House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Introduction: Baroness Benjamin
Introduction: Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale
Death of a Member: Lord Flowers
The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of Lord Flowers on 25 June. On behalf of the whole House, I extend our condolences to his family and friends.
Commonwealth Games: Delhi
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Harries of Pentregarth
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to the Government of India regarding the funding arrangements of the Delhi Commonwealth Games.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, we have maintained close dialogue with Indian officials responsible for all aspects of the Commonwealth Games. According to the chairman of the organising committee, Mr Kalmadi, the costs of the Delhi Commonwealth Games will be met by the revenues generated through the sale of broadcasting rights, sponsorship, and ticket and merchandise sales.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
I thank the Minister for his reply. However, is he not very disturbed by the report of the Housing and Land Rights Network, released by a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, showing that money which had previously been earmarked for the uplift of the poor—particularly the poorer castes—had been used to finance these Games, which have run hugely over budget? Will he, with other Commonwealth countries, raise this with the Indian Government?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Yes, my Lords, we were disturbed, and indeed the Secretary of State launched an immediate inquiry when some of these statements and allegations appeared in the media. However, although the noble and right reverend Lord is correct about the likely overrun of costs—which were estimated to be £250 million but are probably going to be considerably more than that—from our examination we are satisfied and have full confidence that the Games will be properly financed and that there will be no diversion from the very important funds that go via the Indian Government and DfID to the scheduled castes, slum clearance and other crucial issues. Therefore, we have full confidence in India’s commitment to deliver a secure and successful Commonwealth Games and to avoid the very problems that have been raised.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, the noble Lord used the word “examination” in relation to what was happening over the costs but he also said that a statement had been made on behalf of the organising authority that the costs were being drawn in the way that he described. When he used the word “examination”, did he mean that he and the Secretary of State have had the opportunity for independent verification or are they proceeding on the basis of an assurance?
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, before the Minister finishes on this Question, will he return to the point that my noble and right reverend friend made about the impact on the poorest people in India? Can he say a word more about the effect on the scheduled classes, to whom he referred, and particularly on the Dalits, and whether this will be seen as an opportunity to draw people from those underclasses—the untouchables—in India into the wider civic life of the nation?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, is right to say that this should be seen as an opportunity and I hope very much that it will be. I mentioned the Indian Government’s major slum clearance programmes, which must be going in the right direction. I believe that, far from being a disadvantage for those sorts of programmes, projects such as the Commonwealth Games can be a positive opportunity for, as the noble Lord said, drawing minorities and ethnic groups more effectively into proper civil life and the civic stream in India. We have full confidence that that can be achieved.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, we will all be glad to hear the assurance given by the Minister. It is particularly important because during the passage of the Equality Bill—I wonder whether he is aware of this—the previous Government, with cross-party support, included caste discrimination as a form of unfair treatment that should be dealt with. At the time, the Indian Government made some representations against that, which I am glad to say the then Government did not heed. Would he bear that in mind in ensuring that the assurance he has given is implemented in practice?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, that is a very valuable observation. I did not know that and I am very glad that I do now. I am grateful to the noble Lord.
Lord Jones of Birmingham
My Lords, at the moment, we stand as the 18th largest exporter to India, whereas 10 years ago we were the fourth largest. Will the Minister please explain, first, how we can use the Commonwealth Games to improve on that awful decline; and, secondly, why are we giving, through DfID, aid to a nation which has quadrupled its defence budget in the past three years?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, on the first point, the Commonwealth Games are part of an ever growing and stronger Commonwealth network, in which I take a particular interest. I believe that it can be of great advantage to all developing countries, including India—and to ourselves and our prosperity, exports and interests. The noble Lord is quite right on that point.
On the issue of aid, India is a country which still contains one-third of the world’s poor people, which is an enormous number. Part of our growing and enhanced relationship with India includes the immensely well targeted DfID programmes which are aimed at meeting the absolutely unbelievable poverty that still exists in India. Those programmes are, of course, greatly welcomed by the Indian Government and the Governments of the various states within India.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, have I missed something? Is India not a sovereign nation and is it really our business to tell it how much money it should or should not spend on the Commonwealth Games?
Lord Howell of Guildford
No, it is not our business. We have negligible influence on the matter and I would not presume to tell India how much it should spend. It will manage perfectly successfully and it does not need any additional comment from us, except helpful and friendly advice, which we are always ready to give.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, has India held the Commonwealth Games before and, if so, how many times?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, I am not 100 per cent sure, but I do not think it has. This is a very big and important development for India and I think they will be the biggest Commonwealth Games held so far, with many participants from all over the world.
Immigration: Refugee and Migrant Justice
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Avebury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their reaction to the probable closure of Refugee and Migrant Justice.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, since this Question was tabled, Refugee and Migrant Justice has been placed into administration. The Government’s immediate concern was that the clients of RMJ should continue to receive a good-quality service.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, as other practitioners specialising in asylum cases—particularly, although not exclusively, those who operate on a not-for-profit basis—have had similar cash-flow problems to those of the RMJ, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that the LSC may be able to find providers to take on the RMJ’s 10,000 cases? Will my noble friend acknowledge that there will be serious delays in looking after those cases, first, because the new providers will have to get to know what the cases are, and, secondly, because they do not know whether they will be funded in the spending round that begins on 1 October?
Lord McNally
My Lords, I will take the last point first. Yes, there is bound to be a certain amount of disruption if an organisation that covers 7 per cent of cases goes into administration. However, I can assure the House that the Government are giving high priority to minimise that disruption. On whether other non-profit-making practitioners are facing difficulty, it is true that there have been complaints about the change in funding and fees, which was made by the previous Administration with an eye to saving taxpayers’ money. The change is not popular but, as my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor said in another place, the organisations are coping. Trying to balance the good work that these organisations are doing against the taxpayers’ not-bottomless pot is difficult.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I am delighted that the Minister has praised those who worked for Refugee and Migrant Justice, which over a number of years did an excellent job. I am also delighted that the Legal Services Commission is ensuring that the existing clients of that organisation continue to have proper advice and representation. Are there estimates of the extra cost to the Legal Services Commission in ensuring that proper advice and representation from fresh providers?
Lord McNally
There are no estimates on that. There will be an extra cost, but Ministers had to face a balance of judgment: did they take into account that RMJ was going into administration and that therefore there would be knock-on costs, or did they give it more taxpayers’ money with no guarantee that it would not again find itself in difficulty in a short time? It was a hard call but, as the noble Lord knows full well, sometimes Ministers have to make hard calls.
Lord Pannick
Will the Minister confirm that the problem faced by RMJ is the consequence of payments being made only after decisions are taken by the Home Office, or by the tribunal, in an individual immigration case, and that that can take two years or more? Will the Government therefore consider introducing a system of interim payments so that competent and efficient organisations such as RMJ are not threatened with closure?
Lord McNally
My Lords, if the description “competent and efficient” was correct for RMJ, one asks how it managed to get itself into administration. It represents 7 per cent of cases, so organisations representing 93 per cent are coping. Again, it was a difficult decision to make and I know that there have been complaints about the tough system of paying. However, we are dealing with taxpayers’ money and there is justification for ensuring that the organisations provide value for it. It may be worth noting that, in the round of bids, double the number of law firms are bidding for this business. That suggests that RMJ is not alone and that companies believe that they can deliver the service under the present scheme.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
My Lords, reports are circulating that the UK Border Agency is refusing to grant extensions to RMJ clients in order that they might find new representation. It is saying that clients can raise any issues that they have with such a refusal at the time of an appeal. That is not only terrible for clients, but it is also poor value for money, because the appeal process is extraordinarily expensive. What advice, if any, is being given to the UK Border Agency in this respect?
Lord McNally
My Lords, the UK Border Agency has been asked to treat RMJ clients with common sense and to allow time during this period of adjustment. Therefore, according to my briefing, the right reverend Prelate’s first assertion is not true.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, there is room for both. Let us listen to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, RMJ says that it is owed £1.8 million by the Legal Services Commission. Is that the correct figure? The Legal Services Commission was supposed to be abolished by the noble Lord, Lord Bach. Will the coalition Government revive it, or would it not be better for it to disappear as soon as possible?
Lord McNally
Again, dealing with the last point first, I am not even sure whether that is under review, but I certainly cannot give an answer. On the matter of money owing, a case from RMJ will be heard on Wednesday, so I am not sure how much I can comment on it, other than to say that it is the view of the Government and the LSC that no moneys are owing to RMJ. Indeed, when the books are finally balanced, it may prove to be the other way around.
Lord Davies of Coity
My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, the Minister said that he had to strike a balance. He also said that he did not know what it was going to cost. How does he strike a balance when he does not know what it is going to cost?
Lord McNally
Because Ministers have to take a view on whether paying out money to an organisation that has gone into administration is a better deal for the taxpayer than making the adjustments necessary to give the clients—as I said at the beginning, the clients are our first priority—the legal coverage that they deserve. Of course, during this period of adjustment, we do not know the final cost, but a decision had to be made. As I said, sometimes Ministers have to make hard decisions and we made this one.
Nuclear Posture Review
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the scope and timing of the proposed nuclear posture review announced by the Foreign Secretary on 26 May.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, the review of the UK’s nuclear declaratory policy announced by the Foreign Secretary will take place as part of the strategic defence and security review. We will re-examine all the factors that make up our declaratory policy to ensure that it is fully appropriate to the circumstances we face today and into the future. The Government expect to report their findings from the strategic defence and security review in the autumn.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. It is very helpful that that will be brought together with the other matters in this very broad security review. Can he confirm that the nuclear posture review, which is the object of my Question, will include a critical analysis of the justification for the “continuous at-sea” aspect of our present nuclear posture? Does he agree that that requirement was related to the Cold War need to deter the threat of a Soviet first strike and that, as that threat is no longer considered to exist by the NATO alliance, the grounds for maintaining the requirement of “continuous at-sea” no longer exists either?
Lord Howell of Guildford
No, I cannot confirm that. The nuclear posture review, which will be in the context of the SDSR, will include questions such as our approach to nuclear-free zones and our assurances given to non-nuclear states who have signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The review of Trident will focus on value for money and will be separate. It will look at whether it is possible to stick to the constant at-sea deterrent system, to which we are committed, with three boats rather than four. That is what it will examine. It will be a separate review from the SDSR plus nuclear posture review, which will be plugged together.
Lord Archer of Sandwell
Will the Minister confirm that the parties to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty undertake to enter into negotiations in good faith for nuclear disarmament and, afterwards, for a treaty on general and complete disarmament? Are the Government proposing any steps to initiate such negotiations, or at least to encourage them? If not, why not?
Lord Howell of Guildford
As the noble and learned Lord knows well because he follows these things closely, the advances and progress made at the recent review of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty pointed in that direction. The general desire, which is long-term but to be achieved step by cautious, realistic and practical step, is a non-nuclear world. That is what we all want to see, but progress towards it has to be through the kind of arrangements and protocol developments that were organised at the non–proliferation treaty gathering the other day. That was a considerable advance, and I am very glad that we were able to report our own decisions to reinforce it further with our declaration of the number of maximum stockpile warheads we would close. It is the right direction, but we have to move carefully.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is important to maintain the momentum towards nuclear disarmament? In particular, will the nuclear posture review look at the alert status of our deterrent? Obviously moving towards having a longer period in which people have time to consider their reaction is a very important part of moving the momentum towards disarmament.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I agree with the noble Baroness that this is an important part of the developments. The review conclusions were very encouraging—they were not all-embracing, but certainly took us some steps forward. I will note what the noble Baroness said.
Viscount Waverley
My Lords, the United States is making its posture a legislatively mandated review. Given the sensitivity of the subject, would it not be appropriate to do so in the United Kingdom in line with our consideration of UK future declarations of war?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I am not quite sure that this relates directly to what we are discussing at the moment, but I note what the noble Viscount said.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
My Lords, the Government’s approach to the future of Trident is central to any nuclear posture review, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, intimated. Will the Minister tell the House how the strong preference of one of the coalition partners for alternatives to Trident renewal will be taken into account in a future review scrutinising spending to ensure value for money?
Lord Howell of Guildford
There will be a review, as undertaken in the coalition agreement, and the coalition partners will be free to express their views, as they have said they will. I have no doubt that there will be a very healthy, realistic and sensible analysis of the situation, but the overarching commitment is that, however we organise the matter, there must be a constant-at-sea deterrent that works, rather than one that does not work or costs a lot more money and involves a lot more missiles, as some alternatives would.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, given that many of the most significant developments in relations between nations in the past 30 or 40 years have been unpredicted and sometimes unpredictable, is it not important, in the context of what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said about the deterrent being focused on the Cold War period, to recognise that if we were to lose the capability, it might be very difficult to get it back again if it were to be needed?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Those are very wise and practical words from my noble friend Lord Marlesford.
The Earl of Onslow
My Lords, is it not also reasonable to assume that had neither India nor Pakistan had nuclear weapons within the past 10 years, it is probable that they would have gone to war? Because they had nuclear weapons, they thought it would be a silly idea and so did not.
Lord Howell of Guildford
My noble friend is quite right. That could be a good example of the theory of mutual deterrence working. Perhaps, if we look back over the history of the past 50 years, it has worked.
Climate Change: UN Framework Convention
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what approach they intend to take at the next Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)
My Lords, the Government are committed to working towards an ambitious global climate deal that will limit emissions. We will be working with our international partners, both in the European Union and bilaterally, to secure practical progress in tackling climate change by the time of the next conference of parties in Cancun in November this year.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for that response. Will he confirm that the Government acknowledge that the scientific evidence is clear that unless we mitigate the worst impact of climate change, countries of the world face catastrophe, and therefore an international agreement in Cancun is essential?
Lord Marland
My Lords, rarely has so much political capital been spent in trying to reach that agreement in Copenhagen, so it is a bit much to ask that it will happen in Cancun. We are optimistic that, unlike the England football team, we might get a result in South Africa in 2011, but, as the noble Lord will know, we need to be patient and realistic and to develop a dialogue with countries that do not row in tune with us at the moment.
Lord Lawson of Blaby
My Lords, given that, as my noble friend’s answer implies, a unilateral UK climate policy makes no sense in scientific, economic or political terms, will he give an undertaking that should Cancun not result in an ambitious and binding global agreement to cap emissions, the United Kingdom Government will fundamentally re-examine and re-evaluate our climate change and energy policies in the light of the outcome of Cancun? If not, why not?
Lord Marland
I thank my noble friend Lord Lawson for his question. His views are widely known, and I compliment him, incidentally, for bringing a great wealth of knowledge to this debate. However, his views are, I am afraid, not in line with the Government’s policy. This Government are committed to a green agenda. Climate change is one of the gravest threats that we face as a nation and as a world. Urgent action at home and abroad is required to tackle it. The overwhelming weight of scientific evidence from a range of independent sources indicates that global temperatures are rising due to human activities, and temperatures are set to increase over the coming century. It is our duty as a Government to solve these problems.
Lord Teverson
My Lords, one of the areas in which there was almost success at Copenhagen was deforestation and the REDD programme. Even if the grand scheme is not solved in Mexico, is it my noble friend the Minister’s judgment that we will move forward in this important area and find a solution? How are the Government approaching this at the moment?
Lord Marland
I thank the noble Lord for his question. He brings unrivalled knowledge to this subject. As he well knows, 70 countries are working very closely to firm up some of the loose agreements that were made in Copenhagen. We are very committed to that dialogue and will continue that process in earnest.
Business of the House
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde will now make a Statement on financial provision for Members. In the light of the subject matter, it may be for the convenience of the House if the Convenor of the Cross Benches is given the opportunity to intervene in the course of the Front-Bench exchange. If required, it may also be convenient to extend the maximum time allocated to Back-Bench questions and answers from 20 minutes to 30 minutes.
Immediately after proceedings on the first Statement have concluded, my noble friend will repeat a Statement entitled, “G8 and G20”.
Financial Provision for Members
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, I wish to make a Statement on future financial provision for Members of this House.
In my view, we need fundamental change. None of us wants to live through again what we lived through in the last Parliament. In a House in which the overwhelming majority of Peers have always acted on their honour, we found ourselves severely criticised. All too often, that criticism was fully justified. The parliamentary expenses regime was opened up to public view, and the public saw a system that was badly broken. Difficult questions were asked, abuses were uncovered, apologies have been made and prosecutions are pending. We could not let this continue, and I pay tribute again to the contribution made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. Once problems were uncovered, she acted decisively, and the House is indebted to her.
We received a report from the Senior Salaries Review Body. Building on that report, my noble friend Lord Wakeham was invited to lead an ad hoc group to consider, consult and advise on the implementation of a new system of financial support. The group has now submitted its proposals to the House Committee, and its report, entitled Financial Support for Members of the House of Lords, is now available in the Printed Paper Office.
The Wakeham group supported the SSRB’s idea of combining the current daily subsistence and office costs allowances into one daily allowance. I agree with that. But the group suggests an alternative option, a simplification of the SSRB’s approach to overnight allowances by combining that, too, into one single daily allowance, payable on attendance on each sitting day. If this were done, it would mean the abolition of the expenses regime as we know it, and in future, payment for staying overnight, taxis, meals, secretaries and research assistants would all come out of that single payment. How much Peers spend on each item would be entirely up to them. There would be no extras, no small print. The single payment would be the end of the matter.
Under the current scheme, the maximum some Members may claim per day they attend is £334. The SSRB suggested that this should be £340. If we create a single uniform daily allowance, it should be set at a figure less than these two totals. I recommend £300. This is 10 per cent less than the current maximum and 12 per cent less than the figure recommended by the SSRB. Furthermore, there will be a lower rate at which Members can claim. I suggest that this should be 50 per cent lower at £150.
This is not a salaried House. Attendance will remain the key basis for the allowance—that is what the public expect. But in order to contribute effectively to the work of the House, Peers are often involved in preparatory and other work outside the Chamber and cannot attend, for example, for long periods in Committee. However, I believe that many will consider a lower rate appropriate, for example for Peers who are able to attend the House for only part of a sitting on a particular day.
We are rightly all under scrutiny for our use of public money and the public expect Members of the House to set the same high standards for themselves as they do for others. Some may feel they do not wish to ask for any payment at all. Based on provisional statistics, last year 13 per cent of those who attended the House did not claim any allowances. I hope that they will continue not to. The Wakeham group proposals cover a number of other important issues, including travel arrangements for Members. Its proposals will continue to recognise the additional costs faced by Peers who travel from long distances.
Axing through the current complex structure of expenses would represent radical change, but I believe that that would be right. It also holds other advantages. It would be cheaper to run than any more complex arrangements, less bureaucratic and less expensive to comply with, simpler to police and far harder to abuse. The controversial rules on so-called “second homes” would quite simply be swept away. There will be no more accusations of addresses of convenience, and no more juggling of utility bills and claims forms. If you come to Westminster and work in Parliament, you will be able to claim the allowance. If you do not, you will not.
This will mean a reduction in the amount that some Peers have claimed in the past. But in the present economic climate we cannot protest against a reduction. Indeed, in my own view, with a new system, levels of payments should be frozen for the life of this Parliament. I accept that this is a scheme that will not be welcomed by all, but it will be broadly cost-neutral compared with the existing scheme. The existing expenses regime is discredited. It lacks credibility and the public have lost confidence in it. This new plan means the end of the second homes fiasco. It means the end of expenses in the House of Lords. It means a new system that is direct, transparent and accountable. It means that we are making a significant step towards winning the public’s confidence again.
So, what next? The House Committee will meet soon to discuss the details of this proposal. Before the Summer Recess, I will table resolutions for the House’s approval. This House has suffered greatly from the faults of the previous system and the misbehaviour of a small minority. Ultimately, it is a matter for the House if it wants to make this change. The Government’s view is that we need clarity, simplicity and reform—and that the time for reform is now. I hope that your Lordships will agree, and I commend this Statement to the House.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Royall, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the House, for making this Statement on financial support for Members of the House of Lords. I am also grateful to him for his acknowledgement of the actions taken previously by my noble friend.
This House is rightly jealous of its reputation. It makes an enormous contribution to this country in the scrutiny of legislation and in holding Governments to account, and to Parliament as a whole. It is important in maintaining public confidence in the integrity of this House and its Members that it has a financial support system which is fit for purpose. I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and the members of his group for the great care and attention that they have given to their work.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has informed the House that in addition to the detailed work undertaken by the Wakeham group on the SSRB recommendations, it has also suggested that consideration should be given to putting in place a simplified allowance to replace the daily and overnight allowance recommended by the SSRB. This will of course be a matter for the House itself to decide. But the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has stated that he intends to support the alternative simplified system set out in the Wakeham group report. I and my noble friend Lady Royall, the Leader of the Opposition, will also give our support to that recommendation.
I believe that the arguments for pursuing a simplified allowance are persuasive. Of course it has a swings-and-roundabouts characteristic about it, and there will be some inequities, as no system is ever likely to be perfect; but the simplified system should be easy to implement, easy to administer and, above all, easy to explain to the public.
We are embarking on a period of change to your Lordships’ House in the light of the Government’s proposals for reform and the establishment of a committee to prepare a draft Bill. It makes sense to move quickly to this new and simplified system, which can always be further reviewed as part of the reform process. I would be grateful for confirmation of that from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde.
It is necessary and important that Members have the financial support necessary to undertake their duties. Equally, we must ensure that public money is spent wisely and efficiently. I have noted the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that this will be cost-neutral and that the maximum level set will be lower than the current level. Can the noble Lord give some indication of when the House is likely to be asked to discuss and approve the new system? Can he confirm that the new system, if approved, will be in place by the time the House returns after the Summer Recess? Can he confirm also that the necessary administrative processes can be put in place in time?
Overall, we can see a sensible way forward which can command public confidence and support Members appropriately in the fulfilment of their responsibilities to your Lordships’ House.
Baroness D'Souza
My Lords, I add to the thanks already expressed to the Wakeham ad hoc group for its report, which I know has taken a great deal of time and may have caused a few more grey hairs. It is particularly helpful that the proposals put forward by the SSRB have in large part been accepted, thereby holding true to the resolution in this House last December to accept the principles and architecture of that report. One or two of the more strange recommendations have been ironed out, such as the need to separate man and wife when travelling in a first-class railway carriage.
I say this in anticipation of the debate which is due to be held tomorrow on House of Lords reform. Let no one say that this House does not undertake reform. In the space of less than a year we now have a stringent code of conduct, an active sub-committee on privileges and standards and greater financial transparency.
There is of course room for further adjustment, which is why the suggestion of a review in a year’s time is welcome. The Leader did not actually suggest that in his speech, but I think it is in the air. One area that continues to cause some concern is that the daily allowance is tied to presence, and this may affect disabled peers where daily attendance would in fact reduce productivity rather than enhance it. I again ask that there be some flexibility in the implementation of allowances.
The Government have now put forward a variation on the Wakeham proposals; namely, a fixed daily allowance for all attendees. As we have heard from all sides, the chief advantage of this proposal is that it would immediately lighten the burden on the finance office: no invoices, no verification measures and no end-of-term adjustments. Another advantage is that adoption of this proposal, as has also been stressed, would for ever pre-empt any accusations of fraudulent claims.
I can see the attraction of this simpler payment system and agree with the government proposal, but I also have some sympathy with those who live outside London and who stay in London for the purposes of attending your Lordships’ House. These people will be penalised to the extent of anything up to perhaps £700 per month, receiving only £300 per sitting day rather than £341 for a receipted overnight stay.
There will be those who argue that an allowance structure will inevitably invoke questions about tax. I feel that the sum of £300 per day to cover all secretarial, office and subsistence costs is not unduly generous, and that any further reduction would seriously deter some Peers from attending at all. It would be helpful for those Peers who live in more distant parts for a distinction to be made, in any publication of costs incurred, between the actual total allowances for a given month and the travel costs, since these expenses are paid directly and thus are not part of any allowance.
The stated aim of the SSRB recommendations was to restore public confidence. I suspect that public confidence will ultimately rest upon more than the size of a daily fee; it is to be hoped that this House will be judged on the work that it does in improving legislation. That said, the changes put forward in the SSRB, the Wakeham report and the noble Lord the Leader’s Statement are all to be welcomed.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am grateful for the broad welcome given by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness the Convenor of the Cross Benches. I understand why the Leader of the Opposition could not be in her place today, and I am glad that the noble Lord stood in for her in such an excellent manner.
I think the whole House should thank my noble friend Lord Wakeham and congratulate him on the work that he did. He took on an immensely difficult task after the debate that we had last December. It was not clear to me that anyone would be able to find their way around this particular maze, with so many different groups of people wanting different things and dissatisfied with what was being presented. It is a real credit. He did not manage to find his way through alone, though; he did so with the help of a group of individuals from all sides of the House who no doubt helped and encouraged him in his work.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked some specific questions, particularly about how long I anticipate this process will take and when the new regime will come into force. It is important that we move quickly to the new regime. The House Committee will therefore meet very soon and take a view on resolutions that will be proposed by me. If they are agreed they will be brought to the House. I hope that this will be done in the course of the next few weeks—certainly before the Summer Recess, because I envisage the new regime coming into force on 1 October. The current regime will continue until then.
We will need resolutions, in part to allow the authorities of the House to take them into account when they are creating the new system. I do not believe that anything I have said about the new system will give the authorities in the House of Lords any concern at all about being able to administer the scheme effectively, efficiently and more cheaply than was envisaged under the scheme proposed by the SSRB.
Turning to the points made by the Convenor of the Cross Benches, I recognise that some will be concerned about a net reduction in the amount of money they receive. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said, this is not a perfect system—nor does it try to be. It tries simply to iron out the worst of the difficulties that we have seen in the current system and the proposed scheme, and it has taken all those things into account.
The noble Baroness was right about all the changes that have taken place during the past 12 months. We have a new code of conduct, a new independent Commissioner for Standards, and we are reviewing the attendance allowances. For the House of Lords, it is a positively revolutionary pace.
The noble Baroness mentioned taxation. That is not a matter for me; it is up to HMRC and the Treasury. However, if the previous scheme was without tax, there must be compelling arguments for this scheme also to be without tax, given that many of the expenses which Peers have are very similar.
The Clerk of the Parliaments has discretion to allow some additional expenses for disabled Members. Nothing in the Wakeham committee report seeks to change that, and there is no reason why it should not continue. The Clerk of the Parliaments has in the past demonstrated an ability and willingness to look favourably on people who need those additional expenses, and I am sure that he will want to continue to do so.
Lord Wakeham
Perhaps it might assist the House if I said a word as chairman of the ad hoc committee. In carrying out our work, we stuck firmly to our remit, which was to stay within the principles and architecture of the SSRB report. However, is my noble friend aware that we found it a complex task to come up with a final solution, which is why we floated the idea of an alternative that would be simpler and cheaper to administer and easier to explain to the outside world? Therefore, I very much support my noble friend’s Statement. As a member of the House Committee, I shall certainly support his proposal.
Lord Strathclyde
I have already said how grateful the House should be to my noble friend. He has come up with an immensely useful and helpful report. It is now in the Printed Paper Office and I hope that noble Lords will take the trouble to read it.
Lord McNally
Clearly the noble Lord is not going to be sensible about it. Let him go on.
Lord Tomlinson
Is the noble Lord aware that there was unanimity in the Wakeham committee right up to the point of our last meeting? At that meeting, the idea of a flat-rate allowance was introduced. As a result of that discussion, I entered a footnote of reservation to the Wakeham committee report, because I do not think that considering that flat-rate allowance fitted with the mandate of the House, which was to work within the structure and architecture of the SSRB report. There was no such reference in the SSRB report, hence my note of reservation. The particular reasons for there being dissent also in the detail will come out in the debate, but let it not be said that the idea fitted in with the architecture and the principles of the SSRB report. That is why there is a note of reservation.
Lord Strathclyde
The noble Lord is right that it did not fit into the SSRB’s original report, but that is why my noble friend’s committee chose to offer it up as an alternative—as I understand it—in the light of its discussions. If the noble Lord reads the document, as I have done, he will see a remorseless logic that took the committee from where it started to its providing this idea as an alternative. It is an alternative taken in the round, looking at the bureaucratic costs, at each Peer being treated equally and at the end of the expenses regime, which I have found attractive.
Lord Dholakia
I welcome the Statement from the Leader of the House, for three separate reasons. The first is clearly spelt out—the system itself is simple to operate. It removes the complexity of the present system, which has resulted in adverse publicity in the media. Also, it has the least resource implications for administering the system. I have two questions. First, will the noble Lord explain whether there will be a built-in review procedure? The last thing that we should ever do is to determine the allowance applicable to us; we should allow an independent element to determine that. Secondly, will he establish some system of monitoring, given the concerns raised in the past about young people, women and people from ethnic minorities in the prime of their careers? Would the type of review that we are suggesting take those factors into account so that such people are not inhibited from becoming Members of this House?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Dholakia for his broad welcome. It was important to hear a senior member of the Liberal Democrat Benches on what is, after all, a House matter and I welcome his words. I have not at this stage recommended a built-in review procedure. It is my personal view that the level that we set should be the one set for the rest of this Parliament. Last week, we saw in the Budget proposals for freezing public sector pay and many other aspects, as well as cuts in the public sector more generally. I think that it is a sensible approach to freeze these amounts. As for a system of monitoring, I should emphasise that one reason why I have recommended this proposal is that it is for the interim period between now and when we potentially pass legislation for a future reformed House. That is another reason why it is attractive. Between now and then, I am sure that many people will monitor those who arrive in your Lordships’ House—new Peers. There are reasons why people from ethnic minorities and those raising a family may find the certainty of the new arrangements rather more attractive than the old expenses regime.
Lord Campbell of Alloway
My Lords, I do not want to challenge in any way the recommendations of my noble friend the Leader of the House but, for clarification, was the proposal of my noble friend Lord Wakeham accepted by the committee or was it not?
Lord Strathclyde
Oh yes, my Lords, the proposal was made by the committee in the report. The noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, explained his position extremely well; he put in a reservation because he felt that the proposal did not fit the mandate of the committee when it was originally set out.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, the Leader of the House made reference in outlining the scheme, which he supports, to an upper and lower level at which the flat rate might be paid. Could he give some indication of what criteria would be used to determine when the upper or lower rate was appropriate? If it is to be based on period of attendance—half day versus full day, as I have seen suggested—how would half a day and a full day be defined and how would attendance be validated?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Lord asks an extremely sensible question, one which is not entirely easy to deal with. There is a perception among those outside this House that a few minutes’ attendance reaps the benefits of large sums of money. In my experience, both as a former Chief Whip and as Leader of the House, I regard these abuses to have been exceedingly small; nevertheless, there is that perception. I am also aware that there are some Peers who, because of the nature of their outside work and for other reasons, do not spend a great deal of time in the House. It was felt in the discussions that I had that we should offer an alternative—a lower sum of £150.
Ultimately, it can only be up to the judgment of each individual Peer where and how they make that claim. A Peer may spend only half an hour in the House on a given day but, if they spent the morning reading and preparing for a complicated Committee stage on the next day, how are we to judge whether that time was well spent? In the end, all these claims will be made public. I hope that, with the co-operation of the House Committee and the House authorities, we will be able to make these claims known electronically on a rolling basis so that it will be easy to attach contributions to the amount of money claimed. That will create an internal accountability, which will be useful to Peers and public alike.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I hope that I am correct in understanding my noble friend as having indicated that the new scheme will be wholly divorced from the actual expenses incurred by Members of this House in coming here and undertaking their duties. I think that that is right—the noble Lord is nodding. Therefore, his remarks vis-à-vis taxation assume a more important light. I go back to what he started by saying, which is that this House and, indeed, the other place came under a great deal of unwelcome public scrutiny over the expenses arrangements and that the trust in both Houses was severely dented. Some may think that those wounds are not entirely healed. Would it therefore be acceptable if the noble Lord and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and his group were to work on the basis that, whatever arrangements are come to vis-à-vis taxation, we have to accept that the allowance will now leave some Members of this place with substantial remuneration—that is to say, a return well in excess of anything incurred by way of expenses—and that it surely cannot be acceptable that this place, of all places, should expect a privilege in tax terms over any other citizen of this land? For us to say that it is much simpler to claim the entitlement and be done with it is fair enough, but that surely cannot satisfy the test that every other person has to live by, which is that, in terms of the tax charge, they can claim only those expenses actually incurred.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, my noble friend is entirely correct to point out that the reason why we are even discussing this is because trust has been dented, not just in this House but substantially in another place. Both Houses are, in their own way, trying to find their way through this to come out at the other end with a greater understanding between the public and Parliament, so that we can try to rebuild that trust. My noble friend is also entirely correct to say that this is a move away from the expenses regime. We are not asking Peers to demonstrate what they have spent. In fact, we are not hugely interested in what Peers spend their money on, in where they stay or, indeed, in whom they stay with. What we are interested in is: have they turned up? Have they made a contribution? What should the value of that be?
The SSRB suggested in its report that in due course the expenses regime that it proposed should be taxed. I take no particular view on that. I am not an accountant and it is not a decision for me. It may well be a decision for HMRC and the Treasury to take in due course. My further understanding is that, if tax were payable, that would require legislation and that, if tax were taken off, no doubt many Peers would make the case for some sort of rerating to make an allowance for taxation. These are all issues for another day.
There is another view, which I laid out a few minutes ago. We hope that there will be legislation on a reformed House. If there is a reformed, elected House, those Peers—or senators, or whatever they are—will be paid. There is then the prospect in that legislation for another independent body—perhaps IPSA itself—to look at what the recommendations should be.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
My Lords, does the Leader accept that there are people around the House, including me, who may be significantly worse off under the new regime but who none the less welcome the proposal that has come from the noble Lord this afternoon? I agree substantially with the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. If we go ahead with this, we cannot expect to retain all the advantages of both the previous system and the new system and to suffer no change in how our tax status is viewed. The main benefit of the new proposal is that it ensures that the way in which your Lordships may be supported or remunerated—the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, suggested that it might amount to remuneration in future—bears some clear relationship to how people outside this House are paid for their services. As well as transparency and accountability, it feels at this moment as though we should be demonstrating not that we are so different from the rest of the world that we cannot be treated in the same way as other people, but that our work bears a distinct and reasonable relationship to what is done elsewhere and therefore we should be treated very similarly to people outside this House.
Lord Strathclyde
I thank the noble Baroness, particularly for her remark that she was likely to be one of those Peers who might end up with a little less money than under the old regime but still felt that this was the right way to go. That is a very sensible conclusion to come to. It also puts us on a different footing from the expenses regime. Some Members of this House will take some time to appreciate the difference in the change that has taken place. Expenses will no longer be claimed. There will be an allowance, depending on attendance. The noble Baroness is right: that brings the relationship to the general public closer. There was a time, perhaps many years ago, when the fact that Peers were unpaid and received an element of expenses was justifiable. As the years have gone by, that has become increasingly difficult to justify, which is why we need to make the change.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, one of the most attractive things that the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, has enabled the Leader to say today is that this will be cost-neutral, because the public, as they look at this, will ask, “Will there be an increase in what Members of the House of Lords receive in the future?”. However, is one of the other attractions not the simplicity of the system? It removes some of the ambiguities that many of us have felt uneasy about in the past. In responding, could the Leader return to the question that my noble friend Lady D’Souza asked about the separation of money that is claimed for travel? That is never received by any individual Peer and yet appears in the receipts of money that is claimed by Members of your Lordships’ House. There is surely a desire on all our parts to continue to encourage those of us who come from the far-flung parts of the United Kingdom to carry on coming here; we do not want to turn your Lordships’ House into a purely metropolitan establishment that draws only on Greater London. Is it not important that we show that separation? I also ask the Leader about the position of staff. Members of your Lordships’ House have research assistants or secretarial staff who are currently supported during recess with a specific payment. What will be their position in the future?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, made a straightforward case for the attractions of this in that it removes ambiguities with which many Peers have felt uncomfortable. Although they believe that they were on the right side of the line, they felt that they still had to explain themselves and to justify the position that they had taken. At a stroke, those ambiguities are removed. It is my assessment, with a little help from the House authorities, that this is cost-neutral. Potentially, there will be an added advantage of a reduction in the cost of the bureaucracy should we have had a more complex system of expenses.
Travel expenses will continue to be paid as before, although my noble friend Lord Wakeham and his committee make one or two suggestions on the SSRB’s report. There is already a different column for the declaration of travel expenses. I agree with the noble Lord that it is sometimes unfair that, because a Peer’s travel expenses are very high because they come from the far-flung parts of the United Kingdom, that puts them at the top of the list of those who have claimed expenses. Every year, we urge the media when they report on these things to take the travel expenses firmly into account. As the noble Lord has seen, they do not always listen to what I regard as wise advice.
Staff will be paid for by Members out of whatever resources they have, including the new £300 allowance. It will be up to Members to decide how best to do that over the year. There will be no extra or additional secretarial allowance paid during sitting days or recesses.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, perhaps I may reinforce the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about good employment practice with members of personal staff, particularly secretaries, who cannot be laid off in terms of good employment practice for three months in the summer and then reappointed. There may be something to be looked at further than that. On a broader point, has the noble Lord considered that, in pursuing the question of House of Lords reform and the endless question of how to deal with those Members of the House who are already here, if we abandon, as he is proposing, an expenses regime, one of the issues in principle about getting people to retire or asking them to leave will be overcome because there will be no reason why, in principle, some sort of pension should not be paid to them?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it is typical of the noble Baroness to raise such a deeply controversial subject in the manner that she has. Tomorrow, we will spend many hours discussing all these issues. No doubt, the question of transition will come up. The noble Baroness, with all her experience, has spotted that in terms of transition there is a real difficulty about how we move from one House to the other. I can assure her that these issues are uppermost in our minds.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, in relation to the point on tax, which was raised by my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, the noble Lord may not be aware—although obviously the Leader of the House will be aware—that in the detailed documents attached to the Budget Statement, it is said that HMRC will have to amend the rules to enshrine the long-established practice that expenses received by Members of another place are not taxable. In other words, it is proposed to retain the system whereby Members of another place are not taxed on their expenses because, as the note says, with the arrival of IPSA the determination of expenses for the House of Commons is no longer quite the same. That is being dealt with in another place.
On the more general point, it is welcome that transparency and simplicity are important and overriding considerations. There is another consideration as to whether the taxpayer will regard £300 a day as good value for money. Is it a little bit relevant that for many professions such as doctors, accountants, lawyers and others, £300 buys about one hour of their time?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, what my noble friend said about taxation, HMRC and Members of another place shows how complicated this issue is. There is already a whole variety of rules for Parliament and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, if you give money to research assistants, it is almost going through individuals’ hands, and HMRC may indeed wish to take all of that into account. That is the start of a wider debate that I do not wish to continue this afternoon.
I have also wondered about the figure of £300. I am sure that some members of the public would regard that as being extremely good value, when they look at the quality of the work that they are getting from individual Peers, and others may not. It is important for us all to demonstrate that when we claim this money we are working for it and playing a full part in the legislature of which we are all members.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
My Lords, we on these Benches have not taken a particular view on these matters beyond believing that any system should be fair, transparent and clearly good value for the public purse; but sitting on these Benches involves becoming very aware of, and developing a great appreciation for, the tremendous hard work on the part of all working Peers on all Benches. One is also aware of how much of that work continues beyond the House going into recess. Is there not a stronger case for looking again at the resourcing of working Peers out of the House’s sitting time to ensure that they are properly resourced to undertake their important public role and that no one is left unnecessarily out of pocket?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate’s point about pay outside sitting days has been raised many times. This scheme will pay £300 per sitting day only, and the judgment that I and others who have looked at this matter have taken is that that amount should keep Peers going when we are not sitting. It is entirely fair enough to say that the totals do not add up to as much as full-time Peers can currently claim, but, as I said in my Statement, in today’s economic climate it is right for us who gain the most to say that we are happy to take a reduction.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, does the Leader of the House agree that a number of the questions that are being raised are dealt with in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham. We have spent a great deal of time discussing taxation. The question of additional office costs is also dealt with in the report, as are the important questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, about long periods of illness. The noble Baroness’s point was not about the powers of the Clerk of the Parliaments to give additional help to noble Lords who have, for example, mobility difficulties, it was more about what happens during extended periods of illness and some of the representations that have been made in relation to them. We are starting to move into a more detailed debate.
I support, as the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, does, the thrust of the additional element brought into this report—the alternative suggestion. Of course my noble friend Lord Tomlinson is right to say that this was not included in the principles and architecture of the SSRB report. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, explicitly states in his report that he is moving outside the architecture and principles described in paragraphs 5.56 and 5.57. That notwithstanding, it is possible to move outside it because circumstances have changed. Clarity, transparency and simplicity are what we should aim for.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Baroness has been extremely helpful. As a leading member of my noble friend Lord Wakeham’s group, she has also demonstrated that there is an enormous amount of detail in my noble friend’s report. I hope that, when read in conjunction with my Statement today and with the report of the SSRB, it will make everything considerably clearer.
I accept what the noble Baroness said: perhaps I did not answer the Convenor of the Cross Benches sufficiently well when she asked about periods of illness, particularly for Members of the House who are severely disabled. I have never opposed any attempt to find a regime for a very few special cases. We are one of the few legislative assemblies to have allowed severely disabled people to play their part. I am sure that if the noble Baroness were to invite the House Committee to re-examine these issues, she would receive a positive response.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey
My Lords, my question is about the word “attendance”, which sounds very simple. I spent the past week at the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, where they have changed the rules. You get your hotel paid, and a smaller amount than used to be the case for subsistence. I was in Macedonia earlier this month, where the subsistence amount was the munificent sum of €28—in addition to the hotel, which they chose. Those who serve the House away from the House, such as members of the Council of Europe and the Western European Union—are they not attending the House for the purpose of this exercise?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it is not envisaged that the attendance rules will be changed for Peers who are working outside the House. The current rules are clear about what can be claimed when Members are outside the House, and it is not intended that that should change.
G8 and G20 Summits
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, it may be a convenient moment to turn to the second Statement, which was made a few minutes ago by the Prime Minister in another place.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the G8 and G20 summits which took place in Canada. First, I am sure the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the seven British servicemen who have lost their lives in the past week. From 40 Commando Royal Marines: Sergeant Steven Darbyshire. From 1st Battalion the Mercian Regiment: Colour Sergeant Martyn Horton, Private Douglas Halliday, Private Alex Isaac. From the Yorkshire Regiment: Lance Corporal David Ramsden. From the 4th Regiment Royal Artillery: Bombardier Stephen Gilbert, who died from injuries received in an explosion earlier this month; and the soldier from 101 Regiment Royal Engineers who died yesterday. As the country marked Armed Forces Day this weekend, people did so with tremendous pride but also great sadness. We will never forget what these men and so many of their colleagues have given for us.
As I have said, I am determined that our forces will not stay in Afghanistan a day longer than necessary. I led a discussion at the G8, where we made it clear that we ‘fully support the transition strategy adopted’ by international partners. We are not after a perfect Afghanistan—just a stable Afghanistan, able to maintain its own security and prevent al-Qaeda from returning. So the G8 sent a collective signal that we want the Afghan Security Forces to ‘assume increasing responsibility for security within five years’. The presence of large-scale international forces cannot be an indefinite commitment. We need to get the job done and bring our troops home.
Let me report to the House on the main conclusions of the G8 and G20. I have placed copies of the communiqués in the Library so that people can see the details of what was agreed. The G8 is a good forum for the leading democratic economies to give proper strategic consideration to the big foreign policy and security issues. It also plays a vital role in helping the richer nations to improve the future of the poorest. In my view, these two vital functions of this forum should continue. Let me take each in turn.
On the big security issues, we discussed the Middle East peace process and agreed the importance of putting pressure on both sides to engage in the proximity talks with the aim of creating the conditions for direct talks. President Obama specifically said that he would make this his priority in the coming months.
While the changes that Israel had proposed are welcome, they do not go far enough, and the communiqué says that the current arrangements in Gaza,
‘are not sustainable and must be changed’.
On Iran, UN Security Council Resolution 1929 was welcomed. The communiqué states that all countries should “implement it fully”. Since the G8 includes Russia, Britain believes this was significant.
The UK also made the case for all members of the G8 to have positive engagement with Turkey, which could have a key role to play in resolving both the Iran issue and encouraging progress on Middle East peace. We also discussed North Korea, deploring and condemning the sinking of the “Cheonan”, nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.
On development, while the G8 has played an important role in increasing aid spending by the richest countries in the world, some of those countries have not met the commitments they set out. I stressed the importance of transparency and accountability, and the accountability report sets out what countries have done in meeting their commitments. While not perfect, it is really good progress in making sure that countries cannot make promises without being held to account for them.
Even at a time when our countries face difficult budget decisions, it is important we maintain our commitment to helping the poorest in the world. The UK is maintaining its commitment to increase spending on aid to 0.7 per cent of gross national income. This gives us the opportunity to exercise leadership. At the same time, in order to take the public with us, we also need to make sure that every penny will reach those who need it most—that means transparency and accountability. It also means that the projects we support must be deliverable, practical and measurable, addressing the causes of poverty and not just its symptoms.
The Muskoka Initiative is a case in point. Today in the UK, the chances of dying in pregnancy and childbirth are one in 8,200. In parts of Africa, it is as low as one in seven. This is something we can change—and we must change. The resources agreed, including a big contribution from the UK, could lead to an additional 1.3 million lives being saved. As the White Ribbon Alliance points out, if you save the mother, you save the family; and if you save the family, you build a stronger society and a better economy.
Turning to the G20, this is now the right forum for all the leading economies of the world to discuss the vital economic issues. The key goal of the G20 is to continue the recovery of the world economy and secure sustainable growth. The argument, proposed by some, that deficit reduction and growth are mutually exclusive is completely wrong. The whole approach underlined by the IMF for this G20 and the subsequent meeting in Seoul is all about how the world should maximise growth through the right combination of three things: deficit reduction, tackling imbalances, particularly through actions by emerging economies, and structural reform in the advanced economies. There was broad agreement on all three and this is reflected clearly in the communiqué.
On deficit reduction, the G20 agreed:
“Those countries with serious fiscal challenges need to accelerate the pace of consolidation”,
and that there was,
“a risk that failure to implement consolidation … would undermine confidence and hamper growth”.
The advanced G20 economies committed to at least halve current deficits by 2013 and stabilise government debt to GDP ratios by 2016. While we agreed that the speed and timing of deficit reduction will vary with national circumstances, the verdict of the G20 was unequivocal.
For countries with large deficits, the time to act is now. Britain has one of the largest deficits in the G20, and the summit specifically welcomed the plans set out in our Budget last week. In terms of addressing the fundamental imbalances, China’s recent decision to move towards greater exchange rate flexibility is welcome. As, in the end, growth comes only from rising productivity, we also agreed on the need to pursue structural reform across the whole G20 to increase and sustain our growth prospects.
On financial reform, the G20 agreed ‘a set of principles’ on bank levies to ensure that the financial sector makes a,
‘fair and substantial contribution towards paying for any burdens associated with government interventions to repair the financial system’.
That is very much in line with the plans for a bank levy, which we announced in the Budget. On making sure that the banks in all countries can withstand future crises, we also agreed that,
‘the amount of capital will be significantly higher and the quality of capital significantly improved’.
We agreed that new standards on the quality, quantity and transparency of capital and liquidity should be finalised by the Seoul summit in November.
Basle took 10 years and this looks like it will be completed in one. Although the drawing up of clear, robust new rules is absolutely essential, it is important that they are not implemented too quickly. We do not want a further monetary squeeze or a reduction in bank lending at this stage of the recovery. The biggest stimulus we could give to the world economy today is the expansion of trade. Although the G20 agreement to extend its pledge that no additional trade barriers should be put in place is welcome, continued failure to make progress on Doha is deeply disappointing. This has now been eight years in negotiation and there can be little confidence that, as things stand, the round will be completed rapidly.
A completed trade round could add $170 billion to the world economy. The UK led the working session on this issue at the G20. One potential way of making progress is to try to add to the benefits of the round so that all parties can see reasons for going that final mile. That was supported by President Obama. The director-general of the World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy, suggested that all trade negotiators should return to the table and consider both what it is they really need from the round and what it is they are prepared to offer to get it moving again. That will lead to a report at the Seoul meeting in November.
Too many people still see this as a zero sum game, where one country's success in exports is another country's failure. That is nonsense. Everyone can benefit from an increase in trade flows. We will play our part in breaking the logjam. I want this country to lead the charge in making the case for growing trade flows around the world.
On climate change, while the G8 communiqué was strongly positive on limiting the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees and on seeking an ambitious and binding post-2012 agreement, at the G20, the communiqué was more limited. This is partly because some countries do not see the G20 as the forum for discussing this issue. In discussions, it was also clear that there was widespread disappointment at the way that Copenhagen failed to deliver a legally binding global deal. We must not give up on this. We will be playing our full part in pushing for a successful outcome at Cancun.
This long weekend of summitry was a good opportunity to build Britain's bilateral relationships. Among others, I had useful meetings with President Obama, President Hu of China, Prime Minister Singh of India and Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey. In building a very strong friendship with our leading European partners, I also suffered the exquisite agony of watching England lose 4-1 to Germany in the company of my good friend Chancellor Merkel and the German summit team. Although I cannot recommend the experience of watching football in the margins of a G20 summit, I commend this Statement to the House”.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Royall, I thank the noble Lord for repeating the Prime Minister’s Statement made in another place. I also echo the tribute he has made to servicemen who have lost their lives. We all have deep sympathy for the loss suffered by their families and friends.
Much of the G8 summit was taken up, according to the communiqué, with problems of international conflict and tensions around the world. As noble Lords will be aware, most of the economic agenda was shifted to the G20 summit, to which I shall turn shortly.
On international issues, in a widely publicised article published just before the G8 summit opened, the Prime Minister made the commitment to withdraw UK troops from Afghanistan within five years. Will the noble Lord tell us whether our allies were consulted prior to the Prime Minister’s announcement?
While the whole House will applaud the concern that the G8 summit displayed for development issues, will the Minister confirm that the G8 has reneged on the Gleneagles promise to double aid to Africa? On the important issues of maternal health, which quite properly dominated the development section of the G8 communiqué, will the Minister tell us whether the UK’s contribution of funds for this purpose will be new money, or will it be met from the existing aid budget?
I turn to the G20 summit. As the House will be aware, it dealt predominantly with economic and financial matters, building on the earlier summits in Washington, London and Pittsburgh. Those earlier summits were characterised by a remarkable degree of unity on facing up to the global financial crisis. The unity of analysis and purpose was led at those earlier summits by the British Government, with significant support in Pittsburgh from the Obama Administration. Sadly, the Toronto communiqué exhibits a quite different tone. On the balance between stimulation and fiscal consolidation, the communiqué stresses the differences between national approaches. On the banking levy, the previous universal approach has been abandoned. On regulatory reform, it is not at all clear whether other Governments will follow the US lead in banning proprietary trading by banks, or whether they will adopt US strictures on derivatives trading. Does the Minister share the widespread concern that the present communiqué does not exhibit the earlier unity of purpose?
On specific matters, the communiqué states that,
“advanced economies have committed to fiscal plans that will at least halve deficits by 2013”.
Will the Minister confirm that the Office for Budget Responsibility has calculated that the Budget measures introduced in March by my right honourable friend Alistair Darling were indeed sufficient to achieve exactly that goal? In the Statement, the Prime Minister says that,
“the summit specifically welcomed the plans set out in our Budget last week”.
Is the noble Lord aware that that welcome does not appear in the communiqué?
The Prime Minister’s Statement also refers to the need for “clear, robust new rules” on financial regulations—not principles but rules. Will the noble Lord confirm that the coalition expects international rules to be imposed on the financial sector of the UK? Which elements of financial regulation does the Prime Minister expect that imposition to cover?
I turn to some of the specific measures in the financial section of the G20 communiqué. Will the Minister confirm that it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to impose a leverage collar on UK banks, as suggested by the communiqué? Will he also clarify the coalition’s position on the requirements that previously over-the-counter derivatives should now be traded through central counterparties by the end of 2012, as the communiqué also states? Are the Government concerned about the consequent concentrating of risk in central counterparties, and what do they intend to do about it?
Given the considerable concern expressed by the banks about the premature implementation of higher capital requirements, will the noble Lord explain why the idea of pro-cyclical provisioning, which was prominent in the communiqués of the previous three summits, is notable by its absence here? Has the idea been abandoned? If so, what are the implications for the size of capital buffers to be held by the banks?
At several points, the communiqué refers to the need for mutual assessment by G20 countries of the implementation of agreed measures. Can the noble Lord tell us by what process that mutual assessment is to take place? Who will do it? What precisely are the criteria to be applied? Will it be done before the next summit?
Finally, although we all welcome the fact that the Prime Minister was treated to a helicopter ride by President Obama, did he also have the chance to undertake bilateral discussions with Mrs Merkel while watching the football? As is well known, the German Chancellor is having considerable difficulty holding her coalition together. Did the Prime Minister advise her on the benefits of having weak and submissive coalition partners?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I was going to say how grateful I was that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, was standing in for the leader of the Opposition. Having heard his speech, I am not sure that that is the case. He asked a series of extremely pertinent questions that, if this were a full debate of several hours, would take me tens of minutes to reply to. I hope that he will forgive me if on some of his specific questions I answer him by way of a letter. As I know that others in the House will take what the noble Lord said seriously and with great interest, I will make sure that a copy of the letter is put in the Library.
The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, started off with an important question about the statement by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister on Afghanistan, the so-called five-year limit and whether any discussions took place with our allies. We are in a state of continual consultation with our allies in Afghanistan. None of that statement was a surprise to them. They understood exactly the point that we were making. There is no desire in any country for its forces to remain in Afghanistan for any longer than they absolutely have to. Over the past few weeks, we have laid out a set of priorities that we believe will enable British forces to have largely removed from Afghanistan, as part of getting civil society in Afghanistan working again.
We have set ourselves new priorities on the aim of development aid. It is right that we and the G8 should do so. It is important continually to review our processes and priorities for our development goals, and the new priorities on the health of mothers, children and families speak for themselves. However, a unity of purpose does not mean a unity of means. Although it is true that Britain has maintained its commitment on funding overseas aid, other countries have found it more difficult. However, in the medium term, there is no reason why we should not get back to the original position. We do not anticipate new money coming in to deal with those priorities. It will be a change of priorities within the existing budget but, as we have explained, over time we hope to meet our target of 0.7 per cent of GDP.
On bank levies and the financial situation, as the noble Lord knows only too well, the IMF forecasts that the UK will in 2010-11 have the largest budget deficit in the G7. When he talked about the record of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, I was not quite sure whether he took pride in the legacy that the Labour Party left this country. We must never lose sight of the lesson of the past three years: taxpayers pick up the bill not only when one of our banks fails but when Governments spend too much money. The bank levy, the concentration of risks and higher capital requirements will all be debated and discussed as quickly as possible over the next few months. There is no question of the new bank rules being imposed. They will need to be agreed by all, and we believe that there is every possibility of those new rules being agreed by everybody.
The noble Lord poked fun at my coalition colleagues, which was entirely unnecessary. I can confirm to him that we are getting along extremely well. Sometimes people say that we have a lot to learn from our European colleagues. I hope that when it comes to working with coalition colleagues, they will find that they have a lot to learn from us.
Lord Laming
My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will support the warm tributes that the Leader of the House and others have paid to our brave military personnel. Does he accept that many of us welcome the Prime Minister’s decision to get our troops out of Afghanistan at the earliest practicable time? Does he also accept that, if that requires involving the Taliban in negotiations, that is a nettle that will need to be grasped?
Lord Strathclyde
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for what he has just said. He reiterates the position extremely well and with a clear understanding of what the issues are. There is increasingly an appreciation and understanding that a violent and military-directed war in Afghanistan is not a winnable proposition for anybody, least of all for the people of Afghanistan themselves. All peace processes around the world have dealt with it by, slowly but surely, bringing all sides together. That will need to be the case in Afghanistan and is increasingly the thrust of our policy.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, may we from this side join the noble Lord in the tributes that he paid to the seven soldiers who lost their lives last week?
One matter of concern is the non-action on development aid, particularly the lack of action on the targets for alleviating poverty. How do the Government plan to ensure that the decisions taken by the G8 and the G20 will be actively implemented? Furthermore, why was climate change discussed only in the G8? If there is to be a global agreement on the way forward on climate change, surely the non-G8 members of the G20 will have to play a crucial role. Finally, do the Government agree that the G8 has now become an anachronism and that it would be better if its role was assumed completely by the G20?
Lord Strathclyde
My noble friend is right to draw attention to development aid, a matter which very much dominated the discussions of the G8. That delivered for the first time a comprehensive accountability report which assessed transparently the G8 progress against its development-related commitments. In the communiqué the G8 leaders reaffirmed their commitments on overseas development aid, on aid effectiveness and on HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, however cynical one is—and I am not suggesting for a moment that my noble friend is cynical when it comes to these matters—about a very serious attempt to give a new priority to these initiatives, the House will recognise that there was an agreement in the Muskoka initiative which means that funding for maternal, newborn and child health will be the new priority.
On the question of climate change, I can understand why my noble friend should feel aggrieved that this could be debated and discussed with one group but less successfully with another. However, there are those at the G20 who felt that it was not appropriate for it to be discussed at that level and that it should remain with the G8. However, there is the climate change conference in Cancun later this year. An enormous amount of work is taking place between now and then to give effect to a global agreement.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, on global imbalances, the Statement referred only to the modest, although welcome, adjustment that the Chinese authorities have allowed to the exchange rate of the renminbi, but surely the Government do not think that that will be enough to solve adequately the problem that is being generated by the continuing propensity of certain major economies, notably China and Germany, to invest and export very powerfully, and the propensity of other major economies, notably that of the United States of America and our own, to borrow and consume excessively. Is it not inevitable that if we continue with these imbalances, the trade surpluses of the exporting countries will be recycled to create excessive liquidity in the economies of countries such as our own that tend to consume too much, leading to another manic and unsustainable boom followed by a miserable bust? What were the Prime Minister’s suggestions at the G20 for averting this outcome, and what response did he receive?
Lord Strathclyde
I could not possibly comment on the noble Lord’s direct question at the end, but the whole issue of global imbalances concentrated the minds of the G8, and indeed of the G20. The new flexibility in the Chinese arrangements is an important step in the right direction. It is the kind of flexibility that we have been looking for for some time, it will make an appreciable difference—so we all hope—and it is recognition by the Chinese authorities of China’s importance to the world economy as a trading nation and as an increasingly important currency. The noble Lord might say that this is a very small step, but it is at least a small step in the right direction.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, does the Minister accept that the case for maintaining the G8 while the G20 is functioning is rather less strong than the Statement that he read out suggests? Here, I join the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. Only by stretching the word “democratic” a very long way indeed can it be applied to the G8, which has Russia among its members. It is also surely worth remembering that there are rather better qualified democracies in the G20, such as India, Brazil and South Africa, the membership of at least some of which we support as permanent members of the Security Council. I therefore hope that the Government will reflect a little on the need for these two forums to continue to run side by side and confusing the issues that they discuss quite a lot—a confusion that I suspect will increase when they meet in different places, as presumably they will have to when the G20 goes to Mexico in 2012, as is said in the communiqué. I therefore hope that the Government will reflect on the possibility of a sunset clause for the G8.
Will the Minister also be so kind as to comment on what the Government are doing to ensure that these endlessly repeated commitments to complete the Doha round are brought to a decision in the not too distant future? The wording of the communiqué is extremely weak. I thought that the wording of the Statement was first class, if I may say so. It reflects the view of those on all sides in this House and in this country that this is a really major objective. However, there is no sign whatever that the United States Administration are putting their back into completing Doha. What strategy do the Government have for moving that ahead at Seoul and thereafter?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, my right honourable friend found the meetings at the G8 and the G20 useful. They were particularly useful because they were different, and because, as a new Prime Minister, he was able to meet different political leaders at different stages. It is impossible for me to say whether these structures will be maintained in the long term. As the noble Lord recognised, they will not be meeting together in the future.
On the Doha round, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said that he finds the Statement convincing but the communiqué rather less so. Frankly, we were rather disappointed by the wording in the communiqué. It is a key strategic plank of this Government to move issues forward on the whole question of the Doha trade round and we will be developing a strategy so that we turn that leadership into action by convincing different countries that it is in their material interest to see an increase in global trade. I am sure the whole House agrees with that but it will need our combined collective will, good judgment and the kind of experience that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, possesses in order to convince other countries of that necessity.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, first, can the noble Lord shed a little more light on the Prime Minister’s thinking on withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan by 2015? It was always the view in the past, as I understood it, that giving a date for withdrawal would be like signalling to the Taliban and al-Qaeda how long they would have to hold out before they would not have any opposition on the ground. My concern is that many people will think that this gives the Taliban and al-Qaeda an opportunity to scale down what they are doing, gather their resources and armaments, bring in fresh recruits and simply re-emerge when the foreign troops have departed. I wonder if the noble Lord can help me on that.
Secondly, the Statement says that the biggest stimulus that we can give the world economy today is the expansion of trade. Can the noble Lord tell us when the Government are planning to appoint a Minister dedicated to trade promotion? I know that, among his many other duties, Mr Mark Prisk has been appointed pro tem to look at trade—but the fact is that he has many other duties. Previously, the noble Lord, Lord Digby Jones, my noble friend Lord Mervyn Davies, and indeed I myself were dedicated to trade promotion and expansion. When will the Government be able to match what they are encouraging the world to do by doing a little better at home?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, on the point about Afghanistan, I agree that the view was taken in the past that making too rigid a timetable and setting the end date too soon simply gives a target for everyone to aim at. That is not true in this case because we are in a very different situation. We have been in Afghanistan for about nine years now and we can see that this current year is extremely important in creating the right grounds for long-term peace and rebuilding civil society. In this case, I do not think that we will run into the danger of giving the Taliban a target, and after all, five years is a long time to have to hang around waiting for British troops to leave. Moreover, that would not achieve the right conditions on the ground for rebuilding civil society in Afghanistan, which is important. So while I accept the point made by the noble Baroness, it is my wish, as I know it is hers, that those conditions will not apply.
On the question of the Minister for Trade, I could not agree more with the noble Baroness that such a Minister is important and that—by her own example and that of others in this House who have held the role—it is a key role for the Government and for focusing our overseas export effort. I am delighted to say that in the past 24 hours Mr Mark Prisk has been made the Minister of Trade. I know that, aided and helped in every way by my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford, they will make a valuable team. Moreover, my noble friend will be answering for him in this House.
Lord Lawson of Blaby
My Lords, is not the answer to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia—who, having asked his question, appears no longer to be in his place—that the G20 was unwilling to tackle the question of climate change because the major developing nations such as China, India and, to a certain extent, South Africa and Brazil quite rightly attach much greater importance to economic development and the relief of poverty, to which moves on climate change would be entirely antipathetic? Nevertheless, does my noble friend agree that there is reason to welcome the response by that distinguished economist, the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, speaking on behalf of the Official Opposition? Although he devoted his comments largely to the minutiae of banking reform—which are important but not urgent matters; indeed, it is more important to get this right than to do it quickly—he accepted, tacitly at any rate, the urgent need for the fiscal consolidation which this Government have shown they have the courage to enter into despite some of the rumblings from the neo-Keynesian dinosaurs who appear to be around.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, enjoyed that in the spirit in which it was intended. I agree with my noble friend that fiscal consolidation is important. Not only have we struck the right balance but, increasingly around the world, it is seen that we have struck the right balance. On the question of the G20 and the G8, my noble friend is again correct. Different countries have taken different views of these issues, particularly the developing countries. That is not news today but has been true for some time. That is why the climate change conference in Cancun will be extremely important.
Lord Patel
My Lords, I commend the Government on their commitment to increasing overseas aid to 0.7 per cent of GDP, as I do their renewed commitment to reducing the terrible tragedy of maternal mortality. Does the Leader of the House agree that in any new strategy which the Government might develop for reducing maternal mortality, our professional organisations will be well placed to assist in the health service reforms required? Secondly, while a reduction in maternal mortality is important, we must also not forget that we need to reduce the terrible burden of other reproductive health issues, such as the greater number of deaths—even more than through maternal mortality—that occur through cervical cancer in low-resource countries, which is a totally preventable disease; the problem of fistulas; and the number of children dying in childbirth or immediately after, which is now some 3 million.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, rightly draws us back to the issue of overseas aid. The reasons for changing the priorities of the G8 were not taken lightly. Obviously, in putting this new strategy into effect, there will be wide consultation with involved parties—most importantly with the health authorities of the countries most directly involved—so that the resources spent can be used as effectively and efficiently as possible. The noble Lord is also correct to refer to the range of preventable diseases that exist and which at the moment are not dealt with sufficiently well. This issue is part of an overall programme. I do not suppose we will see all the answers come out quickly, but the direction of travel is important.
Lord Bates
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend repeating the Statement, particularly the strong section relating to development aid. Can he confirm reports that there was a shortfall of some $10 billion in the commitment of $50 billion made at the Gleneagles G8 summit five years ago? Can he further confirm that the two countries primarily responsible for that are Japan and Italy? What conversations did my right honourable friend the Prime Minister have with them on that issue? Given that they have cited their fiscal position as the reason for not fulfilling their commitment, will my noble friend encourage the Prime Minister to give them a lesson on how to rigorously tackle the fiscal deficit while still being fair and caring about the world’s poorest?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, there are many people who will be disappointed that some of the Gleneagles aims have not been met. My noble friend referred to two of those countries. In the communiqué that was delivered this weekend, there was genuine recognition that there needs to be more transparency and accountability on the part of those countries that have promised to help but have not yet delivered.
I know that the Prime Minister draws the attention of many people, not only from overseas, to the problems that we face in this country and how we are tackling them. They may well be a beacon of light to help other countries meet the commitments that they have already made and come up with the money.
Academies Bill [HL]
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen
“( ) the school has a curriculum which includes Personal, Social and Health Education as a statutory entitlement for all pupils;”
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, Amendment 32, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Gould, would make personal, social and health education a statutory part of the school curriculum.
We have had many debates on what children should be entitled to as part of their education. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was enthusiastic and lyrical about this last week. In fact, he reminded me of the Mock Turtle’s reflections in Alice in Wonderland about what school curriculums should contain. Pupils had,
“Reeling and Writhing … the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision … Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling … and Fainting in Coils … laughing and grief”,
with,
“French, music, and washing—extra”.
They could all have benefited from PSHE, in my view. The Mock Turtle lists all this while sobbing a little now and then. I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was sobbing, but there was a great deal of sobbing when, at wash-up recently, PSHE was lost as part of the statutory curriculum.
Many noble Lords spoke passionately in favour of PSHE during the recent wash-up, as I described. In particular, there was an eloquent plea from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. My amendment seeks to reinstate the original intention of the previous Labour Government to ensure that all children have access to PSHE.
It may be worth looking at what we mean by personal, social and health education, as many terms are sometimes used rather confusingly. PSHE encompasses sex and relationships education, but it is broader—SRE is not primarily about health issues such as drugs, first aid and so on. PSHE encompasses life skills and some aspects of citizenship.
I have taught PSHE, advised on it, researched it and written about it and I want to distil some of that experience. It was inspiring to teach PSHE to children and to see their involvement and enthusiasm. If I were to list topics to be covered in PSHE, I would say that for younger children it is important to learn about staying safe; resisting pressure; friendships and other relationships; bullying; health hazards such as smoking and drugs; where to get help if in trouble; and basic facts about reproduction. Children will have their own topics. For older pupils, the topics will be added to and treated in more depth. At primary school, pupils may discuss the importance and concept of friendship. At secondary school, issues such as integrity and conflict resolution may be discussed.
Some may argue that children receive this kind of education from home and from mainstream school subjects. Sadly, that is often not the case, as young people tell us. PSHE has a particular body of knowledge and particular educational processes, such as discussion groups or role play, which make it an important part of the curriculum. Apart from the topics of PSHE that I have mentioned, young people need to develop language and communication skills and interpersonal empathy. Those skills can transfer from this area of work to life itself.
Lord Northbourne
My Lords, I have tabled my amendment for the same reason as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, because it seemed to me that this Committee should be able to debate compulsory PSHE and sexual relationships education. Noble Lords will remember that this was debated and powerfully argued by the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Massey, but there really was no time for a proper debate during wash-up.
I open my remarks by briefly stating my position. It is a great pity that this has become a sort of battle. Whether PSHE should become compulsory is not a yes or no question. It tremendously depends on what is to be taught and who is going to teach it. We need to know not only what the government guidelines say but what is going to be taught. If I had been a pupil of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in one of her classes, I am sure that I would be much better informed even than I am today—and I should have enjoyed it. However, it is important to know that there are enough teachers available before we start making something compulsory. Otherwise, Bloggs, the geography teacher, who is not much good, will be put on to do PSHE, partly because it is a difficult and tiresome thing to teach. That would be absolutely disastrous.
I was told only the other day that, contrary to what the noble Baroness said, recent research shows that the sort of diet of sex and condoms delivered to 14 to 16 year-olds in most schools today makes absolutely no difference at all to the number of teenage pregnancies among the group. Unless and until there is satisfactory and independent evidence that it does make a difference, there is a strong argument for considering whether we cannot improve what schools are delivering.
I am assured by a number of experts, including representatives of Ofsted, that an increasing body of evidence shows that what makes a difference is the whole-school ethos to which the child is exposed. When families are willing and able to provide supportive parenting to their child, it seems axiomatic that parents should be consulted and involved as partners, particularly in any programme of sexual relationship education. I expect that that would be the case in a great many of the academies that we are talking about today. However, when home life is chaotic, the schools step in and make up for what the family cannot give.
Whether it is learnt at home or in school, it appears that what makes a difference is learning in a secure environment where each child is valued and respected and each child is safe and loved. It is learning that the way in which you treat others matters and that you, too, can be a success in spite of a disadvantaged background. Ofsted reports show that those schools where teaching and a whole-school ethos consistently encompass those values are those that it finds to be outstanding on academic results and child well-being. Some of them are working in very disadvantaged areas.
There are two extremely good reports on 20 primary schools and, I think, 12 outstanding secondary schools working in disadvantaged areas. Perhaps I might briefly quote extracts from those Ofsted reports. First, the report on 20 outstanding primary schools says, among a great many other things:
“It is no longer acceptable to use a child’s background as an excuse for underachievement. The challenge for schools is to make a difference … Viewed in these terms, the job of the school may be construed as providing, through education and care for children’s well-being, advantage where it is lacking, mentoring and support for parenting where it is needed, and complementary provision in a school community of high ideals and aspirations … Primary schools, together with”,
other school providers,
“of education and care, are in a pre-eminent position when it comes to having a lasting impact”,
on a child’s future. Secondly, its report on the secondary schools says:
“The outstanding schools in the sample succeed for the following reasons. They excel at what they do, not just occasionally but for a high proportion of the time. They prove constantly that disadvantage need not be a barrier to achievement … They have strong values and high expectations that are applied consistently and never relaxed”.
A prerequisite for respect for others is respect for self. For children from disadvantaged and chaotic families, that may not easily be learnt at home. Excellent schools can build self-esteem and emotional intelligence right across the school in an age-appropriate way. That involves a high level of staff commitment and strong leadership. Schools that generate empathy, self-confidence and aspiration of this kind lead to fewer early pregnancies, but that is not the whole story. They also prepare young people—again, age by age and in an age-appropriate way—for the responsibilities of adult life and parenthood and so could help to break the cycle of disadvantage passed on from generation to generation in some families today.
What are the Government’s plans for PSHE and SRE? I hope that they will reject or substantially revise the guidelines produced earlier this year by the previous Government, which concentrate mainly on contraception and largely ignore the role of cementing relationships and creating a stable family. The guidelines make no more than passing reference to the importance of supportive parenting, of a whole-school ethos or of respect for others and for self. I also hope that the Government will delay making SRE compulsory until they are satisfied that there are enough well trained teachers available to deliver this sensitive coverage.
Finally, I hope that the Government will focus their resources on encouraging more schools to develop and deliver whole-school policies that support the emotional and social development of all their pupils, including the less academically able. In this context, I very much hope that the academies that we are talking about today will, in particular, be free to adopt innovative policies—including a wide range of syllabus activities that will provide opportunities for all pupils to experience success—and facilities that include, where appropriate, boarding facilities. I hope that they will try to develop a whole-school ethos which is positive and supportive and which develops emotional intelligence and respect—both self-respect and respect for others. Can the Minister give me any comfort on those issues?
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
My Lords, I support this amendment, to which I have added my name, following the great disappointment—the sobbing to which my noble friend Lady Massey referred—of PSHE being removed from the Children, Schools and Families Bill in the wash-up on 7 April. I do so to hear whether the Government are prepared to reconsider their previous negative approach to this issue.
In the wash-up debate, the support for the removal of the clauses from the Bill focused on two main points. First, there was the lack of trained teachers, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. Secondly, there was the view about whether PSHE was being well taught. It certainly was in some schools but, as Ofsted said, that was in too few schools and throughout the country teaching was extremely patchy. Using the shortage of teachers as a reason for not teaching PSHE is standing the argument on its head. The PSHE continuing professional development programme, which was established by my noble friend Lord Adonis, has gone some way towards providing a pool of trained teachers. I accept that more has to be done, just as I accept that PSHE should be taught by accredited teachers. The answer is that if a subject is a statutory entitlement for pupils, it is guaranteed that it will be taught in teacher training. If it is not, there is absolutely no guarantee that that is the case. Therefore, the pool of untrained teachers will continue. As my noble friend Lady Massey said, adequate teaching materials should be provided, which is not always the case at the moment. We are talking about timing and flexibility in how the subject is taught, as long as it is taught well and covers the main issues that I will refer to.
I find it extraordinary that the coalition Government—Conservatives and Liberal Democrats—can reject something that prepares young people for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. In doing so, they reject the teaching of mutual respect; valuing each other, which the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, again referred to; loving and happy relationships; safety and health; and responsibility for oneself and others. Last week the Minister referred to the curriculum review, and the need to be innovative, be creative and respond to the needs of pupils. He will find the answer to that in the pamphlet written by his right honourable friend Iain Duncan Smith, Early Intervention: Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens. I could quote most of the report in answer to why PSHE should be taught in schools, but one sentence refers to,
“the subject at the heart of this pamphlet: the need for intervention in the earliest years of a child’s life, thus ensuring that he or she fulfils their potential and is not subject to intergenerational transmission of disadvantage”.
Those are fine words and a fine concept, the fruition of which could be considerably assisted by making PSHE well taught in all schools by making it statutory. Disadvantage can be overcome if the teaching is there to do that.
If for no other reason, the teaching of PSHE makes economic sense because it is about prevention. It is about reducing health inequalities and social exclusion; safeguarding children and young people; reducing homophobic bullying and its consequences; and avoiding teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted illnesses such as HIV, and drug and alcohol misuse. It is about increasing the understanding of the short-term and long-term effects of alcohol on physical and mental health and sexual behaviour. While there is a clear need for sensitive and sensible messages on the avoidance of risk, which can lead to pregnancy or acquiring an STI or HIV, there is also a need to build the confidence—that is what it is all about—for girls to be able to resist the pressure and learn how to say no; and for all children in how to avoid exploitation and abuse.
I was interested in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, about condoms. He is right: there is a problem in condoms just being delivered to schools. Nobody tells pupils what they are for and why they should be using them sensibly, or not using them at all if they are not having early sex. That is not taught. We are saying that we should make sure the teaching goes alongside giving condoms to young children. At a school I visited it was fascinating. Young people were issued with condoms, particularly after school. Some of the younger ones thought that they were balloons and had great fun blowing them up, but some of the older ones sat around and had that important conversation, which should take place in schools.
PSHE teaches young people to respect each other and not to pressurise others to do something that they do not want to do. Teaching children and young people about physical and mental lifestyles will save the NHS and local authorities a considerable amount of money. A further aspect of PSHE that we do not always talk about is that it underpins the employability of young people through the development of personal and social skills which commerce and industry demand in their workforces. It also identifies the necessary flexibility to deal with changing workplace and industrial situations.
PSHE is about economic well-being and financial capability. It can teach about managing money and how to avoid personal debt, and the problems that result from that debt, which sometimes mean considerable cost to the state. It prepares young people for their future roles, such as parents, employers, employees and leaders. A groundbreaking survey, which will be launched in October, asked the views of parents, teachers and governors, particularly as regards the SRE aspect of PSHE in England. It was carried out by the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, the National Association of Head Teachers and the National Governors Association, in partnership with Durex.
The results showed a high level of agreement between the three groups, with 91 per cent of parents, 83 per cent of governors and 83 per cent of teachers believing that it is very important that young people have information on practising safer sex. While the majority of parents believe that PSHE-SRE should be taught in schools, part of the programme should be to engage those parents and provide them with information and practical support to help them develop the confidence to talk to their children about relationships, sexual health, alcohol and drugs, and their responsibilities and attitudes to others.
In that way, perhaps we can break down the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage described in the Early Intervention paper. PSHE teaching is an important way of building relationships with parents. Parents need to be more involved and lessons should not end in school. In the survey to which I have just referred, 84 per cent of parents said that what is taught in schools should be followed up in the home. The dropping of PSHE from the Children, Schools and Families Bill went against the views of parents, teachers, governors, the Youth Parliament and young people. Now that the Government have the opportunity to redress that situation, I hope that they will take it to heart.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I support a great deal of what has been said today. I shall go back rather further. In the early years of the previous Government, there was an attempt to introduce citizenship. My noble friend Lord Northbourne and I hoped valiantly that young children would be taught not just about their relationships with their parents, but about how they would bring up their children and what sort of a parent they should be. Sadly, the whole citizenship exercise disappeared into a vacuum of being taught all around the curriculum, so it was never followed through.
Following on from the Ofsted report, I wish to comment on the success that the schools mentioned had on things such as bullying. In some schools, from the moment a child enters, he or she has a mentor. It is another child’s duty to settle the new child into the school. It would be a huge help if that could be taken seriously and become part of the way in which all schools integrate the next generation.
It may not be totally fair to blame the Government—certainly not all members of it—for the way in which the previous Bill disappeared into the sand, but now that they have this opportunity to look at the situation again, I hope that they will come forward with sensible proposals.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My Lords, the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey of Darwen and Lady Gould, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley, have long been advocates and apostles of PSHE. Their difficulty has been that for a long time PSHE has been regarded as a “trendy left” view which has been dismissed on largely political grounds. Therefore, I want primarily to address my Conservative Party partners in the coalition. Three aspects of PSHE should give them pause.
The first was eloquently stated by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould. It is that huge threats to children, such as drugs and alcohol, need to be discussed seriously within schools at a very early age—the middle of primary school—and onwards if people are to realise their immense and devastating consequences on children. They have to counter great pressure from, on one side, teenage magazines and what one might call youth culture, and, on the other, the supermarket culture. That is not easy to do.
The second issue, which supersedes any political views and which I again ask my partners in the coalition to consider very seriously, is parenthood. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has been famous for the way in which he has consistently argued in this House that we have neglected at our peril the parenthood of the human species, which is long in growing up. Long ago, when I was Secretary of State, I remember proposing that parenthood should be a fundamental part of sex education. In other words, the emphasis should be at least as much on the responsibilities of bringing up a child—families will devote a huge part of their energies to that process—as on sex education itself. You cannot divorce the two and in some ways we have done great harm to ourselves by doing that. We now look at what one can describe in some quarters only as an abdication of parenthood. I do not refer just to people who are economically deprived but to the many who wrongly think that money substitutes for time in the bringing up of children. There are huge lesions to be mended in our relationships with children. I strongly thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and commend him on the consistency of his arguments in this field, which desperately need to be listened to.
Finally, on the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and others who said that there are insufficient qualified teachers, conceivably the coalition might think of something rather unique and announce that it is its intention to introduce compulsory PSHE—with the emphasis as I have described—in three years’ time. That would immediately attract many young people to thinking about teaching in that field. We try to do everything instantaneously. Education, like growing a tree, is a slow process, and we need to think in terms of how one can obtain responses further down the line. In this case, many young people and many others who are coming into the profession would seriously think about a responsible approach to PSHE as part of the curriculum, although it may be unwise to introduce it immediately.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
My Lords, I begin by commenting on both amendments; I recognise the importance of giving children and young people access to appropriate and high-quality PSHE, for which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and others made such a compelling and eloquent case. However, I wish mainly to speak to Amendment 70 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, in welcoming the emphasis placed in that amendment on parenting and the need to make young people aware of the parenting responsibilities that come with bringing a child into the world and, again, I salute the work of the noble Lord in this area, especially in helping young men to come to terms with what it means to be a father.
However, I have a couple of concerns with the amendment. First, it is not clear how the resulting curriculum would be determined. Research suggests that aspects of PSHE that have to do with sex and relationships are most effective if parents are involved to the greatest possible extent. That is why the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, about engaging parents, were so well made. While the Church of England has not had a problem with statutory provision, not least with the impact that it has on teacher training provision, I am aware of those, particularly in other churches and faith communities, who feel that the engagement of parents would be more greatly advanced if it was stated explicitly that the curriculum would ultimately be determined, on an academy-by-academy basis, by governors in consultation with parents, so that this important subject is taught in a manner that is consistent with the ethos of the academy and parental wishes.
Lord Layard
My Lords, I strongly support the two amendments in this group. In the past 40 years, there have been four surveys of the mental health of 15 year-olds in Britain. These show that the number of young people suffering from emotional and behavioural problems is twice as high now as it was 40 years ago. That is a shocking fact. It is terrible for young people and for the rest of us. We are talking about the health not only of young people, but also of the society that is affected by their behaviour. If we take into account the extraordinary costs for young people and for adults of the problems of young people not knowing how to live, we cannot turn our backs on the emotional and behavioural aspects of their education. We have been moving towards a disastrous situation in which our schools have increasingly become exam factories—factories for helping people to earn a living, not to learn how to live.
It is possible to teach people how to live. This can be done not only through the school’s ethos, which is extremely important—as has rightly been stressed, this could be the most important thing—but also through structured teaching of life skills. We already know a lot about how to do this, and we are learning more. For example, the Penn Resilience Programme, now used in 30 schools in this country, has been shown to reduce teenage depression markedly, and to increase school attendance, with emotional and behavioural consequences. Many other equally effective programmes cover areas such as developing altruism, learning about healthy living and avoiding risky behaviour, learning about mental health and learning about parenting—there are programmes that teach young people how to be parents, and others that cover nearly all the topics in the QCA’s excellent programme of study for personal and social well-being.
There is also plenty of evidence of the effectiveness of sex education. For example, one striking case is the comparison between our country and the Netherlands, where sex and relationship education, including parenting, begins in primary schools. There, the teenage pregnancy rate is one-fifth of the rate in this county. Therefore, we have plenty of evidence on which to proceed.
These are difficult subjects to teach and that is why I am enormously worried about the coalition Government’s approach of leaving them to individual schools. If they are difficult to teach, the most obvious thing to do is to have a concerted programme of teacher training. That can be done only at the national level but, as many speakers have already said, it will not happen unless there is a clear statement that education in life skills is a key element in the complete education of every child.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I speak on this matter in a personal capacity and I absolutely support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I also support much of the spirit behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, although I think that it is a bit too late to provide sex and relationships education to 14 year-olds, given the hundreds of girls under the age of 14 who get pregnant every year. Good PSHE includes all the information that young people need to lead an ordinary but successful life, or even an extraordinary life. It is not academic but what are schools doing if not preparing young people for the lives that they will lead when they leave and, indeed, the lives that they lead while they are still at school?
Much has been said this afternoon about the importance of teaching about parenting, and I absolutely agree. Noble Lords may have heard about the programme in which school nurses give out baby dolls to young women. These dolls scream in the middle of the night, they need burping, they need their nappy changing and they need feeding regularly. I recently heard about one school nurse who gave out a batch of these dolls and when they came back at the end of the week most of the young girls said, “Oh my goodness. I couldn’t possibly”, apart from one who said, “It was wonderful. I can’t wait to get pregnant”, so it does not always work.
Over the years, I have said a good deal on this subject in your Lordships’ House, so, in an effort not to repeat myself, I did some new front-line research last week with two teenagers who are doing work experience in Parliament. One told me about a girl in her sister’s class at school who at the age of 13 had a one year-old baby. Both of them said that they have to go to PSHE lessons but to quote one of them, “We don’t do anything”, and to quote the other, “We watch a lot of videos”. One said, “We had a lesson on drugs recently and they just said, ‘Don’t do drugs. Drugs are bad’. It was useless”. She also told me that she did not have any sex education until she was 17 and that they do not teach about contraception or abortion in their Catholic school except in RE, where they say, “Don’t do it; it’s a sin”.
That is just not good enough. I realise that this is a very small sample of hearsay evidence but it lines up with what I have heard from many other teenagers over the years. It tell me that, first, teachers are not properly trained to deliver PSHE; secondly, teachers are not confident to teach PSHE, and that is why they rely so much on videos; thirdly, the quality of PSHE varies immensely and is very poor in some places; and, fourthly, some children are not receiving the information to which they are entitled and which protects their well-being.
The only way to deal with all those things is to make the subject part of the national curriculum in maintained schools and mandatory in academies and all other schools that do not have to follow the rest of the national curriculum. All establishments which educate children and young people have a duty to have regard to their well-being. However, they cannot do that successfully if they do not give them the information that they need to live a happy life. Young girls’ life chances are being severely affected because they may not have the information or the self-confidence to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and often the state has to pick up the bill in the interests of the young girl and, in particular, her baby. Unless children have information about the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, they may unwittingly become addicted at great cost to themselves and the country before they can turn round.
Much has been said about teacher training and, as usual, my noble friend Lady Williams has put her finger on it. Fully trained teachers cannot be produced in an instant, but her suggestion that the Government should show their intention to make the subject mandatory, given sufficient time to undertake the training of new teachers in initial teacher training or CPD for existing teachers, would be a solution to that problem. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said that often the subject is given to Joe Bloggs the geography teacher. In my experience, it was given to Jill Bloggs the biology teacher or, in my case, Joan Walmsley the biology teacher. I taught it but I was not properly trained and I did not have the necessary confidence. I did my best but it was a very long time ago and the problem is that that is still happening.
I know that the Government are to have a curriculum review, which will be an opportunity to look very carefully at what we teach our children in schools. We need to give them the tools for life and not just academic qualifications for work. We must redress the damage that was done before the election when this measure very nearly got into legislation, but was prevented by the vagaries of our parliamentary procedures. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that this subject will be considered during the curriculum review.
Lord Howarth of Newport
It could be argued that there is no more important element of the curriculum than PSHE. The previous Government were certainly right to propose that it should be a statutory foundation subject. There is a public, societal interest in children being educated in these areas. Moreover, I believe that it is the inescapable responsibility of Government to ensure that that happens because only the Government can ensure that all children receive education in these areas; only the Government can establish a norm; and only the Government can promote best practice across every school.
Education about relationships and sex is, of course, a very important private and parental responsibility and should be respected as such, but it cannot be the responsibility of parents alone. By definition relationships involve two people and, indeed, two families. Ignorance in sexual matters is dangerous to others. Children need support and education. They grow up in an erotically charged environment, where advertising and entertainment sexualise almost every kind of transaction; and the internet opens the window to a host of sexual possibilities regardless of who receives the messages. I am afraid that it is commonplace in our culture for human beings to be objectified, exploited and even brutalised sexually. Inescapably, children and young people witness that. If there is an age of innocence, it is all too short. For that reason and because of earlier puberty, it is essential that sex and relationship education is introduced at primary level although, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, it should be age-appropriate.
There are powerful peer pressures to experiment and to take risks, and those are stronger than the social codes that seek to protect young people from precocious sexual experiences. Children and young people are vulnerable and, therefore, they need help from an early age to understand this environment and to start to establish their own secure and confident individuality. They need education about relationships—not preachy education but education that may well be imparted through the study of literature and drama, for example. They need to learn that good relationships are characterised by respect for the other person, by sensitivity and by love. They also need to learn about the physiological facts of reproduction, the practicalities of birth control and how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. They need to be taught those matters with no euphemisms and no evasion: sexually transmitted diseases may kill. Some families are not willing to teach that to their children and some families do not know how. Therefore, it is unacceptable to leave sex education to families as a private responsibility. I believe that religious objections, for example to teaching about contraception, have to be overruled.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I cannot help but notice that Members on the coalition government Front Bench have been struggling with the brightness of the light today. I hope that that is because they have seen the light on PSHE.
Lord Greaves
Will the noble Baroness agree that the sun shines on the righteous?
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
Well, I am sure that we are about to find out the truth of that. I do not want to keep the Committee any longer because I know that we have a great deal of work to do today. However, I want to support my noble friends Lady Gould and Lady Massey. Both have made strong and impassioned contributions—I do not want to rehearse their strong arguments—as have my noble friends Lord Howarth and Lord Layard. I was also interested in the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who, as ever, spoke wisely on these matters, and in the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley.
We have debated these matters hotly at times; we certainly did so during the wash-up, when I think that things got a bit frayed. It is fair to say that what happened was not vague—the then Conservative Opposition opposed the measures in the Children, Schools and Families Bill to include PSHE following all the consultation and discussions with the faith groups, parents and specialists involved. I therefore hope that, with the confidence that the Conservative Party has in government, it will be able to think again. I hope that this is not a party-political issue, but one on which we can come together for the benefit of children currently going through the education system and more widely for our community. I hope that my noble friends will accept my support for their amendment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for moving the amendment and giving us the opportunity to have this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said that there had been a history of a battle in this House. However, one of the advantages about my being the new boy is that I do not yet have all those scars and am not approaching this issue as a battle. I am seeking to approach it as I do other issues, by listening to the arguments. I have heard a number of forceful and persuasive points made today.
Perhaps I can give my noble friend Lady Walmsley some reassurance. These certainly are important matters and strong views are held on both sides. Perhaps properly they will form part of a much bigger debate that I recognise we need to have as part of the broader curriculum review to which my noble friend Lady Walmsley referred. We will need to discuss all these issues—whether we need to or not, we clearly will do so—as they will be part of the legislation later in the year. There will be a proper opportunity to discuss this issue fully and at length and there will be opportunities for noble Lords to—
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
Will the Minister give us a clear timetable before Report on how these deliberations will go forward? Who will be consulted and how will the practicalities of the discussions work?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am not sure that I am able to give a very clear timetable. As part of the discussions that we need to have on the curriculum review, we need to decide how the experience and views of Members of this House can be fed in. I am happy to come back to the noble Baroness on that point. We need to work out how to do this. We have heard that there are issues to do with content as well as principle and I recognise that we will return to the matter.
I am also struck, from listening to the debate, how far sex education at school has moved on since I was at school, when I seem to remember that I had a drawing of a hen and an egg and that was it. There has clearly been some progress since then.
On the more specific and narrower point to do with academies, which is what this debate and the amendment are about, the independent schools’ standards regulations require all independent schools, including academies, to have a curriculum that includes personal, social and health education that reflects the school’s aims and ethos. Those regulations require the schools to prepare pupils adequately for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life. That is important and those regulations are in place. We recognise the importance of this area to parents and pupils and believe that that is sufficient for academies to deliver an appropriate PSHE curriculum. We know that many academies already see that area as key to engaging pupils.
Amendment 70 would have the effect, which may or may not have been intended, of removing any right of parental withdrawal from sex and relationship education. I know that there is a range of views on that. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, expressed one set of views; I know that others will have equally strong views that parents should have the right to withdraw their children. I do not believe that creating a difference between the maintained and the academies sector by removing a right of withdrawal is justified and I am not sure that the noble Lord intended it. In any case, I hope that noble Lords will accept my reassurance that these important issues will be returned to as we think about the curriculum review more generally and that they will feel able not to press their amendments.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken in this interesting debate. As someone said, this is not a political issue; it is about the welfare of children and about how schools deal with this important subject, as well as engaging parents. The noble Lord was lucky to have a hen and egg when he had sex education; I had to knit a uterus. I will test him on that.
As we have said, personal, social and health education is about living not just in the future but now. Children live now. Three clear issues have emerged. One is about engaging parents. Of course I agree with engaging parents in personal, social and health education. Sadly, some parents do not want to be engaged and some simply cannot. They do not talk to children about relationships or health issues. Perhaps if we taught personal, social and health education to this generation of children, they would be able to talk to their children about personal, social and health education. Let us try to break the cycle.
Another issue was trained teachers. I still maintain that, if something is statutory in the curriculum, you will get teachers trained and you will get curriculum materials circulated. If it is not statutory, you will not get that; it will be at somebody’s whim—it will be Joan Walmsley teaching whatever she was teaching at her school. There will be no curriculum materials. Both are essential.
Another important issue is saving money. It also saves potential misery. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, spoke about the misery of depression, drug use and teenage pregnancy and about the importance of breaking the cycle of deprivation.
I look forward to the curriculum review, which many noble Lords have mentioned. However, I do not want this to drag on. We could end up with it just faltering. I noted with interest the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. I need to think about the question of delaying this for three years. This is an urgent issue. Children are suffering from the misery of not having the chance to discuss issues about sexual relationships, drugs, alcohol and so on. We have to get on with it.
Would the Minister be prepared to meet with a group of us to talk about this before Report, because the curriculum review will clearly not be issued before then? I intend to withdraw the amendment for now, but I will certainly return to the issue at Report if we do not get a satisfactory response.
Lord Layard
I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Because I will not have an opportunity to speak later, I just wanted to say that I strongly support her suggestion.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
I ask the Minister to meet with a group of us. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment for now, but I will certainly bring something back at Report unless this issue is resolved.
Lord Lucas
“( ) arrangements have been made for Ofsted to prepare annually interim reports on the school;”
Lord Lucas
I should declare an interest, in that I run the Good Schools Guide and therefore spend an inordinate amount of my time inspecting schools, or rather causing schools to be inspected, and thus have a keen interest in the topic. Inspection is a crucial aspect of the Bill. We are considering schools that will be innovative, free schools. They will be newly founded, often with untried and untested combinations of people involved, with no established sponsors or with sponsors who are relatively new to the job. That will be at a time when there is considerable pressure on the central and local systems of support provided to schools.
The lesson that we have from the United States, as I am sure Rachel Wolf has told the Minister, is that charter schools succeed when they are properly regulated and inspected. If you think about it, it is obvious. If a school starts to go wrong, you can see it. If you can catch it reasonably early on, it is not too much work to put it right. If you let it go for a year or three, you will be in serious trouble.
We are also at a time when inspection itself is up for inspection. It is clear that this Government are reviewing the inspection regime in some detail and are prepared to make big changes—not surprisingly, if they want to cut the overall budget by 25 per cent. This is a good time to look at Ofsted and to ask: does it do what it is supposed to do; could we do better; could we do it for less?
Parents want, first, a regular report from Ofsted. The idea that you wait for four, five or six years between inspections is ridiculous. You want to know what is happening this year. You want to know that the school that you are about to commit your child to is still in good condition. Secondly, if Ofsted produces an adverse report, you want support. You want to feel that, whatever the problems at the school, they are now going to be gathered together and looked after. In both those aspects, Ofsted fails miserably. Most Ofsted reports are out of date. When Ofsted puts a school into special measures—this is my experience of the process, which has always been from the outside—parents spend a month or so in ignorance and, even then, when people start to react and be supportive, Ofsted just stands on the outside throwing rocks at the school, keeping on criticising, rather than being part of the support network.
Ofsted is also clearly not what schools want. Schools want support, advice and help in steering in the right direction. They want a constructive relationship with the people involved in inspecting the school. The most recent example of that that I can think of is the old FEFC inspections under our previous Government. They had that relationship with colleges. They would inspect regularly. Subject inspectors would be in and out of the college once or twice a year. Support and advice would be coming through the college. You worried about whether you might be ticked off for something, but the general relationship was supportive. You expected that the inspectors’ visit would, on the whole, be a constructive experience.
What the Government want out of Ofsted is value for the money that they are putting in. We are a long way short of that. After a fashion, we have an effective system of calling schools to account. Spreading good practice, knowing what is going on in schools and making sure that, say, PSHE is being properly taught, even though it is not being examined, are functions of the inspectorate. By and large, I do not have criticisms on that, except that it costs far too much to get there and does far too much damage to schools.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
I am sympathetic to the noble Lord’s argument, but why does the word “interim” appear in this amendment? Should this not be consistently carried on, rather than being purely interim?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I apologise if the wording of my amendment is not exact. It is merely there to bring up the subject of inspections and to make it clear that I want them to be regular, not just every five years or so.
There is a good model of how this could be done. Every year, we are retiring a few thousand headmasters and deputy headmasters who have immense experience and the ability to judge a school pretty rapidly—the good ones. They know how to read a school, how a school works and what to look for. They have the ability to be immensely supportive and they are not that expensive because they have pensions. They have a commitment to the job and all they want is a reasonable return for the effort that they are putting in. If we were to pay £300 a day, that might be a figure with some echoes—we do it for that. It should not surprise us that heads and others with a real vocation and dedication to helping other people are prepared to work and put in similar effort for a similar amount of money. You are not looking at a lot of money. You are looking at people whom parents and heads naturally trust. You are starting off on a pretty good basis if you are staffing your inspectorate with that sort of person.
These people could go once a year into every school—and I do say “every school”. What is the point of an inspectorate not visiting outstanding schools? How are inspectors ever going to learn what best practice is if they never go into the best schools? Part of the point of an inspectorate ought to be spreading good practice. They should be there to say, “This is what I saw the other day”, or, “Why don’t you talk to him or her about that because they seem to be getting it right?”. If all you are doing is going round the schools that are not performing well, all you can do is spread bad practice. To be an effective inspector, you need to be in touch with good practice and with what is going on in the world of good schools. A simple report to parents—a paragraph or so, to say that since the last inspection report things are progressing, this is particularly good, there is still a bit of trouble on that but, overall, we are happy—is what parents need to know that they can take a baseline from the previous Ofsted report, read through it, know that things have improved or are much as they were and take a reasonable decision. Most schools with a head who is open to ideas will benefit enormously from having someone such as that around.
Once schools have come to trust the system, you would find that they were asking for extra days. When I was a governor of a college under the old FEFC system, we were looking to have these people in more often. We would say, “We’re not doing what we should do in biology. Let’s get the biology man around to give us an extra bit of help there”. Schools, particularly primary schools, are little, isolated, lonely places. They want support and they want to have contact with people who can provide that support and good ideas. At the moment, all we have is the school improvement partner system, which is too low-level and local. We would do much better if we moved to making that part of the inspection system. I think that we could run that bit of the inspection system for about £10 million a year and have a report on every school, every year. Over and above that, you obviously need a full inspection system. Every now and again, you need to go in and do the whole works. Even if you are quite generous on the budget and say that you will spend 10 man-days on average every five years, that will cost you only £20 million or so. Then you have the central system over that.
There is an enormous obsession with data in the current central system. Collecting the data imposes immense burdens on schools. Teachers worry about measuring every aspect of every child’s performance because the school improvement partner or the inspector may pick them up on this or that, which is not constructive. You do not need to look at data on that level. Any mathematician will tell you that, apart from in pure mathematics, figures are always wrong. Figures do not provide value on their own; they provide value only in relation to what is happening on the ground. Inspections should be about the human aspect of schools: the quality of the teaching; the quality of the atmosphere; the staff; and the relationships in the school. They are things that numbers never throw any light on, although numbers can be useful in confirming what is happening.
If we were to budget £50 million a year for Ofsted as a whole, that would be enough. We could then perhaps devote another £50 million to the same organisation, perhaps, if it was running well and was focused on supporting schools that were having a hard time, bringing them round and making them straight—if it was picking up schools that had scored four and setting them right—which needs a lot of concentrated help and advice very fast. That would still be half the current budget, but it would provide about 10 times the value. I beg to move.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I support much of what my noble friend has said. It is desperately important to have proper monitoring of what is going on in these new and very innovative schools and to have feedback, not only to the schools—I will come to what my noble friend said about the positive nature of the feedback that is needed, which I agree with him about—but also to the Secretary of State. Ministers need to know how well the experiment is going and what adjustments are needed from time to time.
I wholly agree with my noble friend that the current Ofsted system is not what is needed and not what we are asking for. It seems to have put everything into one rather unsatisfactory basket. Ofsted inspects for health and safety issues and can fail a school on the height of its security fence. That is not the professional judgment of educational experts. The people who should be doing the assessment of the school’s success and innovation should be people who were successful professional teachers who know what they are talking about. Popping in to see whether health and safety rules are being obeyed or whether security is being maintained is not what an educationalist should be doing. There should be a firm and distinct line between that kind of inspection and the professional judgments that my noble friend so well described.
It is important that we have a cadre of people who are constantly in touch with schools. I say to my noble friend that we need more than simply a once-a-year report. Somebody should keep in touch with the school on a fairly regular basis and go in from time to time to be a shoulder on which the head can—one hopes not cry—pour out her or his ideas, thoughts and problems when they arise, and provide wisdom and judgment. As my noble friend said, they also need to be a sounding board so that the Secretary of State and Ministers can understand what is really happening in these innovative and exciting academies.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton
I have a certain sympathy with this amendment, although there are question marks about how it is phrased. I have most sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, has just described. We have got into a muddle with the role of Ofsted, of SIPs, of the YPLA—or before that, of the department—and where support starts and ends and inspection starts and ends. Rather too many people are going into schools, particularly schools in trouble, without being clear about who is doing what.
I totally agree that Ofsted—or any inspection regime, in a sense—must have a lot more focus and not inspect the myriad things that it is inspecting at the moment. My personal experience is that you end up getting into a panic about whether the files are in order rather than rigorously checking and really improving education in the school. That cannot be right and has to be looked at.
However, we have to be clear that Ofsted, or whatever inspection regime there is in the future, must be accountable to the community and to parents in particular. I therefore differ from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in that I would not want to go back to the somewhat gooey regime in which data did not really matter. Data really matter. Without them, there is a real danger of groups of children in a school being missed and not progressed properly. By all means, let us add real intelligence to schools and give them real support, but let us not go back to the days when whole sections of kids could be left behind because we did not notice that they were not progressing.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, I was reminded of visiting a children’s home some time ago with an inspector who made the point that she had been asked to be an inspector for care homes for the elderly and had declined because she was a teacher by background. She said, “What do I know about care homes for the elderly?”. There has been an issue—I am sure that it is still an issue—of ensuring that the inspectors are the right ones for the particular institution. The inspector also said that the remit of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, for which she worked at the time, was very much about supporting and developing good-quality practice and supporting the staff. After the remit moved to Ofsted, certainly the information that I received suggested that it became very much about checking that someone had done the right thing and criticising them if they had not, but not about asking, “Have you tried this? What about that way?”, and supporting the development of better practice.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggested using retiring teachers. The National Union of Teachers has emphasised the need to ensure the proper and continuing professional development of teachers who are already practising. It is concerned that past advice from the Department for Education—then the Department for Children, Schools and Families—was, “You shouldn’t let teachers off during the school day to get continuing professional development. They should do it at other times because we need them in the classroom”. If we could free up teachers with quite a lot of experience to spend a day in another school and take part in the sort of inspection and support arrangement that the noble Lord is discussing, that might kill two birds with one stone inasmuch as it would give them a chance to see how someone else teaches and to learn from that. They could be refreshed by that, as well as producing a report that could be useful to parents or whomever, and they could support professional development at that school. That occurs to me having recently read the information from the National Union of Teachers. No matter how much we improve the training and recruitment of teachers, most teachers are already in post and will be there for a long time, so we really have to think about their developmental needs. That is a bit of an aside.
Lord Bates
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for moving this interesting amendment. My default position when I first read it was that it was completely opposed to what the whole Bill is trying to do: to free up Ofsted inspectors so that they do not spend endless amounts of time visiting schools that are simply outstanding across the board but devote that time to schools that are failing in some areas so that those schools can be given greater attention and support. I take the point made by my noble friend Lady Perry, but that was very much where I was coming from.
When I heard the debate, however, I began to move towards seeing a couple of problems that need to be explored. I wonder whether part of the solution, which probably needs to be developed a little further, should not be the partnering of a highly successful school, which is enabled to become an academy, with a failing school. What would be the format of that relationship? Could the successful school assess and supervise the failing school in the interim?
Then there is the role of the governing bodies. Often very little is said about them, but under the new arrangements they will have hugely more power, authority and responsibility. How much training are they given? When one becomes a non-executive director of a firm, there are often lots of training courses about your duties, statutory responsibilities, the pertinent questions to ask and what you should look out for. The head teacher on the first governing body of which I was a member absolutely insisted that there was never any need for a member of the governing body to come to assemblies or to visit any of the classrooms, as that was way beyond their remit. Later on academy boards, I found that the head teachers of good, successful schools went out of their way to encourage governors to experience classroom teaching, to sit in the staffroom and to talk to teachers. Do people actually know this?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am grateful to the noble Lord. Does he accept that his personal experience may not be universal? As one who has had a series of non-executive directorships over the past 30 years and has served on a number of school governing bodies, I must confess that the picture he draws is not that of my experience.
Lord Bates
I defer to my noble friend’s experience, but bodies such as the Institute of Directors put on training courses and provide structured guidance for directorships, so I wonder what the equivalent is for governing bodies? Is there a body which fulfils this role?
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
I have also been a school governor in one form or another for getting on for 40 years. Training courses for governors are run not only by local authorities but also centrally, and they are quite detailed courses. There is also a training guide on the web. The noble Lord might like to look at the Department for Education website where he will find that under “governors” there is a sort of teach yourself course to show you what you should know to become a good governor.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, as president of the National Governors’ Association, perhaps I may be allowed to make a tiny comment. There has been a good deal of improvement in the training of school governors, but it is not uniform. I think there is a desire on the part of the National Governors’ Association to pay rather more attention to this side of things so that all governors are given some training before they start as well as ongoing training whenever that is necessary.
Lord Bates
My Lords, one of the great joys of this House is the realisation that when you raise an issue, you suddenly find several world authorities in the Chamber with the answers ready to hand, which is fantastic. I will not delay the Committee except to say this. Under the new mechanism the school will be separated from the local authority, which will not provide these functions going forward to an academy. Given that, could there be a role for the governing body of the academy to take a more detailed view—almost a form of Ofsted standards “light”—of the institution? That would provide some internal checks and balances while at the same time it would strengthen the governing body’s understanding of what is actually going on in the institution for which it is responsible.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, as in so many areas, this has been an interesting debate which again has ranged further than the specific scope of the Academies Bill, and I have been struck by a number of the points made. It seems that we have been talking about three separate strands: one is to do with information for government and accountability; one is to do with support for a school; and one is to do with information for parents. In that context, if I am not puffing my noble friend Lord Lucas too much, the Good Schools Guide, which I heard him mention earlier, is a good example of how parents can be given human and anecdotal information about a school. That is an extremely informative way to find out what is going on. Generally, going forward and thinking of the ways in which parents can access more frequent and better information about their children’s schools, it is clear that this is something the Government should think about. We have said that we will try to reform the league tables to make them more relevant, but I should like to reflect on some of the points made more generally by my noble friends Lord Lucas and Lady Perry outside the context of the Bill, and perhaps we could discuss them further. The question of how one gives parents information that lets them know what is going on in a school in a regular and relevant way is an interesting one which I should like to explore further.
On the specific point of the amendment, and bearing in mind some of the reservations expressed by my noble friend about Ofsted, to give that body an obligation to carry out an annual report on each academy strikes me as a little excessive. Further, the fact that such a requirement would apply only to academies and not to maintained schools seems a little odd. That said, I would be happy to discuss this further and I will not charge £300 a day for the conversation, which I think is the going rate. With that response and some reassurance, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, certainly I will withdraw the amendment but I will make one or two points first. On the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, it is wonderful that we have all these data, but you can make far too much of them. I am a physicist and I have played around with data all my life; I have gigabytes of data from the Department for Education that I decorate my website with. But in the end, what is happening in a school is what matters, and all the data can tell you is that maybe there are some questions that you should ask because there are so many different ways in which a particular pattern can be accounted for. I agree that data are important, but they have been turned into something oppressive under the current Ofsted system.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton
I am sorry to intervene but I do not think that is right. What the noble Lord is talking about is what can be claimed to be the obsessions about narrow forms of data that dominate a lot of inspections at the moment and therefore dominate a lot of headlines. However, the intelligent use of data in terms of tracking individual pupils is something an inspector needs in addition to all the qualitative work that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, talked about. When schools are only just starting to get there on using data in an intelligent way, it would be a retrograde step to chuck that out and return to the rather blunter instruments of the public lists which do not do the more sophisticated work that I am talking about.
Lord Lucas
Yes, my Lords, I agree that, used internally, those sorts of data are wonderful. I recall how, 15 years ago, Greenhead College in Huddersfield was one of the pioneers of such data, and it made a great difference. Even the English department was enthusiastic about it because it helped the staff to be better teachers. In a dumb world, data are great, but you do not need to inspect on them. If you do, you turn something that is a helpful internal tool into a weapon of oppression. It is a matter of getting the balance between being inspected on enough data that happen to be produced by the system and not pressurising teachers into recording every single aspect of every single child at great length and in close detail. The amount of time people are spending on this means that it is not productive. The inspectorate should not be interested in data at that level except when diagnosing a school that is clearly going wrong.
I am concerned about my noble friend’s relaxed attitude to inspection, particularly of the free schools that will be coming through under this Bill. These creatures are going to need to be looked at very carefully. As I said earlier, the New Schools Network is clear about the need for inspection, and I am clear that if you are starting up a new enterprise and you want to be proud of it rather than be landed with nasty cases where things have gone wrong and you should have known about it, you need a good system of what I call inspection but my noble friend Lady Perry would call a relationship between inspectors and schools. You need something that allows someone in authority outside the school to say, “Hang on. Something is going wrong and we need to get in and help”. If you wait for data that appear late because you need a year or two’s data before you can see the trends, a newly formed free school could be heading for trouble. So I hope that over the next year or so I will be able to convince my noble friend that going back in time and picking out the virtues of the system of which my noble friend Lady Perry was such an eminent part will be a good model to pursue. Not only can we do that, but we can save the Government a great deal of money while getting there. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) the school, if it was a selective school on conversion, has a roll no larger than it was at conversion date;”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, these are probing amendments with which I hope to learn a great deal from the Minister about the Government’s intentions with regard to selection. We probably all agree that selection is a major issue in any consideration of educational matters, and I am sure the Bill will be no exception. However, the idea of a selective academy is a perversion of Labour’s view of the future of the academy scheme.
As we have already heard, the previous Government used the academy system as a means of helping struggling schools to turn round the life chances of the hardest to teach, which often meant entering an area where a local authority had let down the children it was there to serve. We gave these schools new leadership, outside expertise and relieved them from many of the requirements to co-operate as part of the local family of schools because of the challenges and experiences that those schools had undergone.
I want to learn about what the coalition Government now propose. In effect, they are saying to schools which select a small minority of the top-scoring children at 11, “Take a share of the money that the local area has been allocated to support the most vulnerable, and outbid other local schools for the best teaching staff using that same money”. Is that really what the coalition Government want to say to schools? By definition, the schools with these advantages will be less likely to need support with issues such as special needs. That is what we are looking at.
Amendment 131 seeks to deal with this criticism by insisting on provision for children of all abilities where a selective school becomes an academy. What is more, unamended, the Bill will allow such schools to expand, so we could be talking about a significant expansion of selection. The Minister has indicated that this will not be the case and I should be grateful to hear him say that now. The Prime Minister has made great claims about having changed his party. Change is good and changed it has—I am sure many would say for the better—but, despite those claims, the Conservative Party has been forced—I remain to be convinced otherwise—to introduce this Trojan horse of more selective schools. We know that Conservative MPs want some red meat on selection, but the Government risk showing that they are prepared to bargain away the aspirations of the majority in return for the acquiescence of Back-Benchers in another place. The Minister shakes his head. I look forward to hearing his response and to being reassured and convinced otherwise.
Amendment 59 seeks to remove this aspect of the Bill by preventing academy schools selecting. I admit that it is a blunt instrument—I said at the start that this is a probing amendment at this stage—but it would be, by far and away, the most satisfactory outcome.
Amendments 40A to 40F seek to deal with the second criticism: that the balance between selective and non-selective schools could be disrupted, without any community consultation, by schools converting to academy status and then expanding whether through different age groups or intake.
Lord Bates
Can the noble Baroness confirm that selection was included in the concept of academies introduced by her Government; that you could select 10 per cent on the basis of the specialism of the academy? That was in the Education Acts of 2006 and 2002.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, the noble Lord is referring to the 10 per cent based on aptitude, which is a different paradigm—I am not sure whether that is the right word. These are probing amendments and I want to hear what the coalition Government’s intentions are on selection. I am sure that we will all be interested to know.
As with the discussion on the admissions code earlier in Committee, Amendments 130 and 183 will reassure those who are concerned that schools could convert under existing admissions procedures—which may erode over time—with no statutory safeguard against it. Many people outside the Chamber are asking these questions. The amendments would ensure that, in future, no non-selective school could use academy status to become selective.
Indeed, others have expressed this concern from another perspective. The Guardian newspaper reported the views of the National Grammar Schools Association. It stated in regard to academies:
“There may be other covert dangers and, until everything is made clear in the area of legislation and elsewhere, we strongly recommend extreme caution. If necessary, please seek advice from the NGSA before making decisions that may later threaten your school”.
The head of the NGSA said he was concerned that if a grammar school became an academy, it could then be run by a small group of people who might decide to change the admissions procedure. The article continued:
“‘What is the protection for the parents?’, he asked. ‘Does there have to be a ballot? Does it become an all-ability intake?’”
The National Grammar Schools Association is unclear about the coalition Government’s intentions. I should be extremely grateful if the Minister could set out, with great clarity, their vision for the future of selection in academies.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 43 and 46. I can address them briefly because I agree overwhelmingly with what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, has said. It is recognised that in part of the coalition at least—I hope in the whole of the coalition—there is a quiet passion to ensure that the extension of the academy principle, which is strongly supported all around the House, should not inadvertently become a cause of further problems for the least privileged part of our secondary education system. As the noble Baroness said, all the amendments, including mine, are designed to obtain from the Minister a “battened down” statement, if you like, that will allay these anxieties.
On Amendment 43, and wearing my lawyer’s hat, a characteristic in subsection (1)(6)(c) is that,
“the school provides education for pupils of different abilities”.
A lawyer could make hay with “different abilities”. It could be that a school would satisfy this test if in future it was going to select the top 10 per cent and the second top 10 per cent. They would be of “different abilities”. It could pass the test if it were to select the top 5 per cent and those with tap-dancing abilities. Those would be “different abilities”. I caricature my point to make it, but I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I hope that I can provide the reassurance that my noble friend Lord Phillips and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, asked for.
However, before I try to do so, I would like to pick up on the noble Baroness’s use of the word “perversion”, which I know is a word that has been used before in the context of the development of this policy. “Perversion” is a strong word with a particular weight, and I make the point that I have made before: it was clear from the 2005 White Paper, produced by the Government of whom she was a member, that it was an aspiration that the academies programme would be rolled out far further, and the then Prime Minister was looking forward to the time when all schools would be able to opt out of local authority control. So to caricature our proposals as a perversion is a slightly strong use of language.
I come to the heart of the noble Baroness’s question. The Bill does not allow for any increase in selection by ability in the state-funded sector. That said, we think that the freedoms that academy status can bring should be applied to all groups of schools and not denied to any in particular. We do not believe that they should be restricted to failing maintained schools; instead, we should extend that more broadly.
Amendment 40A seeks to make it a characteristic of an academy that was formerly a selective school that it does not expand following conversion to academy status. As the noble Baroness has set out, Amendments 40B to 40F seek to place a limit so that they cannot expand their role beyond a particular percentage.
The Bill contains provisions that allow selective maintained schools to retain academic selection but it does not allow for new selection. If accepted, the amendment would mean that successful grammar schools and successful partially selective schools would not be able to meet local demand for places if they converted to become academies.
With regard to a cap, as things currently stand, maintained grammar and partially selective schools are allowed to publish expansion proposals under Section 18 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 and the 2007 prescribed alteration regulations. Proposals are needed only if an expansion of over 25 per cent is planned, so any expansion below this level could be achieved through the normal admissions consultation. Provisions within the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 prevent any new selection from being adopted within maintained schools that were not already selective, and those 60 or so partially selective schools are also prevented from increasing the proportion of selective places.
Given that maintained selective schools are currently able to expand up to that point, to prevent them from doing the same thing as academies, as the noble Baroness’s amendments would suggest, would be more restrictive than the current regime within which they operate, and I cannot believe that that was her intention. Consequently, our wish is only to offer similar options on expansion to schools converting to academy status as are currently offered to maintained schools. We are seeking to maintain the status quo in that respect.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
It is important for me to understand how the status quo will be measured. How is selection defined? How will the Minister measure if there has been any change, and how will he monitor that? What is his plan to ensure that this is not a Trojan horse, or a back-door route to increasing selection?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I will come on to deal with that, if I may. If it would be helpful, I am happy to set out in writing for the noble Baroness as clearly as I am able what I consider the safeguards to be. I recognise that many people are concerned about this point, and I want to try to nail that down for her.
As would currently be the case with any proposals for expansion of a grammar in the maintained sector, local groups would have to be consulted before any expansion, and that would persist with academies. We will continue to ensure that the proportion of selective places in partially selective academies does not increase.
Amendment 43 would make it a condition of being an academy that it provided for children of all abilities as opposed to children of different abilities, the point that my noble friend Lord Phillips raised.
If we were to accept Amendment 43, I am advised that national testing would be necessary to ensure that academies all had intakes of all abilities across the country and admissions would have to be manipulated to ensure that all abilities were represented. We do not think that that is proportionate; maintained schools are not required to go as far. There will be circumstances where those who apply for admission to a particular academy do not represent all abilities, although they would represent a wide range of different abilities representative of the area.
Amendment 132 would require academies to provide for children of different academic abilities as opposed to children of different abilities. Section 99 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 defines “ability” as
“either general ability or ability in any particular subject or subjects”.
It is clear, in our view, that what is meant by “pupils of different abilities” within Clause 1(6) is the meaning that is already established within legislation: pupils with a range of different general abilities or achievements. This interpretation is supported by the relief from this duty in Clause 5(3) for existing grammar schools wishing to convert to become academies. Such a relief would not be necessary if “ability” did not encompass academic ability.
Amendments 46, 59, 131 and 183 would require any existing maintained grammar school or partially selective school to remove its selective admissions arrangements on conversion to academy status. To deny existing selective schools these freedoms, or to require them fundamentally to change their nature before being granted them, seems to be unreasonable.
Amendment 130 seeks to prevent any non-selective school that converts to become an academy from acquiring selective admission arrangements after conversion. On that point, I reassure noble Lords that Clauses 1(6)(c), 5(3) and 5(4) of the Bill prevent academies from selecting by academic ability, except where a maintained school with pre-existing academic selection converts to become an academy.
I should be clear that the only schools that will be able to select by ability are those listed in Clause 5(4). As the schools defined as “selective” within that clause do not include independent schools, any independent schools joining the academies sector will also not be able to select by academic ability.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Will my noble friend be open to at least thinking about a rewording of Clause 1(6)? He made a fair point about my amendment, but wording that is more clearly contrary to selection could be put in that subsection instead. That would resolve a miasma of anxiety around the Committee.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I understand that miasma of anxiety. I am due to meet my colleague shortly, and perhaps that is another issue that we can add to our list of issues to discuss.
As I said, I think it would be helpful if I set this out clearly in writing; as I go through this, I am conscious that some of it is quite technical. I shall write to the noble Baroness and put copies in the Library, and I hope that will help. In the mean time, in light of the explanation and the reassurance that I have sought to give, I hope that noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I thank the Minister for his response, and I look forward to receiving a fuller response in writing. I am sure that the letter will also be placed in the Library.
Given the academy provisions that already exist in law, it seems that the only point of bringing forward this Bill is to enable selective academies. I suppose that that is why one might choose to use quite strong terms. Having been a member of a Labour Government who made such a success of academies and having seen the transformation in the education that young people around the country have received, I feel very disappointed that the Government are not only starting with currently outstanding schools but taking the trouble to introduce selection into the academy programme. As I said, however, I look forward to hearing further from the Minister.
The Bill introduces selection, removes consultation and joins the free-school, free-market experiment by introducing a new funding mechanism for academies. I still feel very anxious about what it is trying to do given that, as my noble friend Lord Adonis said at the start of Committee, strong provisions already exist in law. In theory, apart from those provisions, there should not be a great difference—but these are really significant differences. The Minister needs to recognise the strength of feeling about these issues around the country. People have great concern about how we should go forward.
However, I made it clear that these were probing amendments. I look forward to understanding more about the Minister’s intentions. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, these technical amendments in my name are intended to correct errors in the Bill. I have already written to Peers to bring this matter to their attention. These amendments have no practical impact on the Bill or on how it operates.
Amendment 41 corrects a typographical error in the drafting of Clause 1, which refers to “agreement” when it should refer to “arrangements”. “Academy arrangements” is a generic term for funding under both “Academy agreement”, in Clause 1(2)(a), and “arrangements for Academy financial assistance”, in Clause 1(2)(b).
Amendments 185, 186 and 192 are technical amendments designed to reflect the fact that amendments to Section 337 of the Education Act 1996 made by Section 142(1) of the Education and Skills Act 2008 are already in force. The Bill currently also amends the predecessor provision. The amendments merely correct these errors. On that basis, I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley
“( ) if the school provides nursery or primary education, its curriculum for children under five years old is the Early Years Foundation Stage;”
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 53 and 54 in the same group. Amendment 52 probes the Government’s intentions with regard to the education and care of young children in nursery and reception classes in primary and all-through academy schools. It also seeks commitment from my noble friend the Minister that academies will be expected to provide the balance, age-appropriateness and play base of the early years foundation stage to very young children.
Many children under five are now in primary schools' nursery and reception classes and it is essential that their teachers are qualified and experienced in the early years. The early years foundation stage—which I shall call the EYFS, although that is not that much shorter—provides much needed unity of principle and purpose across the range of settings. It offers a single framework to ensure quality, equality of opportunity and safeguarding. There is a real commitment among early-years professionals to this agenda.
The EYFS was introduced in the Childcare Act 2006 and has been a statutory requirement for all providers of education and care to zero to five year-olds since September 2008. It provides a clear statutory framework and standards, and although it is relatively new, its ideas, standards and approach are not. It has grown out of a long tradition of providing education and care for babies and young children under five years old and attempts for the first time to ensure that, wherever children are educated and cared for, they and their families can expect the same standard of education and care. I give credit to the previous Government for its introduction. Although I feel that it is time to renew it in the light of experience, as it is too prescriptive, it is generally a good thing and should be adhered to by all providing education to this age group.
Academies do not have to follow the national curriculum for primary and secondary schools, but it is not clear what the intention is in relation to under-five year-olds in nursery and reception classes. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend the Minister the following questions. How many of the current all-through academies provide education for under-fives and, of those, how many follow the early years foundation stage? Is it the Government’s expectation that primary academies should follow the early years foundation stage for under-fives? How will the Government ensure that under-fives receive age-appropriate, play-based education in primary academies?
Amendment 53 probes the Government’s intentions for inspection of new academies in relation to education for young children under the early years foundation stage. The Secretary of State has indicated his intention to grant academy status automatically to schools deemed to be outstanding by Ofsted, alongside an intention generally to exempt those outstanding schools-turned-academies from further inspections. However, in relation to the EYFS and provision for under-fives, I am particularly concerned about removing academies from the inspection framework, given that inspection under the EYFS is relatively new and that the main driver behind the EYFS is to improve quality and standards in early childhood education and care. I am also concerned that the emphasis on engagement with parents in the current inspection framework may be lost, with detrimental effects on some schools’ commitment to engage with all parents, which is so important at nursery age.
Under the law, all providers of education and care to under-fives must be registered on the early years register of providers and must meet the legal welfare, learning and development requirements as set out in Section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006 and associated regulations in order to remain registered.
However, schools providing for children aged three to five are exempt from the register, and EYFS provision is inspected within the main schools inspection framework. Maintained, independent and non-maintained special schools are required to be registered only in respect of any provision they offer for children below the age of three, in recognition of the need for extra safeguards for the youngest and most vulnerable children. Can my noble friend explain how young children’s welfare, safeguarding, learning and development will be quality-assured in academy schools?
Perhaps I may draw one related matter to the Minister’s attention. If there is a problem in the early years setting, there is currently a practice of the proprietors deregistering it and opening it up again as a different business, thereby expunging the history of the problematic incident and making it impossible for Ofsted to inspect whether the failings that led to it have been corrected. Indeed, some places have been reregistered several times. I give as an example the case of a nursery in Chigwell, where the two year-old daughter of Mrs Shatl Malin was accidentally hanged in the playhouse where she had been unattended for 20 minutes. The proprietors have reregistered the setting, and the parents have therefore no closure or explanation and no assurances that no such thing can ever happen again. While we have the opportunity in this Bill, I should like to ensure that no academy offering early years education can walk through this loophole by deregistering.
On Amendment 54, one of the best aspects of recent workforce development is the importance of an integrated approach to working with children and families. This is exemplified in the children’s centre model. Again, I give credit to the previous Government for introducing this way of working. In children’s centres, children under five years old and their families can receive seamless integrated services and information. These services vary according to centre, but may be very wide and serve the real needs of families. Indeed, the coalition Government intend to locate a lot more health visitors in them, which I support. I would not want the independence of academies to pull children out of the integrated structures developed under the Every Child Matters agenda, which all parties supported. This is particularly relevant in relation to safeguarding issues. Will my noble friend the Minister clarify what support will be available to academies in developing safeguarding policies and in their implementation? What connections will academies have to children’s trusts and local safeguarding children boards and what impact will there be on children’s centres and extended services where they are co-located with primary schools wanting to apply for academy status? I beg to move.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I support the thrust of the noble Baroness’s amendments. Having visited several nurseries in the course of the Childcare Bill and followed the debates about the early years foundation stage, I believe that it is vital to have good-quality early years care. There is a real challenge in achieving that in this country; we start so far behind the Scandinavians. We have not had a strategy until recently in this area. Many of those working in it are poorly educated and poorly paid young women, and there is often a very high turnover of staff. The settings in schools may be different to that general picture, but I ask noble Lords to put themselves into the shoes of a three year-old being cared for by a woman who then goes—then another one comes and goes, and another one comes. That is a very black picture. I am sure that it is not generally the case, but there is that danger.
The early years foundation stage really helps in setting out clearly what the expectation should be and what these children should receive. In particular, every child in the nursery should have a key person. That should be the person who makes the relationship with the parent of the child and follows that child, changes the nappies and looks after that child. Others will have to take their place from time to time but, rather than the child being passed around from person to person, there is someone there with a particular special relationship with that child. That is an easy thing to lose if there are lots of poorly trained and poorly supported people and there is a high turnover of staff. Given the vulnerability of the children and the challenges to the sector, I would appreciate the reassurance of the Minister that this clear framework for practice in this area will be applied to those children in future.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I lend my support to these amendments, which I know at this stage are probing. I am very proud of the achievements of the last Government in relation to the under-fives and I acknowledge the kind remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. However, the fact is that millions of children have had a better start to life thanks to the considerable investment in free nursery education for all three to four year-olds and the creation of so many Sure Start children’s centres. My concern, which is shared by the Early Childhood Forum and others, is that it would appear that the authors of the Bill have given little thought to its effects on three to five year-olds.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked a number of very important questions including about the risk of removing academies from the inspection framework for the under-fives, the issues around welfare and safeguarding and the loophole over reregistration. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, put his finger on some of the important workforce challenges that this sector faces, including issues about the lack of experience of many staff working in the sector. That is why it is so important to maintain the integrity of the early years foundation stage. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that his department has thought very carefully about these matters around early years. If not, perhaps he can give us some hope that there will continue to be national safeguards and infrastructure to ensure that attention is given to the points raised by noble Lords. This is an important matter and we will come back to it on Report if we are not satisfied that it will be dealt with effectively.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I understand the points that have been made, particularly those made very forcefully by my noble friend Lady Walmsley about the need to be clear about arrangements for the very youngest in our schools. I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, too, in that regard. I know how much work my noble friends have done in this area, and I hope I can give some reassurance that the key safeguards they seek are already in place.
Amendment 52 would require academies that teach the under-fives to teach them the early years foundation stages of the national curriculum. Although I agree with my noble friends’ intention in this amendment, I would suggest that the amendment is unnecessary because academies are already required, under the Childcare Act 2006, to provide the early years foundation stage. That is spelled out explicitly in their funding agreement. This stage is more than just a curriculum, as it covers much broader outcomes for very young children, including issues such as social skills.
Amendment 53 would require academies to register as early years providers. The Childcare Act 2006 sets out the detailed circumstances in which some academies, as independent schools, are required to register on the early years register. It is not appropriate to require all academies providing nursery or primary education to register as early years settings if they do not necessarily meet the precise, detailed requirements for registration that the Childcare Act lays down. Some will meet those requirements, and will be required to register, but others will not. It is a complex area, but it is covered by the Childcare Act and academies are covered by that.
Amendment 54 is intended to ensure that academy Sure Start centres continue to provide integrated children’s centre services. We would certainly encourage schools with such centres to apply to become academies, as we would want them to continue to provide the excellent services they currently do. The particular circumstances would need to be worked through with the department by any school that had a Sure Start centre when it applied for academy status, but that is certainly something that we would want to discuss with them. It would require decisions to be made on a case-by-case basis, and we would prefer to have that flexibility rather than make particular mention of them in the Bill. I understand my noble friends’ concerns about the future of these important children’s centres in schools, and I recognise the progress made in recent years on that. However, any issues which will inevitably arise in each case will be carefully considered as part of the conversion process. We certainly do not want to lose the progress that has been made.
I hope that that provides some reassurance to noble Lords and that my noble friend may feel able to withdraw her probing amendment.
Baroness Walmsley
I thank the Minister for his reply and other Members of the Committee for their contributions. I am gratified that he is able to tell me that Amendment 52 is unnecessary, because the early years foundation stage will be taught. I will have to go away and look again at the detail of that. On Amendment 53, I am not quite clear what the Minister was saying. He said that some settings will be required to register and are already, and that some will not. I wonder whether he would be kind enough to write to me and clarify that, because I did not quite understand the reasons—perhaps he did not really go into them—why some do not need to register and will not. If they are to provide the education for that age group, I would have thought that they all had to be treated the same, because it really is important that the standard is kept up. That is what particularly concerns me.
Concerning the Sure Start centres, my noble friend suggested that they should be looked at on a case-by-case basis. I would have thought that those current centres are so proud of their reputation—and jealous to guard it—that if they felt that in applying to become an academy they would lose that multi-agency, multi-professional ethos, they simply would not apply. I certainly hope that they would not, anyway. I will have to look rather carefully at my noble friend’s reply to see whether I need to probe him any further, but I would be grateful if he could write a more detailed response on my Amendment 53 and put a copy in the Library, because I really did not quite understand it. However, in the mean time I beg to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 52 withdrawn.
Amendments 53 to 60 not moved.
Amendment 60A
“( ) the school offers a guarantee of minimum educational standards to pupils and parents (a pupil and parent guarantee) as set out in schedule (Pupil and parent guarantees)”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I shall briefly give the coalition Government another opportunity to think again about the events that took place during the wash-up. The Committee will be well aware of the Labour Government’s commitment to deliver for parents and pupils a guarantee around the quality and style of education delivered to them through our schools around the country, so we now turn to the amendments in relation to the pupil-parent guarantee for academies.
Amendments 60A and 170A would restore the guarantees that we on this side of the Committee aimed to provide for pupils and parents. Those guarantees were, sadly, blocked by the Conservative Party during the negotiations between our two parties on the legislation outstanding before Parliament in the run-up to the last election. Those guarantees would have given pupils and parents assurances of a decent education whatever school they attended, so that every local school would be a good school, delivering minimum standards for all.
We set it out in statute that the guarantees should include: catch-up support in the three Rs for primary school pupils or for those starting secondary school who fall behind, which would have included one-to-one tuition and small group work; online information for parents on their child’s behaviour, progress and attainment; a named personal tutor for every secondary school pupil; guarantees on school behaviour through home-school agreements; the right to learn triple sciences at GCSE; a guarantee of regular sport and exercise; and the opportunity for every primary school pupil to learn a musical instrument—on which, if the Minister wants to see that as my contribution toward Amendment 68, then in the interests of time I am happy if he wants to come back to me on musical tuition in his response here.
This is about giving parents and pupils the information and the awareness of what they can expect from their school system, so that no child should miss out and so that every school should be a good school. Now, we have heard a great deal from the coalition Government about the desire to empower parents and to give more power to communities. Of course, we very much want that, so I will be very interested to hear how the noble Lord can build on the work that we did in government to make sure that the best really is on offer for all our children in our schools.
Baroness Walmsley
The noble Baroness invites my noble friend to return to the days of an old new Labour Government; I do not agree with her. Actually, we did not agree with her at the time. We spoke against these pupil-parent guarantees as being motherhood and apple pie without any legal levers at all, so she will not be surprised to learn that we do not support her amendment.
Lord Bates
Indeed, the guarantees were not just without any meaningful evidence as to what they actually meant, but without any resources so that teachers would be able to undertake that additional, onerous responsibility.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
If I might add another voice from the Back Benches: to try to guarantee to every parent that their child will have an ideally good school—what a wonderful thought that would be. People have been trying ever since the end of the Second World War to provide a good school for every child; successive Governments have not succeeded in doing so. There are still an awful lot of schools which fail an awful lot of children, so to try to put into legislation a promise to parents that they will have a good school for their child is really an absurd suggestion.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, when my children were at primary school I recall the primary head teacher telling me with great joy one day that there had been a very large package delivered in the school playground. They were not sure where it came from and had asked the police to inspect it. They had indeed blown it up; it was 400 pages of further instructions from the Department for Education. Of course, we agree with many of the aspirations set out in the proposed new schedule but, as the noble Baroness will have heard from behind the Front Bench, we are committed to giving schools more freedoms to get on with the job, with fewer detailed instructions taking less time away from teachers for teaching. What she is suggesting is very much the kind of approach that we want to move away from.
As my noble friend Baroness Walmsley and others have said, writing things down on paper and spending a long time negotiating them does not necessarily make them happen. We therefore share the aspirations but not the method. For most of us on this side of the Committee, part of what was wrong with education policy under the previous Government was the overdetailed instructions and prescriptions to schools, which we all know that teachers grew intensely to dislike. The aim of this Bill and of the Bills which will follow it—a larger Bill is promised for this autumn—is to free teachers to talk with parents and deal with pupils, and not to spend an immense amount of time with pieces of paper and negotiations. I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, of course I listened with great interest to the noble Lord’s contribution. The pupil and parent guarantees were actually about empowering parents and pupils so that they can ensure that, in partnership with their schools and their local authority or academy trust, they can get the things that they need for their children. It is about looking at the education service that this country provides from a bottom-up perspective—looking at it from the point of view of the parent and child and of what goes on in the classroom. If we think back to Second Reading, how chastened might the coalition Government perhaps have felt when my noble friend Lady Morris criticised them for focusing so much on structure? Here we have a chance for them, just for a moment, to think about one-to-one tuition, for example. What has happened to one-to-one tuition? We have gone from a situation where the Government were committed to guaranteeing it in statute, with a process through local government—
Baroness Walmsley
Will the noble Baroness be patient until the pupil premium comes along?
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I cannot wait for the opportunity to discuss the pupil premium. There we have a real chance to see how the grand words will unfold into real benefits for pupils in schools. That is what I am interested in and what the pupil guarantee was all about. That is what this focus on structure and structural tinkering leaves wanting, which is what I am concerned about. I am very interested to debate how the pupil premium will work. An awful lot rests on what the pupil premium delivers—not just for disadvantaged pupils in this country, but for the coalition Government. I am happy at this stage to withdraw my amendment and I look forward to the debate continuing.
“( ) An Academy must operate in partnership with its local authority, and the maintained schools in that local authority area, on arrangements for the permanent exclusion of pupils.”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I will focus now on exclusions, which are always a key issue for schools, as we know. I am sure noble Lords will agree that exclusions by the academies proposed in the Bill will be no exception. There are many reasons why academies are more likely, historically, to exclude a greater proportion of their pupils than other maintained schools, especially in the early years of their creation. Often, when we look at the data on academies, it appears that by definition they result in a higher level of exclusions. However, we should not expect that those challenging schools which convert to academies under the old scheme would not have higher exclusion rates than other schools. That is the situation of the past. The figures show that exclusions tend to rise in the early days but fall as academies become more established. This is an example of how successful academies have been. In part this is because we have insisted—and this is key—that academies participate in local behaviour partnerships.
The then Department for Children, Schools and Families published revised guidance about behaviour and attendance partnerships for schools on 31 March 2010. The main provisions take account of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, which makes it a requirement for all maintained secondary schools and academies to co-operate and form behaviour and attendance partnerships to improve behaviour and tackle persistent absence among pupils. That is the present situation. The partnerships must also report annually on their progress to the children’s trust board, which is in flux at the moment. These provisions will, I believe, come into force on 1 September 2010, unless the Minister is going to advise us of a different situation. By working in partnership on such issues, rather than working in isolation, schools could achieve great benefits—the benefits of shared physical and financial resources and people; the joint commissioning of the provision of shared expertise; and the sharing of knowledge of effective practice between schools. Those schools in behaviour partnerships are asked to work together to seek a reduction in differential rates of permanent exclusion or persistent absence of pupils with SEN, pupils from a particular ethnic minority group or pupils who are eligible for free school meals.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I am unhappy about these amendments on several counts. First, they seem to impose, again, external restrictions on academies, whereas the whole object of the Bill is to take away all the impositions that have been put on them. Secondly, Amendment 72 would give the local authority an overriding say in the exclusion of pupils. Surely, if a school is to be free and able to manage its own affairs, it should not have to operate in partnership with a local authority that no longer has any statutory or financial authority over it.
I have discussed these amendments with the principal of one academy, who assures me that academies are happy to operate independently and in informal collaboration with other schools in their area, though not necessarily within the same local authority, particularly over aspects of their work which might well affect those other schools. For example, if a pupil is excluded from an academy, it might well be that another school would be the better and right place for that pupil to go. In that case there is nothing to stop Fred, the principal of one academy, calling Mary, the principal of a maintained school, and saying, “Look, we’ve got a lad here who isn’t fitting into the academy well and is behaving very badly. We’re intending to exclude him; would you be willing to take him on?”, and so on. Trusting professionals in the service to do sensible things and work together on a collegiate and happy basis is far more likely to work than all this imposition of things from outside and putting them in legislation. I hope that the noble Baroness will reflect on the lack of trust which this kind of amendment suggests.
The Earl of Listowel
The reassuring words of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, are very helpful. When I visit special institutions for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties or children’s homes, I am concerned that often one finds that the children with the most severe difficulties are pooled together in one place. They become difficult to manage, difficult for each other, and difficult for those who are caring for them. When comparing Denmark and this country, one of the differences is that Denmark intervenes and takes children into care earlier. Children’s homes are used more and there is more of a mixed bag of children in them. Thus, the temperature of the place is lowered. As a result of this provision, I would not want to see the most difficult children pushed into one place. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that further thought will be given to how we can support head teachers in academies and non-academies to work together. For example, a small amount of resources could be put into a yearly local get-together where such people would be able to speak to and to meet each other.
Baroness Wilkins
Amendment 97 does not sit easily with the other two amendments in this group and is on a separate area. Therefore, we are moving on. This probing amendment seeks firm reassurance from the Government on how the Academies Bill may impact on specialist support services for children with low-incidence special educational needs and disabilities. I am focusing my remarks on specialist support services for deaf children, but these issues are applicable to other children with low-incidence needs, such as those with visual impairments.
The National Deaf Children’s Society, to which I am indebted for its advice on this issue, estimates that there are more than 35,000 deaf children in England, of whom 90 per cent attend mainstream schools. However, deafness is a low-incidence need. As a result, in many schools it may be many years before a deaf child enrols. The reality is that deaf children are spread unevenly in mainstream schools across any one area. There is no reason why a deaf child cannot achieve as well as their hearing friends, provided that they get the support that they need from the start. This support is normally provided through local authority specialist support services, which cover a wide range. They include providing the school with amplification equipment, such as microphones; ensuring that there are follow-up checks and maintenance; training mainstream teachers on how to support deaf children; and, most importantly, providing direct support to families to help with pre-school language development.
These services are normally funded by the local authority, but academies will be independent from them. I am therefore seeking reassurance that deaf children will still receive the support that they need in a school system with a greater number of independent academies. Currently, in local authority maintained schools, schools funding is allocated to local authorities by the Government. While most of the money is then delegated to schools, local authorities will usually retain or top-slice some money to fund services, such as the specialist support services for deaf children. The service then provides outreach support free of charge to all local authority maintained schools in its area. Where a school becomes an academy, any money retained or top-sliced will be taken away from the local authority and given straight to academies, which will be expected to buy in any specialist support that their pupils will need. But if a child has a low-incidence need, such as deafness, the cost of meeting this specialist support to one individual academy will be proportionately greater. The economies of scale that operate at a local authority level will not exist at individual academy level. I am deeply concerned that any extra funding that academies receive will not cover the costs for these necessary services, which may result in deaf children not getting the support that they need. This is not a theoretical risk.
The National Deaf Children’s Society is already aware of a number of cases in existing academies where deaf children have gone without the support that they need. Last year, when the NDCS did a survey of local authority specialist support services for deaf children, it asked whether any academies in their areas bought in support for any deaf children who were enrolled at those academies. I am shocked that nearly three-quarters of academies did not buy in any support, which raises alarm bells as to how deaf children in these academies are being supported, if at all. Surely, that is an inefficient way of funding specialist support services for deaf children. This top-slice money that academies will receive will go to all academies, even if they do not have a deaf child on their rolls. Does the Minister share my concern that this will be poor value for money?
My amendment aims to address these concerns. The first part would amend the School Finance (England) Regulations 2008 with the intended effect of moving funding for specialist support services for low-incidence special educational needs from the schools budget to the core LEA budget. This would prevent funding for specialist support services for low-incidence needs being top-sliced and spent inefficiently in the way in which I have described. I would welcome a statement from the Minister on how the department will address this matter.
I am all too aware that local authority specialist support services in some areas are not as good as they should be. For that reason, the second part of the amendment would also give the Secretary of State the power to make alternative arrangements if this is the case. I believe that the Government need to take urgent action to set up a working group to consider whether alternative arrangements, such as parent-led services, might offer a better way in those areas of delivering such services. I urge the Minister to ensure that any such working group includes representatives of children with low-incidence needs as well as their parents.
However, any alternative arrangements need to be carefully thought through and planned to ensure continuity in the service that deaf children receive. It is not good enough simply to throw our cards in the air and hope for the best. Government figures show that deaf children are already 42 per cent less likely to do as well in their GCSEs as other children. It is vital that this Bill helps us to ensure that deaf children get the support they need, regardless of the type of school they attend. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me on this. Should he not do so, I will return to this issue on Report.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I very much support the probing amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Wilkins. I agree with my noble friend and I am glad that she indicated that it is not suitably grouped. I share her concerns over the impact of the Academies Bill on specialist support services for low-incidence special educational needs and disabilities. I also am grateful to the National Deaf Children’s Society for its briefing.
In particular, I am concerned about the impact of the Bill on outreach services to pre-school children. Parents are at the heart of a child’s learning, as we would all agree, but the parents of a child with special educational needs or a disability need extra help, as well as the child. In many cases, this extra help is provided by the local specialist support services. We have heard about the important role that local authorities play in that. For example, the parents of children with communication difficulties need guidance and support on how to communicate effectively with their child. Without such support, it would be far more difficult for these children to acquire language and to develop communication skills at the same rate as their peers. A huge responsibility rests with helping the parents.
We risk condemning children with these communication difficulties to a life of underachievement before they even begin school. We have already heard from my noble friend Lady Wilkins just how far behind they can fall if they do not have early access to the services they need. Almost certainly, when such children start school, the school they attend will be forced to provide costly catch-up support.
There is a range of other pre-school services that families of other disabled children will find invaluable. I am very concerned that if funding for these services is delegated to academies, they may be unable or unwilling to invest in pre-school services. I am also concerned that it may be unsustainable for existing providers to do this if much of their funding is reduced as a result of the Bill. Like my noble friend Lady Wilkins, I would warmly welcome reassurance from the Minister that the Bill will not risk undermining these valuable pre-school services for disabled children. We are all urging the earliest possible testing for special needs. If ever there was a need, it is for this group of children.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
I shall direct my comments to Amendment 72, although I also support Amendment 73. On this occasion, I shall disagree as strongly as I might with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry.
Of all the freedoms that academies may be granted, it is the freedom not to take part in the education of vulnerable excluded children that worries me most. This amendment is important and, if we do not pass it, we do so at our peril. Quite frankly, academies are not queueing up to take these excluded children. The children are often difficult to teach, they come from homes with difficulties, they do not do anything for the school in terms of its position in the league tables or its Ofsted inspection and they do not improve the school’s social image. Let us say it as it is: these kids are not top of the pecking order in terms of schools wanting to take them on.
We also know that traditionally we have dealt poorly with these children. If they go to a pupil referral unit, all the evidence is that they are very rarely reintegrated into the mainstream education system, they do not pass their exams, they do not continue in education, they do not fulfil their potential and they do not carry on to university or have the life chances that they might have. That is the problem that we are trying to solve.
This problem started in my day—and one knows how one becomes precious over things that began when one was in the department, so I apologise for that. Co-operation has now been built among schools so that they say two things—that their prime responsibility is to their children but that there is a generosity of spirit that accepts an obligation towards children in the community. That has meant that schools have had that generosity of spirit and have been prepared to take other children on to their rolls, rather than having them excluded to a pupil referral unit. That is my first point: if you can keep an excluded child or a child who is not settling in school within mainstream education, that has to be better than excluding them from mainstream education. That will not happen if you leave it just to market forces.
The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, made an interesting point when she talked about an academy phoning another school to say, “We have a child who does not seem to be settling or fitting in here. Will you take them?”. That is the way it will be. The middle-class schools that are already full will be able to say, “No, because we are full”, while the schools that will have to, by law, say yes are those that serve deprived areas. Those that have spare places will have to take on such children. The schools will already have children such as those, whom they will be working their socks off not to exclude, and they may not have the capacity to deal with these children.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I hope that the noble Baroness will accept that principals of academies may well share our concern for the most deprived and difficult children. The principals of academies whom I have talked to have expressed every bit as much concern and care for the difficult and disadvantaged children in society as we have in this House, who do not have to run schools. There seems to be a kind of arrogance on our part in assuming that, unless we control the schools, put things in legislation and make them do it, they will not of their own free will wish to do the right thing.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
But the evidence is on my side. The number of exclusions by academies is very great, while the number of children at risk of exclusion by non-academies being taken in by academies is very small. That is why the amendment is important. This is not about the Government saying to schools, “You must do this, that or the other”; it is about a partnership that already exists. We are not instructing schools to form these partnerships; they exist already. The schools work together and make professional judgments. There are times when a child needs to be out of a school. Such children do not settle, the relationships are broken and the damage is done. They need to be elsewhere. The best system is when schools, through generosity of spirit and professional judgment, almost come to an arrangement to help each other out. By doing so, they also help children out.
The only point of including the local authority in the amendment is that someone has to broker the arrangement. I do not care who it is. All that the local authority does is broker the partnership that provides this better way of dealing with excluded children. The local authority cannot tell a school to take a child—and that is good. All that the local authority does is hold the ring for families of schools to make professional judgments about where these excluded children should go. My prediction, which I know is accurate, is that if academies are allowed to exclude themselves from this partnership of schools that deal with these most vulnerable children, a lot of academies will do exactly that and the burden will fall on schools that are not academies but are still in the partnerships.
I have listened carefully to the Minister. As well as emphasising independence, he has emphasised partnership. Academies under his Government have to partner with an underperforming school to raise standards. What better way is there of cementing that relationship and philosophy than by his Government also saying that academies should stay in the partnership and play their part in making sure that we deal with our excluded children as effectively as we can? We have not done that well in the past, but the partnerships that have flourished in the past few years provide the evidence that that is the best way to proceed.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I want to say how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and, unusually, disagree with my noble friend Lady Perry. The points that she makes about partnerships are precisely correct; indeed, a number of academies are part of these behaviour partnerships, which are working extremely well. In exactly the same way, many school confederations are working well. Many of us are now saying, “What a good thing confederations are”, although initially some of us were a little hesitant about the Government forcing schools into confederations. Where there have been confederations, many members of staff have found them very useful.
I particularly endorse Amendment 73 on the need for academies to participate in the behaviour partnerships in exactly the same way as other locally maintained state schools should. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, getting on the telephone and talking to other heads is precisely what it is all about. The partnership does not need to be heavy-handed or forced; it can be very light touch.
I also agree very much with the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. The low-incidence special needs can be overlooked and it is extremely important that they are not disregarded.
We are all concerned about these exclusions because we do not want these young people to fall by the wayside into the category that we call NEETs—not in employment, education or training. They are drop-outs from society, so it is important that we meet their needs. Many pupils with low-incidence special educational needs get disregarded. They are not a great nuisance. They sit at the back of the classroom, playing games and talking among themselves, but they do not get educated as they should because nobody has looked at what their needs are. We have got much better at this over the past few years, but it is vital that academies, too, pay attention to these young people. The Minister has promised to come back with another look at the process surrounding special educational needs and I hope that he will incorporate the issue in the review that he is undertaking.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My Lords, as another former Secretary of State, perhaps I may say how strongly I agree with what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, as well as by my noble friend Lady Sharp. I will be brief. First, like other noble Lords, I have first-hand knowledge of the fact that, in some cases, schools have decided not to accept a child with special educational needs—for example, one who is dyslexic, dyspraxic, deaf or blind—when they believe that that would lower their standing in the league tables. The league tables have been devastating in that way, by making it difficult often for an ambitious and able head teacher who values their position in the league tables to take such children. There is a danger, as my noble friend Lady Sharp said, that if you begin to regard the position of children with special educational needs, or children who are difficult, as somehow excluding them from being part of the academy, that academy will become still further removed from the problems of the whole of society. I feel strongly about this.
Perhaps I may refer to the interesting comments of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about Denmark. It is interesting also that the incidence of permanent exclusion in Scotland is proportionately a long way below that in England, because Scotland has chosen to go for short-term, temporary exclusions rather than for permanent exclusions that far too often condemn the child for the rest of their life to being outside society and often lead them straight on to being young offenders and things of that kind. I have a great deal of sympathy with what was said by both noble Lords. I hope that the Government will seriously consider a different kind of approach to children who are excluded.
The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, whom I congratulate on her open-mindedness on the issue, has indicated that partnerships play a large part in this. My noble friend Lady Sharp has seconded the view that they are crucial and significant. However, beyond that we must look at the whole situation of excluded children: why they are excluded, whether earlier intervention would save them from being excluded and whether temporary exclusions should be more common than permanent exclusions, with their devastating effect of taking the child almost altogether out of society.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I agree in many ways with what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has just said. We face a long-running problem of how to deal with kids who get themselves into a position where they need to be excluded from school. She said that the Scottish example is that schools retain ownership of these pupils. You cannot throw them away because they are still part of you. Even if they are not on the premises, the school has a commitment to help with their education.
That is one approach. Another might be through the use of the pupil premium, when we get that going. The kids will suddenly become much more valuable because they have been excluded. The resources to help them and deal with them will travel with them. Certainly, there is scope for free schools to innovate in this area. Many of the children’s homes that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about are privately run. The troublesome end of education has become increasingly well looked after by the private sector. There is a real opportunity. I do not expect to hear it today, but I hope for a commitment from my noble friend to deal with this. We have a chance, if we are sharp and inventive enough, to make real progress.
The problem raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, is rather more intractable. Imagine that I said to your Lordships, “Right, there are 800 of us or thereabouts. I will take £500 from one of you, but don’t worry, I will give each of you £1”. That is all very nice, as 799 of us will go and spend the pound and feel a bit better off, but someone will feel very upset when they get a bill for £500 and only have £1 to pay it with. That is the situation that we risk landing ourselves in with schools with low-incidence problems of any kind. If we do not operate this on a pool basis so that the school with the problem can find the funds, all the other schools that do not have the problem will have spent the money and we will be in trouble. Again, I am interested in how we will solve this in a world where not 200 but 2,000 schools are academies and the problem becomes much more obvious.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, perhaps I may say how much I agree with what my noble friend Lady Williams said about the perverse effect of league tables. The good instincts of many school heads that I advocated in response to what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said have been stifled by the imposition of league tables. The heads want to help these disadvantaged children but dare not do so in case it pulls them down the league tables, with all the perverse effects that that would have on their finances, reputation and everything else. I hope that we can continue to have faith and trust in the good instincts of those who run schools and that we can release them from the perverse effects of collecting detailed information and statistics simply for league table purposes.
The Earl of Listowel
Again, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, has said. As far as I know, the best performing country, Finland, does not have league tables but relies on excellent teachers and trusts them to make the right decisions for children. As I recall, Finland also does not have exclusions, but has smaller, very mixed-ability classes.
Two things come to mind in this debate. The two amendments in the group are well related. There is the danger with academies that they will not be so well supported by, for instance, the good approach of having a child psychotherapist working regularly with teachers to talk about particular problematic children. That is a good approach, but it is easy to think that it is too expensive and a bit of a luxury and that an easier option would be to move a difficult child somewhere else. I have sympathy with both sides of the argument. Given that these things are already established, I would prefer to keep the status quo, because league tables have a perverse influence. I look forward to the Minister’s response. If he could say a little more about the plans for league tables and how they will be improved, that would be helpful.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Lucas said, this is a long-running problem. What we have heard from all around the Chamber this evening is that this matter concerns us all, across the parties, and that none of us is entirely sure that we have the complete and final answer. We are all aware that the early academies had an unusually high rate of exclusions. That was partly because they were going into the toughest areas and trying to reimpose discipline in schools that had lost control—there were special circumstances. I am happy to say that the figures have now come down.
We are also all aware that league tables have had a perverse effect not only on academies. I am well aware of one or two secondary schools in my part of Yorkshire of which it has been said that they have tried to avoid taking on difficult children from difficult areas precisely because of the impact that they knew it would have on their standing in league tables. I am afraid that I am unable to say anything specific about our plans on league tables; we will have to write to the noble Earl. As he will know, the question of how one can shape league tables to recognise the starting point as well as the output is being discussed, again across the parties and across the expert community, because it is recognised that league tables have had a perverse effect. We are engaged on this.
I will also say that these amendments were correctly grouped, because difficult children are often defined in all sorts of ways. I know little about the problems of educating children with autism, which is a low-incidence disability and special need. That also, in a sense, makes it easier for a school to say, “Let’s exclude that child. Let that child go somewhere else”. Therefore, there is an overlap. Children can be seen as difficult in a number of different ways.
On Amendment 72, I emphasise that academies are already required, through their funding arrangements, to take their fair share of challenging pupils through their involvement in local in-year fair access protocols. This will continue to be the case for all new academies, so they do not get out of this obligation. They should be free to co-operate with local partners in managing exclusions but, again, there is a question for the coalition of how one writes that down and in how much detail. The previous Labour Government were always in favour of prescribing everything in the most minute detail—usually twice a year, each time the name of the department or the Secretary of State changed. This, as the noble Baroness will of course admit, is a different approach.
Academies are regulated by their funding agreements, which require that they act in accordance with the law on exclusions as though the academy were a maintained school and that they have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on exclusions, including in relation to any appeals process. I hope that that provides assurance that academies have to follow the law on exclusions in the same way as maintained schools.
I turn to the subject of low-incidence disabilities. We recognise that this is a continuing problem, especially where there are only a very small number of young people in a district with those particular needs. Again, partnerships among schools will clearly be the best way forward.
Academies’ funding for SEN is paid on a formula basis by the Young People’s Learning Agency. If a pupil with one of the different forms of low-incidence SEN attracts individually assigned resources as a top-up to the formula funding, the local authority will pay this from its schools budget and will continue to be responsible for monitoring the provision. If the academy fails to secure such provision, it will be in breach of its funding agreement and the YPLA can ultimately investigate following a complaint. Therefore, measures are already in train. I am not saying that they will entirely resolve the problem, just as under the previous Government a number of other measures did not entirely resolve the problem. We all recognise that this is one of the most difficult issues in education in England and we will all need to continue to monitor and to work with others—
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
Can the Minister explain how this will be monitored? He said that, if it is a low-incidence special educational need, the YPLA will be responsible for paying an extra premium in respect of that need. However, the YPLA is a payment agency, not an inspection agency. How will it monitor matters to ensure that needs are met in an academy?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am not sure that I can provide an instant answer on that. Particularly in relation to low-incidence disabilities, whether it is to do with deaf or autistic children or those with other needs, a specialist voluntary organisation will often also be doing its best to monitor the situation. Therefore, when I say “following a complaint”, very often the relevant specialist society will be doing its best to support the pupil and will make sure that the YPLA and the local authority are informed and concerned if the need falls short. However, we are looking to develop partnerships among schools. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, went a good deal wider than this and spoke about young people in care going beyond the education sector to the other local agencies that deal with difficult young people. That is the way in which we have to go forward. On that basis of reassurance, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, on this occasion and given the hour, I have set aside my 2,000-word speech. I shall think carefully about what the Minister has said. I, too, was concerned by the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and the idea that we can just leave the matter to trust. We know that, of the academies that exist, a very large number—I do not have the exact number to hand—currently take part in behaviour partnerships and they work. However, it is the ones that do not do so that I am worried about.
I shall read the report of the debate. It has been a good discussion and helpful in clarifying for me the Government’s position. I was concerned to hear the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Wilkins and was interested in the noble Lord’s response. However, again, we come down to the academy agreement. When we are talking about a change from the number of academies being in the hundreds to potentially all schools in the country being academies, we have to think much more ambitiously about how we can make these partnerships work.
Baroness Wilkins
Before my noble friend withdraws her amendment, perhaps I may say that I regret that I am not reassured by the Minister’s words. However, I shall read them carefully and should like to consult my advisers. It is essential that the support services are kept together and maintained as a core service, but at the moment it does not sound as though they will be. I shall reflect on this issue.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I was about to say that I am happy to withdraw my amendment.
Gulf War Illnesses
(13 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Morris of Manchester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in addressing the problems and needs of veterans of the first Gulf War with still undiagnosed illnesses, they will be taking into account the findings of the congressionally mandated and funded US Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, particularly those on exposures to pyridostigmine bromide and organophosphates.
Lord Morris of Manchester
My Lords, this debate is about the brave men and women, veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf War, now in broken health with still undiagnosed illnesses, who were prepared to lay down their lives in our service in the most toxic war in western military history, and the bereaved families of those who did so.
I am most grateful to the noble Lords who will be following me in the debate and am especially glad to see here the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. I know that the House well understands my admiration of the inestimable value of their services to Gulf War veterans.
The noble Lord, Lord Astor, has my congratulations on his well merited elevation to the government Front Bench. For more than 12 years until today, we have sung from the same hymn sheet on Gulf War illnesses; and I can assure him that, even if today his hymn sheet varies somewhat from mine, I know he will act with all his customary integrity.
The timeliness of our debate is undoubted anywhere in your Lordships’ House. Indeed, in this 20th year since the end of the first Gulf War and with the Ministry of Defence still in conflict with the afflicted and bereaved over claims for more adequate support, the debate is seen as long overdue.
I have non-pecuniary interests to declare as Honorary Parliamentary Adviser to the Royal British Legion—the authentic voice of the ex-service community—and the National Vice-President of the War Widows’ Association. A further interest I must declare is that, in January 2002, the United States Congress co-opted me, uniquely for a non-American, to serve on its committee of inquiry into Gulf War illnesses, from whose deliberations federal funding of the congressionally-mandated Research Advisory Committee (RAC) on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses ensued. That is why I was asked to speak at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington DC at the launch of the RAC's historic report in November 2008. It explains also why my continuing links with executive Government, Members of Congress and institutions like the US Institute of Medicine (IoM) remain strong.
Those links are of high relevance today when the Ministry of Defence is in denial not only of the IoM's own statement of the facts about its interest in the RAC's findings, but also of easily accessible factual information on the new US Administration's positive response to the RAC's report. Even the announcement by the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs, General Eric Shinseki, on improved healthcare and benefits for veterans and the fundamental change in the direction of US policy on Gulf War illnesses, is ignored by the MoD. Yet when the RAC’s report was published in November 2008, notwithstanding its huge importance to British veterans, the MoD stated and it was reported to the House that it could not comment on the report until the IoM had peer-reviewed its findings. We were further told that the IoM’s review would not be published until February 2010 and that the MoD would then consider both the RAC's report and the IoM's fictional peer review.
This unconscionable delay was in spite of the RAC's deeply disturbing finding on the real, serious and potentially deadly effects of neurotoxic exposures to which almost all coalition troops were subjected. That they would be publishing a peer-review of the RAC's report was at once flatly denied by the IoM, who had already stated that they were not and would not be peer reviewing the RAC's report. It would of course have been preposterous and highly questionable legally for the IoM to undertake a peer-review of a report from a congressionally-mandated and funded committee packed with eminent medical scientists, all leaders in their fields and based on 1,840 scientific communications, the vast majority of which had appeared in peer-reviewed journals, most of the remainder having been included because of the repute of their authors.
Apologists say that the IoM had in fact been asked ministerially to undertake a peer-review of the RAC's findings and that the MoD was basing itself on a reported announcement that James Peake, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs in the Bush administration, was referring the report to the IoM; but within days of his reported announcement, Secretary Peake had become the out-going Secretary: not just a lame duck but a dead one; and crouching behind a dead duck is not the most dignified posture from which to conduct policy-making on new help for war veterans in pressing need. Of course the MoD could have clarified the position by making a single telephone call to the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
The IoM's reaction to the MoD's version of its role vis-à-vis the RAC's report had been swift and sharp. It came from Roberta Wedge, the institute's senior future programmes officer, whose statement left no one in any doubt about how offensive they found that version of their role. Dr Judith A Salerno, the executive director of the IoM, had already told me in a letter on its role that the IoM had,
“not been tasked with a review of the RAC report”,
that it had not been nor would it be conducting a peer review and ipso facto would not be publishing a review of the report as stated by the MoD, in February 2010 or at any other date.
Meanwhile General Shinseki, leaving aside the keen controversy about the falsification of the IoM's role, made it plain that he had not been and would not be waiting for any comment from the IoM. Rather, having carefully studied the RAC's findings, he had acted and, in the view of Gulf veterans here, so should we have done. Shinseki had ordered an immediate review of the files of many thousands of Gulf veterans to establish, among other purposes, to what neurotoxic exposures they had been subjected and he spoke of,
“challenging all the assumptions made for 20 years”,
and,
“historic change in how the Department for Veterans Affairs would in future be considering Gulf War veterans illnesses”,
since when many new initiatives have been taken, including one on help for veterans with multi-symptom illness, in terms both of healthcare and disability benefits.
Of course, February 2010 has come and gone and time has falsified the replies given to noble Lords after the RAC’s report was published. That is why there is such determination now all across the ex-service community to prevent any further delay in addressing the implications of the report for British veterans of the conflict.
It was while reflecting on all this that I recalled a moving letter from Samantha Thompson, the widow of a Gulf War veteran who had been decorated by Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister, at a ceremony held at 10 Downing Street, for his conspicuous bravery. Samantha told me in her letter that she and her seven year-old daughter,
“would have been far better treated had her husband, Nigel, been in the United States and not the British Armed Forces”.
Her anguish was shared by many other widows and by Gulf veterans who were trying to cope with still undiagnosed illnesses, some of them terminally ill, who should surely have been spared the strain and hurtful and demeaning indignities of still further delay in reaching closure on their claims for more adequate help. There was no delay in the response of Nigel Thompson and of all other Gulf veterans to the call of duty in 1990-91. Nor must there be any further delay now, 20 years on from the start of the conflict, in discharging in full our debt of honour to them.
It is among the highest duties of parliamentary life to vouchsafe just treatment for those who, alone in this country, contract with the state to sacrifice their lives in its service. That is why this debate is taking place in your Lordships' House this evening.
Lord Craig of Radley
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, on securing this debate. It allows the new Administration the opportunity to indicate their approach to a problem which has been lying for far too long in the not-yet-settled tray. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, to his new ministerial responsibility. I remind the House that I was Chief of Defence Staff at the time of the first Gulf War. We knew that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. He had used them against his own people in Halabja only two years before in 1988 when 5,000 people were killed in a most dreadful way. We thus had to take all reasonable care before we attacked the Iraqi forces to protect our own troops in the event of a toxic attack. This we did, and rightly so. The alternative of not taking steps and then suffering toxic attacks and multiple deaths or illnesses would have been unforgivable. Noble Lords will agree that it is the duty of government to do all that they can to assist and compensate any who were made ill or incapacitated in the conflict.
As is well known, many veterans have suffered a variety of illnesses and some have died early. Time does not allow me to catalogue the series of promises and steps taken by earlier Conservative and the previous Labour Governments, but at no time has there been confidence that government treatment, both practically and emotionally, has been worthy of the sacrifice and loyalty shown by the men and women afflicted. Those familiar with the story will be aware that the veterans concerned feel that they have had a raw deal and their plight has not been followed up as thoroughly and expeditiously as it should. The MoD in particular has been seen as the uncaring, obstructive face of officialdom, lacking in the fair treatment of veterans who were clearly ill but felt that their plight was met with no more than vapid promises and little proactive support. At various times in the past two decades, the MoD has moved somewhat due to strong lobbying and parliamentary pressure—for example, conceding that the label “Gulf War syndrome” might be used as an umbrella term. But the MoD made clear that the label itself did not attract any pension for compensation rights.
It is perhaps ironic that the claims that have been met are under the former rubric of the MoD having to prove that the illnesses were not caused as a result of involvement with Operation Granby and deployment to the theatre. Under the new compensation arrangements, this burden or proof has been shifted to the veterans’ shoulders. A few Gulf veteran appeals to the war pensions appeal tribunal have also been successful, though even then there was procrastination by the MoD over implementing the tribunal’s findings, and no willingness to treat any group as a class action that would allow other veterans to be fairly compensated.
Five or more years ago, there was a determination not to treat service men and women differently, when dealing with pensions and compensation arrangements, from others in government service such as the police or fire fighters. This attitude has changed, and rapidly, in the past two or three years. In 2008, we had the previous Government’s command paper, The Nation’s Commitment. The new Prime Minister and Defence Secretary have spoken of a statutory military covenant and that our Armed Forces deserve special treatment. So will this new approach carry us through to a final and reasonable settlement of a long, tragic episode?
As the noble Lord, Lord Morris, has explained, the latest United States Research Advisory Committee’s report and the intentions of the US Veterans Department to reassess and to compensate those who have what they now accept is the unique condition of Gulf War illness. These latest findings of the RAC and the earlier independent inquiry carried out so ably by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, provide a real opportunity for the new Administration to take steps to bring this regrettable treatment of so many of our fine service personnel to a reasonable and responsible conclusion. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, made no specific recommendations about levels of compensation—that was not in his inquiry’s terms of reference—and clearly that is a matter for the pensions and compensation authorities.
To help the Minister, who has consistently expressed his party’s sympathy while in opposition to reach the right conclusions, perhaps I may remind him of just a couple of things that he said in the course of the many debates that have taken place in this House since this problem was first aired in Parliament almost 20 years ago. When the Lloyd report, to which I have referred, was first debated in December 2004, the Minister said:
“The report's recommendations now provide the Government with a unique opportunity to close this long-running chapter in the lives of many who have suffered after serving in the Gulf during the period 1990–91 … This group of people have been ignored by the MoD and this report is a considered and convincing case for recognition”. —[Official Report, 21/12/04; col. 1734.]
Speaking in a debate on the latest RAC’s work in February 2009, the Minister acknowledged that Gulf War illness,
“can no longer be marginalised or dismissed”.—[Official Report, 5/2/09; col. 854.]
Can the House now be assured that the new Government will act as the US Department of Veteran Affairs is now acting and ensure that all the British personnel afflicted by the symptoms of Gulf War illness are given comparable support and help? It is right to treat them fairly. That is what they ask and I ask the Minister on their behalf. All hope at last for a helpful and positive response to this long-running saga.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
My Lords, it is customary to congratulate noble Lords on obtaining a debate during the dinner hour. Indeed, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, has already done so. However, with the little we have to do, with the notable exception of the Academies Bill, perhaps obtaining a debate is not now so rare an event. So in addition to congratulating the noble Lord, I want to change the metaphor and do something I have never done before in this House. On behalf of all those who are suffering from Gulf War illness, I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Morris, for all that he has done for them over so very many years. He has been tireless in bringing their plight to notice. It was due to his persistence that the previous Government eventually apologised for the way that the Gulf War veterans had been treated. I hope of course that under the new Administration, the attitude will change still further.
If they think that they need only to go on long enough taking the same line as their predecessors and that the problem will then go away—by “the problem”, I mean the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester—I can assure the Government that he will not go away, nor will those of us in the House tonight who support him in his noble efforts, nor will all those in the country who are also only too well aware of what he does. Like him, I am in continuing correspondence with a widow whose husband died of Gulf War illness and who is now in the process of petitioning the Government in Edinburgh. I hope that she will succeed.
One might have thought that after 17 years, everything that could possibly be said on the subject would have been said, but that is not so. The first line so far taken has been that we do not yet know the causes of Gulf War illness. The second line is that, in any event, those who are suffering are getting all that they are entitled to by way of war pension.
As for the first argument, we now know, for the reasons so eloquently stated by the noble Lord, Lord Morris, in his very well researched and powerful speech, that there are only two causes of Gulf War illness. One is the PB tablets; the other is the OP spray. Both are causes for which the MoD was directly responsible back in 1991. The Government and the MoD have fallen back on their second line of defence: yes, if there were causes for which we were responsible, nevertheless, we have done all that was required of us by paying the pension which has been established in all those cases. The MoD may not realise how very close it came to being sued some years ago for negligence. It escaped legal proceedings, but it is worth remembering that negligence is never easy to prove, and it was not necessary to establish negligence to show, as has been shown, that this case does not come within the ordinary run of cases.
Men are now suffering from Gulf War illness which is not the ordinary perils of war, for which the pension may or may not be sufficient. The MoD was itself directly responsible, even if it could not be shown that it was negligent at the time. As they are suffering from something for which the MoD was directly responsible, it is surely now time for it to accept that something more is required. Only if the Government accept that will we reach a just end to this very sorry tale.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I warmly congratulate and thank, in the same terms as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, for the way in which he has so persistently and persuasively pursued the issue of the treatment of Gulf War settlements. Like the noble Lord, Lord Morris, I am a member of the Royal British Legion Gulf War Group, and have been since the problem was first identified—a non-pecuniary interest. Indeed, I know that all participants in this evening's debate are veterans of the issue. All of us have taken part in debates—in both Houses, in my case—about the issue for the almost 20 years for which it has been such a controversial concern for many of us.
I came to the issue first because I was concerned about organophosphate pesticides in workforces outwith the armed services—notably among sheep farmers in what was then my constituency. About 20 years ago, that became an apparent problem in the south-west because of the continuing use of very dangerous chemicals for dipping sheep. What came first to my notice was the extraordinary similarity of symptoms between those who came back from the Gulf, having been exposed to very similar compounds to those used in sheep dip, and those who had suffered serious illness as a result of their work on sheep farms.
I am not going to attempt to cover the areas of particular expertise and experience which have already been touched on this evening, because I do not aspire to do so. However, I am extremely concerned about a point that I hope the Minister will take up, which is that we may find in the near future that the victims of organophosphate poisoning, whether in the Gulf or anywhere else, may be the unfortunate further victims of the changes to the disability living allowance which have just been announced. Admittedly, they will not come into being for two or three years, but I am reliably informed by the brief from the Department for Work and Pensions that the move away from self-reported assessments to more objective assessments—I am using the department’s own words—may well prove to be particularly difficult in the case of veterans and those who have been exposed to these pesticides because, by their very nature, they are not easily identified and diagnosed by professionals. Indeed, many GPs, who were in many cases the first port of call for those returning from the Gulf, had no proper advice about the likely symptoms of Gulf War illness. As has already been referred to, the constant quibbling over whether there was one particular Gulf War syndrome, or a group of illnesses, went on for years in Parliament, outwith Parliament and in the Ministry of Defence. I am afraid that that made it even more confusing for those who gave medical advice to those coming back from the Gulf.
As the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, said, the US research advisory committee’s report is an amazingly comprehensive and conscientious attempt to get to the bottom of these problems. What is so remarkable is that, in precise and comprehensive terms, it is absolutely relevant to UK members of the combined forces that went to the Gulf. Every item in the report, which I have read with great care, applies absolutely to our forces. Of course it does, because they were exposed to almost exactly the same preparatory conditions as the US veterans before they went there. What is so extraordinary—and I refer to the findings in brief—is that the RAC states in the report:
“Gulf war illness is a serious condition that affects at least one-fourth of the 697,000 US veterans who served in the 1990-1991 Gulf War”.
The scale that was identified by the RAC report is important and relevant to our troops and Defence Ministers. I share the dismay that other speakers have already expressed this evening at the way in which this absolutely clear indication of the scale of the problem has been treated with such apparent—not contempt, as that would be putting it too strong; but as if it was not really anything like as serious as has become so apparent through the work of the Administration in Washington.
That is not the whole story. As has already been indicated, the expeditious response to the RAC work by the US Department of Veterans Affairs has been remarkably different from the response we have had in this country. I can be brief because others have already expressed not only our anxieties and concerns but, most importantly, our hope and trust that the new Government will adopt a new approach. We should be delighted and should indicate how much we respect the fact that the US Administration have borne the brunt of this research and investment which is so relevant to our veterans. If we had had to do all that work on our own account and the US had not led on this, the money and time which would have been spent in this country would have been very considerable. We are very fortunate. I hope that the Minister and the new coalition Government will recognise just how fortunate we are that the Americans have led the way in this respect.
I hope that the Government will therefore take account of the precise terms of this Question for Short Debate tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester. All we are asking the Government to do is to take full account of the very detailed, precise and comprehensive work that has effectively been done on our behalf. I am confident that the Minister, who has been involved in previous discussions in this House, will indicate that our coalition will take a fresh approach. As has been said, we are fast approaching the 20th anniversary of the deployment of the young men and young women who went to fight on our behalf in the Gulf. As we approach that 20th anniversary, surely it must be a debt of honour to recognise at long last what they did on our behalf and to make sure that there is no further problem in trying to obtain proper recognition of their sacrifice and suffering, and proper compensation to meet it.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, as a member of the Government who were responsible for sending the troops to the Gulf on that occasion, I feel it is absolutely essential that they be treated with fairness now. In connection with the Budget, the point has been made again and again that this has to be fair. If anyone is entitled to fairness, surely it is a person who gave their service in the dangerous situation in the Gulf in 1990 and those who depend on him or her.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Morris of Manchester for raising this issue. One cannot but admire his tenacity, and of course one admires the work he has done with the Royal British Legion over the years in looking after veterans, particularly Gulf War veterans. I also take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, on his position on the Front Bench, which I sat on myself, and I look forward to his answers to the many detailed points.
I shall make my position very clear. I have listened tonight to the arguments from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and I have read the very interesting briefing provided by the Royal British Legion. This is not the first time I have been involved in this debate. I think I have been involved in it about five times, and on every occasion I have scrupulously and with enormous effort gone through the paperwork and the reports on what has happened. I have to say to noble Lords that I see no reason to change the position that I represented when in government.
The former Government recognised that they made mistakes. They made errors of judgment and showed significant insensitivity, but they apologised fulsomely for that and put in hand programmes and procedures to address the problems. It is my view that, in recent years, Her Majesty's Government have done all that is reasonable for the Gulf War veterans. I do not accept that the MoD has ignored them and has not sought to discharge its duty properly and to address their concerns and provide appropriate facilities—indeed, we spent a lot of time arguing about the different chemicals, the causality and so on—but, at the end of the day, as I have said over and over again, the issue is about the level of compensation that these people should have according to what criteria and what is fair.
The Royal British Legion seems to have been straightforward in its latest briefing. It argues that that there should be a £10,000 or more ex gratia payment to the Gulf War veterans, but I have yet to read anything that suggests that there should be a specific ex gratia payment. Its submission also refers to the Prime Minister’s commitment to a military covenant enshrined in law. I understand that this will be in the Armed Forces Bill, and we await the detail to see precisely what it means. However, it is probable that we on these Benches will support the general principle of such a Bill, particularly in so much as it aligns with the forces charter that was set out in the Labour manifesto and that sought to consolidate in law a number of important improvements for all veterans. I think we all share the view that these brave people should have a solid background.
Nevertheless, I find it difficult to believe that such a Bill will contain a provision for ex gratia payments or new categories of compensation, as the Royal British Legion suggests. Compensation for injured and disabled service personnel must be based on a fair and transparent system. I believe that that is the system we have now and that the new Government will maintain such a system. No doubt they will want to review and improve it from time to time, but the system must be the same for all service personnel and it must have the same criteria. It must relate to a proper assessment of disability, it must be fair to all, and it should not depend on special cases driven by special pleading.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever)
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Morris, on securing this further debate on illnesses in Gulf veterans and I thank him and other noble and noble and gallant Lords for taking part. The noble Lord has been a long and true champion of veterans and the wider disabled community, and I am proud that 40 years ago, my late uncle, John Astor, was one of the architects, along with the noble Lord, of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970—the Alf Morris Act. The noble Lord has raised the sensitive issue of Gulf veterans’ illnesses on a number of occasions and many in the veterans community hold him in high esteem, as I found out when I was privileged to hold a number of honorary positions with the Royal British Legion.
The first duty of Government is the defence of the realm. We have a moral responsibility to look after those in our Armed Forces, particularly when they are prepared to risk life and limb on our behalf. So let me begin by setting out the new coalition Government’s priorities in this area.
As the Prime Minister has said, we want to create an atmosphere in which we as a nation back, revere and support our military. There has never been a formal document setting out precisely what this means, and that is why for the first time this Government will create a tri-service military covenant. The Prime Minister is passionate about this. It will be the foundation of the new Government’s far-reaching strategy for and obligations to our service men and women, their families and, of course, veterans. It is long overdue. More broadly, we will ensure that the Armed Forces have the support they need and that veterans and their families are treated with the dignity they deserve. It is important to set out the broad principles that drive our approach and how this Government will go further.
Let me turn now to the specifics of Gulf veterans’ illnesses. As the noble Lord would expect, I have gone into this matter in some detail with officials. The Government are open-minded on the issue of the illnesses reported by some veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf conflict. Our priority is to ensure that Gulf veterans who are ill do receive appropriate medical care. Gulf veterans with concerns about their health should seek a referral to the Ministry of Defence’s Medical Assessment Programme at St Thomas’ Hospital. This facility gives free and speedy general and mental health examinations by an expert doctor with great experience of veterans’ health issues. The MoD pays the travelling expenses of attending veterans and will also arrange overnight accommodation for those travelling long distances. Over 3,500 Gulf veterans have used this service, where each individual receives an examination and clinical tests, dependent on their case.
The service provided by the Medical Assessment Programme remains popular with those who attend. Indeed, the programme provides valuable back-up support for the Department of Health and the devolved Administrations who, with support from the MoD, are running six community health pilots for veterans at NHS trusts across the country. The pilots, which will be evaluated later this year, will provide key input into planning future provision across the NHS. Financial support for veterans and their dependants is provided through the Ministry of Defence war pensions or Armed Forces occupational pension schemes. For those veterans who need additional support, the Veterans Welfare Service exists to provide help and advice to veterans, their families and dependants.
To date the MoD has spent around £9 million in funding expert independent medical research on Gulf veterans’ illnesses issues. This research has come to the same conclusion as the independent Medical Research Council report from 2003 which looked at all the UK and international research into these issues—namely that,
“there is no evidence from the UK or international research of a single syndrome related specifically to service in the Gulf”.
As recommended by the Medical Research Council, one area where we are looking specifically at the needs of Gulf veterans is rehabilitation. We are spending £430,000 on specific research into rehabilitative therapies for those with persistent symptoms. We expect this work to conclude in 2012.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
Before the noble Lord leaves the question of causation, I hope he will come back to the point made so clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Morris, that we now know the answer on causation from the much more extensive research carried out in the United States.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I am coming to the United States reports in a while. Lessons identified from the 1991 conflict have been implemented for other operations. So far there has been no similar problem with unexplained illnesses.
The noble Lord, Lord Morris, was the first British parliamentarian to be co-opted on to a US congressional committee of inquiry into Gulf War illnesses. I can assure the noble Lord that the Government are well aware of the interest in the publication of the United States Institute of Medicine update on the Health Effects of Serving in the Gulf War, published in April, and that of the US Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, published in 2008. We look forward to seeing the US authorities’ comments on the reports before commenting in any detail from the UK perspective. Indeed, we understand that the US Department of Veterans Affairs has formed a task force specifically to look at the Institute of Medicine updated report and to make recommendations. Defence Ministers, particularly myself, and officials will consider any findings carefully.
We are aware of the frustration that some feel with the pace of work associated with these reports but they address complex scientific and medical issues. We have noted, however, that the Institute of Medicine report mirrors the findings of the Medical Research Council review of research into UK Gulf veterans’ illnesses published in 2003. In particular, the Medical Research Council review recommended giving priority to research aimed at improving the long-term health of Gulf veterans with persistent symptoms.
We further note that the Institute of Medicine report supports the international majority view and the MoD’s long-standing position that NAPS tablets given to service personnel and OP pesticides are not the cause of ill health reported in some Gulf veterans. This should be reassuring to UK Gulf veterans concerned about such health issues.
Noble Lords and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, will be aware that the MoD’s vaccines interactions research programme, costing some £4.5 million, was an in-depth examination of the potential adverse health effects of the combination of medical countermeasures administered to troops in the 1990-91 Gulf conflict. The overwhelming evidence from the programme was that the combination of vaccines and tablets offered to UK forces at the time of the conflict would not have had adverse health effects. This programme has been the subject of a level of scrutiny far in excess of what might be expected in similar research. As well as peer review prior to publication, all stages of the study were overseen by an independent panel of experts and veterans’ representatives.
I know that exposure to OP pesticides during the 1990-91 Gulf conflict is of concern to some veterans. The MoD continues to monitor ongoing research in this area through its involvement in the Official Group on Organophosphates, chaired by Defra. Although the effects of acute exposure to OP pesticides are well understood and undisputed, no such incidents occurred during the deployment of UK troops to the Gulf in 1990-91, although OP pesticides were undoubtedly used.
While we are always willing to consider credible new evidence, the overwhelming consensus of the scientific and medical community is that there are too many symptoms for the ill health reported by Gulf veterans to be characterised as a syndrome according to the strict medical definition. However, MoD reviewed the position on its use and accepted it as an umbrella term, addressing the concern of those veterans who feel that the link between their service and their illnesses has not been adequately recognised.
We know that this does not go far enough for some, but we believe that we must take an evidence-based approach. The medical and scientific evidence published so far does not support the claim that veterans of the first Gulf conflict are suffering from a specific illness that differs from those experienced by individuals who served elsewhere.
Data from the medical assessment programme continue to support the results of the independent research. Gulf veterans seen as part of the programme complain of similar symptoms to the general veteran population, and most should be cared for by standard NHS resources. No unusual pattern of disease has emerged, nor is there evidence of unusual neurological or other disorders among Gulf War veterans. The same high standard of medical care and treatment is therefore as appropriate for them as it is for all veterans.
Gulf veterans, like other veterans, have access to a wide range of support: medical support at the medical assessment programme, financial support for any injuries caused by service and practical support through the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency welfare service. We are undertaking further research to offer tailored rehabilitation support. There is insufficient credible evidence to suggest that we should treat this group differently from other groups of veterans who report similar health problems.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Morris, is not going to go away. I give him a commitment today that I am happy to meet him with officials to hear any concerns that he may have. I thank him for raising his concerns again—concerns that affect people who have sacrificed so much on our behalf, and to whom we owe a great deal. I assure him that the Government are committed to helping them through treatment, rehabilitation and research. We also reaffirm the moral obligation to treat those who serve, their families and veterans with fairness and dignity.
Academies Bill [HL]
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley
“( ) Academy arrangements must include terms imposed for the purpose of securing that—
(a) the school’s food policy and catering service promote pupils’ physical and mental health and ability to learn, and(b) all food provided by the school meets the nutrient-based standards for primary and secondary schools currently in place for maintained schools.”
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 76B, which brings us to a subject that is most appropriate for the slot straight after dinner—school food. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that pupils in the new academies are entitled to the high standards of school food to which most schools have now risen, with the help of the School Food Trust, the Soil Association and others. We have to thank Jamie Oliver and the previous Government for an enormous increase in the quality and high standards of school food these days. If a great many schools wish to become academies, it is important that we do not lose that benefit for thousands of their pupils. There are now mandatory standards in place for the quality of food served in schools in England. The implementation of food and nutritional standards in primary and secondary schools in 2008, for primaries, and 2009, for secondaries, has seen great improvement in the quality of food served.
There are five good reasons why we need this amendment. First, school food is important for pupils' health and learning. A recent report from Ofsted has confirmed that. Secondly, good quality school food improves children's behaviour and performance. The School Food Trust's School Lunch and Learning Behaviour in Primary Schools research, published in July 2009, shows that children were over three times more likely to concentrate and be alert in the classroom when changes were made to the food and dining room. The School Lunch and Learning Behaviour in Secondary Schools research of July 2009 shows the same benefit for secondary pupils. The School Food Trust research has shown that school meals are now consistently more nutritious than packed lunches. This is of particular concern for children from lower-income families, whose lunches contained more fat, salt and sugar and less fruit and vegetables than children from wealthier backgrounds because, unfortunately, empty calories are cheaper. An affordable school meal service can help to close the gap between rich and poor.
Thirdly, school food is important to help our children maintain a healthy weight and get the nutrients they need to be healthy. School food sets a standard for food quality, encourages healthy eating habits, and raises awareness of the link between diet and health. In England, nearly a quarter of adults and about one in 10 children are now obese, with a further 20 to 25 per cent of children overweight. Research by the Government’s Foresight programme suggests that if current trends continue, some 40 per cent of Britons will be obese by 2025 and, by 2050, Britain could be a mainly obese society. I think that we all know that obesity increases a person’s chances of suffering from many serious health conditions affecting their quality of life and ability to earn.
The fourth reason is that standards at school should set a model for the food outside the school day. A good school meal service can help all children make healthy choices outside school as well as inside it. School cooking and gardening clubs teach healthy eating skills to young people and families to use at home. The skills learnt at cooking clubs increase the intake of nutritionally balanced food, while research from the recent Year of Food and Farming showed that children were more likely to eat fruit and vegetables that they had grown themselves—and so am I.
Fifthly, an Ofsted report just published shows that a good school food policy that promotes a “whole community” approach to food and food culture is as important as a high-quality catering service. It certainly does a whole lot for community cohesion and the enjoyment of our multicultural communities. If academies want to improve their children’s lives and learning, they need to pay attention to their food policy. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I support this amendment and I certainly think that the issue of helping children to enjoy wholesome, nutritious food in schools is very important. As the noble Baroness has already pointed out, the issue of obesity in young people is a problem that has been growing over a number of years. She mentioned the risk of the potential epidemic in diabetes and, indeed, other health problems. I have a certain degree of interest in this because I launched our Government’s fresh fruit scheme for schools—it seems many years ago now—in Wolverhampton. That scheme has worked well and, as the noble Baroness suggested, we have seen major improvements in the quality of school meals. It is important that this is not dissipated with the development of academies as proposed in the Bill.
I realise that the Minister may argue that the approach taken by the noble Baroness is, in a sense, trying to micromanage schools. Underlying our debates so far on the Bill is the clear tension running through between the desirability to give individual schools as much autonomy as possible and, on the other hand, the recognition that there has to be some kind of national underpinning. The debates on special educational needs and, indeed, our recent debate on exclusions are examples of that. The question before us is whether nutrition ought to be one of those matters where some kind of national leadership or guidance is necessary. I am persuaded that it is. The issue raised by the noble Baroness about the health of our young people is so serious that we have to look to schools to do their bit to help, and the approach that she has taken is one that we could support.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, before replying specifically on the amendment, perhaps I may make a clarification arising from an earlier debate. Earlier, in the extremely good debate on PSHE, I said that the independent school standards which apply to academies also contained a requirement to teach personal, social and health education. I am afraid that I was misinformed on that point and I apologise to the Committee. It may be helpful if I provide a little clarification. The independent school standards require the promotion of self-knowledge, self-esteem and confidence; enabling pupils to distinguish right from wrong; and encouraging them to take responsibility for their actions and contribute to the community. All academies do, however, have to have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on sex and relationships education. I apologise again for that earlier error. We know from that debate that there are important issues to be picked up on PHSE as part of the broader curriculum review, and I look forward to discussing those with noble Lords in due course.
On the specific amendment to do with school food, and full of my bangers and mash from the Home Room, I realise how important an issue this is for schools. I certainly agree with my noble friend about the importance of good diet and physical health—points also made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, with his work on promoting fruit. We take this seriously. Schools converting to academies will already have been providing healthy, balanced meals that meet the current nutritional regulatory standards. We have no reason to believe that they will stop doing so on conversion or that new schools will not do so either. I am not aware of any evidence that existing academies feed their pupils less well than a maintained school. We would certainly hope and expect in every way that they would continue to feed them as well. They are under a duty to act reasonably in the interests of all their pupils.
We believe that parents will demand the high standard of food that is increasingly being maintained. I pay tribute to the work that has been done in recent years to improve the quality of school food. I have heard from head teachers about the importance of good diet and how it improves behaviour and learning. We expect that parents will demand that that should continue. As an aside, pupils who currently receive free school meals will continue to receive such meals from academies. That will continue to be a requirement of the funding agreement. While I very much agree with my noble friend about the importance of this, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was correct in surmising that we feel that, in this balance between prescription and trust, this does not need to be set out in the legislation, important though it is. I invite my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Walmsley
I thank the Minister for his reply and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his support. I am not aware of any evidence that the existing academies feed their children any worse than other schools. I am not suggesting at all that that happens. I am reassured by the Minister pointing out that schools that convert will adhere to the current nutritional standards. He suggests that there is no reason why they should change, but there is pressure to do so—children like to have chips more than once a week. There have been situations where parents were, perhaps unwisely, pushing pork pies through the bars of the school gates when these nutritional standards first came in. There are pressures to change.
I hope that the future of the School Food Trust, which has been so instrumental in improving the quality of school food and the skills of school cooks, can be assured. I understand that money is tight and the coalition Government will be looking for ways to save money, but I hope that a small sum could be found to make sure that the School Food Trust continues to exist. It has done excellent work in transferring best practice and helping to improve the quality of cooking in schools. It is not just cooking but the whole curriculum involvement in the school agenda in relation to food. Its website is wonderful, with many good examples of creative schools, catering managers and cooks sharing their good ideas with each other. It is the School Food Trust that does that. The Soil Association has also done some extremely good work, and I hope it will be able to continue to do so.
The health and weight of children varies enormously from one school to another. I know that what I am going to say is anecdotal. Recently, a young woman did work experience with me. She attends two secondary schools. One of her courses is in one school and the rest are in another. When we discussed this matter, she said, “It really is odd. At my main school, all the children are slim. At the other school I go to for one of my courses, they are all fat”. I asked her whether she had noticed any difference in the provision of food in the two schools and she said that she had not. But she was aware that in her main school where all the children are slim, years ago boxes of crisps used to be piled high. There were vending machines selling every kind of chocolate and fizzy drink that you could wish for, and chips were on the menu every day. All that has been swept away as a result of the new agenda on high nutritional standards in school food. I asked the girl to send me any evidence that she discovered as regards a difference between the approaches to food in the two schools, but I have not received any such evidence. It would be very nice to be able to say that there is a clear reason for the obesity in one school and not in the other, but I do not have that.
There is a lot of evidence that the quality and nutritional standards of food affect children’s behaviour, learning, social skills, cultural awareness and all the rest of the agenda of which we are all very much in favour. I hope that if we cannot ensure that academies stick to the standards we have the moment, at the very least, we should ensure the future of the School Food Trust in order to disseminate best practice across all schools. I shall then be somewhat reassured. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
“( ) At least 25% of the people on the governing body of an Academy will be elected from among the parents of pupils at the school.”
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, we have had one or two little forays about governors and governing bodies in Committee. I have to admit that I am surprised at how small a role governors appear to play in the Bill. I reaffirm my position as president of the National Governors Association in moving this rather specific amendment on its behalf. There is general concern about the small number of parents on governing bodies. I am probing, I hope, to get a full answer on what the Government intend to do about it.
The composition of the governing bodies of maintained schools is set out in the School Governance (Constitution) (England) Regulations 2007. The precise arrangements will depend on the type and size of the school, but, broadly speaking, the arrangements mean that at least one-third of governors will be parent governors; at least two governors, but not more than one-third of the total, will be staff governors; and at least one will be a local authority governor. Existing academies are not covered by any such regulations. Their governor arrangements can vary widely, depending on the views of the proprietor. Academies tend to have some form of limited company arrangement. Some will have a body which calls itself a governing body, while others will state that the school is governed by the limited company, but that there will be an advisory body which may include some parental representation.
The NGA very strongly supports the need for the governing body to represent different stakeholders with an interest in the success of the school. This Government—not least with their launch of the idea of free schools—have a track record of championing the role of parents in setting the ethos and direction of a school. However, surely the way in which parents can most effectively do this is as members of a governing body. An academy is currently required to have only one elected parent as a member of its governing body. One elected parent governor does not represent parental involvement of the kind and extent that government Ministers have been promoting in other ways—or, incidentally, of the kind of numbers involved which the NGA also strongly champions. Its preferred option is to have at least one-third of the governing body as parent governors. The NGA’s advice to any of the outstanding schools which will opt to convert to academies is to retain the current structure, which it believes has served the schools well to date—at least, there is no evidence to the country.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I have Amendment 82 in this group. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, said about the importance of parent governors. My amendment differs from hers only in that I have specified a range of numbers of parent governors, including a minimum, rather than a percentage, because schools can become tied up in knots if the percentage is calculated to include a fraction of a governor. We would not want a set of legs without the brain. The range that I have specified caters for very small primary schools and larger secondary schools. In both cases, the elected parent governors are an important factor in the governance of schools and fulfil the coalition commitment to involve parents more in the education of their children.
The composition of the governing bodies of maintained schools, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said, is set out in the School Governance (Constitution) (England) Regulations 2007, but academies are not covered by any such regulations. Their governance arrangements can vary widely, depending on the views of the proprietor. In any case, it is vital that on the principal governing body, the board of the academy, or whatever it is called, there is proper representation of parents, staff and the local authority—all of whom have a vital and obvious interest in the good management of the school as part of the local community. My amendment also includes a requirement to have as governors two members of staff, one of whom must be a teacher, and a member of the local authority. Of course, if one of the academy partners—one of the sponsors—is the local authority, one would expect it to have representation on the board anyway. However, all academies should have this.
We have heard from many noble Lords that what makes a good school is not its legal status or how it gets its funding, but the quality of teaching within its walls. I agree, but the staff must feel that they are an integral part of the school, including of its governance. That is why it should be not just good practice but an essential requirement that staff are represented on the governing body.
The Secretary of State has also made it clear that the new academies will have a robust relationship with the local authority. Part of achieving that will be to have at least one member of that authority on the governing board. I am not talking about a majority or even a large number, because it is intended that the school should be autonomous and free from the local authority; but it will be easier for academies to be seen as serving the local community, which they will have to do, if local authorities are represented on their boards.
I was distressed when the previous Government introduced academies with a requirement only to have one parent governor on the board. That is not enough, and I hope that this Government will put it right.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My Lords, I will intervene briefly, partly because I was the Minister who introduced the Taylor report, which laid down a requirement that school governors should include representatives of the staff, of the non-teaching staff, of parents and representatives of the local authority, roughly in the order of a quarter each. It was one of the more successful education reforms, for reasons eloquently set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, and also because deep within the sense of the school was a feeling of it being owned by, and part of, the local community. That was where the significance of parent governors came in. The parent governor often shared the same income and problems of living as the community, and spoke for the community in a way that governors appointed by the proprietor or the agency simply could not do.
Secondly, it is vital to have some representatives from the staff on the governing body, so that they speak as part of the entity of the school and not simply as representatives of a staff union or association: they become part of the body and success of the school. As regards non-staff governors, anyone who knows the extraordinary record of teaching assistants—I thank the previous Government for this—will know that, particularly with respect to children with special educational needs, their role has been crucial and can be represented only by a governor who represents the non-academic staff of a school.
It puzzles me—I hope that the Minister will think hard about this—that a Government committed to the idea of decentralisation, of the big society and of involving far more citizens in building and creating that society, should dream of going back to a situation where we have just one elected parent governor in an academy. One reason for this was that it was felt that in the very deprived communities from which the early academies sprang, they would find it difficult to find more than one parent governor, because so many husbands and wives would be working all day long and would find it very difficult to attend governing body meetings. The much more privileged group that we are likely to see now coming into the world of academies of outstanding schools will certainly find it easier to produce governors, but that is no reason to move away from the principle that in every school—whether the community is deprived or not—there should be a clear commitment to the school by the community. I plead with the Government to reconsider the mistaken decision to cut down the governing body and its composition to just one, at a time when we should try to rebuild and strengthen relationships between parents, schools and the community. It is clear from the coalition agreement that the Government are committed to this.
I will leave this hanging in the air: will the Minister consider ways in which we can bring back the community and its parents to the support of, and involvement with, the school? What was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and by my respected and distinguished noble friend Lady Walmsley, suggests that this is something well worth thinking about.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I, too, ask the Minister to give this important matter further consideration. One of the great strengths of our education system over the past few years has been the involvement of parents in schools through PTAs, voluntary work in schools or, indeed, helping in classrooms. In my experience and that of many others, strong parent governors can enhance the quality of governance within schools.
The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, made a strong point about why the circumstances that applied to the original academies and those that apply to the situation before us now, whereby many schools are projected to become academies, are quite different. I also remind the Minister that we are talking about academies that are to be established without formal consultation and without the involvement of the local authority. If we take that together with the fact that academies at the very least will not be encouraged to have a large number of parent governors and the fact that decisions by Ministers, who are taking a huge amount of power to themselves, will not be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, then the situation regarding parent governors begins to fit a certain picture.
My concern is that we are seeing the development of almost private institutions without sufficient scrutiny at either local or national level. One way to counterbalance that would be to come back to the Bill, either tonight or at a later stage, with a much greater reassurance about the involvement of parent governors on these governing bodies. I believe that the same argument applies to staff members. My experience is that by and large they add value to the institution and enhance the confidence of staff in the governing body. It is important that there continue to be links between the local authority and individual schools. Again, in my experience, the local authority-appointed governors often bring a breadth of experience to the governing body. It would be very disappointing if that were lost.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, perhaps I may add one small thought to the debate. As I understand it, the parent governor will be not elected but appointed by the board of trustees for the academy. I think that that is a retrograde step. It is important that we have parent governors but I think that they should be elected from among the parents rather than appointed.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I agree with everyone who has spoken about the importance of parents being involved in schools’ governing bodies. I completely accept that the Government’s position that there should be at least one parent governor will not be acceptable to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. However, I start by stressing the words “at least”, because it is easy to elide “at least one” into “one”. That, in part, is my response to the argument made by my noble friend Lady Williams, to which I listened carefully, about the big society and decentralisation. A perfectly proper argument is that a school, which is a very local form of organisation, knows best the kind of governors whom it needs for a properly balanced governing body, and it should be flexible in choosing the right people for that governing body. That is not to say that my assumption is that governing bodies in academies will tend to consist of only one parent governor.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, gave an extremely good, common-sense answer to some of the concerns that have been raised: the governing body of any converting maintained school will determine the composition of the governing body of the new academy trust. With a converting academy, those people who know how the governing body has worked with the membership that is currently set out will make the decision. It is likely that they will draw on that experience and take it into account when choosing the membership of the new governing body.
Although it is certainly extremely important to have a broad representation on the governing body of academies, we do not think that it is right to prescribe a 25 per cent minimum. We want academies to be able to choose and to do what they think is right in their particular circumstances.
I say in response to my noble friend Lady Sharp that my understanding is that the arrangements for the election of parent governors will be set out in the articles of association, which will make it clear that the election of parent governors should be by the parents of pupils attending the academy, so there is an elective element. They will be appointed to the governing body of the academy trust.
Amendment 82 would also have the effect of introducing more prescriptive arrangements for the numbers of parent, staff and local authority governors. Again, the Government’s view is that academies should certainly be free to choose a governing body that has representation from staff and from local authorities. We are proposing that in the academy governance model there should be a maximum of two staff governors, but it is true, as has been pointed out, that we propose that academies do not have to have those particular categories unless they choose to.
I know that that will not satisfy all Members of the Committee, but the Government consider this principle of flexibility to be extremely important and we want academies to be autonomous groups. We certainly urge, in the strongest terms, the benefits of having parent governors—I am very clear about their benefit—but we are not keen to go down the prescriptive route. Therefore, I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Walmsley
Before the noble Baroness does so, perhaps I could say a word about my amendment in the group. I was a little surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, backing these amendments, given that it was the Labour Government who reduced the number of parent governors to one, to be appointed by the proprietor in the old-style academies. The excuse of the noble Lord for that change of heart appears to be his claim that these schools will be set up without consultation. Perhaps the noble Lord was not in the Chamber last week when the Minister accepted that a high degree of consultation with all appropriate groups was extremely desirable and that he would come back to us on Report with some suggestion about how he would ensure that that best practice is put in place. We welcomed that.
The Minister suggested that under the arrangements for the new academies a single parent governor, as the minimum, would be elected. That is different from the situation that applied with the academies as set up by the Labour Government. Indeed, it is a step in the right direction, but I suggest to my noble friend that it is not enough. He suggests that, on the basis of localism, the school should decide how many parent governors to have and whether it should have two staff members. I accept that, as he says, it is suggested that they should have two staff members, but they are not obliged to have them as a minimum. I also accept that the school is probably the most localist level one can get, but the proprietor may not be local; the proprietor may be a chain and failing schools will still have to have a proprietor. I therefore suggest to my noble friend that, if the proprietor is not local, it is not a piece of local decision-making if he decides that he does not wish to have two members of staff on the board of governors or more than one elected parent governor.
I remain of the view that it is good for the school, good for the education of the children and good for the link between the school and its community to have the kind of situation that I have suggested in my amendment. It is also helpful to the school in fulfilling its duty in relation to community cohesion. If we put a duty on schools, it is important that we give them the levers to fulfil it and I think that this is one of them.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I do not want to disagree with the noble Baroness, as I agree with the substantive points that she makes in relation to her amendment, but I want to respond to her comments. First, we will wait for Report to hear the Government’s response to the point about consultation, but the fact is that it is not in the Bill. I want assurances that it will not be some fly-by-night consultation but will allow ample time for people concerned to have their say and for that to be considered. On the way in which parent governors are treated under this Bill and under the previous Government’s approach to academies, I, too, drew the distinction that there were specific reasons relating to the situation in which the first academies were created that will not apply where hundreds of academies are being created. However, on the substantive point, I very much share her concerns.
Lord Lucas
Before my noble friend replies, perhaps I may ask my noble friend on the Front Bench a question. He cited a piece about parent governors being elected. Can he give me the reference to that, because I shared the belief held by my noble friend Lady Walmsley that that was not the case? I would very much like to correct that misapprehension.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and very much back the issues that they have been pressing. It will not surprise the Minister to hear that, alas, I am far from happy with his response. His admission that “at least one” tends to drift towards “one” in people’s minds confirms the fairly obvious route.
I hope that the Minister will be able to work this whole situation through. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has said, we are going to be looking at vast numbers of academies, although I feel that that is somewhat on the horizon, it really will be the case that local people—the big society, which is back to the Government’s definition—will have to be properly represented and able to do the job that they will need to do to get the best education for all our children, which all of us want.
I have no option at this stage but to withdraw my amendment. However, I certainly cannot guarantee that I will not be back on Report unless I have something rather more palatable to chew on. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) An Academy is a public authority including for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010.”
Baroness Williams of Crosby
Given the late hour, I shall make my remarks fairly brief. The amendment concerns the issues raised by the Equality and Human Rights Commission about the Bill. By looking at them closely, we can go at least a little way towards comforting, among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, who raised the issue of the minimum levels of special educational need, which might be so easily overlooked as a result of the Bill. Let me briefly explain that the Equality Act 2010 dealt precisely with the rights of children to be treated in an even-handed way by the schools which they attend, in particular with regard to children who have what are called protected characteristics—that is to say, children with disability, racial or religious minority issues which might lead to their being unfairly and unequally treated within the school.
Let me be precise about the things that are covered by the legislation. Issues such as harassment, victimisation, intimidation and bullying are part of what is assumed by the phrasing about children with protected problems and how they might be victimised at school. We do not have to go very far into theory to see that that is the real issue. There is the serious issue of homophobic bullying, to take just one example. There are also issues of racial bullying in our schools, which are mostly well dealt with by the staff and the head teachers, but which would nevertheless raise serious issues if they were ever to get hold. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has made it very clear that it regards this as one of the areas where it needs to keep an eye on how children are treated in schools.
In that context, it is perhaps worth remembering the so-called public sector equality duties, which fall on everyone in the public sector, holding them to that same set of obligations. There is considerable concern in the Equality and Human Rights Commission that because in the past independent schools have not been brought under the umbrella of the legislation, academies, which fall into a new hybrid area, as it were, might also be excluded from the operation of the legislation. I say again that the legislation covers quite a wide range, but it certainly covers provision for special educational need and minorities who might be otherwise seriously affected in schools. Provision for disseminating proper behaviour and proper monitoring of such behaviour falls within the terms of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and of the law of 2010.
Let me take one other example, which I think is important. Under the legislation, the Minister has power, in extreme cases, to make directions to order that the body concerned—in this case, a school—take action to ensure that that behaviour is dealt with and ceases because it is outwith the law. If there is no system of monitoring—a point raised very effectively earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—if there is no attempt to discover what is actually going on and if no one has power to insist that it is put right, the effects of the equality law become immediately blunted. It is so easy to say that equality law is some kind of political legislation, but the issues of intimidation, harassment and bullying are real, with us here and now and need to be dealt with.
In view of the lateness of the hour, I will not pursue the debate further, but I ask the Minister two questions. First, does Section 85 of the Equality Act 2010, which lays responsibility on maintained schools to accept this legislation and to deal with the issues that I have raised, still stand? In particular, what will happen about Section 87, which specifically excludes independent schools? Where will academies lie? Will they lie with the maintained schools, from which they are mostly converted, or will they go into the independent schools which were, in my view, curiously, exempted from that legislation? Secondly, will the Minister say whether, in the general provision of legislative requirements, the independent schools, which were again left out of the overall principles of the equality legislation, will in future be separated and exempted? Where will the academies lie? In view of the lateness of the hour, I will not pursue the matter further. I should be most grateful if the Minister could address these two questions. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am happy to confirm that this Government, like the previous Government, accept that academy schools are public authorities for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and that, consequently, they are under a duty to act compatibly with the convention rights in their dealings with parents, pupils and others. The Act does not spell out or list all possible public authorities. This is for an obvious reason: some private bodies also carry out limited public functions and, for the purposes of those public functions, they are also public authorities, but only in respect of those functions. It is not possible to identify all of them at all times. Nevertheless, when they are providing a public service—schooling—they are clearly public authorities.
The noble Baroness will know that academies will be required to comply with all the duties in the Equality Act that apply to schools more generally with respect to disability, non-discrimination, reasonable adjustments and the like. It is quite correct that academies are not currently listed in Schedule 19. However, Schedule 19 will be updated before the duties come into force in 2011, and academies will be included in time for that. This will also deal with the suggestion in Amendment 81 that an academy should be a public authority for the purpose of the Equality Act. I regret that I do not have immediate information on the inclusion of independent schools. I hope that the noble Baroness will allow us to write to her on that issue.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
I am very grateful and, in view of that assurance, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“(a) for at least three years, and(b) terminable by the Secretary of State giving one year’s written notice”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, the amendments in this group are probing amendments to understand why the Government have chosen the period of seven years for the academy agreement, not six years or eight years, to understand what evidence they have chosen to support that choice and to probe the direction that the agreement flows in. If a new academy is formed through an academy order and a funding agreement for seven years is established, how can such an institution, if it wishes, revert to the maintained sector? Is it a one-way street or a two-way street? What are the safeguards to ensure that an institution is not stuck as an academy if it wants to come back? I hope that the Minister will be able to furnish us with the evidence on this matter. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Brougham and Vaux)
If either Amendment 88 or Amendment 89 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 90 and 92 for the reason of pre-emption.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 108 and 178 in my name and that of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Garden. I need not detain the Committee long at this time of night.
Amendment 108 is slightly different in that it concerns the application to convert to academy status, and is very much probing. At the moment, there is no provision in the Bill to withdraw an application once it has been made. Will the Secretary of State allow a maintained school to withdraw an application, and what will be the latest time by which a school can withdraw it? Presumably there will be some point of no return prior to the conversion date or the date on which the academy order is issued, which is the date that allows the school to convert to an academy and therefore to negotiate a funding agreement.
Amendment 178 proposes one of a permutation of clauses—or, rather, it proposes the same clause with a permutation of times in it—and proposes that an academy, once established as an academy, can revert to becoming a maintained school. Its purpose is really to provide a mechanism for the school to revert to maintained status.
It might be of interest to the Committee if I note that the seven-year rule in the Bill came from the Education Reform Act 1988 of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. The rule was originally five years, and Lady Blatch, whom many people in this House will remember, moved as a Back-Bencher that this should be changed to seven years on the grounds that any young person attending what was then a city technology college should be afforded the opportunity to complete a full seven years—the period of secondary education up to 18 years of age. The assumption was repeated by the Minister of the time, the noble Earl, Lord Arran, and it might be worth asking whether it continues to be the assumption that academies will provide sixth-form education. Certainly our primary schools and many of our special schools will not necessarily provide sixth-form education.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, my Amendment 179 is also in this group of amendments. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has mentioned, probably a number of us were sent them and we have used them in differing ways, but they are in fact extremely similar. My proposal is very much, as we argued in the first place, that if you have to go through a series of consultations before you take the specific step of applying properly to become an academy, the whole procedure of consulting the parents, the staff and everyone—the kitchen sink, as it were—to become an academy is the same as the procedure before you decide to come out of the process. All of that indicates the concern about the whole process. There are without doubt, as originally set out, a number of reasons why a school, having suddenly leapt to the idea that becoming an academy is definitely the way forward, might regret converting to one, so it should have the option of returning to maintained status if that is best for the education of its children.
I therefore join other noble Lords in what they have said about these amendments, and I hope the Minister will be able to satisfy us on these points.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 92 in this group. I cannot resist commenting on the fact that we have been in debate on the Bill for 20 hours and are still only on Clause 2. That says something about the drafting. My amendment covers a simple point. I suspect that the Minister will say that the amendment is unnecessary, but it makes clear that the seven years’ period of notice the Secretary of State can give under Clause 2(2) in relation to payments to an academy may be given at any time. It follows a well worn precedent in normal law of contract, but if he assures the Committee that it is superfluous, so be it.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
My Lords, I make a brief intervention on the group of amendments concerned with reversion to maintained status. What I am looking for is clarification on the consequences, intended or unintended, of any of these amendments in the case of an academy that had formerly been a church school or a school of particular religious character. Is there a clear intention here that such academies should revert to that form of status, and if so, to what extent in any of these amendments is that intention secured? Moreover, in the provisions that require consultation, in the case of church schools should there not be explicit consultation with diocesan boards of education or their equivalents, for whom such a reversion would have resource implications?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lady Sharp. She reminded us, in her clear exposition of the history behind the answer to the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, about the period of seven years and where it came from. The previous Government followed it and we are doing the same.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
In terms of the noble Lord’s approach going forward, I ask what evidence has been used to carry on with that timeframe. There is nothing in the impact assessment about timeframes and I would be interested to know what the evidence is.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My noble friend Lord Wallace says that the evidence is as good as the evidence the previous Government had. The answer to the question is that, over time, the period has shown itself to demonstrate stability for parents and children because it gives them some certainty. However, in terms of the impact assessment, I can give no better answer than the previous Government themselves had.
We think that reducing the period of notice required for termination would create greater uncertainty. We are not aware of evidence that suggests that a shorter notice period would provide a better solution. However—and this comes back to earlier discussions about the difference between the funding agreement and the grant arrangements—there may well be a case where a new school is created for providing a shorter period for the school to prove itself. That is the reason behind the proposed new grant arrangements. In such a case there would be greater flexibility to allow for more regular review of performance, and then once the school had established itself as what is called a free school, it would be possible, if both parties agree, to move on to the more conventional contractual funding agreement.
Furthermore, it is right that the academy itself is sure of this same stability to make long-term plans and that the Secretary of State, when committing to funding, is confident of the proprietors’ commitment to the academies programme. The amendments would add unfair uncertainty to the academies programme. On the question put by my noble friend Lord Phillips through Amendment 92, I am advised that it is already the case, as he says. The Bill gives no prescription about when the notice to terminate may be given.
Amendment 108 seeks to allow the governing body of any school which has applied for an academy order to withdraw the application at any time up to one week before the conversion date. Until the academy arrangements, including the funding agreement, have been signed by both the academy trust and the Secretary of State, the academy trust is free to withdraw its application for an academy order, even if the order has been made in respect of that school, and in theory that could be right up until just before conversion. An order merely permits the school to enter into an agreement with the Secretary of State; it does not require it. The decision by a school to enter into academy arrangements with the Secretary of State should be taken after due consideration. The academy trust will want to be confident of its decision when it signs the funding agreement or grant letter but, as I say, in theory that could be up until the point before conversion.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
I return to my question in the light of what the Minister has just said. I understood him to say that if a school of a particular religious character becomes an academy and then seeks to revert to maintained status, nothing within the process guarantees that that particular character will be continued and protected.
Lord Hill of Oareford
On the specific point the right reverend Prelate raised in the question he asked earlier, I can tell him that we shall come later to amendments in regard to religious schools and land issues. Perhaps I may write to him to clarify the precise point.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I thank the Minister for his remarks and for putting on record some very helpful information about moving in and out of academy status.
With regard to the seven-year timeframe, given the debates that we have had so far, the main difference between having an academy agreement and having a direct grant payment is the term. I am trying to understand what the Government see as so important about the seven years. Regarding the term of the grant letter, we were advised that the main difference there was the variation of the term. This is an important issue. If the coalition Government had simply carried on everything that we did when we were in government, we would be looking at a very different education Bill now—we would be looking at PSHE and guarantees around one-to-one tuition.
This is about understanding what the Government see as an appropriate term. If it is a new, experimental school that is being funded through a grant letter, then how long is enough—one month, two, three? Does it have to be a year or five years? At what point does it become a stable, going entity? I would be interested to know that, along with what evidence the Government are going to use. If they do not have evidence now, and I understand that there is an experiment unfolding around the free schools, it would be good to understand what criteria are going to be used to look at how well those new funding grants and the terms around them are performing.
I am grateful to the Minister for putting on record those helpful remarks about the transition to and from academy status, and I will read Hansard to understand the implications fully. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) An application under subsection (1) shall be in such form and shall contain such particulars as may be prescribed in regulations.”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
Again, this is about teasing out more from the coalition Government about the practicality of how applications should work and the kind of criteria that the Secretary of State will be using to make decisions about whether a school can become an academy. I am sure that these are matters that have all been thought through.
I would be interested to know whether the Government have considered putting much more detail in the Bill. When we had an academies programme that started off with numbers in the tens, the academy funding agreement and the intensive coaching approach that the Department for Children, Schools and Families adopted was very appropriate. Then we moved on to academies in their hundreds and the YPLA was established, and so on from there. We increased transparency around the standard funding agreements and so on.
Is the Minister considering publishing the criteria for decisions around academy applications? Is he also considering putting more in the Bill as we start to think about a whole system that could be made up of academies rather than a small number focusing on school improvement?
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 112, 118, 123, 126 and 187, in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Garden. The key amendment among them is Amendment 123, which has two purposes. In the first place, it asks the Secretary of State to state the criteria for approving an academy order. This is both important and urgent. It is important because, as my noble friend the Minister has made clear, there remains a two-stage process for applications for state-maintained schools converting to academy status. First, they have to apply under the conditions set out in Clause 3 and, if approved, the Secretary of State, under Clause 4, issues an academy order. Once an academy order is issued, the school then has to begin negotiating an academy agreement or a funding agreement with the Secretary of State.
As I mentioned at Second Reading, the impact assessment suggests that only 200 schools a year will achieve academy status during the next three or four years. My noble friend the Minister made it clear that this was merely a guesstimate based on past experience. He has also told us that more than 1,700 schools, many of them judged outstanding by Ofsted, have expressed an interest in becoming academies. Even if you halve that, so that the number of applications received is 850, you have to ask whether all those which receive academy orders go on to negotiate academy agreements. The Secretary of State has indicated that all those judged outstanding by Ofsted will be able to proceed unless they are carrying a significant deficit on funding.
If this is so, the department will have to process many more than 200 schools, with not insignificant costs, not least because each school will receive a welcome present of some £25,000. Will all schools applying which have been judged outstanding automatically—unless they carry a large deficit—receive an academy order allowing them to proceed to negotiating a funding agreement? If not, what other criteria will be used to select those that are allowed to proceed? What about the schools judged good or satisfactory by Ofsted? They are also being encouraged to apply, albeit to a slower timetable. By what criteria will they be judged? Neither the Explanatory Notes nor the guidance to schools wishing to apply makes clear what criteria will be used to judge applicants. Amendment 123 would make the criteria public so that schools thinking of applying might be able to judge whether it is worth their while doing so.
The second aspect of the amendment is that it seeks to make it clear, where a school is under notice from its local authority under Section 30 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 or Sections 15 to 17 of the Education and Inspections Act 1996, that the local authority will cease to maintain the school. When GM status was introduced in the early 1990s, many schools sought it as a way of avoiding closure. How far is this likely to be considered by this Government? We face over the short term a very considerable drop in numbers at some secondary schools, especially those that deal just with the 11-to-16 age group, and closures and amalgamations are still very much on the cards. How far will they be allowed to use an application for academy status as an escape route from reorganisation?
Amendment 112 asks that, where a school is being converted to an academy because it is failing and not serving its community as well as it might, the decision is taken in conjunction with the governing body, and that, just as with other schools, the application is made by the governing body and not imposed on it.
Amendment 118 picks up the second issue raised in Amendment 123. This amendment was proposed to us by my honourable friend the Member for Bath, Mr Don Foster, and relates to school reorganisations. There were some instances where plans for a sixth-form reorganisation had been foiled by a key player opting out to become a grant-maintained school. The suggestion is that before a school opts out in this way an independent view should be sought on how it affects the provision of education within the community as a whole. Who better to provide such an independent view than the schools adjudicator, who has already had to look at the contentious admissions procedures? The proposal, therefore, is that when the conversion to an academy is contentious in a local community because of reorganisations, the schools adjudicator should be asked to look at the situation and the Secretary of State should have regard to his or her advice—not necessarily follow it, but have regard to it.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 112. Like the noble Baroness, I have some concerns about the way in which the power to which the amendment refers might be exercised—although, in my case, particularly with regard to church schools, which will come as no surprise. The principle issue relates to the power to intervene should schools standards not be up to scratch. Noble Lords will be aware that such challenge and intervention currently lies with local education authorities for church as for community schools. In our diocesan boards of education and our sister Roman Catholic dioceses and schools commissions, we have long been accustomed to work with them to address weaknesses.
We need to find ways in which to enable diocesan boards of education to be fully involved in identifying weakness and working with governing bodies in supporting improvements at an early stage prior to the exercise of the Secretary of State’s draconian powers as set out in the measure. With or without such a provision in the Bill, there is a further danger in the clause as it stands in that the powers that it confers could be used in respect of a school where standards were unsatisfactory to radically change the character of a school. By turning over responsibility for a school to other providers, the existing trustees could be bought out, the original intentions of a school of religious character overruled and a school of a particular character brought to an end.
The Secretary of State is, I believe, of the view that this would not be compatible with the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights, but we are not at all sure about that since, as the Bill stands, it would appear that a school could be taken away from the church without the relevant church body—in our case, the diocesan boards of education—having had any opportunity, along with the governing body, or power to challenge or intervene at an earlier stage. We hope that some of these issues can be further explored before the matter returns to the House.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, this group of amendments deals with academy orders which enable the conversion of a maintained school into an academy. Amendments 105, 115 and 123 seek to place in regulations the process of applying for an academy order and to require the publishing of the criteria that the Secretary of State will take into account when approving academy order applications and entering into academy arrangements. As your Lordships might expect by now, we are unconvinced that it is necessary to prescribe in regulations the application process for an academy order, as this is an entirely administrative process. The Government have made it clear that they will apply a rigorous fit-and-proper-person test in approving any sponsors of an academy or promoter of a free school.
In response to one question raised by my noble friend Lady Sharp, I can confirm that the Secretary of State will publish on the department’s website criteria for deciding applications from schools which are not outstanding. I agree that it is important that people know where they stand. We will make sure that those are available when we have done some more work on that.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
Can the Minister clarify whether that means that every school that is outstanding which applies will automatically get an academy order, unless it has a deficit of over £100,000?
Lord Hill of Oareford
No, my Lords; I was coming to that. There are some exceptional circumstances where that would not necessarily happen. There may, for instance, be cases where further information or action is required, including where a school is subject to existing reorganisation proposals—such as those referred to in Amendment 123—and where, as my noble friend has said, the school has a deficit or its performance has changed significantly. The Secretary of State has that power and would want to review each case on its merits. There will need to be flexibility in the Secretary of State’s consideration of these factors to make sure that he can make the most appropriate decision in each individual case. Information on those exceptional circumstances is, I believe, available on the department’s website.
In a similar vein, Amendment 126 would require the Secretary of State to make an order through secondary legislation specifying the mandatory contents of an academy order. While each order will inevitably contain certain standard elements, each will be different and specific to each school depending on the circumstances of each case. I think that we touched on this briefly last week. The parliamentary Delegated Powers Committee report on this Bill, dated 17 June, concluded that it would not be necessary for Parliament to scrutinise academy orders, while the expectation is that the academy orders will be brief. Therefore, it is not our view that we need to set out in an order what those orders will contain.
Amendment 118 seeks to require the Secretary of State to seek the advice of the schools adjudicator before agreeing the conversion of a school from maintained to academy status. The local authority normally would decide proposals for changes to existing maintained school provision, including closures, alterations and new schools. Where the local authority itself is the proposer of a new school, the schools adjudicator may be called upon to decide the competition. The decision on academies has, however, always been the Secretary of State’s. Given that the process for converting to academy status will not result in a net change in provision available to parents and pupils in the area, we do not believe that involving the schools adjudicator would be necessary. It might, indeed, introduce another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
On the point raised by my noble friend Lady Sharp on Amendment 187, the Secretary of State does not intend to delegate to the Young People’s Learning Agency any decisions about, or the making of, academy orders. I can confirm that he has no intention of delegating this function, which goes hand in hand with the decision to enter into academy arrangements themselves and which he cannot delegate to the YPLA. Academy orders are made in respect of maintained schools; therefore it is not appropriate to delegate it to the YPLA, which is responsible for certain roles—funding, challenging and supporting academies—once they are up and running, but not before.
Finally, Amendment 112 would remove the power of the Secretary of State to make an academy order for a school that is eligible for intervention. Generally speaking, schools are eligible for intervention where standards are too low or there are concerns about performance standards. It is crucial that schools that are failing their pupils can be given the opportunity to convert to academy status and to do so quickly to improve their pupils’ chances. There is evidence that schools obtaining academy status can make improvements to raise standards for all their pupils. It is right to make sure that those schools have that opportunity, too. Removing that option would not be in the best interests of pupils. I hope this has provided some more information and factual answers on several of the points that have been raised. With that, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, given that the hour is so late and the complexity and importance of the information that the Minister has just shared with us, I will want to read Hansard and think about it. One of my concerns relates slightly to the FOI amendment that is coming later. I am concerned about transparency. The coalition Government have said time and again that there is a strong commitment to transparency. We are dependent on a host of information being posted on the department’s website but, given the number of websites being culled at the moment, I am slightly anxious about it. So I want to think about what the Minister has said this evening. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
“Community facilities
(1) An Academy order must include provisions which make available for community use some or all of the school’s facilities.
(2) Such provisions shall not be fewer and on less advantageous terms than those which have been available prior to the application being made for an Academy order.
(3) Such provisions may be made by means of a contract or contracts with a local authority or other non-profit making or commercial body.
(4) “Local authority” in this section means a county, district, unitary or parish council.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, Amendment 128 stands on its own. It appears to be obligatory for everyone who now speaks to refer to the lateness of the hour. All I can say is, with 10 groups still to go, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Amendment 128 is clearly a Committee stage probing amendment. It returns to the question of the relationship between the school and its surrounding community, which featured in amendments to which I spoke last week. This is about community facilities that are provided by the school. There has been much pressure on schools for a long time to share their facilities with the wider community. It is something that has been increasing slowly because it is not easy for a school, administratively, to do this; it is not easy to arrange. However, some schools have for a long time provided educational facilities or the accommodation for such facilities in their buildings. More often, the use of sports facilities, such as sport halls, tennis courts, pitches and so on, is provided. I think that many of the new Building Schools for the Future schools have had built into their funding agreements the provision of facilities for the wider community. They are an important part of the place of a school within its community.
Amendment 128 suggests, first, that academies, wherever and whoever they are, should, as part of their agreement, make a commitment to providing at least some of their facilities for the wider community. That should be built into the agreement so that academies cannot walk away from it. Secondly, the facilities available should not be less overall than they were before the school became an academy. Preferably, they should be better. The position should not get worse for the wider community. Thirdly, the amendment draws attention to the way in which schools often come to arrangements with local authorities of various kinds—from the county council down to the parish council—to do this jointly. In many cases, what appears to be a simple facility, such as a children’s play area, can be more complex. The children’s play area might be provided by the parish council or the district council but is on county council—that is, school—land, which would transfer to the academy under these arrangements. The use of those recreational facilities needs to be continued. The amendment highlights all those issues and I look forward to the Minister’s reply. I beg to move.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I have some sympathy with this amendment. Certainly, as regards independent schools, under the Charities Act a great deal of sharing of facilities is required. That is extremely effective. Academies will be very much in the same position. It would be interesting to know how this will work for them.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for his probing amendment and I am happy to provide the assurances that he seeks. Perhaps I may mention that the new Titus Salt School, the site of which he will know very well, has built a car park for its staff that is available for people who use Roberts Park at weekends. The noble Lord will know exactly where I am talking about.
The model funding agreement requires academies to be at the heart of their communities and to share their facilities with other schools and the wider community—for example, by making their sports facilities available for local groups to use. That will remain a requirement on academies. We therefore entirely agree with my noble friend that it is important for a school to be at the heart of its community and that it should, as far as possible, encourage the community to make use of school facilities in the evenings and at weekends. The place to impose obligations on an academy is through the academy arrangements—either the funding agreement or the terms and conditions of grant. We therefore resist the imposition of this in the Bill but entirely sympathise with the intentions of the amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that encouraging response and for the fact that it will now be in Hansard if nowhere else, which at least can be quoted back at the Government if it turns out that in some cases schools are trying to renege on these matters. Perhaps I may add that, yes, I know Roberts Park. I think that I was five years of age when I was sat in a thunderstorm in a shelter in Roberts Park and I began to contract the symptoms of measles. I remember it very well indeed. I am not quite sure what that has to do with academies, but it is certainly to do with Roberts Park and me. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) The Secretary of State before making a property transfer scheme shall consult with—
(a) the local authority;(b) the current owner, if not the local authority; and(c) any other such persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.”
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, the amendment is in my name and that of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Garden. Clause 7 applies not to land but to items such as electronic hardware and software, furniture and cleaning or catering contracts. It permits the Secretary of State to make a property transfer scheme, which, in effect, transfers to the academy various property and contractual rights and liabilities that previously belonged to the local authority or, through it, the maintained school that the academy is replacing. As it stands, the clause makes no mention of any consultation with the owner of the property—whether it is the local authority or otherwise—or with people such as the catering contractors who might be affected by such a transfer. It seems natural justice that they should be consulted and the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that they are consulted. Will my noble friend also explain what subsection (6)(a) means? What sort of property rights,
“could not otherwise be transferred”?
I beg to move.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
My Lords, I have been asked to speak to Amendments 171 to 174 in the name of my noble and right reverend friend the Bishop of Lincoln, who cannot be in his place today due to commitments in his diocese—although I dare say that his commitments will be over rather sooner than yours and mine.
I should like to speak to these amendments as a group because they relate to complications that could arise from the Secretary of State’s powers to compulsorily purchase the site of an existing church school as part of the academy formation process. The amendments are technical and are being put forward because of the extraordinary complications in respect of the ownership provisions of many voluntary schools sites—again, predominantly those held in trust by Church of England bodies.
As I am sure all noble Lords will know, the School Sites Acts of Queen Victoria are still in force and contain a technicality called a “reverter”. It is our view that reverters will be likely to apply to at least some sites dealt with under the provisions of this Bill and that in consequence the rights of the heirs of original donors will come into force if and when the school site is purchased by the state. Thus, the closure of a school in order for it to reopen as an academy may trigger reverter conditions, enabling the trustees to reclaim the land. Likewise, the original donation of the land in trust probably had conditions attached such as its use for church schooling only. In this respect, we do not think that the Government have taken into account the effects of the Schools Sites Act 1841 and of the Reverter of Sites Act 1987. Many of our school sites can be regarded as being part of the church’s historical assets and every effort needs to be made through discussion with the diocese and trustees to ensure that the transition is both smooth and a legitimate handing on of the asset in trust.
These are therefore probing amendments through which I hope to draw out the Minister to clarify the Government’s thinking on this arcane subject. They seek to protect trustees and heirs from the complications that might ensue and to protect the Government from a nasty and expensive legal trap if the issue is not clarified and addressed now.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, the amendments in this group deal with the transfer of school property to the successor academy. Amendment 160 deals with the transfer of property other than land. In response to the question from my noble friend Lady Sharp, that means things such as desks, computers and so on. The amendment would impose a requirement to consult the local authority, and possibly others, before the property may be transferred. In the case of converting academies, the clear intention is that there should be a smooth transfer between the existing school and the academy, as part of which the school would need to be able to continue to use its property, including things such as desks, computers and so on—property other than land. I am conscious that we have discussed the question of consultation in other contexts and I have said to the Committee that I will reflect further and come back to it. I am aware that views on consultation differ, but I will bear in mind my noble friend’s points as part of my reflection.
The amendments spoken to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter are, as he says, extremely technical and complex, particularly as they concern the Reverter of Sites Act. Perhaps it would be acceptable to him if, for the convenience of the Committee, I were to write to him at length on those points and place the letter carefully in the Library. I understand the significance of these issues to the church and do not want to rush them, get them wrong or end up, as he says, with an expensive lawsuit. I am advised that we have some answers to the points. Perhaps I may write to the right reverend Prelate and circulate the letter widely. When he receives that letter, if there are specific circumstances that the church authorities have in mind and about which they are still concerned, I would be happy to consider the matter further if he or others contact me. If he and the rest of the Committee agree to that proposal, perhaps he will refrain from pressing his amendments and my noble friend Baroness Sharp will withdraw hers.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
I thank the Minister for those assurances and will not press the amendments this evening.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
I am grateful to the Minister and am glad that he is going to think about this. It seems to be natural justice that there should be some consultation with the owners of the property concerned. In the light of that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
“Powers and duties of local authorities: oversight and monitoring of Academies
(1) The Secretary of State may by order appoint a local authority as the body responsible for the oversight and monitoring of Academies in its area or part of its area.
(2) An order under subsection (1) may be made for all Academies in the area of a local authority or for one or more types of Academies.
(3) Such an order must be made if the number of Academies of a particular type in the area of a local authority is at least ten or twenty five per-cent of the total, whichever is the smaller, unless the Secretary of State considers after consultation with a local authority that there are special circumstances that make such an order impractical in that particular case.
(4) The Secretary of State may make regulations concerning the operation of the powers and duties of local authorities under this section.
(5) An order made under subsection (2) and regulations made under subsection (4) are subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 160B in this group. The two amendments cover important and fundamental issues that it is probably too late to discuss in detail: however, they are still fundamental and important. I do not claim that these are perfectly honed amendments that could go into legislation: they are an attempt to set down principles and issues that are important. They probably indicate my lack of detailed knowledge of education legislation. Nevertheless, the two issues are clear, and these are probing and speculative amendments about them.
The first amendment refers to the powers and duties of local authorities in relation to the oversight and monitoring of academies and clearly suggests a role for them in intervention in, and challenge of, underperforming academies. It does not propose any change to the basic powers and freedoms of academies. It suggests that, over a period, the role of supervision and oversight of academies should transfer from a national body—from the Young People’s Learning Agency or whatever other national body the Government of the time decide to use—to local authorities.
If there are a few hundred academies, having this role in the hands of a national body will be feasible and practical and will probably work. However, the more academies there are, the more the creation of a large national bureaucracy to carry out this work will become unrealistic and impractical. If there are 5,000 or 6,000 academies, then it will not seem sensible for one national body to be responsible for oversight, and it certainly will not fit into the Government’s mantra of localism. One might say that it is an old-fashioned state socialist way of doing things, but I do not want to get under the skin of the Labour Party too much, so I say that very gently.
My proposal also fits in with the remaining residual local authority roles in relation to pupils who are, or have been, attending academies. In this Committee we have been discussing roles relating to transport, special needs, excluded pupils and so on. There is clearly a residual local authority role in relation to academies or in relation to pupils attending academies, and it would be sensible if there were not two different bureaucracies dealing with the same schools.
Clearly, we are talking about light-touch oversight. As I said, I am not talking about in any way changing the status or freedoms of academies. However, it seems to me that if oversight is put into the hands of bodies which are closer to the academies, are more local and are more likely to have close relations with them for all sorts of reasons, they will have the knowledge and close links that will make it much easier for them to intervene effectively if and when things go wrong in a school. If and when that happens in an academy, there will have to be outside intervention—we all understand and accept that—but how much easier it will be if this is done by people who already have close working relationships and links with those schools rather than by people charging down perhaps several hundreds miles from Whitehall. Alternatively, the YPLA, or whatever other agency is involved, might have to set up local or regional branches to do this work. There will then be a risk that local authorities will, in a sense, be duplicated by the regional and local branches of the national agency. As I understand it, that is exactly what this Government are trying to avoid. Certainly they seem to be taking an axe to quite a lot of the existing regional bureaucracies—something that I shall not complain about too much—but it seems to me that setting up new ones would be the wrong direction in which to go.
I am not suggesting that the detailed mechanisms in Amendment 160A are the right ones. I am not necessarily arguing for them; I am putting them on the table for a discussion about the way in which it would be sensible to move as more and more academies are created over the next few years, if that is indeed what happens.
Amendment 160B is rather different. It would put local authorities in the driving seat in the process of converting existing schools into academies. This is a probing amendment to ask the Government some fundamental questions. First, what are their ultimate objectives in converting schools into academies? What is their strategy? What do they think the position will be in five or 10 years’ time? Do they expect that ultimately all or most schools will convert to academies—perhaps all schools except those in need of intervention in terms of special or other measures? Is that their ambition?
Several times, the Minister said that the Government want to give all schools the opportunity to apply to be academies. That implies that they want all schools to become academies eventually. If that is their position, we are moving towards a situation in which the local management of schools, which took place in 1988 and subsequently, will be taken to its more logical conclusion and all schools will be given a substantial degree of independence. Any relationship that they have with the local authority will be turned upside down and schools will decide whether to pay for local authority services, rather than having some services provided automatically.
The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said in a powerful speech at Second Reading that this is the latest in a series of initiatives to make a special category of schools. She referred to technology colleges, grant maintained schools and so on. So far, all those initiatives have resulted in a minority of schools getting special status. Is this the same thing again: that a minority of schools will become academies and that all the rest will continue as usual? Do the Government think that that will happen, after a period of years, or do they envisage every school becoming an academy? I do not think that the Government have made that clear at all and I do not know whether they have a clear idea. I suspect that Michael Gove has a clear idea about it, but I am not sure whether the Government collectively have. That is a fundamental question and it is one reason for tabling this amendment.
The Government are cutting local authorities out of the process of the creation of academies. That will result in a lot of resistance from local authorities, which will attempt to persuade many schools not to become academies. The same will apply to diocesan authorities. The alternative is to put local authorities in the driving seat, letting them supervise, organise and attempt to get some order and sense into the conversion process in their areas.
In Committee, we have talked a little about the transitional period during which an authority might have half of its schools as academies and the other half which it will still have to look after. Perhaps the latter will eventually be a minority, a rump of schools, which inevitably will be the less successful schools, or perhaps the mediocre, satisfactory schools. It is not clear whether the process will work in an efficient and economical way. During this transitional period, it will cost local authorities more money as they will have to provide all the services, but for fewer schools. I believe that putting local authorities in charge of the process will mean that they will be able to manage the whole thing more efficiently and economically. If you give local authorities a job, they will become enthusiastic about it; they will do it; and I believe that you will end up with more academies in a more sensible, organised way than by doing this nationally and trying to lock local authorities out of the process, as that will result in tensions, difficulties, inefficiencies and extra costs.
The wording of these amendments is not necessarily the answer, but these fundamental issues have to be faced, even at this time of night. I believe that the Government are missing a huge opportunity if they do not use local authorities more fundamentally in their ambitious programme to convert schools into academies. I beg to move.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Greaves. I listened to his comments with care and he made some extremely interesting points about oversight. I agree that one has to keep that under review as the situation develops. It goes to the heart of the question about the future role of local authorities, which we have touched on previously in Committee. I recognise that the coalition Government have not yet come up with a complete or satisfactory answer on what it should be, other than saying that we are clear that local authorities should have a strong strategic role.
The issue of it being a revolving picture is related fundamentally to my noble friend’s Amendment 160B. Perhaps I may answer his question directly by reference to Baldrick in “Blackadder”: I do not have a cunning plan around how many schools are likely to convert. I know that my noble friend may find that hard to believe, but it is true that our approach to the legislation is to say to schools that they have the opportunity: it is a choice rather than a compulsion. We do not have a clear view of the landscape in five years’ time because the shape of that landscape will be determined by the response to this permissive legislation.
We see this as being an opportunity that we want to give to schools rather than requiring them, or a local authority acting on their behalf, to convert or plan for conversion. Linked with that is the desire to be able to seek academy status quickly. It may indeed be that over time local authorities will develop a new role more akin to commissioning. I think that was the thought behind my noble friend’s amendment and the 2005 White Paper laid out thoughts on how the role of local authorities might develop. As the department and the Government more generally reflect on the proper role of local authorities and how to work with them—
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I have been listening carefully to the Minister. If the Government do not have a vision for the role of local authorities going forward, would it not be a better idea to take this legislation at a more reflective pace so that people can engage with the coalition Government more proactively and in a considered way? Why are we rushing this? If the noble Lord does not have a picture or an answer, why are we here at 11 pm instead of having more time to think more carefully about the matter and have a proper debate? I do not understand what the rush is.
Lord Hill of Oareford
This relates to a debate I had earlier with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who asked: why the rush? Our answer to that question is that we know there are schools which appear to be keen to convert and to take advantage of academy freedoms. Our instinct is that, given that information and given the choice between going slow and cracking on with it, and providing answers about the strategic role of local authorities going forward, as I fully accept we must, we incline to the latter view.
I fully recognise the experience of my noble friend Lord Greaves in the proper role of local authorities. I hope that he will contribute to our deliberations on these matters. He said that these amendments are meant to illustrate a point rather than being particularly prescriptive in their intent. I have listened to what he said and will continue to reflect on it. I hope that in the light of that he may feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the honesty in his considered reply. I am a little alarmed by the idea that Baldrick may be in charge of government education policy, but I do not think that he quite said that. If I cite him correctly, he said: “We have not come up with a clear answer to the role of local authorities”. The more that we have considered the Bill, the more obvious it has been to me—this point was made by some of my noble friends—that it would have been a good idea for it to have had pre-legislative scrutiny to try to bottom out some of these issues and at least to present us with some considered alternatives on these important matters.
The future role of local authorities in relation to schools is vital. Clearly, a few hundreds of academies can be created without, in most areas, severely affecting the role of local authorities, but not once it gets into the thousands. I think that there are about 20,000 schools in England. If 5,000 or 6,000 of them, a quarter of them, converted to academies, which is clearly possible under the criteria that the Government propose, during the next four or five years, that would have a severe effect on the viability of local authorities—at least in some areas, because their creation would tend to be geographically patchy.
I believe that we are to get a schools Bill or an education Bill which will be a bit fatter than this Bill later this year. If so, this issue should certainly be returned to at that time, if not before. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he will reflect on the matter. Finally, the answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, as to why we are rushing this, is that we have a Secretary of State in a hurry. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but if it results in bad legislation with all sorts of unintended consequences, we will have to sort them out in due course.
Baroness Thornton
Before the noble Lord withdraws his amendment—which I expect he will do rather than test the opinion of the Committee on the matter at this time of night—does he have a view on what is the tipping point? If he does not, perhaps he would like to ask his noble friend what he thinks the tipping point is before a local authority becomes unviable.
Lord Greaves
That is the $64,000 question, or perhaps more than that at present exchange rates. I do not know. We will all have a view on that. It will depend on how big or small the local authority is. A big local authority, such as Lancashire, could probably survive quite a lot of its schools becoming academies, because it would still have a critical mass, but if a small local authority—a small London borough that has only a few schools—is left with just two or three primary schools, it will be in serious trouble.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Is the point not round the other way? If the cumulative impact of a lot of independent academies in an LEA area is to render problems for the education system, what happens if the LEA no longer has any intervention powers? How is the public interest in a community to be upheld?
Lord Greaves
I am beginning to feel like the Minister, the way that I am being cross-questioned by the Labour Party. I am not a Minister; I am not a member of the Government. My first amendment faces exactly the problems that the noble Lord just raised. They are serious problems. The answer has to be properly thought out. It may take longer than this Bill to think about, but it ought not to take very much longer. Having said that, I have said more than enough tonight and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I shall speak also to Amendment 167. Amendment 161 is jointly in the name of my noble friend Lady Walmsley, and Amendment 167 is jointly in the names of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Williams of Crosby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote.
As my noble friend the Minister referred to Baldrick, I think that he will sympathise if I say that Clause 8 could have been drafted by Monty Python himself. It is a dog’s dinner. Quite why we have to have this new definition of “academy proprietors” when the first five clauses make no reference to academy proprietors and they make only a desultory appearance in Clause 6 and a latter-day appearance in Clause 7, I do not quite know. It does not seem to me to be worth its presence in the Bill, which is complicated enough already.
I shall briefly deal with Amendment 161. I am a little shy about proposing it at 11 o’clock at night, but I shall nevertheless do so briefly. The use of the word “proprietor” is unhappy, given that all these academies can only be charities and that the word “proprietor” has an almost aggressively private ring about it, a ring of ownership. If you look up the definition, all its resonances and ring are about personal, private ownership. I am not expecting the Minister to make any concession on this tonight, but if he reflects on this and thinks that the word “operator” would be more in tune with the culture of the Bill, so much the better. The language of Bills can often be quite important in the way they are understood by the public afterwards.
I turn to the heart of this group: Amendment 167. It deletes subsection (4) of Clause 8 which states that all academy proprietors—to use the language of the clause—shall be exempt charities. I know that my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts will argue in the next group along the lines that I now do—it is nice to be in harness with him again and to see the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, o’er yonder because we battled it out for a year over the Charities Bill in 2006. The question of who regulates this new breed of schools is vital. I am entirely happy that the Bill makes clear that all these academies are to be charities—indeed I would have been frantic if it had not.
However, as we in this House know only too well, charities are both highly privileged entities in the national legal fauna and have very considerable tax and other advantages over any other sort of legal animal. Because of that and their ancient nature, and because they are at the heart of civic society and our wonderful voluntary movement, they need to be and, indeed, are specially regulated. It is also fair to say that the law of charity is very particular and complex and requires more judgment on the part of those who apply it than most other parts of our law. It is no accident that the Charity Commission was established in the first half of the 19th century and has maintained to this day its pre-eminent—indeed, almost absolutist—role with regard to the oversight of charity activity and, starting at the beginning, of charity registration.
Therefore, it was with some alarm that I read the Bill and saw that academies were to be exempt charities because, as many Members of your Lordships' House will know, that means that they are taken out of Charity Commission regulation. It is particularly odd on two grounds. First, schools and other educational establishments used to be regulated by what was then called the Department for Education and Science, but that special possession was taken from it and put back into the responsibility of the Charity Commission many years ago.
The second oddity is that existing academies are subject to the regulation of the Charity Commission. I understand that there was a little brouhaha when at first it was suggested that the regulation should not be with the Charity Commission, but that was overcome and the academies remain subject to the oversight and regulation of the Charity Commission. It is worth pointing out that the DCSF, in its guidance to academy schools which it issued less than a year ago, makes very plain why the Charity Commission rather than anyone else is to regulate them. The reason is principally to ensure that academies that are charities must remain charities with the essential attribute of charitable status, which is independence, above all things.
Although the Government will rightly claim that one of the great virtues of the new wave of academies is to be more independent—I do not for a minute suggest that my noble friend the Minister has any other thoughts in his mind—sometimes things can occur that are not intended when one is legislating, and we must be absolutely sure that the independence of new academies, over and against local education authorities for example, is not replaced by subservience to the Government of the day. That is the principal benefaction, if I can use that word, of charitable status, which is why the Charity Commission goes to great lengths to ensure that academy schools are properly independent of government.
The Government say in their guidance that the agreement must be reached after,
“arm’s-length negotiations with the governmental authority”,
and that the trustees of an academy school must not,
“commit themselves simply to giving effect to the policies and wishes of the governmental authority”.
Finally, the trustees cannot agree to allow the governmental authority,
“to decide who is to benefit and in what way … However … it is possible for trustees to accept funding from a governmental authority on terms that are quite prescriptive”.
That gives you a flavour of this long document.
My amendment, which is supported by my noble friends, would bring the regulation back into the hands of the Charity Commission. I do not seek that for any other reason than that it has the experience and expertise to do this job not only better than any other regulating authority but, dare I say it, with less bureaucratic stumbling than might be the case if the regulation were moved to—what is it called these days? Is it still the DCSF?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am sorry. I have got the abbreviation wrong. I am well behind. On utilitarian grounds, and on the grounds of the most effective regulation, the Charity Commission should not be ousted in the way it is in subsection (4).
I also need to say this. The Charity Commission could not take on the role of regulating the new academies unless it was given more staff—it is currently losing nearly 60 staff. Whoever is given the task of regulation will have to have the necessary staff, and any regulating hand will have to have more staff than the Charity Commission, because the Charity Commission has resort to a huge reservoir of experience, expertise and assistance. Noble Lords may ask who will regulate. That is the problem. The Government say that the Charity Commission is not the regulator, but there is nothing in the Bill about who they wish to be the regulator.
Let us concede for the minute that they insist on a different regulator, although I hope the Minister will have second thoughts about that. There are very few examples of other principal regulators. Most of our big national museums are regulated by DCMS, while Kew Gardens is regulated by Defra. Some of the universities are regulated by HEFCE, and some housing associations have a separate principal regulator. There has to be a principal regulator, and if I may say, the principal regulator in the case of the universities has delegated much of its regulatory function to the Charity Commission under a memorandum of understanding. So it all gets a bit confusing and, I would say, wasteful.
I end by saying that, whatever else, we must have the name of regulator on the face of such an important Bill as this. It is not enough for the Government to use their powers to appoint a principal regulator by secondary legislation. We all know how futile are the powers of this and the other place in relation to secondary legislation. We ought at least to have the possibility of commenting on the appropriateness and quality of the principal regulator the Government have in mind in order to assist them.
Finally, why on earth are the Government doing this? I hope it is not because they want to whip these academies through without the careful initial oversight of the arrangements, particularly of the new academies, that the Charity Commission could and will provide. I hope that the Government are not hoping that this will rush things through. If that is the case, they could repent at leisure. I beg to move.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I have two amendments that address many of the points made by my noble friend Lord Phillips, although they approach them from a different angle. Given the lateness of the hour, it might be for the convenience of the Committee if I speak to them now so that the Minister can deal with the various arguments. I apologise for not having participated in the debates before, although I have read in particular the Second Reading debate carefully. As we are discussing charitable matters, I should declare my interests as president of the National Council of Voluntary Organisations and chairman of the Armed Forces Charities Advisory Company, inelegantly known as AFCAC.
The most important of my amendments is Amendment 164. It would remove the words “is a charity” and replace them with the phrase,
“may be deemed to be an exempt charity if and in so far as it is a charity”.
I am not quite as concerned as my noble friend Lord Phillips about the use of exempt status, but I am concerned about the way in which the charitable status and arrangements are being drawn in this Bill. I do not oppose the principles of the Bill; indeed, I support them, because I am for aspiration in our education system and it seems to me that this Bill will lead to higher aspirations. However, Clause 8 causes me some concern. This is a probing amendment, about which I am much looking forward to hearing from my noble friend on the Front Bench.
I shall take a moment to say a word about the background. The Charities Act 2006, which was a Lords starter like the Academies Bill, went through a high degree of scrutiny, not only pre-legislative scrutiny but also because the parliamentary examination took place twice over. We had reached the end of the process when we came to the wash-up before the 2005 election, when our progress resembled the childhood game of snakes and ladders—we had reached square 99 but then stepped on a very long snake and went all the way back down to square two, from where we had to start again. I had the privilege of serving my party on the Front Bench and, as my noble friend Lord Phillips said, we spent many happy hours with the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, and others dealing with the issues in that Bill. The result of what some might say was an inordinately long gestation was that we had a huge amount of input from the sector and the wider public. I must say that the then Labour Government were prepared to listen and I think that we made some sensible changes. I think that the sector believes that a delicate balance that reconciles the many strongly held views about the charitable sector and its position in our society was achieved. This Bill, if unamended, will damage that delicate balance.
What is the balance? First, the Bill reintroduces presumption by the back door. The Charitable Uses Act 1601 stated that there was a presumption of charitable status for three purposes: the relief of poverty, the advancement of religion and, of relevance to us tonight, the advancement of education. Therefore, if you checked into the Charity Commission with the Hodgson educational trust, it would be bound to give you charitable status. However, it became perfectly clear in recent years that that no longer held water in our society and that we therefore needed to find a way in which all applicants for charitable status, with the benefits described by my noble friend Lord Phillips, had to show that they afforded an appropriate level of benefit to the public to offset the tax and other benefits that they received. So we achieved a level playing field.
This public benefit test was to be achieved by the Charity Commission and we wanted to make sure that the commission was insulated from political pressure from all sides of the House. Therefore, written into Clause 6 of the Charities Bill were words to the effect that the Charity Commission should not be subject to the direction of any government agency or any Minister of the Crown. We had a level playing field with an independent regulator.
The Bill as drafted blows a hole in this because Clause 8(1) states:
“A qualifying Academy proprietor is a charity”.
That restores presumption. There is no mention of a public benefit test; it just states that it is a charity. Therefore, we no longer have a level playing field. Above all, we are introducing an unlevel playing field in an area of great controversy. It was on education that some of the most difficult discussions and debates in this House took place because of the existence of fee-paying schools that are charities. Indeed, several schools have had their charitable status called into question or, in certain instances, revoked.
The second worry is that this undermines the authority of the Charity Commission and damages its independence. We went to great lengths to make sure that it was above suspicion; if it could be bypassed at any time, that would be a great mistake. I have absolutely no doubt that these academies will be able to show that they can pass the benefit test, so why damage the balance that we created in the 2006 Act?
Most important, we are creating a dangerous precedent. A future Government—not this Government or any Government that I am thinking of—could use this ability to say that something is going to be pushed through on the ministerial fiat. It would be a great mistake to allow that kind of precedent to be created in the Bill.
On the implications of exempt charity status, I entirely share the views of my noble friend Lord Phillips. We need to know what the regulatory body will be. The sly, shy hint in paragraph 29 of the Explanatory Notes does not go far enough. We need to know whether the regulator will have a public benefit test and, if so, whether it will be the same as that of the Charity Commission. It is essential that it should be so.
When my noble friend replies, will he say whether he thinks that he has the power to enforce this? Section 13(2) of the 2006 Act states:
“The body or Minister must do all that it or he reasonably can to meet the compliance objective in relation to the charity”.
However, as far as the Charity Commission is concerned, that is only one of five objectives. It has a public confidence objective, a public benefit objective, the compliance objective to which I have just referred, a charitable sources objective and an accountability objective. We need to know whether those other objectives will be met in this case. As my noble friend has said, we need to know what will happen to existing charities and whether we will have a further unevenness in the playing field.
I do not expect to reach finalisation on this tonight but I seek from my noble friend reassurances on two or three central points: first, that the Government will not reintroduce presumption by the back door; secondly, that they respect the independence of the Charity Commission and its expertise; and, thirdly, that they see the great dangers of the precedent that we will be creating.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, I will not make any long arguments. My noble friend Lord Phillips has referred to museums and to Kew, but I think that, although the secondary legislation to appoint a charitable regulator other than the Charity Commission is in draft, it has not yet been triggered. I think that the matter is still in limbo.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
In fact, it came in at the beginning of this month.
Viscount Eccles
I stand corrected. That secondary legislation was drafted by the previous Government and I must confess that I had some hope that the coalition Government would see that there had been an error and not implement it. An extremely strong argument has to be made in order to appoint any charitable regulator other than the Charity Commission. In default of that argument, the Charity Commission should be the charitable regulator.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I have got slightly confused about the groupings. I think that I have a clause stand part in here. Anyway, I shall make a brief contribution to this debate.
The contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, on the question of charitable status and the automatic exemption proposed in the Bill was so key that I am not sure that I want to add much more. When I read the Bill, it gave me great cause for concern. I sat through much of the proceedings on the Charities Bill as a new Peer and learnt how thoroughly this House can interrogate a piece of legislation. I came to understand the importance of presumption and the role of the regulator in safeguarding the values that the charity brand, if that is the right phrase, has for members of the public. This is a fundamental step to take.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families considered this measure for its last Bill but rejected it on the basis of advice that we received, so we were listening carefully. There were lots of good reasons why academies might want to become charities, but in the end there were not enough good reasons to suggest that all the careful deliberation that this House and the other place went through to achieve that settlement should be thrown out. To carry on the Monty Python link, I would say that this clause is a dead parrot, as it really is dead as a concept. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response, but I have heard some convincing arguments today for why Clause 8 should not remain in the Bill.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I deeply regret having mentioned Baldrick. I am learning as I go and I shall attempt to be more concise in future.
I shall attempt to respond to some of the broad points that have been made and the specific concerns that have been raised. I am conscious of the expertise that resides with both my noble friends, so I think that the sensible way forward, if they are prepared to spend the time, is for me and officials to sit down with them and go through these points in more detail, taking advantage of their knowledge and trying to address some of the points that have been raised.
Perhaps I may respond in general terms to the main thrust of the points made around Amendment 167, which would remove the provision for academy trusts to be exempt charities. The effect of that, as my noble friend made clear, would be that they would have to continue, as now, to register individually with, and be regulated by, the Charity Commission. As we discussed earlier, hundreds of maintained schools may apply to become academies during the next few years and, as charities, they would, if not exempted under subsection (4), all have to be regulated by the Charity Commission. That would clearly be a huge additional burden. I accept the point made by my noble friend Lord Phillips that whoever does it will have to deal with it, but I believe that the Charity Commission accepts that the burden of taking on that regulatory role would be considerable.
A range of educational bodies are exempt charities. Further education colleges and higher education colleges are exempt charities and not regulated by the Charity Commission. The governing bodies of foundation and voluntary schools are shortly, following discussion and agreement between the Charity Commission and the department, to become exempt charities as well. They will cease to be regulated by the Charity Commission and will be regulated by the department instead. We therefore thought that academies could be treated consistently with these other schools and educational bodies and be made exempt in the same way.
I know well that the Charity Commission is committed to ensuring that proper public accountability for academies is maintained. It is our intention that funding agreements or grant arrangements should place an obligation on academy trusts to publish their governing documents, reports, accounts and the names of trustees. I hope that that offers the noble Lord at least some reassurance that there would not be an unacceptable reduction in accountability and transparency.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office has agreed in principle that the YPLA should be appointed as the principal regulator for academies. That is the government body with day-to-day responsibility for academies. Once opened, it could be the appropriate body to carry out that role. I am told in response to a point raised in the debate that all principal regulators appointed under the 2006 Act have been appointed under secondary legislation.
I hope that my answers have provided at least some factual information. However, having listened to the debate, I repeat my invitation to my noble friends Lord Phillips and Lord Hodgson to spare the time to sit down with me and discuss these matters at greater length. I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister cannot be fairer than that. I am tempted to make some comments of my own on some of his, but that would be wicked, cruel and unnecessary. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“(b) may apply to be a community interest company (CIC)”
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I shall be very brief on Amendment 165, because it is an alternative route to heaven for academies. It would permit them, instead of becoming charities, to become community interest companies. It is a probing amendment which may repay some study, and I look forward to hearing what my noble friend has to say about it.
The Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004—inelegantly entitled, I agree—has in it a bit on community enterprise. Part 2 of the Act, which comprises Sections 26 to 63, establishes the concept of community interest companies. If the Minister’s officials care to look through those clauses, they may be able to or wish to advise him that it could be a useful structure for the new academies to adopt. I shall not weary the Committee tonight with a recitation of how they would all fit together, except to say that Section 35 sets up a community interest test, rather like the public benefit test, while Section 27 establishes a regulator of CICs, as they are known, with extensive powers, and Section 30 caps dividends and distributions, so they are not profit-making in the normal sense of the word. There are a number of less important aspects, which might have value in this approach.
CICs cannot be charities, so they would be travelling a totally separate road. They come under Companies Act regulations. However, this could be a useful alternative—not compulsory, but a possible alternative—to becoming an exempt charity with some of the issues that we have just been debating in the previous group of amendments. This amendment seeks to explore the possibility. I beg to move.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will probably have something to say on this. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and I had several happy hours in the Chamber discussing community interest companies and how they should be formed. The noble Lord is correct—it was a matter of some significant discussion at the time that a community interest company could not be a charity. However, a main feature of a community interest company is the asset lock. That is why it is such a valuable company form for social enterprises. I am not sure how that could be applied as an alternative form to a charity. This is a complex issue, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, is about to make it even more complicated, because I know that he has very firm views on this, but I cannot see how the asset lock would work here.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I do not like being known as a man who complicates things, but I shall just say that I, unusually, do not support the noble Lord in his amendment. The fact that a CIC cannot be a charity is a fundamental impediment. It would also mean that it could not have a principal regulator under the Charities Acts 1993 and 2006, which would be a really major drawback. However, the noble Lord has at least drawn the attention of the House, inadvertently perhaps, to the charitable incorporated organisation, which is a new corporate animal created under the Charities Act 2006. The Charity Commission is still struggling to find the regulations appropriate to the birth of this new beast but, by jingo, when it is born, it will be a perfect vehicle for these new academies. As Clause 8 has been drafted by Monty Python, it will not be a permitted corporate carrier of a school, although plainly it should be. So I am grateful to the noble Lord for his amendment, even if I disagree with it.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to agree with my noble friend Lord Phillips but, as has already been pointed out by my noble friend Lord Hodgson, the CICs—a word I have learnt tonight—are not charities so, from a practical point of view, I am advised that any academy which became a community interest company would have to pay corporation tax, rates tax and small amounts of additional VAT. It would also lose Gift Aid on direct donations. Therefore, there may be practical reasons why it is a less attractive option apart from any point about the asset lock, which I am sure I will also learn about rapidly. Given that my noble friend Lord Hodgson will, I hope, be able to discuss these issues more generally with me, perhaps we can touch on this as well as part of those broader discussions.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, may I make a point to the Minister? I am concerned about the timing of this Bill because the issues raised tonight are extremely complex. We are due to have Report stage within a week and, knowing that the machinery for getting approval for amendments in government does not move as speedily as one would wish, I am concerned that there will not be enough time to give full consideration to these matters. I hope that he will give some consideration to ways in which this House can really have enough time to deal with these matters appropriately.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I have been invited to withdraw my amendment, which I am happy to do. I think that there are ways around the asset lock, which I will not bore the House with at 11.40 pm. To my noble friend Lord Phillips, I had thought about putting down an amendment about a CIO—a charitable incorporated organisation—but since the regulations were not yet drafted, that would be otiose to our discussions on this point. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
“Academy proprietors: freedom of information
In Schedule 1 (public authorities) to the Freedom of Information Act 2000, after Part IV insert—
“Part IVAAcademies56A A qualifying Academy proprietor, within the meaning of section 8(2) of the Academies Act 2010, when exercising functions under that Act.””
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the coalition agreement pledges to review the Freedom of Information Act with a view to increasing its scope. This, the first legislative act of the coalition, seeks to reduce its scope. It should not.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, in Amendment 168 my noble friend proposes inserting a new clause that would amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to add academy proprietors to the list of public bodies covered by that Act. Having thought about this, and having come newly into the department, I think that he makes a very good point in his new clause. I can see no reason in principle why academy proprietors, in relation to their function of running academies under academy arrangements, should not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act in the same way as all other state-funded schools are.
I am also happy to confirm that this Government, like the last one, accept that academies are public authorities for the purposes of the Act. In principle, then, I am completely with my noble friend on the merits of his amendment. It also helps us to address some of the broader debate that we have had about consultation, where I accept the points that have been made from around the Committee. Making sure that information is available and that there is as much transparency as possible is part of the process of helping to overcome suspicion, so it will help in that respect as well. I undertake to consider the issue further. If my noble friend would be happy enough to withdraw his amendment, I will come back to the issue on Report.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, that is very cheering news at this time of night, I shall go straight off and have a whisky to celebrate. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Whitaker
“( ) requiring the appointed person to ensure provision of premises which meet designated minimum design standards, including standards which meet the needs of students with disabilities”
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I will try to race through this. I apologise for not signalling the subject at Second Reading, which I could not come to. It was, however, trailed in the Statement on free schools. I was grateful for the insight into government thinking which the Minister provided then.
Amendment 175, in my name, is predicated on one overarching fact—that the design of school buildings is fundamental to their purpose; and that a well designed school building, as well as keeping initial and recurring costs down and being environmentally sustainable, contributes materially and significantly to the educational success of the school. In the new Westminster Academy we can see even wider social achievements, including not only the educational results of a drop in truancy and a big rise in attainment, but also a drop in crime around the school. There is nothing in the Bill about the role of design; nor, as far as I can see, is it in the remit of the very interesting New Schools Network, about which the Minister wrote to us. Design was not directly included in the statutory remit of the original academies either, but they were to be created as part of a framework which insists on design criteria.
Design is not an amateur matter. We may all think we know a good design when we see one, but it is not just a matter of good taste. It is a matter of functionality, and of buildings or other objects which achieve a purpose. As regards school buildings, the standards—the modern ones in the Building Schools for the Future programme of the last Government—are well accepted. I entirely agreed with the Minister when he said in the Statement on free schools, in answer to my question, that the building regulations need a fresh look. I am referring not to this ancient corpus of law but to the up-to-date and innovative standards of our excellent new schools. If academies are to be built or put in refurbished buildings outside this framework, unless the sponsors have access to or understanding of school design skills, the children who study there will be deprived. Money will be wasted. I am sure that the noble Lord opposite does not want academy students to be let down in this way.
Listeners to the “Today” programme on 18 June will have heard new sponsors of academies being grilled about how even to get their building up in the first place. Procurement and construction are complex processes, requiring expertise and negotiation. If good design is not part of the process from the beginning, it invariably loses out and so then do the students, not least those with disabilities. My amendment would ensure that the appointed person in the regulations in Schedule 1—usually, no doubt, the sponsor—has a duty to find out what the appropriate design standards are and apply them. As I said, the standards exist. They could of course be adapted to allow for a range of educational models and school ethoi. This would work very well if the Government continued with the client design adviser system, another successful innovation.
I do not think that we should allow our children’s education to be vulnerable to the vagaries and variations in expertise of groups of people who may have clear ideas about the teaching culture they want to set up but no acquaintance with design. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, about the importance of design. There is such a thing as a dysfunctional building. Schools are buildings around which large numbers of children have to be moved every day. It is very important that they are well designed for that purpose, as well as for concentration and calm contemplation of the lessons. If the buildings magnify sound, they will not be very good for that purpose.
I am also concerned about the green credentials of schools. Will the Minister say something about the design standards in relation to the use of energy and water, and the disposal of waste and all those issues? I have often suggested that schools are ideal places for ground-source heating. They have large tarmac playgrounds under which you can put the pipes. It really is important because in the future energy will be even more expensive than it is now and we will all have to pay for it.
I recently went to an academy school where in order to switch the lights off at night the caretaker had to go to the top of the building. However, he was forced to leave the lights on all night because health and safety would not allow him to come down the stairs in the dark. That new, purpose-built academy building was ablaze all night. It was a disgrace and I hope that we will avoid that sort of thing.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Whitaker and I have stood shoulder to shoulder in campaigns for good design in recent years and I am happy to join her in the field tonight. It is too much, no doubt, to ask that the magnificent £50 billion Building Schools for the Future programme should be continued, but it is essential that design standards should not be dropped in the school building that does continue. Presumably that will mainly be the construction of academies. Do the Government intend still to provide some funding to support the creation of fine new academy buildings, as their predecessor did? Will the Government at least maintain minimum design standards?
This matters very much. Children and staff in schools, like everyone else, should work in a good built environment. The benefits of that for their morale, spirit and performance are marked. Good design is practical and works better. Well designed schools, like well designed hospitals, hospices, railway stations and magistrates’ courts, are statements about the values we hold as a society, our attachment to civic values and the public realm and our commitment to sustainability, an important point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. There are important symbolisms in good design.
Good design is an expression of national self respect. It is a manifestation of the respect we have for our community. There is a noble tradition of design of school buildings and it is one which we must not lose. Our Victorian and Edwardian forebears took it as axiomatic that a school should be a proud statement on behalf of the community in its design. The school building programme launched after the Second World War by Ellen Wilkinson, as Secretary of State, led to a commitment in a number of local education authorities to good design in a modern idiom. The schools designed in Hertfordshire for the local education authority by Stirrat Johnson-Marshall were celebrated. He was an architect who was described as,
“Socratic in manner of discussion and intolerant of formality in any guise”,
which, I think, means that he sought to find out what people thought, to elicit their best ideas and to develop his designs accordingly, as good architects do. Equally, later in Hampshire, the schools designed by Colin Stansfield Smith were celebrated, and the local education authorities which committed themselves to a programme of high-quality design in school building were strongly and admirably supported by the ministry’s architecture and buildings department.
More recently, under the previous Government, we had the Building Schools for the Future programme. I shall mention two schools that were jewels in that programme. The Mossbourne Academy in Hackney was built in an area known as “murder mile” because of the gangland killings there. It replaced Hackney Downs comprehensive, a school which had gone so far down in the world that the tabloids described it as the worst comprehensive in England. The school reopened in 2004 in buildings designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership. The first intake of the new school consisted of children, nearly half of whom were eligible for free school meals and 30 per cent had special educational needs. They took their GCSEs in 2009 and achieved some of the best state school results in the country. The Mossbourne Academy topped the league tables in value added. That was, above all, due to the leadership of Sir Michael Wilshaw and first-rate teaching by his colleagues, but design, they acknowledge, was also an important factor—as was the case at the Westminster Academy, which my noble friend and I visited earlier this year. There, the architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris were awarded the RIBA Sorrell Foundation Schools Award. This is an opportunity for this House to pay tribute to Sir John Sorrell and his wife Frances for their extraordinary generosity and creativity in their support through their foundation for good school design. The design of the Westminster Academy is beautiful and clever. As my noble friend said, the results in the new school soared by comparison with the results in the old school because pupils were treated with respect through design, and thus learnt to treat their school and neighbourhood with respect. The head teacher and her staff above all deserve the credit, but she insists that the quality and nature of the design of the school were crucial in making possible the curricular flexibility which, in turn, was key to the motivation and success of that school.
The Government want to impose the minimum bureaucratic burden on academies, and that is right. Good design cannot be promoted by regulation, but bad design can be averted. I hope that the Government will keep the minimum design standards that the DCSF pioneered in the public sector. I hope also that the Government will keep the engagement of CABE, which is not a quango to cull. It mobilises at negligible cost talented and expert people to illuminate and promote good practice in design. Here the leadership of Ministers is needed and, as elsewhere in education, leadership, aspiration and ambition are the magical ingredients. Only the best should be good enough for our schoolchildren, their teachers and the staff in our schools. We can afford the best. Good design costs no more than bad design. It is simply a matter of doing the job well. Indeed, good design costs less over the lifetime of the building.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am tempted to answer that lengthy catalogue of good schools in London and close to London by giving examples of schools in Yorkshire and outside the south-east, because often in this House and even more in the national media we tend to focus on what happens in London, not in the rest of the country. One thing which disturbed me in recent years was when I visited a school in Yorkshire which appeared to have been built for a 25-year lifespan. Its sustainability was not good. Also a prison was built for a 25-year lifespan. That is part of what is wrong with current thinking about public buildings as a whole. I also went to a school last year which had been built within the past 10 years and had almost no worthwhile roof insulation. Sustainable standards are not very good in many of the new schools that have been built under the BSF programme. So let us not kid ourselves that the previous Government left us with an unsullied legacy of well designed, highly sustainable buildings of comparable quality to those wonderful Victorian school buildings now being replaced.
I appreciate the thinking behind the amendment, and I am conscious that behind it are stories about charter schools in the United States being put up in warehouses. We had some friends visiting us from New York this weekend who talked about some of the problems that they have run into there with people starting schools in unsuitable buildings. Of course, we wish the premises of all schools to meet the needs of their pupils, including those with disabilities. We are well aware that the quality of the built environment of the schools in which they are educated does affect their outcomes. However, sufficient protections are already in place to ensure that children at academies are as fully protected as those at maintained schools. All schools, including maintained and independent schools, are required to comply with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which include a requirement to prepare and implement accessibility plans. These provide for the implementation of improvements to the school premises to accommodate existing and future disabled pupils within a reasonable period. The 1995 Act will be revoked by the Equality Act 2010, but the requirement for all schools to prepare and implement accessibility plans is replicated in the new Act.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Will the Minister confirm that the department will continue to keep in operation the minimum design standards that operate at present?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I have no reason to doubt that—and if I discover that it is not the case, I will of course write immediately to the noble Lord.
The Earl of Listowel
I interject briefly to seek reassurance on those minimum standards. I am reminded by this debate of a report some time ago about a head teacher of a new academy school that had been built without a playground. The head teacher reportedly said, “We don't need one, we will have them working very hard in school all day, thank you very much”. A paper presented to the British Psychological Society emphasised the value to children of having play breaks in the school day, and looked at how those play breaks had been squeezed over time. It would be reassuring to know that there is something in the minimum standards about a play area for children in every new school. If the Minister would write to me on that, I would appreciate it.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have joined in at this dreadfully late hour. I particularly value the point about CABE, which is an economical and expert organisation that we hope will continue to be used as it has been. I am grateful, of course, to the Minister for the degree of his understanding, and for his assurances on accommodation for children with disabilities. I was not quite so sure about the firmness of his assurances about design standards for all schools. Perhaps he might write to me with the assurance that the current design standards will be used for academies, or perhaps we could have a brief chat about it. If the outcome is satisfactory, there will be no need to take the matter further; but we do feel strongly that there must be this assurance. I will read Hansard carefully and hope for another letter, or perhaps a conversation. In the mean time, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
“( ) In section 133(6) (requirement to be qualified) omit the “or” after paragraph (a) and at the end of paragraph (b) insert “, or (c) an Academy”.
( ) In section 212(1) (general interpretation) insert at the appropriate place the following definition—
““Academy” means an Academy within the meaning of the Academies Act 2010;”.”
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I tabled this amendment to ensure that academy support staff are not excluded from the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, which was set up under the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. The establishment of this negotiating body was supported on all sides of the House. There are concerns that, because academies have freedom to negotiate separate pay and conditions, their staff will be excluded from the negotiating body.
Many people will recognise that changes in educational practice over the past 10 years mean that support staff now play a very important part in schools. Over the years, we have treated them extremely badly. The negotiating body is the first move on the part of any Government in creating a proper career structure and providing proper negotiating machinery for support staff, who have been paid extremely badly. We are seeking assurances from the Government that academy staff can be included within this negotiating body. I beg to move.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, there are over 200,000 more support staff in our schools thanks to the investment put into school improvement under the previous Government. More than 123,000 of these staff are classroom teaching assistants, who support teachers in identifying and helping children who need extra support.
The previous Government established the School Support Staff Negotiating Body to ensure fair pay and conditions for hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs on the front line help to give every child the best start in life. This was part of a partnership that we built between government, employers, unions and staff, known as the Social Partnership.
A forum for real dialogue between government, the trade unions and school staff is something which I consider to be extremely important and which I am sure all of us in this Chamber can look back on with pride. Whatever else the coalition Government may disagree with us about, I hope that—in going forward with the previous Government’s approach—they do not forget that it is by working with, and not against, staff that you can drive change and raise standards in our schools. I hope that we can hear some very constructive language and views from the government Benches.
It is true that under the previous Government academies were not covered by the national pay and conditions structures, although they were invited to be involved in the school support staff negotiation process. As I understand it, the amendments in this group are not intended to represent reneging on that position. If academies are to become the norm for secondary schools in this country—if the majority of schools adopt academy status, as I understand is the Government’s view—these amendments are looking for an understanding that, rather than being a tool for driving improvement in a number of areas, it is right and proper that there should be a framework for collective bargaining, particularly for these important staff members who have made such a difference in our schools.
Giving a few schools in challenging areas the freedom to vary the terms and conditions is one thing, as it may help them to break down entrenched disadvantage and to attract new staff to schools where morale may have been low and staff turnover very high. However, by giving such freedoms first to the strongest schools may undermine the aims of the academy scheme and, therefore, the rationale for the approach to the rights of workers in the sector to collective bargaining. The rationale simply will not stand up. I hope that the Minister can respond with supportive language to these ideas. I look forward to hearing his views.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I always try to be as helpful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, as I can. I certainly echo what she and my noble friend said about the importance of support staff and the contribution that they make. On this occasion, I fear that I shall not be able to be as supportive as she perhaps would like and as my noble friend might like in substantive terms.
Our view is that the freedom over staff pay and conditions, which has been extended to academies in relation to teaching staff, is an important freedom and it is one of the reasons why schools have wanted academy status. Our view is that if it is good enough for teachers, it is good enough for support staff. I suspect, although I do not know because it was before my time, that at the beginning, when academies were given greater discretion over pay, there may well have been concerns that it would lead to staff at academy schools in some way being done down because they were not part of national agreements. Over time, those fears have not been realised.
There is no reason to believe why the same should not happen as regards school support staff. Academies could use their greater freedom to treat them well and perhaps to treat them better. We believe that those freedoms have been vital to academies’ success. They allow them to make changes to the school, to drive up standards and to employ the best staff. It is one of the core freedoms. On this occasion, I certainly feel that academies ought to be able to have those freedoms in relation to school support staff.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I am disappointed that the Minister was not more forthcoming on these amendments. It seems to me that over the years support staff have not been treated well and this was a positive move to give them status. However, given the lateness of the hour, I shall not pursue the matter further. Perhaps the Minister and I can have words about it later. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
The Earl of Listowel
“Annual reports
The Secretary of State must produce a report every twelve months on the impact of the number of Academies established in the past year on the teaching workforce.”
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I will endeavour to be as brief as possible. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to produce a report every 12 months on the impact of the number of academies established in the past year on the teaching workforce. The purpose of that is twofold: first, to produce some mechanism to monitor the impact of these changes on the workforce; and, secondly, to flag up the concern that inadvertently these changes might lead to the creaming off of the best teachers into the best schools with the best pupils, with the consequence that the poorest pupils in the worst schools would have the least good teachers. I know that that is not the Government’s intention, but it is much better to consider such possibilities now rather than just walking down the road and running into them later.
As regards the reports, will the Minister consider some way of monitoring the impact of academies on the general teaching workforce? Perhaps there is already enough to measure what is happening on the ground. Can he comment on that, or perhaps write to me? I would also be grateful to hear from the Minister what action he can imagine if what I have described were to happen. He has already referred to what can be done—for instance, Teach First is focused on the most vulnerable children in the most difficult areas. I think that City Challenge helps in this area, too. What other mechanisms might be put in place to redress the possibility early on before the rot begins to set in?
I worry about stratification. I have already mentioned the consequences of a mixed market in the Prison Service, in child care and in independent social work practices. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships of the guardians ad litem, who were crack social workers appointed by the courts to represent the voice of children in public law in the courts. They present rather a good case in point for the rationale for having academies, because those social workers were frustrated by working in local authorities. By working for the courts, they were independent and pretty much decided how much time they wanted to dedicate to each child. The posts attracted many of the best social workers, paid less for their experience and gaining little career progression. At least a couple of your Lordships had spouses working in this area. Unfortunately, 12 years ago the Government decided that they wanted firmer control over these practitioners and as a consequence many of them simply left social work.
It is easy to be critical when one is not responsible for such a change, but I remember attending a meeting where the guardians were gathered. It was so disappointing to see such a great deal of expertise leaving the profession. Now we have the Child and Family Court Advice and Support Service, which amalgamates the former guardians ad litem and the former court reporting officers. There again we see a problem, in as much as CAFCASS requires officers who have at least three years’ experience in social work. That means that frontline social workers are pulled off the front line into CAFCASS and are taken away from where they are needed most.
My point is that that was all done with the best of intentions, but the consequences were not thought through at the time. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that. I would appreciate a sense that the Government have considered the issues, that they have ways of monitoring the impact and that there are means of taking action if that becomes a problem in future. I beg to move.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I hope that I can provide some reassurance on the concerns raised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, which he has made consistently throughout Committee. The Department for Education publishes comprehensive statistics each year on the school workforce—I give way to my noble friend.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
I was expecting the number of my amendment to be called. I apologise; I will be very brief. First, as it is the last amendment in this long Committee, I should like to say a word of tribute to the Minister, Lord Hill of Oareford, because after a baptism of fire—perhaps a baptism by exhaustion is a more favourable phrase—he deserves great credit for having sat through the whole thing and been so helpful in his responses.
My amendment is similar in many ways to, but not the same as, that of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. The noble Earl is particularly concerned about the issue of monitoring and of the effect on the teaching workforce. I have sympathy with him, because we know that there has been recruiting of head teachers to academies over and above the normal recruiting of head teachers. There is a real worry about weakening the quality of the teaching force in maintained schools. However, my reasons are rather different. I will mention them in a couple of sentences. They are all about accountability.
My great concern about the Bill is that there is very little structure of accountability in it. Once local authorities have gone and once the consultation has gone, we begin to look at the frightening prospect expressed by my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts when he talked about the possibility that the powers rested with the Secretary of State and his department, almost unchallenged all the way down to the schools themselves. That is why I propose a report to Parliament to bring one body of accountability back into the picture. There have been very few countries—the Soviet Union was one exception, and Germany under the Nazis was another—where there was no accountability whatever between schools and central Government. That continues to trouble me. Although I do not pretend that my amendment will by itself meet the need, there is a serious need for greater accountability. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, has accepted that. We look forward to what he has to say at Report.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Forgive me for having pre-empted my noble friend Lady Williams; I will make a second stab at it. Before I do so, I thank everyone who is still here at this late hour and everyone has been here throughout this Committee. My noble friend pointed out that it has been something of a baptism of fire, but noble Lords’ comments have been unfailing helpful, courteous and stimulating, and I am extremely grateful.
I understand the desire of the noble Earl and my noble friend Lady Williams for information. The department publishes comprehensive statistics each year on the school workforce in England, which may well provide him with some of the information that he is interested in on teachers. Those data are published provisionally in April and the final data are published in September. They contain information about the number of teachers and other school staff in academies compared with previous years. The noble Earl would be able to see that information, and it may provide him with some of the facts and figures that he wants.
In relation to his fears about what might happen, from a practical point of view, it is the case that the first wave of new academies will all be outstanding schools, so it may well be the case that the impact on staff will be less pronounced than was the case with some earlier academies where there was a bigger turn-around job. Common sense says that there will be more continuity in a school converting from maintained to academy status. I agree with the noble Earl’s underlying point. Our job overall is to attract more good teachers into all schools. I do not think that one should accept the premise that there is a given number of good teachers and therefore be afraid that that fixed number of good teachers will just be parcelled up throughout the system. I think all noble Lords would agree that we need to do all we can to increase the supply of good teachers. We will aim to do that by working to raise the esteem of the profession, which is clearly vital, strengthening the ability of schools to improve discipline, removing some of the bureaucracy that we have discussed in this Committee to enable teachers to get on with teaching, and extending programmes such as Teach First and Future Leaders. I hope that provides some reassurance to the noble Earl.
However, we are not convinced that if we provide more of this kind of information, an annual report by the Secretary of State is necessarily needed to address the issues of substance. We are not certain that it needs to be in legislation. So far as the annual report and the points made by my noble friend Lady Williams are concerned, I accept that we need to have information out there on which people can make decisions. In part, I hope that will be helped by our earlier discussion about freedom of information, which will be part of making more information about academies available. As part of my commitment to think about how one gets more information out in general, we need to look at how parents can get information about schools more readily.
The academies programme will continue to be evaluated, and the results will be published. The National Audit Office and the Education Select Committee are likely to have a continuing role in monitoring the provision of education at academies. With that panoply of different forms of scrutiny, our view is that a formal report to Parliament would not be necessary. That said, I accept the underlying force of the points made by my noble friend and the noble Earl. I hope that will provide some reassurance and I urge the noble Earl to withdraw his amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his courteous and helpful reply. I hope, like him, that there is no given number of good teachers. I am afraid that my experience elsewhere is that there have been shortages of the best, but I very much hope that his Government’s programme next year will continue the process that was begun by the preceding Government to raise the status of teaching and to make it more attractive. The current recession may well boost that.
A thought occurs to me. One thing that we have done in children’s homes in this country is to have Danish pedagogues working alongside British practitioners. Since we have talked a fair deal about Finland and other countries, perhaps we might encourage an exchange with a country such as Finland so that some of its teachers come and practise in our schools, particularly in our more difficult inner-city schools, as another means of raising standards.
I am grateful to the Minister and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Reports to Parliament
The Secretary of State shall make a report to Parliament on the progress of schools which have converted to Academies, and on the implementation of this Act, not more than 12 months after its commencement, and each year thereafter.”
Baroness Williams of Crosby
I thank the Minister for his response, and thereby sadly, but not necessarily permanently, will not move the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford