannot give the same welcome to the Bill itself. He needs to know that I have fairly fundamental objections to it, which may appear from time to time. It may have a rougher ride as we go forward.
It is true that I also had some reservations about the previous Government’s academies programme, contrary to the position of the Front Bench and other colleagues. However, it was very different—it was different in execution, although some would say that it was not that different in ambition. In execution, the Labour Government, with their fewer than 300 academies, recognised that there were failing schools, or at least schools that were underperforming in educational terms, and that there were areas of social deprivation, which was detrimentally affecting educational attainment. The Government used the academies as a way of compensating or intervening at the extreme end of special measures. That I can understand. In a sense, it was a comment on the failure of local authorities and the governing bodies that central government had to take them over. In general, I believe that the education of a community’s children ought to be the responsibility of the local authority elected for that community. It is only in very specialised and specialist cases that you would override that.
That is a political and an educational principle. It is an educational principle for reasons to which the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has just referred. A change in the status and the relative resources and attention given to one school will have a knock-on effect on other schools. Sometimes it might be beneficial, but it will undoubtedly have a knock-on effect.
The record on Labour academies is mixed. Some have been very successful; some have improved, though it could be argued that they could have been improved by less drastic interventions; and some have failed or nearly failed. The case is not yet fully proven. To take away from local authorities the responsibility for educating their populations, which they have had for well over a century, is a very drastic move. In this short Bill we are changing the provision of education in this country.
This depends on initiatives being taken by the school and on the attitude of the Secretary of State to the application of the school. However, the ambition has been clearly laid out by the Minister and the Secretary of State. They want a large number of schools to opt out of local authority oversight. I say “oversight” and not “control” because local authorities have not managed schools for many years. They have supported schools and given them administrative support, help in specialist matters and special needs, and help in many other areas, but they have not managed the schools in the way which is sometimes implied by the criticism of the current system.
The Bill is taking a big step to remove the relationship between schools and the local authority. I appreciate that I am not going to be able to persuade the Government or the coalition—or at least most of the coalition—that this is the wrong way to go. But if we are to go down that road, it is essential to reassert the role of the local authority. We had a debate just before the break about consultation. I take some of the points from my noble friend Lord Adonis and others that to prescribe exact forms of consultation in primary legislation can lead you down difficult paths and that perhaps it is better covered by a code, guidance or, certainly, practice by the Secretary of State and those who are promoting academies and free schools.
The one bit of consultation that I do not believe you can escape is consultation with the local authority. The local authority might in some cases agree that it would be a good thing to have an academy. It would certainly have views on it and it would certainly have views that are informed by the impact on the rest of education in the area of its oversight. My first amendment is my ideal. Amendment 116 says that the local authorities should be consulted and should agree the proposals.
I appreciate that that is fairly close to cloud-cuckoo land, given the Government's intentions. In any case, if there was a disagreement between the local authorities and the Secretary of State, you would have to build in an arbitration process. I have therefore given the Government an alternative, which simply states that there is an obligation to consult the local authority.
Personally, I think that if that is not inserted in some form into the Bill, it will be greatly flawed. I suspect that it will make for a difficult ride in another place if local authorities are not written in, so I therefore strongly advise the Government that if they are to continue to go down that road, they ought at least to recognise the special role of local authorities in that respect.
I also take the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, before the break, but perhaps the obligation to consult ought to be not on the party proposing the school but on the Secretary of State him or herself. At the end of the day, the Secretary of State will have to make the judgment and explain to Parliament whether an effective consultation has taken place, so I place the responsibility not on the proposers but on the Secretary of State. That makes sense.
My Amendment 119 goes further to state—in a sense, with the same motivation as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips—that there should be an assessment of the effect of taking a prospective academy out of local authority oversight on the rest of the educational provision in the area. Where it differs from the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, and probably therefore avoids the objection of my noble friend Lord Adonis, is that it simply states that there should be an assessment. That assessment, or at least its conclusions, should probably be available publicly—although the amendment does not state that—but it still leaves the final judgment to the Secretary of State, whereas the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, would prescribe something that is difficult to define, as my noble friend said. Nevertheless, I think that the noble Lord and I are both on the same page here: before we move to approve an academy, an assessment needs to have been made as to the effect that will have on the total educational provision in the area.
I hope that the Government take some notice of the amendment. Personally, I find it very difficult that in the name of removing the burdens of red tape from head teachers and governing bodies, we move from a system of local authority oversight to one of centralised funding, centrally regulated. The red tape which has undoubtedly been imposed on the teaching profession by successive Governments over the past two or three decades has largely emanated from central government and their agencies, not from local government. The relationship with local government has been, by and large, constructive. We ought to maintain that. Even if we are going for change which some local authorities may approve of, there must be a vital role for local authorities in that process.
My final amendment simply gives some flexibility on timescale, so I will not go into it in great detail. The key point here is that local authorities must be present under the Bill to be consulted, engaged and involved, reflecting the impact of a decision on one school on the totality of education in their area.
Lord Greaves
I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 106—which, as I previously explained, should have been in the previous group, but it has ended up here, so I will speak to it here.
It was originally intended as an addition to the amendments on consultation in the previous group proposed and spoken to by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Howe of Idlicote. I thought that rather than tabling three amendments adding on to them, I would table just one to discuss alongside them. I failed miserably, because we have to discuss it now.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that he thought that he would not be able single-handedly to persuade the coalition that this Bill should be scrapped and that we should start again. It would not take a lot to persuade me, but I do not think that I could persuade the coalition either. Even the combined forces of the noble Lord and I would not succeed in that. Therefore, we have the Bill that we have, and we have to do what the House of Lords traditionally does very well: look at the Bill, not challenge it in principle but look at how it will work, whether it will work successfully and the effect that it will have on everything else around it. That is what we are doing, and what we have to do.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I am very interested in the noble Lord’s view on this. Does he think there is a material difference between what a community might have to say about a primary school and about a secondary school? Is there a difference between those institutions in terms of the community engagement and collective responsibility?
Lord Greaves
I think there is a real difference between primary schools and secondary schools for other reasons, but the relationship between a school and the community in which it is situated varies hugely between schools. Some schools cut themselves off from the community, unfortunately, a tendency that has increased in recent years because of the pressures put on the schools, but other schools look outwards. I do not think there is necessarily a difference between a primary school and a secondary school, although primary schools—by their very nature, because they take in very young children and bring mothers in and so on—are often more closely involved in the community than some secondary schools. However, I do not think there is necessarily a direct relationship between that, and I know secondary schools that are heavily involved in the community.
The parish council in a village, the town council in a town and the district council can all legitimately have a say. I am not saying that they should have a right of veto; I am saying that these are community institutions and if a community is to have a proper debate, no matter how quickly, everyone in that community has a right to it.
There are two principles of general consultation. They help with the difficulties, which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, identified, of being too prescriptive about whom you consult or of trying to be prescriptive but vague at the same time and perhaps leaving things open to legal challenge. First, you must publish what you are proposing for general discussion so that anyone can pick up information about it and take part in the discussion, and you must publish the responses. That is proposed new subsection (1A) in my amendment. Secondly, once you have the responses, whether from parents, teachers, the parish council or just a group of interested people, you must obviously consider them and decide whether you want to allow them to influence your decision. If, after the consultation, you decide to send your application to the Secretary of State, you send a summary of the responses or the responses themselves to the Secretary of State alongside your application so that someone who is looking at the application can consider them at the same time. Those are the two principles of genuine public consultation and debate.
The argument against such a consultation might be that it will delay the process, but so long as you have a pretty strict timetable and people are fairly rigorous and efficient with it, it does not have to delay the process very much. I think there is also a worry on the part of the Government that if there is too much general public debate about a particular proposal, it will encourage people to decide not to go for it. They might say that it is a bit controversial and hang back a bit. However, given the scale of the interest which the Government assure us there is in these things, whether it is a free school or a conversion—they say that 1,800 schools at least have now asked for more details—the Government and the department cannot possibly deal with that very quickly and will have to go ahead with far fewer, so I do not think that the argument about putting people off carries any weight whatever.
I support the coalition Government, but everything that people have said and everything that they have published so far—in the original agreement and in the coalition document Our Programme for Government—talks about more public involvement, more consultation and more involvement of citizens. We are slowly learning what the big society means, but if it does not mean genuine consultation on something that is as important to a local community as the future of its school, what on earth does it mean? Something needs to be in the Bill about consultation, and it needs to involve not just particular interest groups in the school but the wider community.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I support Amendments 114 and 191. I particularly support Amendment 191, because it asks the Government to pilot the academy schools and I think that a conservative approach to this is appropriate. This is so significant to our children’s lives. I recognise that this is an enabling Bill, but we expect many schools to buy into this programme. This is a huge experiment and it really does behove us to act in a conservative and considered way. Piloting a scheme, as the amendment suggests, would be a good step forward.
I have previously raised with the Minister my concerns about not only the most vulnerable children in the system but also the workforce and how these schools might cream off the best teachers and head teachers from the schools around them. I think that there is a consensus that the quality of teachers and head teachers makes the most difference to the education of children and young people.
To give examples from other areas, in the prison system we now have a mixed economy of private and public prisons. Private prisons are often accused of paying huge sums of money for the best executives from the public sector. The public sector trains the best prison officers, who get creamed off by private companies. They are also accused of putting junior officers in place who are underdeveloped and undersupported, and they quickly move on. I do not know whether that is a fair accusation but, from the statistics, the turnover of junior officers in private prisons is very much higher than in public prisons. There were all sorts of benefits to introducing a mixed economy in terms of breaking down inflexible practices, but I hope that the illustration shows that there is some cause for concern.
As regards childcare, I was speaking to the manager of a voluntary nursery which is not far from your Lordships’ House. She said, “We are very keen on training our childcare workers. They work for their national vocational qualification level 3 in childcare and as soon as we train them up they move to the local authority system where they get better pensions, benefits and job security”.
I have already mentioned independent social worker practices. I heard the Minister’s response to that. It is super that such new models can be very attractive to people coming into social work or teaching. They see themselves gaining the autonomy they want to run their own businesses. There is great enthusiasm for that. However, Paul Fallon, who was director of social services at Barnet, reduced the level of social work vacancies in his local authority from 30 per cent to 3 per cent in three years—I hope that I have the figures right, because they sound a bit too neat. He was well respected and was asked by the Government to be part of a committee advising on independent social work practices. His main concern was that these social work practices would cream off all the best social workers from thereabouts and that there would not be the continuity of provision essential in dealing with these children to ensure that they get back to their families.
This is a bit like a game of chess and the devil is always very good at enticing us with an attractive knight, a rook or even a queen. But we have to look further down the game. When we are dealing with something as serious as this, we have to look a number of moves ahead to the end game. I am concerned about this matter. I wish to learn more. I appreciate the Minister’s serious endeavours to reassure me and others.
I also recall the right-to-buy policy, which had many benefits for many people. Unfortunately, the need for councils to redevelop public provision—the local authority homes that were being sold off—was overlooked in that policy. I am sorry to say that in many areas this has condemned some families to sharing a kitchen or a bathroom with five other families. Many families have to live in awful conditions in poor-quality private accommodation because sufficient thought was not given to the overall impact of that policy. This is a good proposal from the opposition Benches and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I am sorry to return to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, but I believe that it is fundamentally unworkable. It is not a question of judgments having to be made about terminology in legislation; these judgments have to be made the whole time. The problem with his amendment is that there are deeply competing interpretations within the education world as to what the words he has used in his amendment would mean. Having been on the receiving end of representations about the setting up of new schools, including schools in the county from which the noble Lord hails, I can tell him that he is setting up a procedure that will see every proposal for a new school that does not have near universal local support end up in the courts being bitterly contested because of the imprecision of language that he proposes to impose on the Bill.
Let me take the two specific terms he uses: that a new academy must meet “public need” before the Secretary of State is allowed to agree to it and that it should not,
“cause undue detriment to any neighbouring school”.
King Lear got this right more than 400 years ago when he said:
“O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous”.
But when it comes to defining need in respect of new school places, two fundamentally competing views are held. One is that “need” should be defined as a numerical need for additional places, while another and essentially different interpretation is that “need” should be based on parental demand for a new type of place or, as alas is too often the case in local authorities with a large number of failing schools, for better places, which is what has driven so much of the academy movement. It is not that there have not been enough school places in a locality, but that they have not been of a quality that parents in good conscience wish their children to take up.
The noble Lord owes it to the Committee to be frank and direct about which concept of need he has in mind. Is need to be defined simply as a numerical need for places or is it to be defined in terms of appreciable parental demand for a type of place—it could be for Montessori-type schools with a different educational philosophy—or better quality places than those on offer in the existing schools?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but he has rather challenged me. The answer to his question is this. My amendment leaves a discretion with the Secretary of State, and it will be for the Secretary of State to decide on the two or more interpretations of need. In the same way, it will be up to the Secretary of State to come to conclusions about undue detriment. If, through guidance, the Secretary of State gives a further indication of how the two tests have been interpreted, all the better. But as the noble Lord is well aware, the only basis on which this could be challenged in a court—and challenges to ministerial discretions, which are widespread, are extremely rare—would be that the Secretary of State had acted in a way that no reasonable person could have acted.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I do believe that that is a straight cop-out. Parliament has to be clear on what it means. There are two competing notions of need here and Parliament needs to state, before it charges the Secretary of State with these responsibilities, which one it means. As for judicial reviews and legal challenges being rare, there was one point when I was in the job now being done by the noble Lord, Lord Hill, when I was barely out of the High Court and the Court of Appeal on challenges to academies, most of them with support from the National Union of Teachers and a good number with support, one way or another, from bodies associated with local authorities. So Parliament needs to be clear on what it means.
We come then to “undue detriment”. Again, there are two competing views of what this is. It could be taken to mean making another school or schools totally non viable or it could be taken to mean that it would have a serious, definable or appreciable impact on another school or schools. Again, there is a fundamental difference between those two concepts of detriment—whether the detriment causes a school to become non viable or whether it simply has an impact or an appreciable impact. Again, Parliament needs to be clear which of the two it means.
This goes to the central point about school improvements as well. The noble Lord’s amendment says that the Secretary of State may not allow a new academy to be established if it causes undue detriment. I have to say that in many cases it is the dealing with the undue detriment that should be the duty of the Secretary of State or the responsible local authority using the huge array of school improvement powers available, including those that the Government of whom I was a member provided over 13 years. The idea that parents should not be able to access new or additional school places in areas where the schools are not providing good quality places simply because the provision of those places will cause detriment to other schools fundamentally ignores the interests of parents and their right to have a decent quality school to send their children to. If there is not such a decent quality school and someone is prepared to do something substantive about it, they should be applauded and not put through the legal rigmarole that the noble Lord is proposing, which will work fundamentally against the interests of parents, particularly in places where schools are not of a high enough quality. The imprecision of the language, where it is not clear what the definitions of essential terms such as “detriment” and “need” will be, will ensure that the only people who will gain from this are the lawyers, who will make huge fees while this is fought out in the courts over many years.
Lord Baker of Dorking
My Lords, I support entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has said. It is a pity that he is not saying it from the Labour Front Bench because he is absolutely right.
On listening to the debates both before and after dinner, I was struck by how similar they were to the debates on the Education Reform Act 1988, when I decided to establish two groups of independent schools—city technology colleges, which were totally independent of government and financed by business people, and grant maintained schools, which were almost independent of government—which we had to get through as a result of an elaborate electoral process which in those days your Lordships tried to hinder, restrict and limit. I was told at the time that these schools would destroy the education system, that the detriment to schools would be overwhelming and that ordinary secondary schools would be undermined and destroyed. That is not what has happened.
In 1988 the Labour Party objected so strongly that it said it would abolish them all; that it would destroy them as soon as it came into power. That did not happen. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was a member of a Government who actually expanded and developed them at the expense of local education authorities, I would remind him. He was a senior member of a Government and a Minister of State who approved all this. The CTCs were not voted down. They became beacon schools which other local schools tried to emulate.
In the early days of city technology colleges, the local education authorities opposed them so strongly that they told the other local authority schools for which they were responsible to have nothing to do with them; not to play games with them. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will remember; he was in the House in those days. The local authorities ostracised them; they said that they were the cuckoos in the nest that would destroy them. Now they tell them to co-operate with them; they are trying to imitate them and to reach the standards that they have established. That is an enormous change, as it was with the grant-maintained schools. I shall allow the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, to intervene but I want him to listen to me for a moment. Again, the Labour Party spent 10 years totally opposing the grant-maintained schools and then it reinvented them and called them trust schools.
However, let us forget all of that. I do not want to make party points tonight. This provision for alternative types of schools is good for the whole education system; it drives up standards. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, if parents are dissatisfied with a local school and the local authority has tried to improve it—it has thrown resources at it and changed the head three times in two years and done everything it can—and it still has not happened, what does it do? Just let it go on to the detriment of all the pupils? I shall give way to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in a moment, because he is being stirred, but I shall give way to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, first.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am intrigued. Is the noble Lord, Lord Baker, saying that the creation of a new school cannot severely damage an existing good school? If he acknowledges that it can, is he saying that nothing should be done about it?
Lord Baker of Dorking
Very often, if there is a good local school there will not be the creation of another school. If you have got a very good primary school that is satisfying the demands of the parents and children, you will not get another group of parents and teachers wishing to create a new primary school.
The noble Lord does not know how difficult it is to start a school. For the past three years I have been starting new schools—at first with Lord Dearing—the new university technical colleges. It is a hard row to hoe because many people do not want it. These are colleges for 14 to 18 year-olds—which is disruptive for an 11-to-18 system for a start—specialising in technological and academic subjects. When Ron and I started, local authorities were not very interested. They did not like them for all the reasons that the noble Lord gave: they hurt good schools. Now I find that local authorities are coming to my little team, saying, “We’d like one of those, please”. They have seen that it is a new model that they like; it is better. I do not believe for a moment that a good school is threatened—that is rubbish, if I may say so to the noble Lord. He should not get up; he has had his go. Only bad schools are threatened; that is the problem. I can tell the noble Lord that it takes enormous effort to get a school started—to get parents together, to get teachers together. Meetings do not happen. Who is the champion? Can they bring it together? Then we have a divisive curriculum. Then they have to find support and make it viable economically: they have to find a primary school for 150 pupils and a secondary school for 500 to 600 pupils. That is an enormous hurdle. All the hurdles that Members of this Committee have tried to put in the way of the new schools over the past few hours is nothing compared to the task that committed groups will have to take on. That is the reality of life. It requires enormous effort and a tremendous act of corporate activity. We should not try to hobble and hinder that activity too much.
I prefer working with local education authorities. For the schools that I am establishing, we talk first to the local education authorities. If you are creating 14-to-19 colleges, they have to accommodate the 11-to-14 pupils. They also have to accept that it is a very different body in their school organisation. But now I am finding that local authorities like it. It is novel; it is different; and it will be effective. It will be effective, because in every comprehensive at age 12, 13 and 14, you have a vast number of disengaged pupils who do not want to continue in their local comprehensive school. We are providing an alternative which the state system has not yet provided. It provided it back in the 1950s as technical schools, but they failed because they were skill by snobbery. That is why we get a university to sponsor each of our colleges.
I therefore say to Members who are anxious about all this disrupting our education system that the new academies, to the extent that they will exist in the future, will improve our education system. They will improve the standards; they will get the commitment of local people, which will be very energetic. Even the Liberal Party knows how difficult it is to get local people to do anything—even to vote for them occasionally. So let us imagine how difficult it is to get local people committed to establishing a new school. That is why the Government are trying to make it as easy as possible. We should not make it too difficult for them to do so. This is a very imaginative proposal by the Government and it should be welcomed. It will be welcomed first by the Liberal Party—obviously; it will be welcomed reluctantly by the Labour Party, just as it came to welcome the city technology colleges and the grant-maintained schools. It is only a question of time. It is still in the mode of fighting the last election. When it starts fighting the next election, it will begin to realise that what we are saying is really rather attractive, responsive to the needs of people and beneficial to the education of our country. I cannot wait for the day.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I do enjoy this coalition politics, but I think that my noble friends on my left are looking too much at institutions and too little at parents. They should think in terms instead of the interests of parents and the pupils. They are taking too static a view of the schools system. Schools are changing and jostling for places all the time. In a town with three or four secondary schools, the least popular may suddenly get a good new headmistress who makes a great difference and the school becomes popular again. Pupils flow to her away from the other schools. This is a naturally dynamic system which can easily absorb other levels of change. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, the Government have lots of levers to deal with any problems that develop as a result of change—we will come to that when we talk about inspections and how we watch the way which the system is going. We are talking about a change which results in parents being happier, pupils doing better and provision being much more closely aligned with the best interests of pupils and parents. Yes, there may be a few bumps in the road, but if we are careful as a Government, we will make sure that they do not hurt people. That must be the way we should go, rather than sticking with what we all agree is a system with a very large proportion of unsatisfactory, or at least sub-optimal, provision.
Lord Whitty
I owe the noble Lord, Lord Baker, at least a brief response since he took us back not only to 1988 but to the 1950s. I read his article about technical colleges and I have some sympathy with it because, for the record, I am strongly in favour of local authorities. But that does not mean that I am against choice and diversity of provision. I do not think that the local authority has to provide everything or that everybody who works at the local authority school has to be employed by the local authority. That is not my position. My position is that the local authority should have oversight. The local authority is responsible for the community and the future of that community. However, the amendment that the noble Lords, Lord Phillips and Lord Greaves, and I are proposing is much more modest. It simply says that the local authority should be consulted, and that these things should be taken into account.
Despite a wide-ranging difference of ideological approach between the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and me, the actual answer to these amendments is relatively restricted. It emphasises the importance of local authorities. Unless the Bill keeps in mind that local authorities are big players in this game, there will be conflict and difficulties.
The other point that I would make to the noble Lord, Lord Baker is that much of what he was describing is not what is being proposed by this Government but what was being enacted by the previous Government. In other words, they were seeing schools that were failing and areas where the local authority was performing badly overall. They introduced academies into that context. I do not totally agree with it, but I sympathise and understand the motivation for that. But what the Minister and his boss Michael Gove are proposing is almost the opposite. They are saying that all schools can apply, but they will take the outstanding ones first. They will automatically take the outstanding schools away from the role of the local authority and leave it to manage the less good schools.
That is an inversion of how the noble Lord, Lord Baker, described the motivation for establishing academies. To some extent, it is an inversion of what the previous Government were attempting to do with the academies that they established. That is the part of the strategy I object to. But I repeat that our amendment is much more modest. I hope that the Minister can at least accept one of our amendments.
Lord Bates
My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, for tabling Amendment 4 and giving us the opportunity to look again at Clause 1(6)(d), because there is a potential difficulty for the Government down the line. We intend to provide freedom for people to establish schools, yet paragraph (d) says that,
“the school provides education for pupils who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated”.
The noble Lord, Lord Baker, has just spoken. Of course, the city technology colleges were successful because they did not have that restriction. There was nothing to say that they had to “wholly or mainly” draw pupils from the area of the school. Therefore, they could draw them from a wider area, which was how they became beacon schools.
From my reading, Swedish schools are not subject to the same restrictions in terms of having to draw from very narrow boundaries. There is a potential risk, particularly in the primary sector as distinct from the secondary sector, of deleterious effects on neighbouring schools. I ask my noble friend to look again at the wording of that clause and see whether “wholly or mainly” needs to be included or whether a general statement about pupils being drawn from the area in which the school is situated would suffice.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, there have been times in the past half an hour or so when I thought that I should contract my job out to the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Baker, and I have been sitting here feeling rather redundant. Between them, they made many of the points that I hoped to make, perhaps more briefly but no doubt less forcefully and persuasively and argued with far less experience, in my case, than that which noble Lords bring to bear. Both their contributions very eloquently made the core point that I would like to make in response, particularly to Amendment 4.
Generally, these amendments probe the Government’s intentions in relation to local authorities and the effect of academy orders on local provision, particularly in circumstances in which a large number of maintained schools wish to convert within a single local authority. We also have a specific amendment to do with new schools, to which I shall come in a moment.
We had an earlier discussion about consultation, which noble Lords will be relieved to know I do not intend to rehash. I said in the light of those comments earlier that I would ponder further and, in doing so, think about the points made to me by my noble friend Lord Greaves. We expect schools to consult parents, staff and pupils.
I move to one general point that touches on the points made by my noble friend Lord Baker and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I think that it is the case—and I am discovering this already with anything to do with academy proposals—that there is no shortage of people coming forward when there are academy proposals, making their views known. The local press tend to make their views known and local groups make their views known very forcefully. Groups of parents not in favour of conversion make their views known and groups in favour make their views known. It is not as though currently these academy proposals are considered in a vacuum or in some kind of Trappist silence. I am sure that that vigorous debate in which local people, whoever they are, make their views known as widely as possible will continue.
Our point of principle in this Bill is that schools that want to pursue academy status should have that freedom. Others have made that case far more forcefully than I am able to do or need to rehearse.
On the point of the role of localism, which in the coalition we discuss frequently and to which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred, the debate will clearly continue. People have different views on what localism means and how it should be represented and policed—if that is the right word. With the Bill, we think that individual schools—
Lord Greaves
I do apologise, but I cannot avoid jumping in. How do you police localism?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I apologise to the noble Lord. The word “police” came unwittingly from my lips. He may have sensed that I was fumbling my way through my sentence and I withdraw it unreservedly.
It is our view that, with regard to local decision-making, involving individual schools, teachers and parents is about as local as it is possible to get. We can argue about how we make that work, but I think that that is pretty local. We think that responsibility for educating children and young people should be devolved to the most local level possible. It is that principle, which I know that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, disagrees with strongly, which has led us to decide that local authorities should not be in a position to veto academy conversions. We know that existing rights in the past have meant that that has happened. If we were to give local authorities the right to be consulted on aspects of this new conversion process, our fear would be that they would be frustrated as it has been frustrated in the past. As has already been set out very eloquently by others, the need to tackle problems of education failure is too urgent to allow that to be frustrated.
I turn to the individual amendments. Amendment 4, moved by my noble friend Lord Phillips, would require the Secretary of State to be satisfied, before entering into academy arrangements, that any new academy met a public need in an area. We had an interesting debate in the House in which these points and the potential legal downsides were aired. I have listened with care to the points made by my noble friend Lord Phillips. He and I have discussed this issue and the specific case that he has in mind, so I understand his view. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on the amendment. I am concerned about its wording, which could give rise to the danger that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, pointed out. The whole point of the free schools policy is that in some cases the proposals should be able to cause detriment to a school if that school has been failing and has let children down repeatedly over a long period. Such a school should be able to be challenged and detriment should be caused to it, so that a new and better school can be established or the school ups its game and improves the education that it offers. That said—
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I regret interrupting the noble Lord, but he misses the main point of my case, as did the noble Lord, Lord Baker. Considerations on the part of some of those who wish to form new schools are not genuinely to do with educational need; they are—let us put it brutally—about a sort of social separateness. I am thinking of the leafy suburbs to which the noble Lord referred. The case that I referred to at Second Reading and tonight involves a good and improving school—indeed, it is the most improved school in the county of Suffolk—which will, according to its head and chair of governors, be mortally damaged if the new school is created. I cannot believe that that is what this coalition Government want to enable.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I understand the point that my noble friend Lord Phillips makes. As I said, we have discussed it. It is in no one’s interests to come up with proposals that would damage education overall in an area. That is not the intention or purpose.
The decision whether to go ahead with a free school will not be taken in isolation. The Secretary of State has the discretion to take all relevant considerations into account as part of the approval process. Those considerations would, I am sure, include the kind of issues that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, raises. I go back to my earlier point: it seems inconceivable that concerns of the kind that he has raised with me and the views that I know are held by the people concerned with this case would not be made known, not least by my noble friend. The Secretary of State would have to reflect on those in making his decision.
During the application process, proposers will be expected to discuss their plans with any local partners, including the local authority, and we will encourage them to do that. The Secretary of State has said—as I mentioned in our debate about the free schools announcement, he wrote to local authorities about this at the end of last week—that, alongside other checks in place, he will talk to local authorities to make sure that he fully understands the local context and circumstances before making a final decision on whether to support the establishment of a free school.
I hope that these are common-sense and practical reassurances and that they will provide some comfort that the process gives the Secretary of State the flexibility to take these issues into account. As I also mentioned, these are early days of the free schools policy. Our approach is to work through the implications of the applications as they come in. I am sure that, over time, we will resolve these issues; we certainly have a willingness and desire to do so.
Lord Greaves
Is that letter to local authorities somewhere on the website, or can we please have a copy of it?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am happy to send that to my noble friend. It has been widely publicised and I think it has been circulated, but I will make sure that he has his own special copy.
Lord Greaves
Maybe other Members of the Committee would like special copies as well. Can we have them individually signed or in different colours?
Lord Hill of Oareford
We will have one colour for the coalition. I thought that the letter had been made available in the Library. If it has not, I will make sure that it is. I will still give my noble friend his own special copy.
It is our view that all schools should be free to apply to become academies, subject to the decision of the governing body and its foundation where appropriate. That does not mean that all schools will be approved to become academies. Some schools may not meet the criteria of acceptability or show sufficient evidence that they will be able to deliver an acceptable level of education. Some may not show evidence of enough demand to make them viable. We will consider each case on its merits in the light of the situation in that area.
Amendments 116, 117 and 129 would require the local authority to be consulted about several aspects of the conversion process. I have already set out our view in this respect. We do not want to be in a position where a local authority could veto the process.
Lord Whitty
I gently say to the Minister that, yes, one of my amendments would give local authorities a veto but another would not, and nor would those of the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Phillips. Consultation is not a veto. Ministers in this Government will find that all sorts of statutes require Ministers to consult before they make a decision. It is a bit irritating. At the end of the day, Ministers can ignore it or override it, but at least they have gone through the process. That is all we are asking for here.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I understand the point that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, makes. I stand corrected. Amendments 119 and 191 propose an assessment of the educational impact of each academy conversion before it can go ahead, and a pilot process to make similar assessments over several years. Academies are not a new phenomenon. We know that that they have achieved great things over the years. They already work in partnership with other local schools. They make sensible and co-operative arrangements with local children’s services. If we were newly introducing academies, these proposals might well be worth considering very carefully, but we are not. We are, therefore, not convinced that they are necessary.
Amendment 177 would require academies to promote community cohesion. That is obviously, in broad terms, a worthy aim. The question is, how do we see this being achieved? As a condition of grant, an academy is already required by its funding agreement to be at the heart of its community, sharing facilities with other schools and the wider community. Future academies will continue to be under this obligation.
I am mindful that somewhere in these amendments was Amendment 137, tabled by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. She asked about the delegation of decisions to an individual governor. We would not expect governing bodies to delegate decision-making in connection with an application for an order to an individual. We would ensure that our system required governing bodies to forward to us a copy of the minutes of the governing body meeting so that we can be satisfied in that connection.
Amendments 76A and 92A deal with post-16 arrangements in academies. I hope that noble Lords will be reassured to hear that where we are being asked to fund an expansion of post-16 provision in an academy we will require the academy to make a strong case for expansion and to show that other local providers have been consulted, but we are not convinced that such a requirement needs to be in the Bill. Recurrent funding in academies, including for sixth-form provision, is formulated to ensure that academies are no better off and no worse off than maintained schools for the provision of similar services. However, as we know, they receive funding to buy in services from a local authority or another provider where these will no longer be provided free of charge to the school. A cap that prevented academies from receiving funding for these services would leave academies worse off than maintained schools.
In light of the general discussion that we have had about the role of the local authority, I urge all noble Lords to withdraw their amendments.
Lord Baker of Dorking
Before my noble friend sits down, I draw his attention to the point made by my noble friend Lord Bates. However, I am not asking him to make any commitment tonight. My noble friend Lord Bates said that the new schools should provide education if pupils were,
“wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated”.
That may be too narrow. If there is a wider catchment area for the new schools, the effect on the area local schools will be much less. Certainly, we have very wide catchment areas for the university technical colleges; for example, half the Black Country. This is acceptable to local authorities because no individual school is hit too much. Will he consider that before Report, please?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I will certainly reflect on that point and see where my reflections take me. In conclusion, I urge all noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
At this hour, and having had this very considerable and useful debate, I am sure that it is incumbent on me to withdraw my amendment.