Grand Committee
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Arrangement of Business
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Ullswater)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes. I remind noble Lords of the new procedure during Grand Committee on this Bill for Divisions in the Chamber. Members who have registered with the Clerk of the Parliaments may vote in their places in the Grand Committee, provided that they are present in the Grand Committee when the Question is put in the Chamber after three minutes. Members who have not registered or who are not here at the three-minute mark will not be able to vote in their places. I also ask Members to make sure that they speak up but do not touch the microphones.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I wonder whether I could raise another question on procedure in the Committee arising from something the Deputy Chairman just said. I have had representations on behalf of the large number of people who are either deaf or have hearing impairments, who are finding it difficult—I immediately accept the noble Viscount’s admonition for not having switched my phone to silent—to follow the procedures and this Committee. They have asked me to raise two issues. Notwithstanding the normal arrangement for addressing the Chair, they have said that it would be easier to lip-read if people addressing the Committee were to talk directly to the camera. Could Members think about that? Secondly, they are finding that the level of speaking by people, particularly when they are speaking down to notes, it is difficult for them to hear. Could Members speak up, and could we ask the technicians to ensure that the level is as high as possible?
The Deputy Chairman
My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord's comments have been taken into consideration by the technicians and that everything will be done in order so that everyone can partake in the best possible manner.
Welfare Reform Bill
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord McKenzie of Luton
“( ) Such an amount shall remain in payment in the event of the claimant lodging an appeal regarding any aspect of universal credit.”
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I shall endeavour to speak up, George. I am not sure whether it is this camera that you want me to speak to.
This is by way of a probing amendment. It was prompted by an article in the Times of 14 October. The article suggested that people were to be denied their benefits if they appealed against the determination. That seemed to be in the context of the reassessment of incapacity benefit claimants, particularly those who were denied ESA— the work-related activity group— who could therefore qualify for jobseeker’s allowance. The article stated:
“Hundreds of thousands of welfare claimants face losing their benefits for months if they challenge a ruling that they are fit to work. Ministers are looking at removing payments during the appeals process in an attempt to slash the number of challenges that are threatening to derail the Government’s benefits reforms. The unprecedented move is being considered as one way to unclog the courts which are set to be inundated with appeals as the Government attempts to reduce the annual £7 billion incapacity benefit bill. A reassessment of all 1.6 million incapacity benefit claimants began in April, with ministers promising to move them on to a new system with narrower eligibility criteria for the sick and stricter requirements to find work. However, concerns over both the reliability of the test to find out whether people are ready for work and the scale of the project has prompted fears of a mountain of appeals. Judges have said privately that they could be facing 500,000 cases a year, some taking more than nine months to resolve”.
In view of the concerns that an article like that can generate, we consider it appropriate to give the Minister an early opportunity to set the record straight, and hopefully deny that that is the Government’s intent. To be clear, do the Government have any plans or otherwise contemplate, by amendment to this Bill or otherwise through regulation, the prospect of denying individuals their benefit should they appeal against a determination that denies them incapacity benefits or employment and support allowance?
At present, where there is an appeal against a decision not to include somebody in the work-related activity group, that causes benefit to be paid at the assessment period rate only, which is the JSA rate. Is this the type of arrangement which the Government are seeking to replicate, or are they proposing to go further and to deny benefit altogether? This raises wider issues which we shall come on to in subsequent clauses, but what conditionality would apply during the period when the appeal is outstanding? I hope that the Minister can set the record straight and clear on this. If he proposes to confirm that the article has some validity, we have some additional questions which we would pose to him. I will give him the opportunity to set the record straight and deny that this article identifies something which the Government propose to take forward. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, the amendment is slightly different from the question posed, and I shall deal with the question posed. The changes to the current appeal system are being taken forward in this Bill, as expressed in Clauses 99 and 100, so we will have an opportunity to discuss those in that consideration. We are, in those clauses, looking to introduce a period of reconsideration, or a reconsideration process, prior to a full appeal. We can have further discussion at that point, but regardless of what an article in a newspaper might say, clearly the practical difference, if one was to be extended in the way described, is purely a difference of conditionality, because as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, pointed out, the actual payment rate of the assessment phase of ESA is the same as JSA. That article has put out a lot of misinformation.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister if he is saying that what is being contemplated in effect replicates what currently exists. When an appeal is outstanding, the assessment period rate, which I think is the JSA rate, applies. If that is what is going to be replicated in the new world, I understand that and can see that the article was misleading on that basis. Broader questions are raised, however, given that there is going to be a universal credit, components of which would in due course be held back during an appeal. If we are talking just about the work-related activity equivalent components, I can understand parity with the existing situation, but obviously other components will go into that, including housing issues. However, I am happy to leave that debate for when we reach Clauses 99 and 100, supposing that we do reach them at some stage in our deliberations. I think the Minister has dealt fairly with the principal concern that the article generated, and I beg leave to withdraw.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, Amendment 34A, as noble Lords will understand, is a paving amendment for the subsequent, substantive amendment, Amendment 48, so that we can have a broader discussion on housing stock before we get into talking about individual client groups. That seemed to be a sensible way of proceeding. I declare an interest as a former chair of a local authority housing committee and a current chair of the Broadland Housing Association.
For me, underoccupancy is the most important issue in the housing section of the Bill. Essentially, the Government are saying that any tenant who is not a pensioner and is underoccupying will have their benefit cut to the size of the property that they should be occupying. The English house condition survey, and the DCLG in the past, regards someone as underoccupying if they have more than one spare bedroom. Indeed, the latest Written Answer from Grant Shapps states:
“It is estimated that 423,000 households were under-occupying”,
which obviously includes pensioners.
“This estimate is a three-year average … Under-occupying households are those with at least two bedrooms more than they need according to the Bedroom Standard”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/10/2011; col. 337W.]
The DWP, for benefit purposes, will not allow two bedrooms more or one bedroom more but requires a precise fit. This is a much tighter and even claustrophobic ruling. A later amendment, Amendment 44, which I favour, would align the DWP to the DCLG standard. As almost 80 per cent of tenants who are affected by the DWP’s proposals have only one spare bedroom, that would address the issue for most people, although of course with implications for projected savings.
This amendment, like Amendment 43, tackles the issue in a different way. It requires the social landlord, not the tenant, to take responsibility. If the landlord does not have the stock to offer, the tenant should enjoy his current home with full HB. If the landlord can offer appropriately sized stock by DWP standards, the tenant takes the HB hit if they choose not to move.
Why do I think the DWP standards of underoccupancy are too tight? Under DWP plans, a couple with two teenage daughters in a three-bedroom house will be underoccupying, and will receive benefit only for a two-bedroom flat or home. Let us remember that we are dealing with social housing that is now built well below Parker Morris space standards. Two teenage girls might be expected to share a second bedroom that is 10 feet by 8 feet. Let us visualise two single beds put against the 8-foot wall, with 2 feet between them. Fifteen year-olds are not going to sleep in bunk beds as though they are five years-old. A 3-foot wardrobe and a 3-foot wide chest of drawers are in the 3-foot by 6-foot space at the bottom of the beds. There may be a gap of 1 foot, and that is it, if you are to open the bedroom door. There is no space for a desk, a table, or a chair. Where exactly do they do their homework? Not in the galley kitchen, because they will not have one, and not in the only living room, where the parents want to eat, talk, watch TV. They cannot do their homework anywhere, so maybe they will not. City children can stay on at school of an evening or use the public library for their homework in that situation. Rural children, dependent on the school bus, can do neither. And then we are surprised at the GCSE results. As a result they cannot find a job, and I fear that there could be two generations of worklessness.
This example assumes that those four family members have moved to the two-bedroom flat as required under the new proposed changes in housing benefit. Actually, probably they will not. Most two-bedroom homes are actually three-person, not four, with a small second bedroom, and although some 12 per cent of my housing association’s three-bedroom houses are four-person houses with a double bedroom and two singles, most are five, so we have three-person accommodation, and five-person accommodation. Imposing HB caps by bedroom numbers rather than by total space size of bedrooms—that is, trying to shoehorn a four-person family into a two-bedroom, but three-person, property—will certainly take us into the realm of forced overcrowding and judicial review. Such a family will be deemed by the DWP to be underoccupying a three-bedroom five-person property, and deemed by housing law to be overcrowded in the only property they can move to, which is a two-bedroom three-person home. What would the Minister have us do?
Will the Minister say whether, if that family were in a three-bedroom but four-person house, they will receive full HB as three bedrooms or persons, or whether they would be expected to move to a two-bedroom flat even if they were three persons? If we put a family of three into a two-bedroom four-person house, would that be classified as underoccupied? I am not playing word games because, depending upon the outcome of this question, families will or will not lose more than £10 a week of their housing benefit. These are the allocation decisions that my housing association and local authority are making day in and day out.
A fortnight ago I was visiting an attractive small development of some 20 homes that we have just built. Thirteen of them were two-bedroom houses, four of them were three-bedroom and there were three bungalows. However, of those 13 two-bedroom houses, 12 were three-person. Only one was four-person. We do not have and we are not building the four-person stock that the Minister has now told us that tenants in a family of four should occupy to get their full HB. They are mostly either three-person or five-person, with the assumption that the couple get the first type and the couple with children get the other. Nationally, our situation is replicated. There is a huge shortfall of one-bedroom and two-bedroom accommodation. Relatively, there is a surplus of three-bedroom accommodation. The national federation calculated that last year 180,000 families were waiting for two-bedroom homes, and just 60,000 became available. Who do those families go to?
I can tell noble Lords about our allocation structure. First, the homes go to families in urgent housing need. Next we have pensioners—to whom the changes do not apply—in three-bedroom homes queuing up to move to more convenient and easier-to-heat two-bedroom homes. Yet we cannot always help them because we do not have the stock, and they are the people who are most likely to underoccupy. Then we have families who need to transfer from one two-bedroom property to another in order to help look after frail elderly people in a nearby village. So we have queues of people wanting two-bedroom accommodation who are willing and able to move, and we cannot meet that demand.
However, under the Bill, if there is no two-bedroom accommodation for my four-person family to move to—as there is not—they are fined with cuts of £15 a week or more. It is madness as well as a misery. We allow—indeed, we make—the pensioners who would like to downsize stay put, while requiring the family who wants to stay put to move. This possibly causes a dislocation of schools for their children and of family support. Yet the HB bill would be identical if we swapped those categories around.
To its credit, the impact analysis recognises this and agrees that there are insufficient two-bedroom properties to meet these forced moves. On page 2, it is stated:
“If all existing social sector tenants wished to move to accommodation of an appropriate size, there would be a mismatch between available accommodation and the needs of tenants”.
Quite so. Some 670,000 tenants would be affected—2,000 of them disabled—or 32 per cent of all HB claimants. Some 108,000 tenants live in an adapted property, with the average cost of adaption being £6,500; yet 78 per cent of them are underoccupying by only one bedroom, which the DCLG does not consider as underoccupying but which the DWP is proposing to consider for benefit purposes. That could be an extra small bedroom for each teenage daughter to do their homework in, for a husband or wife who is in poor health and has disturbed sleep, for the occasional overnight carer of a disabled person, or for a grandchild.
Let us return to my family of four who are obliged to move or face HB cuts. As there is a shortage of smaller accommodation, what then? How can the tenant move if there is nowhere to move to? “Oh”, states the impact analysis blithely on page 8, at paragraph 24:
“In these circumstances individuals may have to look further afield for appropriately sized accommodation or move to the private sector, otherwise they shall need to meet the shortfall through other means such as employment, using savings or by taking in a lodger”.
Employment? Do noble Lords really think that they have not so far looked for work and that a £15 fine on their HB bill will find them a job? Using savings? The average individual savings of £300 would cover the shortfall for barely five months. Taking in a lodger? If you have small children? We need to get real. Instead, if they cannot afford the HB cut, they may move, apparently, to the private rented sector, where their HB bill will of course increase because it is higher. That, of course, is if they can find a landlord to take them, given their past history of possible rent arrears, and if they can find the deposit—a month’s rent in advance—together with moving costs, curtains and carpets, which may come to £1,500 out of savings of £300. In rural Norfolk, all this takes place close to the school that the children go to. It is simply not possible. If the family moves after falling into arrears, which private landlord will accept them anyway?
The impact analysis is revealing—it sort of knows all this. It expects savings of £700 million, but this is based on the presumption that families do not move but stay put, are fined and have their HB cut. I quote page 2:
“If a significant number of tenants wished to move, this would reduce direct savings and place extra demands on social landlords”.
A couple with a child in Crawley, quoted by Shelter and Crisis, moving from three-bed social housing to a two-bed private rented flat would see their HB bill rise by £66 a week. The savings—and this is key—are based not on people moving to smaller accommodation but on their being fined for not moving because the stock is not there and for staying put. In other words, the Government are basing their savings not on people doing what the Government say they should do but on their not doing it. The Government need their public policy, for people to move home, to fail if they are to ensure that their private policy—to cut HB and make the savings off the fines for people not moving as normally required—succeeds.
I was pretty horrified when I read that. You might think that issues around underoccupation were at the very least being propelled by a huge increase in overcrowding, so that, however reluctantly, underoccupying families should move to make way for those in greater need. It is not so. On average, 5 to 6 per cent of all households in all rented sectors are overcrowded; 40 to 50 per cent are fit; 40 to 50 per cent are underoccupied, many of them containing pensioners. So the needs of the overcrowded could be met if we were able to meet the requests of pensioners and others to downsize. No force majeure is required, except that we do not have the stock to do it.
This is not about the need of other families for the house that you are underoccupying; it is about artificially capping the HB bill knowing that there is insufficient stock for tenants to move into and then pocketing the fines because they have no alternative course of action. That is not a proper way to behave. They stay put because they cannot move and arrears mount because they have run out of savings. What do the Government suggest local authorities and housing associations then do? Should they evict them? As I said, how many private landlords will take on a tenant with rent arrears? No judicial review, and there will be plenty of those, would regard them as intentionally homeless—in which circumstances the local authority would give them priority housing and back they would come again into social housing, where everybody can find a home, or go into B&B at five times the cost. But if they are not evicted, arrears mount rapidly and a housing association’s balance sheet goes into the red. It may already have tripled the amount set aside for rent arrears due to direct payments to tenants. It could now expect it to double again if it does not evict.
We have four solutions. First, we can follow Amendment 44, aligning the DWP’s definition of overcrowding with that of the DCLG and largely define the problem away. This is the solution that I prefer, but I accept that it has cost implications. Secondly, we can build and better balance the stock, but that will take years, as our building programme is being halved by DCLG. We can, thirdly, ask local authorities to use their discretionary housing payments to top up, except that my local authority ran out of money halfway through the financial year—last November, in fact—and even then had helped only a few families. The £60 million, although welcome, will go nowhere near to meeting or softening cuts of £2 billion-plus. The final option is the path of these amendments. We place the responsibility on the landlord and not the tenant. They do not say no change; they are genuinely a compromise. If the social landlord can make an offer of appropriate accommodation, the tenant will be expected to take it or take on the HB shortfall and government make their savings. But if the landlord cannot do so because the homes are simply not there, as in my housing association, then HB continues exactly as was.
We sanction people in JSA if they do not seek work, because they can and should. We use the threat of sanction to change their behaviour. What we do not do is sanction them if, after a proper job search, they cannot find a job, because no change in their behaviour can change the economy and job vacancy rates. We sanction them according to what we can reasonably expect them to do and how they change their behaviour. This is about job searching, not a lack of job success.
Similarly, it may be reasonable to sanction by HB cuts someone who is grossly underoccupying a house that a much larger family desperately needs and who could change their behaviour by downsizing. We could debate that, but to sanction families for not moving when they cannot change their behaviour and cannot move because of the housing stock is not a sanction but a punishment of people who not only have committed no offence but who can do nothing to avoid the sanction by changing their behaviour. That is wrong. We should not fine some of the poorest people in the country who have been set up to fail. It is not their fault, and it is not decent, and I really hope that the Minister, who I am sure will share these worries, can indicate that he accepts the principle of the compromise of this or some subsequent amendment. We would all be happy to discuss further with him how this might be done. I beg to move.
Lord McAvoy
My Lords, I want to put a couple of points to the Minister on a particular aspect of the availability of suitable accommodation. I will describe the city of Glasgow because it is the biggest city I know. I stay adjacent to it and I know quite a bit about the different types of housing there. Some is council accommodation. My noble friend Lady Hollis of Heigham has indicated that size is important and that people can be in a small room that is classed as a room. Glasgow has what are called three-stairs-up tenements, which are usually in red or grey sandstone tenement blocks. The rooms are smaller in the likes of Dennistoun, Townhead and some older parts of the city centre, but massive in the likes of Shawlands, King’s Park and Langside. If someone was “forced” to move from a small two-bedroom flat in Dennistoun to King’s Park or Shawlands, they would be dancing up the stairs, because it would be a vast improvement on the living space that they had had. They would soon get a sofa bed in the living room.
I am leading up to the fact that this is a very difficult situation and I really do not know how this can be done. Has any assessment been made to address the main thrust of my noble friend’s amendment, which deals with the fact that the size of rooms is just as important as the number of rooms? As I say, it would baffle me, but there are highly paid people working for the Government who should at least be able to test this. My question is therefore: has some consideration been given to assessing the size of rooms compared with the number of rooms in individual cases?
Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, I support the amendment, which was so comprehensively moved by my noble friend Lady Hollis. One of the concerns of the organisations that have written about the Government’s proposals relates to the plan to reduce housing benefit for working-age tenants who are allegedly underoccupying social homes. From 2013, some 670,000 social housing tenants receiving housing benefit could lose an average of £676 a year, because under the new rules their homes could be deemed too large for their needs. The cuts could force them to choose between moving away, and thus leaving any local support networks or supportive neighbours, or going into debt. This could be particularly difficult for disabled claimants, many of whom could have had their homes adapted to deal with their disability. A spare bedroom may be necessary should family members visit or if the aid of a carer is required. There may well be no similar accommodation available in the locality. Some of the amendments before the Committee attempt to deal with these problems.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
At this point I should like to make a point on the second new subsection proposed by Amendment 48, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. Many disabled people will have had their homes adapted with help from the mandatory disabled facilities grant, which local authorities have to pay to eligible people. This may be as much as £30,000, depending on their circumstances, and is means-tested. Do the Government really expect families or couples who include a disabled person, or even a single disabled person, to move from an adapted property if they are considered to be overoccupying, with all the upheaval that that will mean? Such disabled people may not even be receiving DLA. A couple including a disabled person may have a two-bedroom house or flat which they need to house equipment. This equipment may include bulky and heavy items, such as oxygen tanks, mobility aids, hoists and so on. It might be a vital room for the disabled person or their partner or carer to be able to use in exceptional circumstances, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollis and Lady Turner, have both said. If there is no flexibility, will there have to be another pot of money to enable a couple to adapt a new, smaller home? I cannot believe that this is a sensible use of public money.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hollis has made a devastating case. I simply want to read out an e-mail that I received from someone who stands to be affected. She says:
“We have two children. Both girls are currently living in a two bedroom flat. We have been assessed by Social Services and GP as needing a three bedroom property due to our eldest daughter’s medical and welfare needs. She suffers from frequent, severe UTI infections which can leave her very poorly and in a lot of pain. She also suffers frequently from incontinence. This is having a very serious effect on her emotional well being and indeed is having a knock on effect on the whole family as we have to go in several times a night to see to our daughter to change her bedding, give her pain relief, clean nightwear, etc”.
This family had been told that they could move to a three-bedroom flat but have now been told that they cannot because of the incipient welfare reform legislation. The e-mail goes on to say:
“The new welfare legislation means that we are no longer entitled to a three bedroom even though they have written proof that we need one. This is now putting serious strain on my family and is affecting my eldest’s welfare. I cannot fight the law, I wish I was able to. I just want people to be made aware that families like mine suffer needlessly when these legislations are made. I would love nothing more than to be told my eldest can have her own room as I know her welfare would improve dramatically. But this is not going to happen”.
When I read this I thought that it surely could not be the case. However, presumably a family in this situation will not be allowed the bedroom that they need for their welfare. I feel dreadful reading such an e-mail and I hope that the Minister feels dreadful hearing it.
Lord Wigley
My Lords, the case made in the excellent opening speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, did not concentrate so much on the disability side, which we will come to in another bank of amendments, but was very strong indeed. Yes, the second part of Amendment 48 applies to disability, but her main thrust was on the adequacy of supply of houses.
The noble Baroness referred in particular to the situation in rural Norfolk. I can certainly vouch for the circumstances in the areas that I know in rural Wales, where this is an enormous problem because so much social and council housing in rural areas, particularly in beautiful rural areas, was bought under the right to buy legislation of the 1980s. Many of those properties that used to be social housing are now second homes. If anyone is expected to move in order to match the circumstances of the housing benefit permitted under this legislation, such people just will not find accommodation to meet those needs. It is suggested that they will find it in the private sector, but in rural areas, particularly where tourism is a major industry, the private housing sector is dominated by the rent that can be attained in the summer months from the tourism industry. Therefore, the likelihood of finding a suitable place is remote indeed.
My fear is that so many exceptions to the proposed legislation will arise that it will not be workable. We heard about the circumstances in Glasgow and the problems of disabled people who will be caught in this. With regard to the rural dimension, the one aspect that I would like to see is the building particularly of bungalows in the proximity of villages to provide the housing need, albeit that that would be a longer-term solution, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, mentioned. One knows that the one category of house in overwhelming demand everywhere is the bungalow. A programme that bought land on the borders of villages that was currently outside the development boundaries and towns into those boundaries, and that was therefore possible to acquire at an intermediate price between the market price for building land and the much lower value of agricultural land, should help to provide a stimulus for the building industry and an answer, over a period of time, for some of the imbalances in the housing stock.
I realise that this does not come under the purview of the Minister, but perhaps the Government could, in the seamless web that they create, think about that possibility as a longer-term solution.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of First Wessex Housing Group and chair-designate of Housing 21. I also appreciate the speeches of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollis and Lady Turner, but underoccupation is a problem when there are great shortages in housing. It is fair to accept that we need to address this problem, but it would be unfair if we do not get right the details for the transition of these proposals.
I agreed particularly with what the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, said, in that we have to accept that we are dealing with people’s homes. They may be social homes or council houses, but they are people’s homes. We are not dealing simply with a marketable commodity. Some 670,000 tenants of working age are affected by these proposals and, as the noble Baroness said, many of the people in these homes are disabled. There are two fundamental problems. One is that underoccupation does not necessarily coincide with where there is the greatest housing need. The other is that the availability of supply to correct the problem is limited. I had the figures that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, mentioned but in a different context; I thought that there were 180,000 social tenants underoccupying two-bedroom homes and that if we wanted to move them into one-bedroom homes, in the past year only 68,000 became available. That seems to be a critical figure.
We know that the other problem is that if we drive people out of social housing in the public sector, we may well add to public spending through the higher rents and the allowances that will have to be paid in the private sector. We want to hear from the Minister, in due course if not today, on the need to get the period of transition right to allow people to adapt and for the stock to adapt as well. We should concentrate on genuine occupation that can be corrected, and we should consider leaving out certain categories: disabled people, foster carers and those in supported housing. We should also concentrate on homes with more than two bedrooms that are underoccupied, and we should, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said, look at a programme of bungalows and one-bedroom homes for older people who want to downsize. I have recently been involved in a scheme where people’s pride in their new homes is remarkable. We had to encourage them to move, but when they saw what was available they were very willing and proud to do so. However, if we concentrate now on the transition as the result of all these changes, we shall dry up the number of homes and the capacity to help people who genuinely want to move. Getting the transition right is therefore key to this change.
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Wigley suggested, I will leave the arguments about disabled people until our debate on the next group of amendments, and talk first about people who are not able to move because of a lack of supply. The Riverside housing association says that for those who stay put, the loss of benefit,
“will have a very significant impact on household income at a time when tenants face huge pressures from rising fuel and food prices”.
Social landlords house,
“some of the poorest households in the country … Such losses would enforce difficult choices between subsistence items such as eating well, clothing the children and, of course, paying the rent”.
Riverside points out that two-thirds of its tenants have,
“a net household income … of less than £10,200 per annum”.
This will cause devastating hardship.
Lord German
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Stoneham in his case for transition. My argument is that if we are going to introduce a policy of this sort, we have to ensure that the social and public housing sector is capable of meeting the changes that are being demanded by the policies of this Bill. Three policy ambitions underpin these clauses. The first relates to the inefficiencies in our social housing sector at the moment and the need to make better and more efficient use of our housing stock, bearing in mind that 7 per cent of homes in the social housing sector are overcrowded and 11 per cent are underoccupied. Already, there is a big mismatch. The second is that we want to increase mobility and strengthen the incentives to ensure that people can move within social housing in order to transfer into work. The third is the ambition to reduce the cost pressures on an ever increasing housing budget. We should remember that in today’s terms the budget has, over the past decade, increased from £14 billion to £22 billion a year, at the equivalent rate today.
My question for the Minister is: how prepared is the social housing sector to meet these changes in policy? If we follow the logic through, we see that there are only three choices that a tenant can make. The first is to pay the increased rent, which we know will on average be £13 a week for a one-bedroom overoccupier. The second is to occupy the spare room, which means either taking in a lodger or having the children back. I guess that some people would not mind having their children back but that others would not want them back at any cost. Whatever the circumstances, is that a realistic choice for many people?
The third choice that people will have is that they can move. In those three choices, what modelling has been done on how many people will make choice one, two or three? The only modelling I have seen has been from the National Housing Federation survey, which is only for part of the country, and they surveyed only 452 people. Clearly, if you are going to have a policy of this sort, the Government must be able to say that they have sought these solutions to ensure that their policy will work.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Can I ask the noble Lord a number of questions since he is asking the Minister a lot of questions? He seems to accept the policy in the Bill but only wants it postponed, so what is his attitude to the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis? What is his response, particularly to the point made by my noble friend Lady Turner that this should be done by agreement and not be forced on people?
Lord German
I think if the noble Lord would wait a few moments, he will see what I am proposing. It is on this piece of card, which I can pass to him, but if he just bears with me, I will give him three things which I think are essential in order to make this section of the Bill work. That is why I am posing the questions, because it seems to me that the solutions are not given in any of the documents.
The document from the DWP about what these choices will be and the three questions that people will have to answer says:
“it is unclear how this”—
the policy—
“will affect the choices of claimants that are likely to be affected by the measure”.
In other words, the Government do not know; or do they? If they do know, we need to ensure that we have those figures in front of us. If we are to avoid unintended consequences, we are going to have to look at the levers that ensure that the housing stock is accurate, and if the housing stock can, over time, match the needs of this particular policy.
As we know, there are 670,000 claimants, presumably of working age, which means that a third of a million non-working age claimants are underoccupying—the noble Lords, Lord Stoneham and Lord Wigley, have talked about elderly people underoccupying. Maybe there is an answer to that which the Minister and the Government have already thought about. There are no figures that I have seen in any of the documentation that indicate how we are going to manage to create a housing stock to match the changes. First, we need to know how many of the 670,000 are going to move and the modelling figure behind it. Until we have the answer to that, we cannot answer the question about how many houses we are going to need.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
The Government’s own impact assessment says:
“Estimates of Housing Benefit savings are based upon the current profile of tenants in the social rented sector, with little tenant mobility assumed”.
Lord German
I am grateful for that quotation, which of course goes against the other one that I gave from further on in the document, which says that we do not know what claimants’ choices are likely to be. The noble Baroness’s quotation has the word “little” in it. We have often reached the point where we have quoted from different sections of the same document, and that is why we need answers. We need to know which of the three choices people are going to make so that we can determine whether the homes are available for them. There are three solutions, which I put to the Minister and which we need answers about, at the very least after his answer to the fundamental question of whether we have the housing stock.
I ask the Minister, when replying, to talk not about the DCLG but about the three government departments that are responsible for these matters in this country, because three levers have to be pulled for the DWP to be able to answer that single question. What is the solution? I would like to know what the three government departments feel about how they can match housing demand. I must say that I am not particularly encouraged because, for many of us, moving house is probably the worst thing in the world that you could probably do. In fact, my noble friend Lord Kirkwood told me this morning that we ought to exchange our rubbish with our neighbour’s because our neighbour’s rubbish is much more interesting than our own. I have found moving house to be a very uncomfortable exercise, and I am sure we have to be careful of this. The Government say that they are working in England to develop a team of advisers who will work to help people to make better use of our housing stock, which is a laudable aim, but they also say that they will work with the devolved Administrations to see what can be done in Scotland and Wales. What can be done about the housing stock across the whole of the country where this policy impacts?
It seems to me that there are three potential solutions when we have the answers to the figures, one of which is that we must have housing money—discretionary housing money, or whatever—to ensure that the money reaches the particular groups that will need it in order to be able to make the adjustment. The second is about exceptions. We will come to that in the next set of amendments, but where the cost to the public purse can be demonstrated to be larger—and many of the amendments coming up now will demonstrate that—we must ensure that we have exceptions. The final point that has been made by many noble Lords here today is that we must have transition time for the social housing sector in all three parts of the country where this Bill applies to make the changes in order that this policy works. We cannot achieve the original purposes of these measures, all of which I think are right, without achieving those three things and without ensuring that we have a sector that can—
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I have listened very carefully, and the noble Lord’s Welsh eloquence—what do you call it, hwyl?—is impressive, but he has still not made it clear to me whether his speech is in support of the amendment by my noble friend Baroness Hollis.
Lord German
My speech, my Lords, is in favour of the policy proposals that are behind this measure, but in order to achieve that this amendment has given us an opportunity to explore the issues that need to be satisfied in order that we can proceed. And hwyl, by the way, is spelt H-W-Y-L, for the record.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Does that mean, therefore, that the noble Lord supports the DWP definition of underoccupancy in which there can be, except for special groups, no spare bedroom, as opposed to the DCLG one, which I outlined, which allowed at least one bedroom more—and in the latest Parliamentary Answer from Grant Shapps is two bedrooms more? Is that what the noble Lord was saying? We need to be clear where he is coming from on this.
Lord German
I cannot answer that question until such time as we have the answer to what our housing stock is, how many are going to move, and for those who are going to move whether there is available housing for them. That was the answer to the question, and the one I will give if the noble Baroness asks me again.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
This is an “in principle” question: what definition of overcrowding or underoccupying is the noble Lord assuming such that the transitional arrangements must seek to meet and adapt to?
Lord German
I will repeat the answer that I gave the noble Baroness just now.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I have still not had the answer to my question. I do not want him to repeat it, just to clarify it. It was the pronunciation of hwyl I had problems with, not the spelling.
For all his bluster and eloquence, I think the noble Lord has confirmed that he still supports the coalition Government’s dreadful proposals in the Bill. All his questions to the Minister are really just to cover up that fact.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is bullying my noble friend, which is outrageous. My noble friend is exploring the issues around this question, which is perfectly valid in Committee.
Lord German
If the noble Lord wants me to answer the question, I can answer it, and will answer it in this way; I believe that the three underpinning policies behind this section of this measure are correct, but in order to achieve those we have to answer some of the fundamental questions, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, raised earlier on today. I have also tried to seek answers to those questions, because I have not found them. That is what we are here to do, and that is what the Committee stage of a Bill is about, it seems to me, but I am new to this particular Parliament. In the one I have come from, that is what we would do: explore these issues.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, I am provoked into joining this discussion, which I was going to leave until the next group of amendments.
First, underoccupation is one of the most serious concerns in this Bill, and I think that those concerns are shared across the Committee. I do not think that it helps to start picking away at the positions of individual members of the Committee at this time. What I think we are trying to do is to make it clear to the Government that the current proposals are unacceptable. They are unacceptable to me for two reasons. One is process—and we touched on the discussion about transition. On 1 April 2013, between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of the case load, which is arguably 67,000 working-age families, will be tipped into debt. It is a brick wall that they cannot avoid. It is very unusual for a social policy change of this magnitude not to have built in a transitional provision.
With a little bit of application and consideration, we might be able to address the issue of overoccupation, which it would be sensible to do in the long term. Speaking for myself, I think that Amendment 44 is close to doing that, although Amendment 40 is not far away. I got a very interesting note from Moat housing the other day, which suggested that:
“Two bedroom properties or below should never be regarded as ‘under-occupied’”.
It is as simple as that. That is another way of expressing it. I do not know what it would cost, but the Committee is right to explore some of these circumstances, which have ramifications for social landlords as well as everyone else. What worries me more than anything else is that on 1 April—that may be an appropriate date—in 2013, that change will be made, and people have very little protection or room for manoeuvre.
The other very interesting suggestion that Moat housing made to me, which I had never heard before, was that a “soft start” could be adopted when people were demonstrating that they were taking steps to address the underoccupation that they were allegedly facing at the time. They could continue to get the full support until they had made the appropriate arrangements. It would probably take 18 months or two years to work out in the wash; that may be too tight a period—it might take longer than that to do safely. As a Committee, we are looking for a safe transition process and a way of limiting the brick wall of debt that 670,000 of our social tenants in the United Kingdom will face on 1 April 2013. That is a matter of concern across the Committee, which I think we should represent to the Government in a way that will occasion constructive change on Report.
Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, there is very little left to say, particularly after the astonishingly impressive opening speech of my noble friend Lady Hollis. If I were a Minister facing that speech across the Table I would have run the white flag up and gone to the pub, but the Minister is clearly made of sterner stuff than me, which is probably just as well.
I have two questions, the first specific and the second general. First, what discussions has the Minister had with colleagues in other departments about the position of children in relation to the implementation of these provisions? Like many other noble Lords, I have had a number of cases raised with me on the position of disabled children, to which we may return, and children with health problems, as discussed by my noble friend Lady Lister. Also, Barnardo’s, for example, raised with me the position of families in which a child or children are in temporary care. For example, they may live temporarily under a residence order with their grandparent, and while the family is trying to get the children back it may look as though they are underoccupying when they are not. There is a whole series of exceptions. I am interested in the specifics, but more generally has the Minister talked to colleagues in other departments about the impact on child welfare, safeguarding and well-being or child poverty when this policy is implemented?
The second question is one the answer to which I would be very interested to hear. We have talked a lot about modelling and transition, but the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, talked about what seemed to me to be an astonishingly simple amendment. She said that somebody should not be required to do something that they are incapable of doing. What is the Minister’s philosophical reply to that?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I start by saying that it was good to hear a defence of the noble Lord, Lord German, who arrived in the House at the same time as I did. However, I thought that being asked questions and dealing with them was a wonderful preparation for being Minister, and I hope that the government Whip has taken note of that.
It is difficult to add to the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who, as the Guardian said last week—and only the Guardian could use these words—gave a “frankly beautiful speech”, and an astonishing one today, as it was described by my noble friend Lady Sherlock. I hope only to add a few remarks in support of what she said. First, I remind us, as did my noble friend Lady Turner, of the special nature of a home. We know the importance of feeling secure in one’s home and that one of the biggest causes of stress is a house move. It affects all of us, whether we are owner-occupiers or renters, old or young, rich or poor. As the noble Lord, Lord German, said, it is one of the worst things that we have to do.
Lord Freud
My Lords, the size criteria measure marks a significant change in our approach to housing benefit for claimants living in the social rented sector. The current housing benefit system is not fair; it is not right that families on benefit in the private rented sector have been able to live in homes that most working families could not afford, and we have already begun to tackle that unfairness through changes to the local housing allowance. It is also not fair that, in the social rented sector, housing benefit pays out the full rent on properties that are larger than required by those who live in them, while at the same time over 250,000 households in England are overcrowded.
To pick up one of the many points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on the bedroom standard, that standard actually expects children aged over 16 to share a room with children of the same gender until they are 21. That is a rather tougher requirement than that of the DWP and the LHA, which allows separate bedrooms for a child of the same gender, aged 16 and over.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, that was why I specified a 15 year-old in my illustration of bedroom size.
Lord Freud
I shall continue. By 2014-15, the annual savings achieved as a result of housing benefit reform as a whole will exceed £2 billion. It is right that the social rented sector plays its part in achieving those savings. The size criteria measure itself will achieve around £0.5 billion of savings each year from 2013-14.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, about room size—the example that he used was his nearby city of Glasgow and its tenements—the size of rooms is something that we are looking at with stakeholders as part of the implementation planning. That concern is shared by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. It is an issue that we are looking at.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Could the Minister describe what he means by a bedroom?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I am tempted to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, to come and save me from bullying by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I will make it easier for the Minister then, since he is finding it difficult. In my city of Edinburgh, there are a lot of houses with rooms that do not have external windows—they are box rooms. Some occasionally have a small skylight. Is that within the definition of a bedroom? Another example might be studio flats, or studio flats that may then have an extra bedroom attached to them. Is that a two-bedroom or a one-bedroom flat? Another might be my study. Is my study a bedroom or is it a study? It was used as a bedroom by the previous occupier, but now it is a study. These are just three examples of difficulties from the very start and the most simple part of the Bill: that is, the description of a bedroom.
Lord Freud
Certainly, the study of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, would seem to me to be a bedroom. However, box rooms without opening windows normally would not count as bedrooms. There is a series of rules that we will go through as we work through the implementation planning with stakeholders.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Then you tempt tenants to board up their windows, as some owners used to do when there were window taxes.
Lord Freud
The coalition Government, my Lords, are not Queen Anne and we will resist any of those blocked up windows, which still blight many villages and which I know the noble Lord is very concerned about.
This is more than just a savings exercise. Housing benefit payments in both sectors will become more balanced in a way that will restore fairness, encourage better use of our existing social housing stock and encourage more people into employment.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about the impact on children in particular. The impact assessment shows that claimants with children are less likely to be affected by the measure than those without children. Only around a third of the claimants potentially affected have children living with them. DWP officials have been working very closely in this area with officials from DCLG, the Department for Education and HMT.
It is reasonable to expect people living in the social rented sector to make choices about the affordability and the size of their accommodation, just as those in the private sector, and those who are not on benefit, have to.
My noble friend Lord Kirkwood spoke about transition and phasing. I should remind the Committee that these measures were announced in the summer of 2010 with a view to their taking effect, as has been observed, in April 2013. We think that this provides adequate lead-in time and we aim to have regulations in place by April 2012 to allow for a full year of implementation. If you like, you can look at that period as the transition phase, as people make appropriate arrangements.
Let me move on to Amendment 48, which comes in two parts. The first part would place a duty on social landlords to find suitable alternative accommodation for claimants who are underoccupying their property. If a smaller property cannot be offered to the claimant’s household, the size criteria measure would not apply. The second part relates to those who live in significantly adapted accommodation, and I will come on to that shortly. We are working closely with the Department for Communities and Local Government, and others, as we explore ways to best support landlords, local authorities and tenants, leading up to the implementation of this measure. That work is ongoing, and we will look at how we can work to ensure that claimants’ options are clearly set out, well in advance of the measure coming into force in April 2013.
It is important that local authorities and other providers of social housing make more effective use of their stock, and this measure, alongside the Localism Bill, will provide not only a greater incentive but a means for achieving that. This measure is about asking people on benefit to make realistic choices about the affordability of their accommodation when it is larger than they need. It is in the interests of social landlords to make the best use of their stock in order to make sure that tenants are able to pay their rent. For this reason most landlords would try to offer alternative housing options whenever they could. The specific duty on social landlords in Amendment 48 is therefore unnecessary and would raise important concerns around control, classification and enforceability. We do not want to impose regulations on to social landlords just for the sake of it.
The Government are providing funding to councils—£13 million over four years until 2015-16—to assist them in supporting underoccupying tenants who wish to move, as well as funding an action team within the Chartered Institute of Housing to work with all social landlords to help them to promote moves. The Government are investing £4.5 billion to help to deliver up to 170,000 new, affordable homes over the next four years.
This amendment would also exempt claimants from the measures where no suitable alternative accommodation is available. However, we expect that many people will decide to remain in their existing property, and make up the shortfall, even if an alternative offer of smaller accommodation is available, so it is likely that such an exemption would be an expensive waste of money in many cases. Of course, without a definition of suitable alternative accommodation, it is not easy to estimate how much this exemption would cost, but let us be clear that it would be extremely complex to deliver, and undoubtedly place a significant dent in the expected savings that would need to be found from elsewhere. I do not think this is a sensible way forward.
I understand that there are concerns about the supply of smaller properties. Claimants affected by this measure will have to decide whether to meet any shortfall themselves—from their earnings for example, or they could take in a lodger, or someone they know, to fill the extra bedrooms. If they do decide that moving to a smaller property is the only option to avoid getting into arrears, the social rented sector should not be seen as the only option. Private renting may be an appropriate alternative for some of those affected.
Changes being taken forward by the Department for Communities and Local Government through the Localism Bill will make it easier for councils and housing associations to move underoccupying tenants. However, this is not just about landlords. Some tenants can, and perhaps should, take more responsibility for arranging a move themselves. The new national homeswap scheme, Home Exchange Direct, will increase opportunities for social tenants looking to move through mutual exchange. Home Exchange Direct brings together the four internet providers of mutual exchange services to offer tenants more choice over where they live. Ultimately, landlords in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales will also be able to join the new scheme.
Amendment 34A also probes the availability of suitably sized accommodation. The provisions in subsection (3) will restrict how the other powers relating to the provision of housing costs may be used. Adding a line in subsection (3) to take into account the availability of suitable accommodation will not limit the way in which those other powers can be used. I take it that this amendment is really intended to ensure that claimants are unaffected by the size criteria in circumstances where no suitable alternative accommodation is available, and I have already made my thoughts clear on that. I recognise that, for some households in certain circumstances, moving may not be appropriate or should be delayed. Local housing authorities are best placed to take into account individual households’ circumstances. Where it is appropriate, they may offer help to meet a rent shortfall through the discretionary housing payment scheme.
The question of how people might respond was raised by my noble friend Lord German and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who I congratulate on her speech. She has made a series of excellent speeches. The most up-to-date evidence is the survey by the Housing Futures Network on claimants’ behaviour, which came out recently. It showed a variety of initial reactions. Twenty-five per cent of respondents said that they were quite or very likely to downsize; 50 per cent said that they were unlikely to consider moving; 29 per cent said they would be quite or very likely to move into work or increase their hours; and around 15 per cent said that they were quite or very likely to take in a lodger or offer a spare room to a family member. Therefore, around 65 per cent of the survey’s respondent group are looking to change their behaviour. In the interests of full reporting of that survey, I should add that 35 per cent said that they were quite or very likely to run into arrears. Clearly, over the next couple of years we will look at putting strategies in place to make sure that that does not happen.
The second part of the amendment would provide an exemption from the size criterion measure for those living in significantly adapted accommodation. I appreciate that within this amendment there is acknowledgment of the need to draw a line somewhere and not just exempt all claimants in any form of adapted accommodation. I have noted the different views put forward in this Committee on how we might begin to do that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, raised the question of disabled children. We are looking at ways to limit the impact on disabled children effectively and in an affordable way. I am sure she will understand that I do not want to comment today on the specifics of that, but I can assure her that very active consideration is going on. I should add the reminder that over this SR period we are already spending a lot of money—a total of £190 million, of which £130 million is for discretionary housing payments.
Since the measure was debated in the other House in May—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, was right about that—we have looked in detail at the possibility of an exemption for a tightly drawn group living in adapted accommodation. The work that we have undertaken to look at this in detail, in conjunction with various stakeholders, has revealed that such an approach is complex and has drawbacks. The issues that have been highlighted are finely balanced, so I should like to take a little more time to deal with them. My department is working closely with officials from the DCLG. We are continuing to talk to stakeholders as we do so. I hope to return to this matter when we debate Clause 68, and certainly by the time we get to Report if that is too tight.
My response to the question of my noble friend Lord German on the evaluation of the reforms is that we intend to undertake independent monitoring and evaluation to assess the impact of this set of measures and the changes in the social rented sector, and we expect the research to be undertaken over a two-year period, 2013-14, with preparatory work starting in 2012-30.
With that in mind and the assurances I have given more generally, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, first, I thank warmly all those who have taken part; it has been a helpful as well as a highly focused debate on the issue of underoccupancy and leads us usefully into some of the other debates that we are to face.
I do not think that the Minister addressed the issues raised in full. My noble friend Lady Turner talked not just about the difference between stock and a home but about the need for local support, and so on, as you get older, and the fact that we may cut all the connections which the big society and localism are urging us to strengthen. We did not have a full reply to that. The noble Baronesses, Lady Thomas and Lady Wilkins, talked about the cost of adaptions to spare bedrooms. We will come to greater detail on that when we discuss disability issues. About two-thirds of those who are regarded as underoccupying by DWP criteria have a degree of disability. It will be difficult to decide where we draw the line.
Then there was the issue of the difference in localities. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and my noble friend Lord Foulkes, as well as my noble friend Lady Hayter, in a powerful speech about Lambeth, showed that in each of these cases the stock was not there to deliver what the Minister seeks. I attempted to throw in some evidence from rural Norfolk. The division was between those of us who regard the definition of underoccupying that DWP proposes to adopt as targeting intrinsically—an opinion that I share—and those of us who say that if it is too tight, none the less the transitional arrangements are not sufficiently generous to make it possible even to move in that direction.
Members of the coalition Government have raised the issue that we need discretionary money. There is not enough of it, as I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord German, will be aware. My local authority ran out half way through the year, and it was helping only a couple of dozen families. The noble Lord asked about exceptions, but we will have definitional problems there. He asked for transition time for stock balancing and made the point about bungalows, which is absolutely right. That will take a decade or more to achieve. On the point about unacceptable process made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and the need for a safe transition process, frankly we will have had a further two social security Bills—as I would like to call them—in the intervening stage before we can address that.
I found the Minister’s answer deeply disappointing. The two words that he was using were “fair” and “choice”. I think he said that it was not fair that social tenants should have a spare bedroom when other people might not be able to afford such; that there should be better use of accommodation for families who are overcrowded; and that it was right that the social sector should continue to contribute £0.5 billion or so to the proposed expenditure cuts of £2 billion to housing benefit. As for better use, only about 5 per cent of housing benefit tenants are overcrowded. If we had the stock available to meet the requests of those who wish to move, we could probably meet that overcrowding today. As for the Minister’s point about home swap, frankly, under different labels, we have been doing that for decades. There is nothing new there, but I welcome the fact that the Minister is looking at room size.
The key question is why the DWP is not accepting what I understand to be the DCLG definition. That means that on 2 April 2013, there will be a family in Norwich in bed-and-breakfast accommodation who have been lingering there for a couple of weeks, to the distress of the children, but technically they require two-bed accommodation if they are not immediately to find that their HB does not meet their rent. The local authority and the housing association, because we jointly have a choice-based letting system, only has three-bedroom houses available. Will the Minister tell me what we do? Do I say to that family that they must stay in an B&B for yet another fortnight or another three weeks until possibly the perfect fit of a two-bedroom property comes up in a place near where their children have started going to school, or do I say they can move into a three-bedroom house but that they have to take the hit? The local authority may help them with the first month or so, but after that they are on the own and will have arrears, and they may go back into the recycling of bed and breakfast accommodation.
As someone who is intimately involved in this, I am afraid I know that that is what we will be facing on day two or day three after 1 April 2013, and the Minister must tell us what we say to that family: move into accommodation that is notionally too large, not by DCLG standards but by housing benefits standards, and pay the price, or stay put in bed and breakfast accommodation, with everything that we know happens to children in that situation and how damaging and stressful it is for the family concerned. The noble Lord emphasised that there are choices in what people can afford—there is no choice. His concept of fairness seems to run like this—I think this is how the syllogism worked. We start with a definition that is tight, in my view too tight, which requires 670,000 families to move, two-thirds of them with a degree of disability. Yet knowing that, we do not have the property, and we do not expect the tenants to move because they cannot. They have no choice. We then, thirdly, go on to fine them for something they can do nothing about.
I do not believe in my wildest moments that the Minister would regard that as fair. It is not fair. We all know it is not fair. A transition arrangement would be fine if it is going to be long enough, but that takes time to adjust the stock, but it is not fair to punish people for something over which they have no power to change and in which they have no choice. I am hoping the Minister will rethink this because many of us feel very strongly indeed. There are various aspects of it that I perfectly well understand, such as the need to try to cap HB expenditure. We will come back to why that is happening, but it is certainly not because of this. It is happening, as the latest reports from the chartered institute and the property federation show, because of the increase from 49 per cent to 52 per cent of the case load in the local housing allowance in the south of England, which is more expensive with a higher number of claimants. It is nothing to do with this at all. I hope the Minister will run that when we come to that debate.
Does he suggest that it is fair to punish tenants for something over which they have no choice, in a way that is antithetical in every other aspect of social security legislation of which I am aware? We sanction when people could and should change their behaviour. If they cannot, we do not; full stop. Yet with this the Minister breaches that profound principle to benefit policy in this country, and I deeply hope, because I know he is a decent man and I believe he genuinely holds to concepts of fairness here, that he will think again and hopefully be able to change his mind before we come back to this on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) Regulations under subsection (3)(a) must ensure that payment for mortgage interest continues to be made available long-term for people acquiring a home via the Home Ownership for People with Long-term Disabilities (HOLD) scheme.”
Lord Rix
My Lords, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that I have spoken at the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall and in a field at Cardiff Castle, and I trust that your Lordships can hear me in Committee Room 4A.
It is perhaps appropriate that with Amendment 35 I am in pole position in this vast group of amendments, for I am putting forward the case for people who reached the back of the grid only some 20 years ago and who had never been allowed near the track before then. I am of course talking about people with a learning disability. As your Lordships are aware, this Bill aims to introduce regulations laying out not only how housing benefit costs can be integrated into the universal credit but how mortgage costs would in future be covered in this context.
The purpose of this amendment, tabled in my name, is to ensure that disabled people have opportunities to buy a property via the home ownership scheme for people with a long-term disability, otherwise known as HOLD. Until October 2010, disabled people were able to access the higher rate of support for mortgage interest, or SMI, which meant that some mortgage providers were willing to lend to people with a long-term disability under the HOLD scheme by providing very specialist mortgages. The Royal Mencap Society, of which I have the honour of being president, believes that, contrary to all expectations, more than 1,000 people with a learning disability have been enabled to buy their own homes by this route. There are many more who hope and are able to follow in their pioneering footsteps. However, the abolition of the higher rate for SMI has meant that these mortgages are no longer available. This route into housing for people with a learning disability has, in effect, been closed down.
The purpose of the amendment is, effectively, to reinstate this route of home ownership for disabled people. It would also ensure that the Government’s support for care in the community continues to be a reality. Turning again to the analogy of motor racing, I am concerned that if we do not take appropriate action on this point now, people with a learning disability could be forced to take a prolonged pit stop, during which others will continue to lap them in the race to secure a decent and comfortable home.
In this group I support Amendments 36, 38, 39, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83 and 84. I beg to move.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 36. This group is not as complicated as it looks because there are two sets of mirrored amendments. I look forward to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best, whose knowledge is well understood in this House. The meat of the group is to do with the exceptions, which relate, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, accurately said, to our earlier debate.
Amendment 36 does a slightly different thing. Before I speak to it briefly, I shall refer to what I said in the previous session of the Grand Committee. We are all under pressure to disaggregate groups of amendments because the people who are promoting the amendments think that they get better consideration in the Government’s reply if they are considered individually. It is better to have a debate around a wider set of amendments but it will not work for the purposes of the people who tabled them unless the Minister is able to say something about individual amendments. If he cannot, the flexibility in the Government’s position cannot be properly understood and appropriate arrangements cannot be made for Report. The Minister has a very difficult job because there are many amendments on the Order Paper, but they are all important in their own way. If he can address them individually to the best of his ability, that would be a favour.
Amendment 36 tries to lift and lay the existing protections in the current provision of housing benefit in the private and public sectors under the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. Clause 11 is very regulation-oriented. Its last three subsections refer to regulations that determine a whole series of things and are the basis for the amount of housing costs. What Clause 11 does not do is provide for entitlement to be related to rents in individual localities. These are key concepts in the existing system that we want to make sure are enshrined in the new provision under universal credit.
Lord Best
I am glad to start with that affirmation in advance. I am speaking to Amendments 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83 and 84. This group of amendments relates back to the underoccupation penalty, about which we have heard so much.
I was deeply impressed by the array of speeches from the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollis, Lady Turner, Lady Lister, Lady Sherlock and Lady Hayter—the opposition Baronesses. I wondered what the plural was and I thought of it by the end: it is “a battery of Baronesses”. I thought that I might feel annoyed that they had stolen all my speech in various instalments, but I did not. Instead, I felt admiration and was in entire agreement with what they said.
My amendments in this group include two, Amendments 44 and 84, which relate to the fundamental point here: the definition of an underoccupied home, one in which people will either pay a penalty, have to move or make some other arrangements. The amendments suggest that we should stay with the standard that we have used in the past; that is, the standard used by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Tenant Services Authority. This allows you the basic bedroom standard plus one bedroom. The amendments call for that status quo to be resumed. I have been involved in housing matters for some 42 years. During that time, we have grappled a lot with issues around underoccupancy in managing property that I have been responsible for and trying to incentivise people to move when that has been sensible. I do not think that it is possible to insist on the basic bedroom standard and expect people to live in the homes that they would then be required to live in. That is not how we occupy our properties in this country; 83.9 per cent of owner-occupiers fail this test straightaway. Most other people, in these terms, underoccupy the homes that they live in. Indeed, we build accommodation on the basis that you are going to underoccupy it. The housebuilding industry knows that people like to be able to tell their parents that they have bought a three-bedroom house. It is actually a two-bedroom house with a box room added. We do not expect people to occupy all those rooms in the real world of owner-occupation, and people move when they fill them up. I cannot believe that social housing tenants’ lives are so different that they will be able to cope with the basic bedroom standard.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, gave some illustrations. The example that I might well have quoted was read out by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister—I received the same, very impressive e-mail about a family with two daughters. I give my own example. Let us try not to pull the heart strings. It is just an ordinary case of a family where there are two girls, of 14 and nine, who are not at the moment sharing—thank goodness, because the teenage girl of 14 does not want to share with her nine year-old sister. People have lives to lead as well as homework to do; they want to invite their friend in and listen to music or whatever they want to do. The 14 year-old does not want to share with a nine year-old who goes to bed at a completely different time. Theoretically, they have to move out. They will move down from a three-bedroom to a two-bedroom home. However, it will not take long before the 15 year-old is 16 and can get a room of her own. They can then move back again—of course, the former home will not be available. It will not be long, though, before that older girl leaves home, and then the family will have to move out again. This is ridiculous—people moving around to try to fit in with the rules.
Let us face it: the impact assessment makes it quite clear that it is about saving money. Reducing the cost of housing benefit is of course a very important objective, but the great majority of ordinary people, even those who do not have small children or children of the wrong sex who will not be able to be fitted together in the right boxes, need an extra room. Their children come back—does no one realise that they have not gone for ever? Sometimes, their coming back saves other people a lot of money because the parents will put them up and look after them during some period of crisis in their lives—marriages break down; all kinds of things happen. Indeed, you in your older age or even in your middle age may get sick and need a member of the family to come back and occupy the spare room and a keep an eye on you for a bit. To have that one spare room available, even when you do not have children to put in it, is the way that the rest of us live, and it has to work for social housing—I have never found a way of persuading people otherwise. This measure is a way, I fear, of raising money. It is a fundraiser, because almost nobody in these circumstances will move. They will just have to pay—or forgo, as it is—£13 a week, which is a serious amount of money for people on very low incomes. It begins to tot up.
The consequences of that will be shared. They will be felt by the individuals, who try to cut their living standards at a time when fuel bills and everything else are rising. It will be felt also by the landlords, because it will be extremely difficult to collect the money which has not been received by way of housing benefit. That means that arrears will begin to accumulate.
At first, landlords will be tolerant and helpful and try to see this through, but eventually—and I have been responsible for social housing—you get to the point where, pour encourager les autres, you have to proceed with eviction. After a while, arrears become too much. If they cannot be paid, people are going to have to be moved out, and then you get all the cost of that.
I cannot believe that people are going to move. It costs a great deal to move. Your carpets will not fit the place to which you are moving; your curtains will not fit. You have to pay disconnection charges for your electricity suppliers, and so on. People are not going to keep moving; they are just going to be stuck there and have to pay up, or forgo the money. I do not think that it is fair. The rest of us do not feel, for a moment, that that is how we would expect to live. I do not think that people, just because they are in social housing, should be expected to.
The amendment says that if you have two rooms which, using the basic bedroom standard, would be regarded as unoccupied—they would probably be a study or whatever—you would pay the penalty, but you would not do so for one bedroom, using this very tight definition. That is the effect of Amendments 44 and 84.
Is there a solution to the problems of underoccupancy? I am not going to burden you with a long speech on this, but underoccupancy is mostly about people over pension age. They are specifically excluded from this measure. However, they are the ones who are actually underoccupying, often in a three-bedroom home, and who—if only we could find the incentives and the ways of moving people—could be moved on, and families could take those homes.
I declare my interests: I chair a housing association called Hanover. Hanover has 19,000 properties, but they are all retirement properties. We concentrate exclusively on older people.
Our target is the underoccupying elderly person, whose home, even though they feel quite reluctant to move, is not suitable any more. If it has three bedrooms, stairs, a garden that needs to be kept up and heating bills that are higher than they should be, it is a great idea if we can move people out of those three-bedroom houses. They are desperately needed by families. Housebuilders have tended to build just flats, and not houses with gardens, so these are really valuable to the rest of society. The incentives to move are what we need.
We have shown in my housing association—others have done just as well—that if you provide something that is really good, then people will move. They are not going to go to scruffy old bedsits in sheltered housing that has seen much better days. But they will go if it is to somewhere manageable, clean, bright, open and companionable.
Lord Best
Well, preferably a bungalow, but mostly we just do flats, but they can be smart apartments. Yes, you could move.
There are some 240,000 families who are overcrowded. We have far more elderly people who are underoccupying than that. We could give incentives to older people, the incentive being the really nice apartment elsewhere. It gives you two-for-one, because you release your family home. This is not the approach being taken in this legislation.
If we are going to have to reconcile ourselves to there being this penalty, then the other amendments in this group come into play, which are about exemptions, exceptions and letting some people off. I hope it does not come to this, but if it does, a series of exemptions is outlined in the amendments that follow.
Amendments 38 and 79 would remove the underoccupation penalty for the 100,000 properties that have been specially adapted to meet the needs of a disabled tenant—we have heard a little about that already. It would be daft to move a household with a disabled family member to smaller premises if the costs of fitting out the new home—for example, with a level-access shower or removal of steps—far exceeded the savings from cutting the housing benefit and left wasted adaptations behind because no other household needed the particular adaptations made to the previous home.
Similarly, Amendments 39 and 80 would exempt the 200,000 households in receipt of disability living allowance, or the new personal independence payment, in the same way that DLA recipients have been excluded from the proposed total housing benefit cap. Some extra space for those with disabilities can even save money when that allows a carer to move in during a difficult period for the disabled person, saving the cost of hospital or residential care. Amendments 40 and 81, which are supported by the Fostering Network and Barnardo’s, as well as the housing charities, which are behind all the amendments, would exempt properties where families are providing foster care placements.
I am sure that it is simply a fault of the drafting, but, at present, the Bill would not count foster children as part of the household. Therefore, any rooms they occupy would be classified as unoccupied. That is clearly nonsense, and I am sure that the Minister will explain how that will be put right in future.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Am I right in believing that, to become a foster carer, you must have a spare bedroom? If you have a spare bedroom, you are hurt and hit by the HB rules.
Lord Best
I fear that that is exactly the position. Others may wish to come in on the amendment about foster parents.
Amendments 43 and 83 would not require an underoccupying tenant to move out where there was simply nowhere for them to downsize to—the fundamental point behind the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. For example, the National Housing Federation has demonstrated that about 180,000 social housing tenants would be classified as underoccupying their two-bedroom homes and would need to move on, but that only about 68,000 one-bedroom social housing flats come available for letting in a year. Even if every one of the one-bedroom flats was allocated to those who are downsizing—which of course would be impossible as there are serious demands from tens of thousands of other such households—it would take years before they could be accommodated.
In the past, we built social housing between the world wars and afterwards. Mostly, we built three-bedroom housing. Now we have a lot of households that require something smaller, but we do not have enough houses to put them in. Here, again, the impossibility of people moving means that the exemption would kick in. If they were expected to downsize into less secure private rented properties, rents are likely to be much higher and therefore the benefit costs, the universal credit costs, would be much higher—about £66 per week more in south-east England. That is not a great saving. The housing benefit bill would be likely to rise dramatically although people were occupying less space.
Moving creates the familiar barrier to employment. Moving to somewhere with a higher rent itself intensifies demand on the private rented sector, which will push up rents more generally.
Of the amendments, my preferred option is to define underoccupying as exceeding the bedroom standard plus one—that is, having two “spare” bedrooms. That would cut the gains to the Government from the underoccupation penalty to 150,000 households from the 670,000 that the Government are expecting to be caught by the new penalty.
If the Government cannot accept that, I hope that, alongside the exclusion for older people—the category most likely to be underoccupying at the moment— exemptions could be put in place for disabled people in adapted property, recipients of disability allowance, families classified as underoccupying because foster children are not counted, those unable to move because no suitable alternative exists, and those in supported or sheltered housing where a spouse or partner dies or leaves them and who are below pensionable age and would be compelled to move out. Added together, those exemptions would certainly reduce the hardship and extra costs implicit in the underoccupation penalty. I look forward to hearing comments from other noble Lords and the reaction of the Minister.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, before I speak to my amendment in this group, perhaps I may follow the noble Lord, Lord Best, in his concerns about the impact of this move to an underoccupation penalty, particularly on families. It was encouraging to hear from the Minister the results of his survey and some positive outcomes to the changes whereby people will look for work, or think of getting a lodger. However, what concerned me about his comments were the large numbers who might go into arrears. I have observed from my experience of young people leaving care and of other families that people leading chaotic lives tend to think from day to day.
Therefore, given the example given by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, if a family in bed and breakfast accommodation were offered a three-bedroom house that seems to suit them but may be too large, they may say, “We will take it and deal with the arrears when they come. We will not think of the future”. Then they end up in arrears and in serious difficulty because they are not able to cope with the worry of being in debt and they do not know what to do. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for highlighting the fact that this issue needs close attention from the Government, and I look forward to learning more about it. He has a good point. This is a serious worry with the underoccupation penalty.
The noble Lord also raised the question of foster carers. Under the current absurd arrangement, foster caring and providing a room to a foster child would not count as a room and in this scenario would count against one. I am not expressing that very clearly, but I think your Lordships understand what I mean. I suppose it might be argued that this will be an incentive for some people to foster if they have a spare room. If the Bill is changed to be made sane, they would not be caught by this part of the legislation.
However, I have two further thoughts. First, there is a real question as to how far one should professionalise foster caring. People should go into foster caring because they love children and want to provide a good home to a child. I know that there is a debate about the professionalisation of foster care but, in principle at least, people should be motivated by caring for children, not making a bit of extra money or saving some money. Secondly, the harms that may arise from this proposal by far outweigh any potential benefits of that kind. If such families get into arrears there is perhaps the cost to the mental health service as the family breaks down under stress. There is the cost to the education system as their children fail. One needs to look at the bigger picture rather than just think about short-term savings.
Perhaps I may sum up. I apologise for using my laptop on this occasion; however, I cannot get internet access today and I was unable to download my notes and print them out. My Amendment 85 is modelled on the previous amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and I apologise to the Committee because I drafted my amendment rather poorly. I should have referred to children looked after by local authorities rather than those cared for by them. My intention is to gain an assurance from the Minister that families who have their children looked after by a local authority may retain a room for that child to return to when he is ready. While a few children are adopted from care, most return home sooner or later, and it is right that they should have a room when that happens. It is important for the parents to retain a sense that their child remains their child and that they remain the parents. That is important because their children will normally still love their parents, however they have been treated, and will need to feel there is a place for them in their parents’ home. It is important also because the child will eventually return. Generally, we should strongly encourage these parents to retain their sense of responsibility for their own children. An experienced child and family social worker has reminded me that it will also be important for the child to know that his parents will be keeping a room for him. He will need to feel that he is still wanted and there is still a home for him with his parents.
In the year ending 31 March 2011, 3,050 children were adopted out of a population at that time of 65,520 children who were being looked after. Very few children, then, were adopted. Children who are subject to residence orders, or are being cared for informally by the Ryder family, are all the more likely to return to their families. Barnado’s has expressed concern about these children. This matter was also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, at Second Reading. There is a separate amendment in this group, which I support, on those particular groups of children.
I would be most grateful if the Minister could reassure me that families whose children are looked after by a local authority would not normally be subject to the underoccupation penalty. I apologise if the problem with my drafting has made it more difficult for him to reply. I would certainly find a letter acceptable if that seemed more appropriate in the circumstances.
I will not speak to my Amendment 86 because my understanding is that the benefit arrangements for care leavers are such that the concern I had is not an issue. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord German
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 48C, 48D and 86ZZZA in my name. It is appropriate that I should speak after the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, because the issue he raised about care and children coming back from care is crucial. The three amendments in my name all relate to children and are intended to make sure that the suite of amendments here, which I have looked at very carefully, does not miss out one or two crucial groups relating to children.
Amendment 48C and Amendment 86ZZZA relate to disabled children. Amendment 48D relates to families with children in temporary care—and I echo much of what the noble Earl has just said about that matter. First, I turn to Amendment 48C and Amendment 86ZZZA. Families with a disabled child may have an adapted property that has a spare bedroom, but that spare bedroom may be needed for a carer to stay the night, or for a time when it is too disruptive for another child to share a room—that is a very crucial group of children. Disability comes in many forms. It is important that we reflect upon the nature of disability and how that might impact upon particular groups of children. I ask my noble friend the Minister to look at the issue of what having disabled children actually means in terms of the nature of their disability. It could mean not just that a family needs a carer, or equipment or a spare bedroom; it could be that the nature of the disability is such that disruption affects another child in the family in a way that they require a separate room.
The impact assessment carried out by the DWP says that for claimants themselves, or their partners, a bedroom for a carer who provides overnight support will,
“be taken into account in determining the relevant size criteria”.
I wonder whether there has been an error, because it seems very strange to me that the same provision does not apply to claimants’ children. I hope that the Minister can reflect that it is not just the claimants, but claimants’ children, who are important when it comes to disability. Many families with disabled children will have expensive adaptations to their homes. Forcing families with a disabled child to move from an adapted property—as we have already heard—in any field could be extremely expensive. As we know, disabled facilities grants often take a long time to organise. Forcing families with a disabled child to move could be very disruptive for both the child and their family.
The issue that the noble Earl talked about, which is the subject of another amendment in my name, Amendment 48D, is that of children in care for a short period. The noble Earl reflected carefully on an important group for whom the children’s home—that family connection—is still important. We need to avoid their home being taken away from underneath their feet. Parents whose children are in care for a short period will need to retain that spare bedroom to prevent additional barriers to their children being returned to them when the care period ends, for whatever reason. Where children are in short-term care, their parents will have that spare room as soon as their children are put into care when their children will not be living with them, but the room may be vacant for only a short period. It is impossible for anyone in the housing sector to second-guess when the child will be returned home, because the reason for them returning home will remain with the other agencies. It is important that we should not block that out and that it should not be treated as underoccupancy, because that will impact on those vulnerable children and their families who live in social housing at a time when they need intensive support to ensure that we do not encourage family breakdown.
Again, I wonder whether that is an unintended consequence of the Bill: that it will prevent families from having their children returned to them after they have been in care for a short period. It is not in the amendments, but the noble Earl talked about the fact that many children in longer-term care will also return home. The average length of time for longer-term care for children is only just over two years, so there is a wider group who are not reflected in this pair of amendments.
I also wanted to say a few words about foster carers. The danger is that this policy shift may force some foster carers to give up their roles, as well as discourage new foster carers from coming into the system. It will make it very difficult for social workers to place children in an emergency, which is what we need for many children. We have a national shortage of foster carers. About 10,000 are needed across the whole of the UK, and we need spare capacity in the system because many foster carers are short-term carers looking after some of the most vulnerable children, who are often children who have been abused.
I know that the Government do not collect data on the number of foster carers who live in social housing and that there is no breakdown of the number of foster carers claiming welfare benefits, but I am concerned that, because they do not have the figures, the Government do not understand the impact that this change may have on that group. If the Government have the figures, it would be useful to know them. I understand that they do not. The estimate is that about 2,000 foster carers will be affected. When we consider that we are short of 10,000 foster carers, we should not affect 2,000 in this way.
Lord German
My Lords, I was talking just before the break about the number of foster carers who will be affected by the proposal. We do not have the figures because the Government do not collect the right data, but the 2010 survey commissioned by the Fostering Network found that 6 per cent of all families lived in private or social housing. We know that the split between private and social is 32 per cent to 68 per cent. As there are roughly 45,000 foster families in the UK, if we take that figure, there would be approximately 2,700 fostering families in private and social housing and 1,836 in social housing, but those are extrapolation figures. I would be grateful if the Minister could assist us in that matter.
What is critical in this suite of amendments about children is that the Government do not jeopardise our caring for children with disabilities, and particularly our fostering system, by introducing measures that would penalise those groups of children. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me that that is an unintended consequence, if people believe that we will impact on such groups of children. I hope that the Minister can assure us that those particularly vulnerable groups of children will not be affected by the Bill.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I, too, shall speak briefly to Amendment 40 and Amendment 41, which stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie. As has been said, Amendment 40 seeks to ensure that the restrictions on the size criteria for social housing cannot leave a foster carer unable to meet their rent. As has been suggested, as currently drafted, the social sector size criteria and related benefit cuts would hit foster carers who claim benefit. As has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Best, that is because foster children are not counted as part of the household. Therefore, any bedroom that they sleep in is defined as being empty and underoccupied. The Fostering Network has warned that the failure to exempt foster carers from the penalty could lead to a number of them leaving fostering altogether.
As was suggested by my noble friend Lady Hollis in her earlier question, it is indeed a necessity that to be accepted for fostering, carers are required to have spare rooms in their homes for such children. Indeed, if you look at any advertisements for foster parents, they say that a spare room to foster is necessary. In addition, it cannot just be any old room; it is expected that most foster children will have a room to themselves from the age of three upwards, as specified by the minimum standards issued by the Department for Education and Skills. That age is well below the underoccupation rules for birth children who live with their parents.
We all know that social housing can provide a stable, high-quality environment in which to care for children who, for whatever reason, cannot live with their birth families. I am sure that none of us would want to exclude the occupants of social housing from acting as foster carers. I cannot believe that the Government intend that foster carers should face the underoccupation penalty. It is fairly obvious what impact that that would have.
Foster carers can claim housing benefit for the housing needs of their families, but the ones that they look after are not taken into account, which would mean that, just as with any other family, the rooms would count as being underoccupied, despite the fact that children sleep in them, and the foster carers’ benefit could be reduced by 23 per cent for the use of two rooms or 13 per cent for the use of one room used by a foster child. Many foster carers look after two or more children, especially those carers who deal with emergency needs, when a whole family can arrive together, and the availability of not just one but two spare rooms is crucial.
Most foster carers do not receive financial compensation for housing costs at present. They receive allowances towards the care, which include household running costs but not housing per se. Last year, the Government changed the law to exclude foster children from housing benefit claims. The Minister will recall that he wrote that this is because fostering allowances are intended to cover all the costs of looking after a foster child, including housing them. However, that statement is inconsistent with official information about the purpose of fostering allowance. The minimum fostering allowances set by the Governments in Northern Ireland, Wales and England do not include housing costs. In any case, the levels for recommended minimum allowances are far too low to provide realistic compensation for housing costs.
In case it is thought that discretionary housing payments may be available, it is true that foster carers are entitled to apply, but even if this concession was awarded it would be only to a small minority. As other noble Lords have said, there is already a significant shortage of foster carers. If there was a penalty for keeping a room in order to foster, some experienced carers might have to quit altogether. This could have a significant impact, especially in major towns and cities and other areas where rents are particularly high. Accommodation is in short supply, yet the demand for such carers is great. As the noble Lord, Lord German, said, there are about 2,700 fostering families claiming housing benefit. One thing being asked for through the amendments is that the cost of permitting it would be more than offset by the cost involved in losing foster carers, with children therefore having to be kept in care.
It is very hard to overemphasise the value of the work done by foster carers. I should like to take a moment to talk about two families I know, who between them have had more than 120 children through their doors. They have mostly been children who either have difficulties or disabilities themselves, or whose birth families are, for whatever reason, unable to provide a home for them. They do not always arrive in a nice planned way. They can come in the middle of the night, after the death or illness of their only parent, as the result of an assault or, as in one case that one of these families dealt with, when one of the child’s parents had been murdered by the other. The need for a home in the middle of the night and a room for those children cannot be stressed too much. These families are ready to take someone in, often very distressed small children. It is something of which we all need to be aware.
The Local Government Association is particularly concerned that if the proposal should remain unamended, and therefore reduces the likelihood of fostering, as carers are forced to give it up to avoid the penalty, it will be local authorities who pick up the cost, at a time when we are already short of foster families. It is fairly obvious that particularly vulnerable children make up a large proportion of those who are placed in emergency or short-term care. Therefore, we hope that the amendment will get a very warm response.
Amendment 41, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie, is there to assist the Minister. It would make an exemption for foster parents to prevent their being subject to any accusations of abuse. I do not believe that there is such abuse, but certain papers like to run scaremongering stories about benefit claimants living in mansions, while there are blogs that talk about people living in enormous eight-bedroom houses in Chelsea, paid for by housing benefit. I have yet to find one. Amendment 41 seeks to protect foster carers from any such accusation. It includes defining,
“the type of property reasonably required for a household which is providing or routinely provides foster care placements”.
So it is to try and help the noble Lord in a very simple way.
The guidelines for good fostering are that there must be a spare room, and that no child over the age of three should be asked to share a bedroom. That is what we would call a suitably sized property, so I very much hope that the Minister can respond positively on the issue of foster care.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Best, especially on his amendment regarding the CLG criteria of one-plus-one bedroom. One thing that struck me is that we have not referred in this debate to people with fluctuating impairment who require overnight care but not on a regular basis. People with mental health problems, when they go into crisis, may need somebody to sleep in the bedroom next door for a month or two, and that is not necessarily counted as an overnight carer in considering criteria for an extra bedroom.
We should celebrate that 15,000 disabled people need overnight care in this country—that figure is given to us by the DWP. Has the Minister had discussions with the Department of Health about the implications of the changes to the housing and benefits extra bedroom situation for people with fluctuating impairments? Increasing numbers of disabled people are living at home in the community now, and that is to be celebrated, but many disabled people require the help of another human being in order for them to do that. Otherwise it is back to residential care and the old days of warehousing. This is another good reason to support the one-plus-one bedroom and if we cannot do that, then I certainly support all the exemptions that are called for in all the amendments.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, but I congratulate my noble friend Lord Best on his incredibly commonsense approach to this problem. It seems that allowing an extra bedroom would probably deal with most of the tragic exceptions that people have talked about—what a straightforward way to deal with those exceptions and normal life. I cannot think of any family that at some point does not badly need an extra room, and the case was so well put.
We talk about all the amendments individually, but what is so painfully obvious is that it is the combined impact of the changes in the Bill that are going to have such a devastating effect on so many people. It feels irrelevant to talk about ESA and people being reassessed and placed on to JSA, and therefore losing a section or part of their benefits, but the individuals at the front line are going to be hit by that, then they find their housing allowances upgraded in line with CPI, then they find that their housing allowances are pegged to the 30th percentile, then find that they have an extra room. Oh my God, their housing benefit will not cover the accommodation they are in and they are going to have to think about moving.
It is the impact of so many hits that feels petrifying, and perhaps the change that frightens me more than any is the pegging of housing allowances to CPI. If that goes on longer than two years—perhaps we do not pay too much attention to it because we assume that it will not—we are talking about families and households finding every few years that they have a growing gap between their rent and the allowances they are paid for housing. They will have to move, and move, and move—is that not correct?—over a period of time, into ever more distant areas, ever meaner properties, ever smaller properties. It is difficult to imagine the psychological impact on households of all these changes.
I do not know who devised this law, but I wonder whether whoever it was stood back and thought about all that. I know, and the Minister has mentioned many times, that the driving motivation behind the reforms is to provide an incentive for people to move into work. From where I come from, dealing with people with mental health problems, one thing that stands between them and work is their level of stress and distress and anxiety.
It strikes me that if all the legislative changes go through, we will create an even bigger gap between very large numbers of people who are prone to anxiety and depression—if not psychosis and other things that are even more problematic to deal with—and the labour market. That troubles me, because I respect the Minister’s commitment to providing an incentive for people to go back into work. I also know that he is very sympathetic and understanding about mental health problems. I would be interested to know what he has to say about the apparent contradiction in what the Government are trying to do.
Another aspect of this for people with mental health problems is that to force them to move away from wherever they are—probably away from the carers who might just about prop them up and allow them to survive and carry on—is the last thing we want. The underoccupation rule impacts even more, given the other provisions of the Bill. As I understand it, young people are going to be expected, in some circumstances, to share accommodation. There are an awful lot of people with mental health problems for whom this might be quite helpful. There are others for whom it might be a complete disaster. Indeed, let us not forget to mention the potential sharer. It might be quite difficult to share with some of our folk. We have to be sensitive to the impact, and the combined and compound impact.
I sympathise with the amendments that noble Lords have tabled about disabled people who have had adjustments to their homes, and those about looked-after children. Those are obvious and glaring problems. I would like to think that the Minister will think seriously about that, in the context that I know he very well understands.
Lord Wigley
My Lords, I speak very briefly in support of Amendment 35, to which I have my name, to endorse entirely the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, in introducing this bank of amendments, and to support the other amendments that deal with disability particularly. In doing so I should declare my interest as vice-president of Mencap Wales. In fact, at the Mencap annual conference in Warwick on Saturday, there were people who asked specifically about these matters. They said, “They have taken away from us home ownership for people with long-term disabilities, and now they are going to start clobbering us on housing benefit, where people with disabilities may be in a particularly vulnerable position”. I should therefore like to ask the Minister, so that I can respond to people who raise these questions with me: do the Government still believe in home ownership for everybody, and if so, does that include people with long-term disabilities? If the Government, having taken away the previous scheme, are not going to put something in its place, surely that is a straight contradiction of what the party opposite has always put itself forward as believing in?
Secondly, with regard to people with disabilities and housing benefit—the amendments before us would make exceptions for them—I hope that the Minister will be able to spell out how he will ensure that they do not suffer. If the amendments are not acceptable, I hope that amendments will come forward from the Government on Report. If not, I hope that there will be an opportunity to vote on these matters to show exactly where each of us in each of our parties, including the coalition partners, stand on such a basic issue.
Baroness Hollins
I, too, support Amendment 35, as introduced by my noble friend Lord Rix. As we have already heard today, tidy laws are not always fair laws. I am concerned about some exceptional people whose needs cannot neatly be described and I hope that common sense will prevail.
I shall give the example of a young man with autism and learning disability, Theo. Since early childhood, Theo has loved and become very knowledgeable about cathedrals, churches and architecture. He is also a man with complex impairments and a history of behaviour which has challenged every shared setting he has lived in. With specialist advice from Housing Options, and support and endorsement from social services, his parents set up a safe and individualised housing and care package for him.
The Government’s view may now be that it has never been the intention that SMI would cover all a person’s housing liabilities, but Theo’s shared-ownership mortgage was offered precisely on the basis that it would cover the mortgaged part of his housing cost, as was DWP policy at the time. The past nine years of Theo’s life have been built on that. His home has provided the all-important stability that someone with autism needs; and his disabilities combine to make change much more disturbing than we would find it.
Theo has an interest-only mortgage, so the possibility of the acquisition of a valuable capital asset does not apply in his case. With careful management by his parents, he has been able to lead a happy life at a much lower cost to the public purse than the alternative arrangement of a secure hospital. However, the new FSA rules require mortgage-lenders to set aside more capital and to treat mortgages on shared-ownership properties as 100 per cent mortgages. The result is a sudden gap between the rate at which lenders have to lend—for example, 6 or 8 per cent —and what the new SMI rate, which I think is 3.63 per cent, will cover. In Theo’s case, this leads to a shortfall of £200 per month. You can imagine that the arrears are already quite high. A new mortgage would be at an even higher rate, but he would then have to find a 25 per cent deposit for his property. He does not have the money to negotiate another mortgage.
There has been quite a bit of publicity about the adverse effect of this reform on HOLD. Experienced housing experts say that fewer lenders are likely to want to deal with disabled applicants seeking this solution to support a non-institutional life.
Ageing parents of disabled adults have followed similar paths with the help of enlightened housing associations. Those parents have been making responsible arrangements in their own lifetime, hoping for some assurance of long-term stability and security for their child. Instead, Theo's parents now face the prospect of seeing Theo’s distress at being uprooted from his home and moved, probably, to an inappropriate and less sensitive institution, which will be much more costly.
As the noble Lord, Lord Rix, pointed out, there are probably about 1,000 customers with learning disabilities—0.4 per cent, I understand, of the total caseload looked at by the impact assessment. Some of those administering HOLD have suggested ways in which the cost of continuing higher-rate payments for this group of disabled people could be contained, but it would require acceptance that there are indeed exceptions to the rule.
Since the Poor Law 1601, society has tried to tidy away people whose needs do not fit present-day norms, but in today’s more enlightened society we have made huge strides towards creating an inclusive society in which every person's humanity and dignity are respected and in which they have a place regardless of the extent of the difference that the person presents. However, these gains are quite fragile and we need look no further than Winterbourne View to be reminded of the previous scandals in mental handicap hospitals such as Ely and Normansfield in the late 1970s. Surely, we must now realise that without adequate advocacy and diligence we could again allow such inhumane provision to be re-created—people shunned by society and placed out of sight and out of mind at considerable expense but in the interests of tidiness. The test of a humane society is how it treats its most vulnerable members.
I had little awareness of the lives lived by some people with learning disabilities until I had a disabled child. My eyes were opened. I should like the Minister to consider using the Bill to reinstate SMI at the higher level for people such as Theo, which would allow them the opportunity to live with dignity in their own homes.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, I rise briefly and somewhat diffidently because I did not have the privilege of hearing some of the earlier exchanges, as I had other obligations at that time. However, I have been listening to the later stages of the debate and before I add one comment to it I want to make it clear that in no sense am I derogatory of the very real problems that disabled people face—and those faced by other people of particular categories, including foster carers and others. Indeed, a good deal of my trade, time, interest and passion in my previous vocation as a Member of the other place was directed towards these issues. Of course they matter, and the people who are experiencing them matter. They have complex and difficult needs.
At the same time, it is worth putting down a marker. My remarks are prompted by those of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, about the cumulative effect. Of course, in a sense, I entirely agree with her point about the cumulative effect of changes, but I am afraid that the argument runs both ways. If the effect is cumulative and poses difficulties for the individual, a cumulative set of concessions or changes to the package that the Minister is presenting to us also has implications for public expenditure. In our debates last week on disabled children, I made the point that I regarded their overall position as being one of particular pressure that required the Minister’s attention and the maximum degree of flexibility. While I do not for a moment resile from the arguments that have been put with great passion by noble Lords on the range of difficulties, we will not be able to meet all those requirements within the equal requirement that the Minister and the Government have for economies in public expenditure—and with the commitments that have been undertaken to secure the prize of universal credit.
What we must do—and I will certainly want to listen to the Minister’s answer on this—is ensure that we understand the implications, and that is why debate is so important. We should be prepared to make changes where the shoe pinch is particularly hard or where the interaction that the noble Baroness referred to may have taken place. However, we will not be able to solve all the problems of all the client groups, however good our intentions are, without making it impossible for the Bill to survive and be sustainable. The Minister has to answer in that vein, and I hope that he does so.
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, further to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, I ask him whether it is fair that this group of people should be asked to pay for the country’s deficit. It seems to fall particularly hard on this vulnerable group of people.
I support the solution of noble Lord, Lord Best, in these amendments and, if not, I support all the exemptions that have been spoken about, particularly those in relation to disabled people. It is very hard for non-disabled people to recognise how important our homes are to us, particularly when you can get into few others. The way that our homes are configured and designed means that they either enable us to live independent, contributing lives or completely disable us. The two steps that were in my house, as they are in every other house in my street, would completely have disabled me had they not been removed. They would have meant that I needed help from someone else to wash or to provide my food. I would not even have been able to answer my front door to take in a parcel from a neighbour. They would have removed any ability for me to contribute to my community.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, the Government will have to recognise the anxieties that lie behind the bulk of amendments in this group. I want to take a step back and take a slightly longer view. Whether they should be in this group or not, there are three clause stand part amendments, one of which relates to this clause, in the name of my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark; the other two are for later clauses and stand in my name. Clause stand part amendments are either a subtle probing amendment or a blunderbuss, depending on your point of view, but they are a request for the Government to think again.
I am prepared to accept that the Government do not intend by the provisions to place a disproportionate burden on the disabled or to leave foster parents out of consideration. They have three aims: the big one, on which we all agree, is to rationalise the whole system of welfare, eventually into a system of universal credit; the second is to save money; the third, which has been less referred to, is to reflect how to deal with a severe shortage of housing in general. The reason why we have the provisions, much of which we have been debating during the past hour, on how to move people to more appropriate—or, in some cases, less appropriate—accommodation is because there is such a squeeze on social housing, in particular, but also on other forms of housing to which housing benefit makes a contribution. That is a housing policy issue, and is in a sense also being dealt with in parallel in the Localism Bill, where some measures would reinforce the direction of this Bill, some positively and some negatively, but some move in a different direction. In that context, particularly in relation to changes in security of tenure, it would actually make some of these problems considerably worse.
The clause stand part amendment and another group of amendments that I have in a later group, which I fear that I will probably not be here to debate if we reach them tonight, are intended to ask the Government to think again. We all want the housing costs element eventually to be included within universal credit, but there are huge complexities in the housing cost element. The Government have attempted to address them, but they make the administration somewhat worse and more complicated by moving housing benefit away from administration of local authorities, separating the council tax benefit from the housing benefit proper and in a different context putting maximum figures on housing benefit and provisions in the Localism Bill that relate to affordable rents and caps on rents in social housing.
There is a whole nexus of issues which are essentially housing policy issues, and they reflect the very serious shortage of housing in all forms of tenure, whether we are talking about owner occupation and availability of a mortgage for first-time buyers, the private rented sector or the social housing sector. If we are to move a housing cost element into the universal credit, a lot of those issues—or at least the direction of travel on all those issues—need to have been established first. I am aware that the Government intend to make a statement on housing in the next couple of months, basically led by the CLG end. Whether it will be definitive or not I am not clear, but until we have some clarity about how we are dealing with future subsidy for housing, whether on the supply or on the demand side through housing benefit, as well as future changes in tenure and tenure law, which will affect the supply and flexibility of people moving to appropriate accommodation, it is difficult to construct exactly how the housing costs element will look.
My suggestion in my subsequent group of amendments is that we should be prepared to take a longer run at the housing costs element than in the rest of the rationalisation of the programme. The Government should at least give themselves the option of doing that, because otherwise they are going to flounder on detailed but vitally important aspects of housing benefit and housing tenure, which affect lots of different interest groups in different ways and which will slow them down in attaining their goal of universal credit.
I do not want to say any more tonight on that, although I may well return to it at a later stage. The whole of the discussion in the last hour and a half shows how complicated changing housing benefit and housing rules are, whether looked at through the prism of welfare reform or of housing policy. The Government in the timetable that they have set themselves for the legislation and the implementation seem to be biting off more than they can effectively chew. I hope that the Government see this and do not slow down the design of the universal credit system but take the time in a parallel track to look at how housing policy as a whole—the supply as well as the demand side—is addressed, and then start to construct a housing cost element relating to the housing market and the different forms of tenure as a whole. If they do not do that, I fear that they will fall flat on their face, and I do not want that because I agree with the ultimate objective. But the housing side of it is far too complex, and some of the discussions that we have had in the past hour and a half indicate how complex it is and how emotive it can be and how the Government can find themselves in all sorts of trouble, which will slow down their ultimate objective. I pass that to the Minister as a suggestion, but it is one that at some point the Government need to take seriously.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will be keen to reassure the Committee about the concerns raised, and I know that the Committee will want to hear those reassurances, so I shall be as brief as I can, but I am prompted by the eloquent speeches of the noble Lord, Lord German, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter—particularly the case histories that she presented—to think in particular of large sibling groups of children taken into care. We are often talking about large families, dysfunctional families, where the parent has a child who is taken away, then another child who is taken away and then another child who is taken away. It is often very important for those children that they stay together with their brothers and sisters. Of course that means that some foster carers need to have many rooms to provide that capacity. In the past, we have failed those children. It has been inconvenient to keep them together, so they have been separated.
I think of one now middle-aged woman who was separated from her five brothers and sisters when she was in care. She was so profoundly troubled by her experience that she set up a charity, Siblings Together, and now organises holiday schemes so that young children in care can spend at least their holidays together with their siblings. If they lose their parents, at least let them keep their brothers and sisters.
I do not want to pull too hard on the heartstrings, and I know that the Minister has met the Fostering Network. He has already provided reassurance on several of its concerns, so I am sure that he will be as helpful as he can on this issue as well, but I omitted to raise this earlier and I wanted to raise it with him before he replied.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, it is with some trepidation that I speak in this debate having released, in the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Best, the battery of Baronesses from this side of the Committee. I am not sure that I am not better suited to sitting on the hill at a safe distance and watching all this from afar.
However, these are hugely important issues. One thing seems abundantly clear on the basis of this debate and the previous one: what is in the Bill simply cannot stand. We recognise the issue of underoccupation. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, part of that is dealt with by definition: the extra bedroom in itself is part of the solution. My noble friend Lord Whitty just made a powerful contribution about the need to look at this in the context of housing policy more generally: the provision of a range of new accommodation and the range of tenancies that we have. To use the mechanism of housing benefit as the sole lever to try to deal with the problem seems fundamentally flawed.
There seems to be an assumption behind that approach that someone who finds themselves in a position of underoccupation, as defined, is somehow doing it to cheat the state, to grab more from housing benefit that they might be entitled to. The reasons that people end up in an underoccupying position are varied. It could be that the kids are leaving home to go to university; it could be that a member of the household has undertaken the instructions of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and got on their bike to find a job somewhere else; there could have been a death in the family. All sorts of reasons may underpin why people find themselves underoccupied, and I am not sure that that is reflected in the provisions.
I must stop agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Best, but I agree that underoccupation is more of an issue among elderly people. I remember people from the patch that I represented on the council. One elderly woman occupied alone the three-bedroom house that she had occupied since she started a family. That is where her memories were. She could not get up the stairs and used to sleep in the front room. That is not a satisfactory outcome to her life or, indeed, to the use of housing stock. Means of dealing with that, such as local authorities having a scheme whereby they can help people to move by dealing with the practical issues of carpets, curtains, utilities and so on, would relieve some of the risks and tensions associated with moving house.
Lord Freud
My Lords, this has been a very good debate. I am not saying I have welcomed anything anyone has said, but I am saying the quality of the debate has been very high. I thank noble Lords for the great expertise they have brought to these issues. In response to the request of my noble friend Lord Kirkwood and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, I shall try to answer on each of these amendments and justify the idea that we can group them and get the right answers through. I am grateful for the indulgence of Committee members in allowing some big groups to come through, which should help us, but I aim to answer all of these issues.
To go back to the essential core point, housing support is a critical element of universal credit. It will help people pay their housing costs and help prevent homelessness. It will recognise that people need support across a range of different tenure types whether they live in the private rented sector, the social sector or whether they are owner occupiers. However, to repeat the point I made earlier, it also needs to be affordable to the taxpayer. My noble friend Lord German made the point about the increases in pure cash terms—it is up from £11 billion to £22 billion in a decade, which is 40 per cent in real terms—and that rise was going to continue if we did nothing.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked why is it this community that is taking the £2 billion saving we are looking at. I remind Committee Members that the way we are designing many of these particular housing reductions is not directed wholly or even mostly at tenants. Clearly, we are looking for landlords to take the strain in the private sector—I am on record as saying that—although we expect other responses in the social area which I have gone through.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I quoted the figure of £2 billion. I thought that figure was for several years and related to these underoccupancy provisions. Is that right or is it a broader range?
Lord Freud
No, the figure of £2 billion applies to the total saving by the end of the period in 2015 of all the benefit changes, and the particular change here is £0.5 billion per annum on the social sector from 2013-14.
Tackling housing benefit expenditure is vital to our combined efforts to reduce the economic deficit. The measures within Clause 68 will help to deliver significant savings affecting housing benefit claims for those living in both the private and social rented sector. Clause 11 will allow us to carry these measures through into universal credit.
Starting with Amendment 36 from my noble friend Lord Kirkwood and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, I confess that it surprises me because it appears to call for a return to something akin to the local reference rent. This was a system that was difficult for claimants to understand, led to delays as individual rent officer determinations were sought, and it was expensive. It needed an army of rent officers to carry out these case-specific determinations. It is not a system that I would willingly go back to. This amendment would also maintain the status quo for housing benefit in the social rented sector, ignoring a property size in relation to the size of the household. As I have set out, we must take control of housing benefit expenditure across both sectors, but this amendment would do neither. In fact, it would increase costs.
I turn to my noble friend’s point on CPI. We will discuss this in more detail in a later group. The CPI uprating will apply across the spending review period, and if it becomes apparent that LHA rates and rents are moving out of step, they can be reconsidered at that point.
Amendments 38 and 79 would exclude anyone from this measure who is disabled and lives in adapted accommodation. Unlike Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, this exemption would apply regardless of the extent of the adaptations that have been made. It would also exempt anyone in accommodation who is “particularly suited” to the needs of that person. These are extremely broad categories. We have already heard in some detail the issues surrounding claimants living in adapted and specially suited accommodation. The terms of the exemption suggested in these amendments are simply too broad brush. However, as I said in relation to Amendment 48, I want to return to this matter once we have considered it further.
Amendments 43 and 83 also touch on similar issues to those discussed in relation to Amendment 48. They would exempt claimants where there is no suitable alternative accommodation, which is classified in the amendment as social rented housing that is also within the claimant’s locality. We cannot contemplate such a wide-ranging exemption. It would be costly to administer and would no doubt apply to those who would, in fact, have paid the shortfall regardless.
On Amendments 39 and 80, we estimate that around 200,000 claimants, where only they or their partner receive disability living allowance, will potentially be affected by the size criteria measure. However, this figure does not include other members of the household such as children and non-dependants. An exemption is simply not affordable and may well include many cases for whom an exemption would not be necessary, while missing out other hard cases. To provide a blanket exemption where claimants and partners receive DLA would lead to a reduction in savings of approximately between £130 million and £140 million in 2013-14, and this amendment goes further even than that.
Amendment 48C and the peculiarly titled Amendment 86ZZZA would exclude all households where there is a disabled child and again reduce the savings significantly and provide too broad an exemption. In response to the point made by my noble friend Lord German about exemptions for people who require an extra room as a result of a medical condition, we are looking at ways to potentially limit the impact of these changes in a way that is effective and affordable. The most appropriate course of action for the tenant and landlord in such cases will vary, depending on the individual circumstances of the claimant and his or her household. They may choose, for example, to apply for a discretionary housing payment.
As for the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, on fluctuating health conditions, local authorities can and do use discretionary housing payments for precisely that purpose. I can inform her that we have worked with the Department of Health on the extra room for a non-resident carer, which will cover that point in the guidance we issue to local authorities.
Amendments 40, 41 and 81 are relevant to foster carers. Within universal credit, our intention is to ignore any fostering income and therefore not to include any foster children within the assessment unit. To do otherwise, by treating the child as a family member and the fostering allowance as income, could result in the family being considerably worse off, and as such act as a deterrent to fostering.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, perhaps I may press the Minister on that key point. He has quoted a figure of £500 million for HB savings. The impact analysis that I think most of us were working off gave a figure of £700 million. If that figure is correct—it may have been overtaken by further refinement from the DWP—it would mean that, for less than half the cost of the savings, he would take some 80 per cent of those worst affected out of the equation. That seems to be very good value.
Lord Freud
My Lords, without us rambling through the papers, I think that the figure is £500 million, of which £300 million is a very substantial proportion.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel)
My Lords, a Division has been called in the House. The Committee stands adjourned for 10 minutes.
Lord Freud
My Lords, perhaps I may conclude on the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. The confusion is between the £0.5 billion that we start to save annually in 2013-14 and the £770 million figure that she quoted from the impact assessment. It represents two years of savings on a GB basis, which is appropriately discounted and deflated.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, it is nice of the Minister to give us those figures, but is his £300 million the amount set off against the £500 million, or is it set off against the £770 million?
Lord Freud
No, it is £300 million set against £500 million—so 60 per cent.
I have already talked about the behavioural responses. I move to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rix, about the number of bedrooms, the size of the rooms and box rooms. Again, we discussed that issue briefly in the previous set of amendments when the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, raised the window tax. It is the social landlord’s responsibility to specify the number of bedrooms in a property but, as I said, we are looking at this, including the size of the bedrooms, to explore whether it is an issue.
Amendment 35 of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, relates to support for mortgage interest payments and is connected with Schedule 4, concerning the payment of housing costs for pensioners. I understand only too well why noble Lords are seeking reassurance that assistance with eligible mortgage interest costs will continue to be provided for homeowners, including those with long-term disabilities. In fact, I met only yesterday representatives from Mencap to discuss these matters.
Approximately 430 claimants have purchased their properties through the shared ownership scheme known as HOLD—rather less than the 1,000 figure that has more generally been quoted. The Government want disabled people to continue to access suitably adapted homes, whether through a mortgage or housing benefit. The Homes and Communities Agency continues to support the provision of shared-ownership homes where this is a local priority, including shared-ownership homes under HOLD. The agency is holding ongoing discussions with lenders on the provision of mortgages for HOLD. Support for mortgage interest is intended to provide a reasonable level of help for homeowners but has never been intended to cover all of a person’s housing liabilities. As noble Lords can see from the draft regulations, help will continue for homeowners. So I see no need to set out in the Bill specific reference to mortgage interest payments. We propose to continue using the same standard mortgage interest rate for all claimants. As to Schedule 4, a housing credit element with broadly the same rules as housing benefit will be introduced into pension credit to ensure that low-income pensioners continue to receive help with their rent.
Regarding the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best, on providing incentives for pensioners to move, our approach to this issue will, over the long term, help to ensure that people are in suitably sized accommodation before they become pensioners. Our expectation is that the proportion of pensioners needing to downsize will in future be lower than it is now. As several noble Lords mentioned, the Localism Bill includes measures specifically aimed at helping pensioners to downsize and will help to increase mobility in the social rented sector for this group.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Could the Minister at some point, not necessarily today but in due course, set out the stats on the number of pensioners underoccupying and what his projection is of the time it will take for numbers to diminish?
Lord Freud
I would be happy to circulate the information to noble Lords.
On the social sector size criteria measure that we are introducing through Clause 68, we will use the time before its introduction in April 2013, as we are already doing, to explore fully the implications for claimants and landlords. We acknowledge that the impact will not be the same across all regions; we will work with stakeholders to look at those variations as we move towards implementation.
Let me repeat: I value these debates and hope that they continue on a constructive level as we move forward.
Baroness Wilkins
Could I just return to the issue of disabled people? I am delighted to hear that he is willing to think again about fostering, but I am very disappointed by his reaction in relation to disabled people and feel that he has failed to recognise their situation. He says that the amendments have been drawn too widely. Could I press him on what he would feel was acceptable?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I hope that I am indicating that we are looking very hard at what proposition we can bring forward later on in this process of considering this Bill to deal with that particular set of problems that noble Lords have raised. So I will have something to say later on in the process.
The Earl of Listowel
I am very grateful to the Minister for reassuring the Committee that he will think carefully about the treatment of foster carers. That is welcome. However, I have a strong concern about a number of issues in this area. I have two questions. I wonder if he could drop me a letter on this, if he cannot reply now. Those registered foster carers who may have one, two or possibly even three rooms vacant, who do not have foster children with them at the moment but are waiting for them, and because of that are not getting an allowance and are on benefit, are hit by that—it is a bad situation for them. So reassurance on their position would be good. I am grateful to him for his response with regard to those parents who have their children removed from them. I think he was saying that for a short period it would be acceptable to give those families where the child has been removed an exemption in certain circumstances. I feel very worried about those families, which are very dysfunctional by definition. To have one’s children taken away is a very serious situation, and to lose a child and then to have an extra room or two rooms and to be further hit—that does worry me. Reassurance on that point, what happens to them, would be welcome.
Lord Freud
I will repeat the two points. The first point is exactly the issue that we want to deal with and the one that the foster community is worried about—the voids area. That is something that we are aiming to address. My response to the second point was, and remains, that this is where we would expect discretionary housing payments to come into play. It is exactly the complex set of judgments that need to be made, and local authorities are best placed to make them.
Baroness Hollins
I apologise for this, but I think that the Minister said that the same mortgage rates would be applicable as for everybody else. From my understanding, in the example that I gave of Theo, the mortgage rates had changed from the previous preferential rates, leading to a gap in the costs of his housing that he cannot meet.
Lord Freud
I think that this is the same case where I spent time with the family, so I am reasonably familiar with it. There was never any preferential treatment within HOLD; it used the standard rates. What has happened is to some extent a bit of a breakdown in the financing market in this area, among other breakdowns, after the worst financial crisis that any of us has ever seen.
So we are looking at a dysfunctional mortgage market with huge deposits required. There was never any special provision here: they were using the standard provision. We pulled it down from a little over 6 per cent to, as the noble Lord correctly said, 3.63 per cent and, if we had used the formula pre-crisis, we would have gone down to a rate of 2.08 per cent, which would have left people in an even worse position. To some extent, by moving the way that we do this, we have been more generous than the previous formula, but we have not changed the goalposts in any way. The issue is whether the market revives naturally—I know that it is shut at the moment—or whether, frankly, we need to think again about what is the appropriate level of support and how it should be delivered.
Baroness Sherlock
May I press the Minister on one more point? I understood that his argument in response to the amendments up to Amendment 83 was that he could not accept such a broad exclusion because it would encompass people who would otherwise have paid the shortfall. That is probably the dead weight argument. I was in the Treasury. Dead weight is much loved as an argument by the Treasury and despised by pretty much everyone outside it. You can see that it makes perfect sense, if you are in the Treasury, to think, “You are already paying this, why on earth would I want to do it?”. If you are on the other end of the telescope, it looks rather different.
Does the Minister accept that the fact that a claimant may stay put and pay the difference does not necessarily mean that they can afford to pay it? That point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. Someone who can see no alternative suitable accommodation may stay put, pay the difference—or at least accept that they must pay the difference and get into debt, with all the consequences that has for the family. Does the Minister accept that point and, if so, how will he address it?
Lord Freud
My Lords, it was interesting that there was a range of responses to our survey. Different people will do different things depending on the circumstances. That is the point. That is the problem with all the broadly defined exemptions that we have discussed today, which we have explored in great detail in the department: none of them works to define eloquently and adequately the people whom we want to protect. We need other ways to do that. I know that people like to attack the Treasury on every conceivable opportunity—
Baroness Sherlock
The Treasury employed me for many years; I would do no such thing.
Lord Freud
It did not sound like that.
Some people will choose to pay £11 and £12 extra for an extra bedroom perfectly rationally and other people will make other responses; a wide range of response is likely. A lot of people would regard it as a bargain to spend that amount on an extra bedroom. As noble Lords will be aware, spending to get that extra accommodation in the outside world—whether through a mortgage or through renting—would cost a lot more.
Baroness Sherlock
Forgive me, in the interests of levity, I was not being clear enough. The people I am concerned about are not those who could afford it but declined to stay, or those who are staying put and are happy to pay the money. The Minister mentioned statistics earlier about the number of people who would move, downsize or stay put and pay the difference. I am concerned about the rump who remain, which I think is sizeable—perhaps he will remind us of the percentage. I tease him about dead weight only because that argument works only if the Government are willing to accept that the price is borne by those who are not capable of making the difference. I am trying to tease out exactly how big is that price, who is paying it and what price the Minister would regard as acceptable for people who are forced into debt in order to make it work for everyone else.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I said earlier that we are working on the detailed implementation of this. It would be premature to make judgments on that. We need to develop strategies to ensure that those problems do not arise.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
In that case, can I ask the Minister to amplify his stats for us when he writes to us next? He has talked several times, over the few Committee days we have had, about a £60 million discretionary housing fund, and how it is going up threefold, and so on. I am not keeping a tight list, but I think we have now overspent that by approximately five times. Could he tell us—given that there are some 400 local authorities—even on a per capita basis, how it works out? On average an authority can only help 700 families, out of—for instance, in the Norwich situation—some 20,000-odd families that are in rented accommodation.
I believe that those people affected, who will not readily afford it, are probably more like 7,000 rather than 700. Could the Minister give us the assumptions, or the stats, behind that £60 million figure as to what this would mean in a typical local authority, per 1,000 rented homes, for a period of, say, six months, or what percentage of those families you could typically expect to support? So that, per 1,000, that £60 million would extend to 20 families for six months, or 50 families for six months. Then we can get some idea of how that money connects to all the various issues for which this will, apparently, be the solution.
Lord Freud
Yes. I always prefer to answer rather than write, but I think I will on this occasion go to paper. It may be that the noble Baroness prefers paper.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I was grateful, as I said before, that the Minister is giving this issue of arrears careful consideration. I think it might be helpful to the Committee if he could provide some reassurance that by Report we will have considerably more detail on what the plight will be of those who face arrears under the new arrangement. Can he give any assurance on that point?
Lord Freud
By the time we get to this again, I will come back with that answer.
Lord Wigley
My Lords, I speak at the request of my noble friend Lord Rix, who has had to leave the Committee, because we have now been going for well over four hours. I think he anticipated that we would have finished before now, and he has had to go to a 7.30 pm engagement outside the House. He has asked me, as I have my name on the amendment that led this bank of amendments, if I could respond briefly.
In doing so, I will touch on three points. In reverse order, taking up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, a moment ago, with regard to the cost implication of the discretionary payments that are to be made by local government, has an assurance been given by the devolved Administrations that they have the resources to be able to do this? We are dealing with a non-devolved subject but are looking to devolved authorities, from a devolved budget, to fund the counterbalancing money that is required. If that answer is not available now, perhaps there will be an opportunity at some later stage to deal with that. It is clearly a matter that will be of concern, not only to the devolved Administrations, but to local authorities in Wales and Scotland.
Lord Freud
I can answer the noble Lord pretty rapidly on that. This is not a devolved area, so the discretionary housing payments are not devolved.
Lord Wigley
Of course—that is the whole point. The housing benefit is not a devolved area, but local government money is, unless there is going to be payment made from Westminster sources—Whitehall sources—to the local authorities in Wales. From the indication I get, payments will be made directly to local authorities, or via the Assembly to local authorities. In which case, fair enough, if enough money is going to be there; but if it has to come from their general pools, then that is from a devolved budget and will cause them problems.
Lord Freud
All I can confirm is that, just as anywhere else in the country, in those Administrations, the money will go by formula to those local authorities, in the same way that it currently does.
Lord Wigley
I accept entirely, of course, that housing benefit is run by the local authorities as a non-devolved portfolio, coming under Whitehall. However, the general funds that they have, unless there is additional funding coming from Whitehall to those local authorities and bypassing the Assembly, it would otherwise come out of the Assembly budget. All I was asking was whether that had been agreed with either the Assembly, or in the case of Wales, the Welsh Local Government Association? The Minister might be able to confirm that.
Lord Freud
What I can confirm is that the DHPs go directly to the local authorities, not through the local Assemblies.
Lord Wigley
Therefore, will any additional resources for discretionary payments that will be made, in line with the numerous references to discretionary payments that we have heard over the past few days, go directly and be over and above the payments that will otherwise be made.
Lord Wigley
We can put a marker down on that clear answer, for which I am very grateful.
Secondly, on one of the banks of amendments that dealt with disability and tried to get exclusions for people in certain categories of disability, the Minister, if I recall rightly, said that it would cost far too much, possibly £180 million. If that is the cost of excluding disabled families from the provisions of the Bill, it is, equally, the additional cost being faced by disabled families as a consequence of the Bill. That is an enormous cost. If it is a large sum for the Treasury budget, how much larger a sum must it be for disabled people trying to find it from their own domestic budgets? That is something that I suspect we shall need to come back to for clarification on Report. I hope that will be possible. I do not expect the Minister to respond at this point.
My third point is in regard to Amendment 35 in my name and that of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Rix, which concerns home ownership among people with long-term disabilities. The Minister mentioned that only 400 people were affected by this. I am sure he is not decrying the importance of the scheme for the 400 people that it has helped; every single one is important in its own right.
Lord Freud
My Lords, may I make that absolutely clear? There are 430 people currently on the HOLD scheme. The bulk of them have an arrangement with a mortgage provider, Kent Reliance, which means that they can continue to pay the required rate of 3.63 per cent. Therefore, only a handful of people on the HOLD scheme are affected by any change.
Lord Wigley
Yes indeed, those 430 may well be safeguarded but there is the question of whether other people, who might in the past have come on to that scheme, will not be able to do so in the future. More importantly, the Minister referred to having had a meeting yesterday with people from Mencap to discuss this. From having a brief word with the noble Lord, Lord Rix, before he left, I understand that the people at Mencap are hoping that the Minister will at some stage, if not today, come back with some provision that will cover the requirements of this important group of people who are being helped by the scheme. I do not know whether they misunderstood that or whether the Minister will look at it again before Report to see what can be done. However, I very much hope that he will take on board the serious points that have been made by the noble Baroness and others, including the noble Lord, Lord Rix, about this important group.
We have gone well beyond our time. I put it to noble Lords that we ought to consider whether this is the most sensible way of undertaking our responsibilities, when the Committee runs for more than four hours without a break, we have disabled colleagues here and there are disabled people who want to follow our proceedings. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, this may be a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn until 2 pm on Thursday, 20 October.
House of Lords
Royal Assent
Visas: Domestic Workers
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Hamwee
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in bringing forward proposals to end the Domestic Workers visa, what consideration they have given to the protection of the rights of domestic workers.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)
My Lords, the rights of overseas domestic workers in private households are discussed in the Government’s consultation document, Employment related settlement: Tier 5 and overseas domestic workers. The consultation sets out a number of proposals for reform, which include making protections more appropriate should the route be retained. We are currently considering the responses that have been received.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the Minister will understand that the portability of the current visa, which means a worker can change employer as long as he or she remains in domestic work, is fundamental to safeguarding the rights of that employee and to safeguard against bonded labour. He will appreciate that I refer to rights such as to be paid at least the national minimum wage, not to be forced to work excessive hours and so on. There are some horrific stories. On Anti-Slavery Day—and every day should be regarded as Anti-Slavery Day—will the Government take into account the need to be very mindful of the rights of all who work in our country?
Lord Henley
My Lords, my noble friend is right to raise this issue on Anti-Slavery Day, but she is also right to say that we should take account of these matters on every day of the week and obviously we will. Settlement has almost become automatic for those who wish to stay in the United Kingdom under these arrangements, and the consultation is about being more selective about those who wish to stay permanently while also, as my noble friend puts it, making sure their rights are safeguarded.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
May I ask the Minister whether the Government would reconsider the signing of the ILO convention on domestic workers?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I am not sure whether that is part of the consultation, but the consultation has been completed and we are considering the responses to it. I can give an assurance to the noble and learned Baroness that I will look at that, too, as part of that process.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, does the Minister agree with the conclusions of the Home Affairs Committee of the other place two years ago that,
“domestic workers are peculiarly vulnerable to abuse”,
and that,
“To retain the existing Migrant Domestic Workers visa and the protection it offers to workers is the single most important issue … in preventing the forced labour and trafficking of such workers”?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord has to say about domestic workers being particularly open to abuse. That is why we want to get the right balance. However, I think the noble Lord would also agree that we need an immigration system that is fairer and more honest and commands public confidence. We want to get the right balance; that is what is behind the consultation and that is what we will be looking at in the responses.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, would the Minister say a little more about the complaints procedure whereby, when many of these workers who work under slave labour conditions—and that is the word that has to be used when you look at some of the horrendous things that go on—try to make a complaint, they can lose their status and so on. Could the Minister say a little more about how people can be safeguarded if they want to make a complaint?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I cannot say that at this stage because that is the point behind the consultation. We want to consider all the responses to that consultation. But what I tried to make clear earlier, and what I will repeat to the noble Lord, is that we want to make sure that we get the right balance by providing the appropriate safeguards while making sure that we have the right safeguards against unnecessary immigration.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, in the letter from the Minister for Immigration, following a meeting we had with him on 6 September, he referred in some detail to the protection afforded to domestic workers by the national referral mechanism, which applies only to those who are trafficked and not to those who are admitted under the domestic resident worker visas. If these arrangements are terminated, as we discussed in Committee, would that not encourage rich employers to bring in their servants as visitors, as many of them already do? Would my noble friend confirm that the national referral mechanism would not be available to them or to servants in diplomatic households, who still normally come from the diplomat’s country of origin?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I believe that my noble kinsman has had a meeting with my predecessor, my noble friend Lady Browning, on this matter, and I believe that there have also been a number of meetings with my colleague the Minister for Immigration, Mr Damian Green. These matters have been discussed, but I repeat what I said earlier. This is a matter for consultation; we will want to consider these matters and come forward with the appropriate solution, which in the end will be a balance.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, it is clear from the exchange of views today that what we are talking about here is tackling modern slavery. That is precisely why this question was raised today. The Minister says that the Government are looking at the granting of domestic worker visas in order to safeguard against unnecessary immigration. That is a very good thing. However, I understand that in 2009 only 795 migrant domestic workers were granted settlement. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me how many of those originally entered the UK on the “Domestic Worker (Visitor)”, the “Domestic Worker (Other)”, and the “Domestic Worker (Diplomat)” visa.
Lord Henley
My Lords, on the more detailed points that the noble Baroness raised at the end, I will obviously have to write to her, but I think she is wrong to assume that all incoming domestic workers are being treated as slaves. They do have protections: they have the protection of the National Minimum Wage Act and all other appropriate protection. But we recognise that there is abuse here. What I am trying to talk about is getting the right sort of balance so that we can have a fair and proper immigration system—something that I have to say the party opposite failed to address in all their years in power—and have the appropriate protection for those workers who are being abused.
Biodiesel
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Palmer
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to support the use in the United Kingdom of sustainable biodiesel produced from waste products, such as used cooking oil, beyond April 2012.
Lord Palmer
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in so doing, declare that I am the unpaid president of the transport division of the Renewable Energy Association.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, in a recent consultation on the renewable energy directive, we proposed amendments to the renewable transport fuels obligation. These proposals included providing twice the financial support to waste-derived biofuels as will be provided to conventional biofuels through the award of two renewable transport certificates per litre of waste-derived fuel. Crop-derived biofuels will continue to receive one certificate per litre and biofuels that do not meet the required sustainability standards will receive no support.
Lord Palmer
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for that lengthy reply. This is a very complex issue. I know for a fact that if the 20p per litre rebate is abolished, an enormous number of current users will revert to fossil fuels. Is this what the Government really want?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, Treasury Ministers confirmed at the 2011 Budget that the duty differential for biodiesel produced from used cooking oil will end on 31 March 2012, as was always intended. It is appropriate that support for waste-derived biofuels in transport will be provided through double rewards as part of the renewable transport fuels obligation. That, of course, has a sharper sustainability focus. By providing two renewable transport certificates per litre of waste-derived fuel, the UK is moving away from the guaranteed return of 20p provided by the duty differential for biodiesel produced from used cooking oil and moving towards an environment where the competitive market decides the price that will be awarded for each renewable transport fuel certificate. But each RTFC will still be worth around 20p.
Lord Bradshaw
Will the noble Earl turn his mind to the fact that the renewable transport fuel certificates, to which he has referred, are tradable assets? They have been often been of no value at all. Anyone investing money in this young industry of processing used cooking oil and other waste products face the possibility that they are being asked to invest money with no guarantee of a return whatever.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. RTFCs were traded at a nil value but that was because of an error in the drafting of the original RTFO by the previous Government. That problem has been rectified and will not recur.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, the Minister is reading his brief excellently today to the great advantage of the House. I appreciate the fact that this Question probably should be directed rather more at Her Majesty’s Treasury than the Department for Transport. But the noble Earl failed to answer the crucial point made by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. What is the Government’s response to the clear signal that many companies which are benefiting from this position at present and are pursuing the policies, which we would all endorse with regard to this sustainable fuel, are indicating that they will drop out from this position and return to fossil fuels unless the Government take a different view?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I answer for Her Majesty's Government and not for any particular department. This policy is following the perfectly sensible trajectory set by the previous Government.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister say whether tallow is currently processed in such a way as to qualify as a FAME biofuel? Is it in use as a transport fuel or can it be seen as such?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, there is a difficulty with tallow because it can have unintended consequences. Tallow is also used to make soap. If we reduce the supply of tallow for making soap, palm oil will be substituted. That can have sustainability issues because the increased use of palm oil will result in deforestation.
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
In the northern and very rural part of my diocese of Blackburn, the very high cost of diesel and fuel is inhibiting the stimulus to economic recovery. Will the noble Earl tell us what plans Her Majesty's Government have for helping such communities, especially in the light of the modest reduction in global oil prices?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I fully appreciate the impact of very high fuel prices—I buy a considerable amount of fuel myself—but it is a little wide of this particular issue.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
My Lords, will the Minister explain to the House, for my benefit, as well as everybody else’s, what exactly his answer to my noble friend was, because I do not understand it?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, perhaps I will run over it again. The answer is that there is plenty of incentive from the issue of the renewable transport fuel certificate to suppliers to continue to supply biodiesel into the market. It is just a different way of achieving the same policy and complying with the renewable energy directive.
Lord Soley
There is a deeply worrying lack of clarity about the Government’s policy and, as the noble Earl claims to be answering for the Government now, rather than just the Department for Transport, it would help to have a bit more clarity. I would like to hear the Government’s view on the use of algae as a sustainable fuel. Research is very advanced in other countries and this country would be well placed to pursue it, yet he has not even mentioned it. Could we have a more detailed answer, even if it has to go in the Library at a later date?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord mentioned algae. I am afraid I was not aware of that possibility. However, suppliers could use that technology if they wanted to. The incentive scheme is not specific about what feedstock is being used. They can use whatever they want. If they can make algae work in a competitive environment, that is fine.
Legal Aid
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Benjamin
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will consider allowing more regular payments to legal aid practitioners in care and domestic violence proceedings involving vulnerable families where children’s well-being may be adversely affected.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Legal Services Commission is responsible for the administration of the Legal Aid Fund and has already taken steps to regulate and accelerate payments to legal aid providers. Standard monthly payments are made in advance for advice work completed under contract and, in addition, weekly payments are made on bills submitted for civil representation work. Providers may make interim claims for payments on account while a case is still open.
Baroness Benjamin
I thank my noble friend for that encouraging Answer. As you may well know, these specialist solicitors are not only the lowest paid solicitors in the country but also have to pay tax on unpaid work and are paid by the Government only twice-yearly in arrears. As a result, their businesses are under enormous financial pressure. Some are even going out of business because banks are calling in their loans. This is likely to result in the loss of assistance to the neediest families in our community, especially children. How soon will quarterly payments be implemented?
Lord McNally
My Lords, I can not give a precise answer to that, but the LSC has taken a number of steps to expedite payments to contracted providers and is committed to investigating any claim where a bill is not paid within the correct timescale. While there have recently been some delays in civil bill processing, the LSC maintains that the vast majority of payments are being made within their published target times. I will, however, look at the matter of quarterly payments.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
Is my noble friend aware that the Law Society has had to write to banks, asking them to treat legal aid practitioners with special care, because of a backlog in payments by the Legal Services Commission, and is his response—that they are all paid on time—not a little disingenuous? Is there not a very considerable backlog at the moment?
Lord McNally
My Lords, I did not say that they were all being paid on time, but I did say that the Legal Services Commission is addressing the problem that has arisen. A backlog had built up and the commission faced criticism, but it has addressed the problem and is moving to cut the backlog. So I am not being disingenuous in any way. I am acknowledging that there has been a problem, which the commission is addressing. It maintains that the vast majority of payments are being made within their published target times.
Lord Bach
My Lords, the Question tabled by the noble Baroness is about legal aid practitioners in the field of domestic violence. Based on the incredibly restrictive definition of domestic violence set out in the legal aid Bill currently going through another place, how do the Government propose to protect women who are at risk of domestic violence for the first time?
Lord McNally
My Lords, we will eventually discuss the various scopes in the legal aid Bill. The Government are satisfied with the scopes they have set in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill and believe that they cover the most vulnerable in family and domestic law. But I freely admit that we are going to have some interesting debates on the matter. I hope that that helps the noble Lord. The debate has yet to come to this House.
Lord Elton
My Lords, the noble Lord has referred on a number of occasions to the “target time”. Can he give us the definition of that?
Lord McNally
The target time is, I believe, two weeks for the settlement of accounts.
Egypt
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Berridge
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the increasing problems for the Coptic community in Egypt.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, my right honourable friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary issued a statement on 10 October expressing his profound concern over the violence in Cairo on 9 October. He urged all Egyptians to,
“refrain from violence and support the Egyptian Prime Minister’s call for calm”,
and “all sides” to,
“engage in dialogue. The freedom of religious belief … needs to be protected … The ability to worship in peace is a vital component of any … democratic society”.
Baroness Berridge
I thank my noble friend for his thoughtful and comprehensive reply. I hope he will agree that Egypt is to be commended on its successful application of the rule of law to former President Mubarak, who is currently being prosecuted for ordering the killing of protesters in the January revolution. While Her Majesty’s Government would not wish to interfere in Egypt’s internal affairs, is the Minister satisfied that a military investigation into military actions on 9 October will also result in the successful application of the rule of law to those who ordered the killing of peaceful Coptic protesters?
Lord Howell of Guildford
There is no room for satisfaction either in our own minds or, as I understand it, in the minds of the Egyptian Government. A government commission has been appointed to examine the situation, but on 12 October my right honourable friend had a detailed conversation with Mr Amr, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, during which he urged him most strongly to establish the facts and, in the words of the Egyptians, to see what went wrong. There are several different versions of what occurred, but the clear result is that many people died. This kind of violence is completely unacceptable. As my noble friend will know, we have a very close dialogue with Egypt at the moment. We are involved in a helpful and supportive way—not interfering but encouraging and supporting the de-escalation of the situation, the restoration of law and order, the call for civilians not to be tried in military courts and the removal of the state of emergency. The dialogue and the pressure are there, and I believe that the Egyptian Government realise that this kind of appalling event will greatly damage their future and must on all accounts be prevented and avoided.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, is the Minister aware of reports that judges in some Egyptian courts are refusing to accept evidence from Copts? Does he know if there is any truth in such reports? If he is not aware of them, would he be kind enough to make inquiries and write to me?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Assessing the truth of these reports is difficult, but one proposition that we have offered in support of the situation in Egypt is that civilians should not be tried in military courts. That is not quite the point that the noble Baroness made, but it is related. As for the question about their judgments, I will make further inquiries and see if I can illuminate my answer.
The Archbishop of Canterbury
Would the Minister agree that part of the underlying problem in the situation that we have seen unfolding recently is a prolonged failure on the part of the security forces to guarantee the safety of Christian personnel and property, not only in the Aswan province in recent months but over a longer period? It seems clear to many of us that this is bringing Muslims and Christians in Egypt together in great distress and anxiety about the dismantling of a long history of fruitful co-operation and coexistence in the country. As we have been reminded, a commission of inquiry has been promised by the Egyptian Administration. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will continue to press contacts within that Government, not only on the objectivity and proper distance of that inquiry from the military establishment, but also for consideration in such an inquiry of the record of the security forces over this period.
Lord Howell of Guildford
We are all grateful to the most reverend Primate for his insights. He is absolutely right about the long history of these pressures and difficulties, as well as the recent evidence of a rising tone of extremism in the clashes that have occurred. I can only reassure him that the dialogue is continuous and the pressure is on in my right honourable friend’s discussions with the Egyptian authorities. The understanding is established that this must be a clear and full inquiry into what really happened; that the control and policy of the security forces must be even-handed; and that there must be work towards a unified law. That means equal rights for all faiths and religions in the matters of building mosques and churches, and in the security forces protecting them from violence. The most reverend Primate is absolutely right: these are the aims that we will continue to pursue with great vigour.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, will the Minister return to the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, put to him earlier about these events at Maspero, where this terrible massacre occurred? Specifically, would he answer her point about the nature of the inquiry to be conducted? Would he agree that, contrary to some of the reports that suggested that this was a clash between equals, these civilians were gunned down, were unarmed, and were run over by vehicles all of which were owned by the Egyptian army? How can it be right that the army should now carry out the inquiry?
Lord Howell of Guildford
This is a perfectly serious and valid query and I recognise the interest of the noble Lord. We will pursue the matter of the nature of the inquiry. There is a swirl of different versions of what occurred. The propositions of some were that the army was not officially authorised to act, that it was supplied with blank bullets and that the shooting took place when other parties intervened. Others say exactly as the noble Lord has said. One has to get to the bottom of what occurred, and we will press very hard for the Egyptian authorities to do that. Certainly, the present situation has too many unreliable versions to be regarded as satisfactory. More truth must come out.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, would my noble friend accept that there is no advantage to be gained by the military and the Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood, getting together against Egypt’s Christian communities? Would he reflect on news reports that the military is now seeking to delay the presidential election until after a constituent assembly has been formed, perhaps pushing that back as far as late 2013? The best method of preserving Egypt’s diversity under the rule of law is for an early transition to democratic rule.
Lord Howell of Guildford
The Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mr Amr, told my right honourable friend that the lower house elections would go ahead in November and the presidential elections would be next year, possibly next summer. I agree totally with my noble friend that it is in nobody’s interests for these elections to be further delayed. We have made it absolutely clear to the Egyptian Ministers and authorities that the sooner we get forward with the sequence of the return to full democracy the better, and early presidential elections are very much part of that.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, we have a virtually insoluble dilemma about Britain in any sense directly addressing the question of rights on behalf of the Coptic Christians. The revolution is fairly recent, but let us look ahead to the reconstruction of Egypt, whether it is in relation to its infrastructure, investment, social policy, tourism or anything else. Is it not reasonable to visualise, as we have done with a number of countries, that the dialogue with Egypt—which would have to be carried out under the European Union because it cannot be accused of imperialism in the same sense as Britain can, but that is arguable—would have to include a wide range of social and religious freedoms and human rights questions? Would it be more useful for the British Government to help stimulate discussion fairly soon about the forum for dialogue so that the whole of Egyptian public opinion can be brought on board as part of that dialogue?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I think I see what the noble Lord is getting at. Certainly our support and help—I repeat, not interference with the affairs of the Egyptian nation—is geared to that kind of development. We are backing non-governmental organisations that are promoting think tanks and discussion groups to try to widen the political diversity, to support the role of women in the political process and to develop a number of other activities to support the evolution of sensible, balanced party politics. This is what we are seeking to do in addition to substantial aid through the Arab Partnership in various other social areas. The general thrust is, I think, in line with what the noble Lord was saying.
Lord Elton
My Lords, the persecution of Coptic Christians did not begin with the revolution. Can the noble Lord say that he will press for inquiries into unlawful killings that took place before the revolution—quite possibly at the same hands as those that took place after—to be pursued?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Lord is quite right. Echoing what was said a moment ago, I say that this goes back into history and is, in a sense, not a new problem, although it assumed a horrific newness or novelty in the rise of extremist attacks and the involvement in an extreme way of the Salafists and other movements, in this case against the Christian and Coptic communities. We believe strongly that freedom of belief and worship by all faiths should be protected in every possible way. The need for inquiry into both past misdemeanours and past violence in order to understand the roots of the present violence is indeed extremely important.
Freedom of Information (Designation as Public Authorities) Order 2011
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord McNally
That the draft order laid before the House on 5 September be approved.
Relevant document: 28th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 17 October.
Live Music Bill [HL]
Education Bill
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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17:48 - Division on Amendment 7 - Ayes: 171 / Noes: 244 - Amendment 7 disagreed.
19:08 - Division on Amendment 17 - Ayes: 138 / Noes: 170 - Amendment 17 disagreed.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I invite noble Lords to leave the Chamber quietly. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is ready, willing and able to lead off on his Amendment 1.
Amendment 1
Lord Northbourne
“Foundation Stage
During a child’s first five years, both the father and the mother have a responsibility to do their best to provide or procure for their child the early education, including the personal, social and emotional development that child will need when they enter primary school at 5 years old.”
Lord Northbourne
My Lords, I apologise to the House as I did not hear the amendment being called. In Committee, I received strong support from all sides for my amendments on the importance of early years parenting. We all agreed that too many of the nation’s children today fail to get in their early years a foothold on the bottom rung of the education ladder. In her report published earlier this year, Dame Clare Tickell says:
“Parents and carers are the people who have the most important influence on children’s early development”.
She goes on to say that “clear and unambiguous evidence” shows that 44 per cent of children,
“are still not considered to have reached a good level of development by the end of the year in which they turn 5”.
The issue of how we improve school readiness is clearly important.
In his response to my amendments in Committee, the Minister suggested that my concerns were dealt with by Section 1 of the Childcare Act 2006. Having read it very closely, I find that the Childcare Act 2006 indeed sets out general duties on local authorities in relation to the well-being of children but it addresses the issue in terms of institutional childcare and nursery education. It makes no mention of the need to encourage, help and support parents who struggle to support their child with the start in life that it needs. The Act makes no mention of early years education in the home.
Looking at it in detail, Section 1 of the Act provides for free-of-charge provision of early childhood services. Section 2 defines the meaning of early childhood services and mentions parents only in that context. The rest of the Act makes it clear that the services referred to are institutional childcare services. They do not cover the role of parents and family members in the home. In my opinion—I say this with regret to the Minister—the Childcare Act 2006 is not a good basis for addressing the issue of the needs of parents, and indeed grandparents and family members, in their role as carers and educators of a young child.
The Government’s policy seems to be to deploy all available resources to the provision of out-of-family childcare and early education rather than supporting adequately parents in their efforts to educate in the home. As the noble Lord, Lord Peston, wisely said in his excellent intervention in Committee, the Government cannot take on the role of a parent.
Of course, institutional childcare has an important part to play but so do attachment, love, care, encouragement and education in the family. In the first two years of life, most children spend almost all their waking hours with a parent or surrogate parent. Even when they start to spend 15 hours a week in nursery school, they will probably spend the vast majority of their waking hours within their family. It is also important to remember that some families, often the most vulnerable, do not have any contact at all with institutional childcare services—often because they fear that if they did, social services might take their child away. In my view, there is the strongest possible case for working with and through parents, and through family structures, to help potentially disadvantaged children to develop emotionally and socially so that they are school-ready when they reach compulsory school age. The Childcare Act 2006 does not address these problems.
I turn now to Sarah Teather’s position paper Supporting Families in the Foundation Years, which unfortunately became available only after we dealt with these issues in Committee. Sarah Teather’s report is excellent and most welcome in many respects but it, too, fails to place sufficient emphasis on developing more and better in-family education in the early years. It does not give it anything like the same level of importance as it does to institutional care outside the family—I am sorry, my computer made a mistake and printed something in the wrong place.
The Government are making a mistake in this. I cannot see much hope in changing the policy by putting this matter to the vote during the Report stage, but I should be very grateful if the Minister would agree to meet me to discuss whether there is any possible way in which we could put more emphasis on in-family education as well as out-of-family education.
The three amendments which I have set down today move in the same direction as my earlier amendments but have much more modest objectives. Amendment 1 is about the very strong case for trying to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and to do that by making all parents, especially men, more aware of the obligations that they have to any child who they bring into the world. This is a matter not of outdated Victorian values but about what we believe is fair to the child. Surely every child should, as far as possible, have a chance to get their foot on the bottom rung of the education ladder before they go to primary school. Well informed and well motivated parents are the best and, incidentally, probably the cheapest way to achieve that objective. I believe that a reduction in unwanted pregnancies will not be achieved by making laws or by providing more institutional childcare. It can happen only as a result of a change of heart in our society, which would require a major campaign such as the one that so successfully addressed passive smoking. A clear statement such as this amendment, if accepted, would produce a solid basis for such a campaign.
I have set down the second and third amendments in my group because I believe that there is a strong case for making someone explicitly responsible for ensuring that the services to parents which the Bill establishes are actually being delivered by the wide range of different bodies that will be involved. It seems to me that the pattern of joint working that the Government propose for the early years services will lead to extravagance, duplication and inefficiency—especially when it comes to shared budgets. What business would run successfully without someone in charge? I have selected my amendments on the basis that so much of the delivery of this programme will fall on local authorities and they should have to answer for the effectiveness of delivery in their areas. At national level the Department for Education should have overall responsibility to Parliament in order to ensure that the outcomes of the programmes are being delivered because I believe that the early years programme is a key element in the success of the Government’s policy to improve educational outcomes and to reduce disadvantage.
I have set down these amendments because leadership is a subject that should not pass without some discussion in this debate. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I very much commend the objectives of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I feel sure that my noble friend the Minister would also do so although I strongly suspect he would not accept that they should be put in the Bill. They express the Government’s intention in relation to helping and supporting parents. I am sure we all understand how important well informed, confident parents are to the upbringing of our children.
I agree with the noble Lord that we need a change of heart in this country. We need to accept that parenting can be learnt. I was in New Zealand during the summer and talked to the people who instituted its highly successful SKIP programme of parenting assistance, support and information. It is based on the premise that you can learn to be a better parent if you are well informed about how children develop, how their brains develop, what works and what does not, and what is good for the child and what is not. We can do that in two ways in this country. One is to start with PSHE in schools and work with young people to help them understand the seriousness of what they take on, as the noble Lord said, when they become parents. Later we can provide more assistance to parents.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for his somewhat qualified warm words about my honourable friend Sarah Teather in another place. I would point out that she announced during the conference season this year that the Government will be providing more funding for parents who wish voluntarily to attend parenting classes. That is very much a step in the right direction.
Lord Eden of Winton
My Lords, I very much agree with what my noble friend Lady Walmsley has just said. I hesitate to disagree with the emphasis that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, brought to bear in moving his amendment only because I, like I am sure every noble Lord in this House, recognise the great contribution he has made over many years to the welfare of children and to the cause of good parenting. I certainly do not wish to dissociate myself from the objective he has set.
However, where I differ from him is in suggesting that bringing matters in the form of statute and putting them in the Bill is the right way to proceed. I agree with my noble friend Lady Walmsley that good parenting can be taught and that the practice is urgently in need of wider observation. I cannot accept that by putting these words into the Bill we will in some way be striking a blow at unwanted pregnancies. There are other ways of dealing with that. Several thoughts are brought to mind in this particular amendment. They include the damaging impact of the constant replication on television of various human relationship activities, which I do not think accord to the highest standards of individual conduct. If we were able—and as a former Minister for Posts and Telecommunications, I have to accept that we are not—to bring a greater degree of responsibility to bear on those who regulate our television programmes for the content of what is relayed into homes, where it is often watched by those with vulnerable minds, we would probably do a very great service to our children.
There is, in my view, a strong feeling that on the whole parents fail to understand the need to communicate with the child, even when the child is very young—although I recognise that that is an awful generalisation. I have made my next point in this place before. How often does one see parents pushing their children in pushchairs with the child facing away from the parent? If the child faced the other way, the parent would have direct contact with them, be able to talk to them, communicate with them and have eye contact with them. The benefit would be enormous not just to the parent, but, more importantly, to the child. These are not tricks of the trade but important underlying principles that need to be adopted by parents. They do not need to be written into the statute but they need to be understood by parents. We need to educate parents in this regard. That starts in the school where children receive all kinds of messages relevant to parenting.
Like all of us, it is the desire of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, to control the number of unwanted pregnancies, and therefore we might address the whole subject of sex education in schools in this group of amendments. That may well come up later. However, the content of that material, and the fact that it is projected to our children in schools from the age of five, is appalling. That matter needs to be tackled sensibly. The real key to good parenting and preparing a child for school is for the parent’s attention to be focused constantly on the child. Parents need to look after their children, not relegate them to sitting in front of the television, thereby avoiding their responsibility and the daily need to attend to their children’s requirements. We need to ensure that this happens by some means or another. I do not quite know how it can be done, but perhaps through talking about it a great deal, through educational provision, through our churches and through every other means of communication, we can ensure that parents really understand the responsibilities involved in having a child, and that that responsibility starts from the very earliest moment of the child’s life when they need to communicate directly with them and draw them into the heart of a loving family. That is the way to prepare children for education and school life.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendments of my noble friend Lord Northbourne, which he seeks to insert at a rather appropriate place in the Bill just under the heading “Early Years Provision”. The amendments describe measures that the noble Lord thinks would be effective. I was not clear how the measures would stop unwanted children being born. Nevertheless, focusing rather more attention on things such as flexible working for both parents might allow a greater sharing of responsibilities. I am glad to say that that is the pattern today, whereby the country is using the talents of both sexes in producing well-balanced children for the future and making certain that we make the most of our intellectual and productive abilities when competing in an increasingly global world.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her reference to early assessment, but I fear that early assessment is actually too late. My criticism of these amendments, though not of their purpose, is that they come too late. We are suffering from having failed as yet fully to adapt to the change that has come over the mores of our nation and many others, most of it during my lifetime. We have gone from a time when unwanted children were such a threat to respectability, earning, and so on, when having a child was regarded as a danger and a risk to those who were not married, to a time when sexual activity is regarded by many, almost wholly, as a recreation with no consequences. It seems to me that that must be addressed long before they become parents. The answer therefore lies in later amendments which deal with how children are taught in school.
I sympathise with the wish of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for a campaign to change our attitude to these matters. It is a biological as well as a political thing which will need a great deal of effort for a very long time by a lot of committed people. I hope that a number of them are in this Chamber.
Lord Storey
My Lords, I remember that when I was training to be a teacher one of my education lecturers, Mrs Mesurier, always used to say, “It is all down to good toilet training”. She was absolutely right. We should never underestimate the importance of parents to the life chances of children. That is why as a society we have done so much over the years to realise that the processes, schemes and opportunities for parents to be taught how to support and help their children at a very early stage are so important. I would also add that we must never underestimate the fact that many parents live in the most difficult of situations but bring up their children in a fantastic way.
There are all sorts of schemes in schools. We need only look at Sure Start, which we will be talking about later. It was a scheme to ensure that parents were closely involved in their children’s education, while at the same time they could be taught parenting skills and given support. I am all for action and feel that maybe we should take stock of the tremendous work that we have already done. I am not opposed to collecting more information; I just think that we should recognise the commitment and the work that we have done and evaluate more closely some of those schemes. I wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend that assessment of a child at an early stage is hugely important because we can then tailor educational needs and support to that child and family.
Lord Peston
My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for raising the subject today, as on many other days previously in my years here. He is indefatigable in his determination to remind us of the importance of young children and of the family in providing the relevant context.
I was going to say that we are all parents but looking at the grey hair around this House, I am obviously talking overwhelmingly to grandparents rather than parents. However, thinking back to when we were young parents, there would be no disagreement that our duty was overwhelmingly to our children. I am not opposed to parental education; quite the contrary—the more the better. I certainly did not have any but my wife and I had no doubt whatever that when we got married we would have children and that, of course, the children were our responsibility. We devoted our lives to them. They are now very grown up but occasionally the phone rings and one will ask, “Is mum there?”, meaning that he has a problem of the sort that he used to have when he was three years old.
There is nothing between us on what we are focusing on. The question is: what contribution we can make in the context of this Bill, which will become an Act of Parliament? I am not too happy at the negativism I have heard from one or two noble Lords on this.
I say to myself, “Why should we not put our aspirations in the Bill?”. Would it not be useful for your Lordships—people of experience and distinction—to send out the message that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, wishes us to send? I believe very strongly that the answer to that question is yes. I see nothing in our unwritten constitution that says aspirations must never be placed in an Act of Parliament. Indeed, I would go further: I feel those of us in this House would be failing in our duties if we did not insist that proper recognition was made of our aspirations. I am therefore in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that this should be in the Bill.
I also think that, in terms of making policy, there is a genuine problem sometimes in not having all the relevant information we might need. This is not the last Bill that will ever be presented to your Lordships’ House on education, nor the last to be presented that will deal with the subject of children. It would be jolly good if we were able to speak with a full factual basis behind us. That is why I would particularly hope that the Minister would look at Amendment 3—also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne—with the intention of giving us a database for future policy-making in due course.
I conclude as I began: it would be a very valuable thing for this House of older men and women to send out a message to the world that we really do think this is of central importance, and we aspire to do something about it.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I should like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Northbourne for his absolutely indefatigable championing of early years provision, which is the context of the amendment. I also agree with my noble friend Lady Howe about the importance of assessment, and echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Eden, about communication. While I am commending, I also commend the Minister for the way that he has communicated with us all throughout this Bill, by writing to us, informing us and keeping us in the picture. That is very much appreciated.
I have to say to the Minister that, in saying what I am going to say, I end up with a question, which is a question born out of disappointment, from over a number of years, in failing to achieve what I know many noble Lords in this House want. In coming to this particular description, I was interested in the report and summary of evidence released in July by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Education. I would like to quote certain passages from the all-party group’s reports, which I think are important, especially in connection with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.
First, the all-party group states that all respondents to the inquiry,
“were of the opinion that early intervention is essential and that recommendations or statutory guidance should be provided to health authorities to prompt earlier intervention”.
I say that because I will conclude with health. Of all the different interventions, I have always felt that one of the most important is that of speech and language therapists, who enable children to communicate with their teachers when they start school. Without that, the pupils cannot engage. When we are talking about education, we are also discussing why people cannot engage. This point has been made over and over again, without success.
As has been said many times,
“It is vital that assessments and interventions are tailored to the specific needs of pupils”.
The point about such interventions is that they should identify specific needs, including difficulties and disabilities such as problems with hearing, sight and so on. This interests me because I have tried to get this introduced before, after I carried out an experiment in young offender institutions with children aged 15 and upwards. That experiment proved that, had those children had that intervention earlier, they might not have arrived at the institution—by and large, their journey until then had been one of failure, not least failure in education. I saw this represented and repeated by children on intensive supervision orders in Leeds, which proved exactly the same thing. The report by Mr John Bercow, as he then was, into the whole question of learning difficulties and how they were not being tackled, highlighted the same problem.
However, when I put up the suggestion that there should be speech and language therapists in every young offender institution to establish what was preventing people making progress, the whole issue ended up with money. The Ministry of Justice was unable to fund speech and language therapists because they came from the Department of Health. Similarly, when I put up exactly the same proposal in earlier education Bills, the same answer has come: it is the Department of Health's responsibility to provide these people.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I will be very brief, in part because I have an amendment on a similar theme to this in the next grouping in the Welfare Reform Bill. I, too, thank my noble friend for tabling these amendments and for generating this tremendously important debate at the beginning of Report. It was deeply gratifying yesterday to hear the Minister of State, Sarah Teather, highlighting the fact that the most important thing in terms of outcomes for educating children is the home environment, which is more important than the jobs that parents do or any other factor. My noble friend has hit the nail on the head, and we must get this right.
It concerns me that we should encourage and enable parents to learn to read, write and count when they have not been able to do that at school. It is very important that we enable parents to get access to adult education so that they can make up for any deficits. It troubles me that creches at the adult education institutes are being cut. I understand the difficult circumstances, but if there is any money available to the Minister and his department in the form of targeted funding to improve outcomes for children, in recognition of the importance of the home environment that money should go to the creches in those adult education institutes.
The noble Lord, Lord Eden, raised some very important points. I am sure that it is a concern to see those children facing away from their parents in the idiotically designed modern prams. I understand his concern about compelling parents to attend parenting classes, but it is interesting to bear in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said when he was chairman of the Youth Justice Board at the time of the controversial introduction of parenting orders for parents who were not managing their children properly—the children were getting into the criminal justice system. His comment was that parenting classes were the cheapest intervention with these families and young men, that they were the most effective intervention and that, when parents went to the classes, they said, “Why didn’t we know about these before?”. They were really grateful for the help. This needs to be treated extremely carefully and perhaps used only rarely. I am not sure whether the classes continue, but perhaps there is a place for them.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, raised very important questions, as did the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about valuing the early years experience.
I will have to move on quickly. I thank the Minister in particular for his help in Committee on my concern about the turnover of staff in nurseries. I will not be present for the next grouping of amendments, so I want to thank him now. I realise that the best place for me to put my worries is in the new consultation on the inspection of nurseries. I now know the civil servant to speak to. I am very grateful to him for his help on this. I cannot speak on the next grouping, but I am very concerned about the high turnover of staff in nurseries and the fact that nursery staff are often the poorest paid and least well educated yet we are placing the most vulnerable children in their care. These children above all things need stability in their lives. They need stable people who stay around. In some settings, such as nurseries attached to schools, staff turnover is 5 per cent, but in Sure Start centres and in other centres, turnover can be 13 or 15 per cent. Better support for staff and proper training and development will help to reduce the turnover of staff. I am sorry to jump ahead, but I strongly support the amendment on Sure Start centres and on insisting that staff get the training and support they need.
I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, further to what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, I would like to add play therapy to his list. Qualified play specialists who can work with the child and the parent—especially those having difficulties in relationships and attachment—really work. I have seen the results of that type of therapy, which is quite remarkable. I would like the Minister to take that into consideration when he is looking at this amendment.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I shall make a few brief comments on these amendments. I start by commending the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, who never misses an opportunity to raise the issue of parenting. I am terribly grateful that he does so because, with so many weighty matters often before this House, it is sometimes difficult to get those issues heard.
The noble Lord and other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, were right when they said that we cannot overstate the importance of having good parents and the disadvantage to children when parents for one reason or another do not understand what good parenting is. For me, that involves having good involved fathers as well as mothers, as the noble Lord’s amendments make clear. Too often in our discourse about this, the default position is mothers, and we forget about fathers. As Minister for Children for four years, that was something I was very concerned about.
The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Eden, about communication from birth is profoundly important. Communication is the basis of good parenting because the enrichment children get from that kind of elaborative language, play, song and stories literally helps the brain to grow and helps the conceptual abilities of children to develop as well as helping with bonding.
I do not share some noble Lords’ opinion that somehow there has been a failure of moral fibre among the population and that today’s parents perhaps no longer care as much as our parents did. There have been changes, but some of those changes are due to changing social circumstances. The lack of proximity of grandmothers, grandfathers and the extended family to new parents means that sometimes people become parents without the support of their family who have been through that before, so they do not benefit from the wealth of that experience. I do not think this is to do with unplanned pregnancy or feckless parents. It has been demonstrated that many people new to parenting nowadays need support to understand what good parenting is. In my experience, and as the research shows, parents want that support and want to be good parents. That is why, as noble Lords have said, the provision of the opportunity to learn what that means is so crucial. Putting on the statute book that this will be available, without dictating the terms of that in detail, is an important thing to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, rightly looked at the Childcare Act and said that it does not make provision for parenting education and support, and he is right. However, other legislation already on the statute book and in statutory regulations make provision for that, and it was enshrined in the legislation and regulations that define the Sure Start children's centre, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, pointed out. When the regulations for what children’s centres should provide were being drawn up, they included a core offer that all children’s centres had to provide, as well as some optional things that centres could provide depending on local need. The provision of parenting support and parenting education classes is in the core offer. All children’s centres, particularly those in disadvantaged areas, have to provide parenting support, and have been doing so. There has been enormous progress in the amount of provision available and, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has said, many schools, particularly primary schools, now provide that as part of their core offer.
The problem for me, which I would be grateful if the Minister could address, is that because children’s centres are closing and many are having to reduce the services they provide because of lack of funds, the progress that has been made in making parenting education and support available is now in jeopardy. The Minister may well refer to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that the Government have very recently announced some new money to promote parenting support, but I question the need for that at the same time as we are seeing some of that provision disappear because children’s centres are closing and being reduced. There is some conflict about where the Government stand in relation to ensuring the provision is available. It has been available for some time now in children’s centres but, as I say, that is now in jeopardy.
I very much support the amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said that he would not press them for a vote, but I think it is important for the Minister to make clear the Government’s position on this, particularly in relation to children’s centres. We will come to that issue in more detail in Amendment 5, but it is relevant here because this is predominantly where parenting support and education is currently available.
The Earl of Listowel
Before the noble Baroness sits down, can she say whether she thinks it important that there is a good, continuous institutional base for parenting training and development? I may have misremembered—
Baroness Garden of Frognal
If the noble Earl will forgive me, on Report people may speak only once to each amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
I thought it was the case that one could ask a brief question before someone sits down. I do apologise if that is wrong.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
If noble Lords will accept the question put to me by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, I will answer it. I think it is very important that there is an institutional base because one needs to develop a great deal of expertise around delivering parenting support.
There is a danger that anybody who has been a parent thinks they can give effective parenting support and education, and that is not the case. Children’s centres are required to provide only those programmes that have been extensively researched and validated to show that they have a positive impact. The Webster-Stratton approach and others have been so researched and the documentation on their effectiveness is in the public domain. It is not clear who will deliver the programmes the Government have put this extra money into, but it is very important that there is the training and delivery of really clear programmes that make a difference. Otherwise, if people think they can just get a group of parents together and advise them because they have been a parent and they know how it is done, I am afraid that can do more harm than good.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, it has been an extremely good debate to kick off Report stage. Like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for raising this issue. No one has done more than him to keep the importance of parenting before this House. No one could possibly disagree with him about the vital role that parents play and about the importance of helping children get off to the best possible start in life. He is always keen for the Government to do more, but I hope he will accept that there is a lot going on in the early years already.
I imagine the noble Lord saw the announcement made yesterday by my honourable friend Sarah Teather about the parenting trials that will be run in Middlesbrough, High Peak and Camden. My noble friend Lady Walmsley referred to the lead that my honourable friend Sarah Teather is taking in this respect. Those trials will give parents access to parenting classes during the first five years of their child’s life so they can have help with parenting until the child starts school. I would be very happy to arrange for the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and any other noble Lords who are interested, to be briefed more fully on those trials.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, said, the Government are protecting support and advice for parents in some other ways as well. We funded a range of voluntary and community sector organisations to operate online and telephone support services which, in the past three years, have had 10 million contacts from parents. They give help to parents in the important job of bringing up their children, and there is more news coming on those later this week.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has tabled three separate amendments relating to parenting. The first would be a duty on parents. While I agree that parents—both fathers and mothers, as has been said, not just mothers—have a responsibility to provide for their child, including promoting their personal, social and emotional development, we do not believe that imposing declaratory obligations on parents is the right way forward, as my noble friend Lord Eden of Winton, also argued. We know that most parents do a good job, as my noble friend Lord Storey reminded us, many in difficult circumstances, and we therefore do not think that they need a new legal duty to do what they do naturally. The duty would also be unlikely to motivate the small number of parents who do not do a good job. We would argue that what is needed is practical help and support of the kind that a number of noble Lords have already raised—for example, about communication, a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, underlined from her distinguished experience as Children’s Minister.
The kind of support we provide is offered through Sure Start children’s centres. I know that the noble Baroness is concerned about those and their future, as we discussed yesterday and will discuss later today. The Government are putting in enough money, through the early intervention grant, to sustain a national network of Sure Start children’s centres and to make sure that they focus on those with the greatest disadvantage. I have mentioned the parenting trials and the helpline services. There are programmes for families with multiple problems or the kind of flexible working that was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote. We are also adding 4,200 more health visitors. Those are the kind of health visitors who will be able to carry out the sort of assessment that was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I shall come back on his points in a moment.
We have protected the 15 hours a week free nursery education for three and four year-olds, and, subject to parliamentary approval, we will extend that to disadvantaged two year-olds. Local authorities are under statutory duties to ensure that there are sufficient children’s centres to meet local need, so far as is reasonably practical, and to provide information to parents about the services available locally to help them. That brings us on to the important points that were raised about information, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. The point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, was echoed by my noble friend Lady Benjamin. He is right to highlight the importance of speech and language to children’s school readiness. The Government, on the recommendations of Dame Clare Tickell, are introducing a review of children’s progress at age two. We are looking at bringing the health and education aspects together in the way that the noble Lord said. I know that my honourable friend Sarah Teather is looking at that, but I will also raise the point with my noble friend Lord Howe.
With regard to information generally, there is quite a lot of information out there. The early years foundation stage profile gathers information on a child’s preparedness for school. Under existing legislation, local authorities are required to collect information about children’s progress in the early years foundation stage at age five, and the Secretary of State publishes these data annually at both the local authority and national level. But what I will do, which might help noble Lords, is to write to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and set out in one place the various ways in which information is provided so that we can pull it all together and see what is out there.
Like all other noble Lords who have spoken, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for raising the profile of parenting. I would be keen to take him up on his generous offer of discussing these important issues further after Report stage and to arrange for him to meet my honourable friend Sarah Teather who has responsibility. I will speak to the noble Lord with a great deal of pleasure.
As regards these amendments, we do not think that the statutory declaration is a necessary or practical way forward. I know that I will have disappointed the noble Lord but in light of the existing duties around the provision of information and services, I would ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Northbourne
My Lords, I always get a bit nervous. It makes me feel a bit of a bore when everyone is so kind as to say that I am always raising these issues. But they are none the less important. Perhaps I may take what the Minister said first—I think it was referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Eden and Lord Peston, one against and one in favour—as regards why it would be a good idea to put something in the Bill. It is not at all an original idea. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 already has a very good definition of the responsibilities of parenthood.
Earlier this autumn, I was at a wedding in France. I was interested that the mayor read out certain extracts from the Code Civil to the married couple. Loosely interpreted, one extract said, “If you have children, you as parents will be responsible for feeding and caring for your children”. It is not unthinkable or way out to suggest that some sort of hint of obligation could be in statute. I suggest it more as a matter of principle. As someone said, our moral values have hugely changed, not always for the worse, since the introduction of contraception. We really have not thought the issue through properly to ensure that everyone understands what we as a society believe to be the responsibilities of bringing a child into the world. Somewhere, somehow, some Government have to have the courage to get people together and to say, “Look, this seems to be a reasonable compromise solution”. It should be thought of in terms of the rights of the child.
I do not think that the noble Lord spoke to my two other amendments but I shall read what he said. There is an element of chaos in the organisation that the Government are proposing. The speeches of a number of noble Lords today have shown that one person is doing one thing and another is doing something else, but one did not know that the other was going to do it, and this, that and the other. Somehow, it needs pulling together as an organisation if we are to get results, and get them at the right price. I am sure that an enormous amount of money is now being wasted in terms of duplication.
I am very grateful to so many noble Lords for participating in the debate on this important subject. I had something to say about what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said but I have forgotten what it was. I hope that we shall move forward on these issues from one Bill to the next. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) Regulations under subsections (1) of (2) may not, following their first use, specify a reduction in the total number of hours of early years provision available to each child that a local authority must secure free of charge.”
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, Amendment 4 relates to the early education provision for three and four year-olds and now for two year-olds. Amendment 5 relates to Sure Start children’s centres, on which we have already briefly touched. As it stands, the clause makes it possible to include in statutory regulation the provision of free early years provision for children of two years of age from disadvantaged backgrounds. I want to start by saying how genuinely I welcome the extension of this provision for disadvantaged two year-olds. This was started by the previous Labour Government initially giving places to 12,000 two year-olds with a long-term goal of free places for all two year-olds, and building on the offer for three and four year-olds. I very much welcome the Government’s decision to continue that process.
As it stands, the Bill gives the Secretary of State new powers to decide, through regulation, how much early years provision should take place and when it must be made available. This amendment aims to ensure that any changes in the scope of that regulation-making power can be used only to increase provision above that which already exists, and not to reduce it. The amendment would mean that moves by any future Government to reduce early years entitlements would have to come before Parliament as a whole and could not simply be done through regulation alone. I tabled a similar but not identical amendment in Committee, and I was grateful for the advice of the Minister that its wording could have reduced the flexibility available for parents. That was not my intention.
I come back with this amendment not because I doubt the sincerity of the Minister or even the current Government in their commitment to continue and, if possible, build on this early years provision. Noble Lords have identified it as important; having children in early years education and childcare allows for opportunities on, for example, early intervention, assessment and parenting. I do not doubt the Government’s sincerity, but we do not know what a future Government might do. More importantly, there are two reasons why this provision should be included. First, families need and deserve the certainty that this provision will continue, and that if it changes it will only increase, without Parliament having to consider it again. That is important for families. Secondly, and relatedly, I would like to enshrine this provision, as far as possible, with the same or equivalent status as that of schooling from the age of five, because that would underline and would state powerfully the importance of early years provision. In other words, it is a provision that parents can expect will continue—and that Governments will continue to provide—for children aged two, three and four. It is for that reason that I hope, with the changes I have made to the amendment, that the Minister might accept it on this occasion.
I turn now to Amendment 5. We rehearsed the arguments about the importance of Sure Start briefly yesterday in Questions, and we debated it in Committee. I make no apology for returning to this but I realise, from the Minister’s earlier statement, that he is unlikely to accept this amendment. I nevertheless say that what the previous Government managed to do—and I think this Government are in support in principle—was establish a new framework of services for parents and the under-fives, through a national network of children’s centres, one in every locality. Not every centre has the same services; in disadvantaged areas there are more extensive services than in others. They are, however, a focus for the integration of services such as children’s social services, early education and health services. We aspire to early identification of children and families in difficulty in a universal, non-stigmatising service that will enable the centre to identify and reach out to families who need support, as well as offering other opportunities—such as play activities—that all families can take advantage of. Having established this national network, it would be a retrograde step to let it crumble. My concern is that it is crumbling.
I have brought forward this amendment to reinstate the qualification requirements which the Government have removed. As with teaching, we know that the quality of early years provision in particular is absolutely fundamental, and that the quality of the provision is fundamental to having a positive impact on children. It would also reinstate ring-fencing of the funding for Sure Start centres.
I quickly wrote down what the Minister has just stated: that he feels that the Government, through the early intervention grant, have provided sufficient money to sustain a national network of children’s centres. The early years intervention grant brings together funding not only for Sure Start children’s centres, but for 20-odd other services, including, for instance, the strategy to tackle teenage pregnancy. A whole range of things has been lumped into this grant. As a whole, the early intervention grant is 20 per cent less in real terms than those funding streams were when added together, so it will be a huge challenge for local authorities to sustain their children’s centres when the money now has to be spread across 21 different services and has been reduced by 22 per cent in real terms. I really must say to the Minister that while the money might sustain something of a network of children’s centres, it probably will not sustain the level of national network that we achieved with a children’s centre in every locality—one, as I have said, that is accessible, universal and non-stigmatising.
To make this a residual service only for the most disadvantaged areas misses the point of children’s centres and risks the fact that very disadvantaged families will not get to them. One of the reasons they were coming to children’s centres was that they were for everybody, not just for disadvantaged people. If it was just another arm of the statutory services, they kept away.
This is an important amendment, but I do not think for a moment that the Minister is going to accede to it. We have information now that we referred to yesterday: as a result of the reductions in funding, many centres are actually closing down and many more closures are in the pipeline. Further, centres that are staying open are reducing their service offer down to the absolute minimum. Looking to the future, given that this national network of centres had an enormous potential to make a huge difference to the next generation of young people, then of all the decisions the Government could have made in relation to funding priorities—I accept that they had to make them—sustaining this service at the level at which it was being provided ought to have been a priority. I hope—although I do not have much hope—that the Minister will also look sympathetically at Amendment 5. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I think I can give the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, some comfort on Amendment 4 because I am very familiar with a document called the coalition agreement. Although we cannot bind any future Government, this Government are bound by that agreement. I do not think it would allow any reduction at all in the amount of early years education provision given to children in this country during the five years of this Government. Turning to Amendment 5, I agree with the noble Baroness on the point about qualifications. The most reputable pieces of academic research into the effects of early years provision make it clear that the better the qualifications of the staff leading a centre, the higher the quality of provision and the more good that does for children. Indeed, it has also been shown that poor provision can do more harm than good. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that we should focus on improved qualifications for the early years workforce.
On the number of Sure Start children’s centres, it is a pity that the noble Baroness’s diary was unable to allow her to attend the meeting and seminar of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Sure Start last week, at which we heard from a number of local authorities. It has to be admitted that they were all struggling to continue to make the provision they wanted to make for children and their parents. It was startling to see how differently they approached the issue. One of them pointed out that while in some cases they had closed a physical centre, they had not ceased to provide services to children and their families because they were being offered out of another centre, or from a virtual centre or something like that. We have to allow local authorities to work with the budgets they are given and make provision in the way they see best. But, of course, we also have to allow them to impose their own priorities on the provision they make. I am delighted that so many local authorities consider Sure Start children’s centres to be so important that they have somehow managed not to close any or reduce the services they provide.
Lord Northbourne
My Lords, I would at this point offer a brief thought on this amendment, which I do not entirely support. All the payments we are making are about inputs and what really matters is outcomes. How and whether it is possible to measure the output from a children’s centre, I am not entirely clear. It would not be easy and, so far as I have had any experience of children’s centres, there is a wide variation; not only in the quality of the service that they offer, but also in the clientele they offer it to. In one that I visited, it was quite manifest that the parents were quite wealthy, and when I asked them what they did about hard-to-reach families, they sucked their teeth and said, “Well, they are hard to reach”. So it is outputs that we should be paying for, not inputs.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, it is clear from the discussions that we had earlier in Committee and the exchange today that everyone on all sides of this House agrees on the importance of investing in children’s early years. We know that high quality early education is crucial to achieving greater social mobility and to improving the life chances of all children. That is why the Government seek to extend the free entitlement to early education to disadvantaged two year-olds. Clause 1 allows us to build on the provision that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, established through the Childcare Act 2006. I was grateful for her generous welcome for the measure. I know how much it means to her. I also know what a respected Children’s Minister she was, so I think there is agreement across the House on the importance of this measure.
Since we last debated this clause in Committee, the Government have published their Families in the Foundation Years policy statement. That sets out the Government’s vision for the foundation years as a whole and reaffirms our commitment further to improve early years services. It includes a number of proposals specifically on the early education free entitlement. For example, we intend to launch shortly a public consultation on how the flexibility and quality of provision of the entitlement could be improved. This consultation will also cover the criteria for which two year-olds should be eligible for the free entitlement.
Despite the challenging economic circumstances we face, we have protected funding for the three and four year-old entitlement and provided the additional funding that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, referred to for disadvantaged two year-olds.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, set out her concerns underlying Amendment 4, and I understand what she seeks to achieve. The current entitlement for three and four year-olds is set at 570 hours a year, over no fewer than 38 weeks a year. That is, 15 hours a week. We now seek to extend this to all disadvantaged two year-olds. While I understand the case that the noble Baroness made about protecting the level of this entitlement in primary legislation, the question that I would ask is the same that my noble friend Lady Walmsley asked: protection from whom?
This Government, as my noble friend says—I am sure she is accurate, since she knows the coalition agreement extremely well—have given repeated assurances over the early education entitlement. I am also sure the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, recognises that, and her party clearly believe that one would want to move only in one direction. So do the Liberal Democrats.
The first amendment in this group seeks to tie the hands of future Governments regarding the entitlement and I would contend that we do not think it is the place for primary legislation to prescribe that level of the entitlement. Those details should lie in regulations. That was the approach taken by the previous Government when they initiated free entitlement for three and four year-olds in the Childcare Act 2006. When the noble Baroness was in my department, they argued in their memorandum to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in 2006 that:
“It is appropriate that this provision is in secondary legislation to give flexibility to react to changing circumstances”.
We believe that was the right approach.
Subsequent Governments will have to make their own judgments on the appropriate level of the free entitlement. We are responding to lessons that have been learned from experience since 2006, and in particular in extending it to disadvantaged two year-olds, and it is possible that future experience may throw up other lessons. So, as the noble Baroness conceded that she would expect, we believe the first amendment is unnecessary.
The noble Baroness’s second amendment concerns the sufficiency of children centres to meet local need and the qualifications of the staff working at them. There is no difference between us about the importance that we attribute to children centres. They are vital to improving outcomes for children and their families—a point made also by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne—and it is the outcomes rather than the inputs, to use the jargon, which are important.
There are, year on year, overall improvements in early years foundation stage outcomes and that is vital. We know that 94 per cent of children who achieved a good level of development at age five in 2007 went on to achieve the expected levels for reading at key stage 1 in 2009. So there is a clear link.
The existing legislation requires local authorities to ensure there are sufficient children centres to meet local need so far as is reasonably practicable. The effect of the noble Baroness’s amendment would be to take out having regard to what is “reasonably practicable”. We should stick with the current formulation. As my noble friend Lady Walmsley argued, local authorities need the flexibility to be able to determine local priorities in the context of their many responsibilities and, yes, the resources that they have available to them. Again, that was the position that the previous Government took in 2009: local authorities must be able to consider their local context, their resources and their overall priorities as they strive to ensure access to services that improve young children’s outcomes.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, is right to say that local authorities are facing difficult financial circumstances. I know of her concern about the funding going into Sure Start children centres. She or one of her colleagues in another place has carried out their own work to ascertain the extent of what is going on. The department is monitoring the situation and is working with local authorities to get an accurate fix on what is happening. She will know probably better than me that it is a fluid situation, and we want information from which we can see how things are developing.
As my noble friend Lady Walmsley has just mentioned, and mentioned yesterday, many authorities are keeping all their children centres open. Local authorities should have the flexibility to deliver services in the ways they think best meet local needs within the resources that we have.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, about the importance of qualifications. Again she will know that for some roles qualification requirements are in place. The statutory framework for the early years foundation stage specifies that all supervisors and managers of registered childcare settings for children under five must hold a full and relevant level 3 qualification and half of all other staff must hold a full and relevant level 2 qualification. Those health services delivered through children centres can be provided only by suitably qualified and experienced professionals because of other statutory requirements already in place. As Dame Clare Tickell said in her recent review, there has been an improvement in the skills of the early education and childcare workforce in recent years. We have set up recently a review of qualifications for the early education and childcare sector, led by Professor Cathy Nutbrown, to consider how best to strengthen qualifications and career pathways.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and have a few brief comments in response to his contribution and also that of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley.
On Amendment 4, I hope that the noble Baroness will not think me discourteous if I say that it will not sufficiently comfort me or many parents—as was my intention with the amendment—to say that it is in the coalition agreement and so will be all right. We have measures now in Parliament that were not in the coalition agreement and there are measures in the coalition agreement that have not—as yet, anyway—been put forward to Parliament. While I accept her personal commitment, and that of the Minister and indeed maybe of the current Government, what happens in the future is open to question. As I said, my intention was both to give parents some certainty and also try to give this provision to the under-fives an equivalent status to that of schooling. I am sorry that I have not been able to convince the Minister that those were sufficiently worthy objectives to accept my amendment.
On Amendment 5 and the children’s centres, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her support on training. The comments about the improvement in the skill levels of people in early years are important but, certainly in part if not in very large measure, those improvements have been made. We have set the bar higher. A big issue about the quality of early years provision is the level of qualification and training that people get. We know that this is a largely unskilled, underpaid and female workforce. Over time, we need to bring up the levels of qualification and expertise. As I said, the improvements have been the result of setting the bar higher. Lowering the bar is a retrograde step, notwithstanding the comments that the Minister made about the requirements of people in a supervisory capacity.
On ring-fencing and whether this should have been a greater priority for the Government, we will have to beg to differ. I hope that the department will keep a close eye on what is happening in Sure Start children’s centres, both in terms of the numbers and what is being offered inside them. As I said, to risk this national network crumbling now would be another retrograde step which I am sure that the Minister would personally not support. However, in light of those comments, there is no point in my pressing this to divide the House. With that, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 4.
“( ) In subsection (1)(b), at the end insert “and has been trained— (i) in the need to maintain the pupil’s dignity and right to privacy in carrying out the search, and(ii) on additional requirements for searching pupils with special educational needs and disabilities;””
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, our amendments cover training for schools in the awareness of issues of pupil dignity and discipline when pupils are searched without consent in schools and, similarly, in FE colleges. They also cover the requirement for a witness to be present and, finally, the need for clarity on the school rules regarding which prohibited items can be confiscated in schools.
First, on Amendments 6 and 11, we had an excellent debate on training in Grand Committee and, with respect to the Minister, we very much felt that the weight of the arguments was on our side. This is why we have tabled similar amendments on Report. I also thank the Minister for his letter of 12 October, enclosing draft advice on searches. It picked up on some of our points raised in Committee but we do not feel that it goes far enough. For example, those guidance notes explicitly say that there should be no need for staff to be trained. It was said earlier that we very much welcome the plethora of letters that we have had from the Minister over the past few days. I echo our thanks but I believe this is going to be a pattern of the coming debates on Report, because the Government are keen to sideline some of the issues that we are raising into lengthy advice and guidance notes, whereas we feel that a much clearer and simpler direction on many of these issues needs to be in the Bill and would be much more helpful to heads and teachers alike.
Going back to the detail, our first amendments seek to ensure that any staff who undertake searches are appropriately trained to search with special educational needs and disabilities in mind and to search all pupils in a way that maintains their dignity and right to privacy, and so to foster a school environment of mutual respect. The Bill removes important checks and balances that have been in place to protect both pupils and teachers. As I understood the Minister's argument in Grand Committee, he accepted that training of staff was necessary but felt that heads should be free to decide whether and when staff should be trained. We take a different view. Of course, heads should have some flexibility in deciding the right courses for their staff but we also believe that the issue of pupil searches is so sensitive, and the opportunities for things to go wrong so stark, that there needs to be a requirement in the Bill to ensure that proper training happens.
As we reported in Grand Committee, our views are supported by a number of children's charities, which felt that staff doing searches should be trained in and given guidance on the effects of searches on young people, including on their self-esteem and confidence. In addition, organisations specifically concerned with special educational needs have expressed particular concern. For example, Ambitious about Autism highlighted the need for proper training to carry out safe searches on children with autism so that the children’s potential issues around physical contact, for example, were understood.
From the perspective of a child, searches can be very invasive and frightening experiences, causing children embarrassment, anxiety and humiliation. As adults, we sometimes forget what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a physical intervention from someone in power. These concerns can have even more pronounced implications for children with a history of physical or sexual abuse, children with a disability or special educational needs or children from different cultural backgrounds. For example, I was very struck by the intervention in Committee from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, when she raised the negative impact of searches on the disproportionate number of black children who are currently being disciplined. In addition, our amendments would give a welcome protection to staff who might otherwise face allegations of improper behaviour.
For all these reasons, we believe it is right to insist that appropriate training takes place for all staff who may be required to carry out searches and that this requirement be spelt out in the Bill. Although I have referred specifically to schools, we believe that the same principles should apply to further education colleges. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge the similarities that cross over those two areas so that we do not have to have two separate debates on this.
We then have a number of amendments on the issue of a witness being present at searches. They are Amendments 7, 8A, 9, 12, 13A and 14. They follow on from our discussion in Grand Committee in which the dangers of unwitnessed searches were starkly spelled out and, with due respect again to the Minister, we did not feel were adequately counteracted. We therefore felt it was necessary to return to these issues today. Again, I acknowledge that these issues have been picked up in part in the draft the Minister has issued but we feel that the issues he has raised in the letter do not adequately address our concerns. Our amendment, which leaves out lines 32 to 33, removes the part of the Bill that says that if there is an emergency there does not need to be a witness present.
As we have previously made clear we support moves that would continue to support schools to improve behaviour and discipline, building on the measures brought in by the previous Government. However, despite debates in both Houses, it is still not clear why the removal of the requirement for there to be a witness to searches would be a necessary addition to existing powers to search or to use reasonable force to control or restrain a pupil or if necessary to stop a pupil committing a criminal offence. The debate in Grand Committee drew strong support from across different parties and the Cross Benches. For example, the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Jolly, tabled an amendment to remove part of the clause that is included in the aims we are pursuing again today. I am aware that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has tabled Amendment 13, which insists on same-sex searches. This is a position again that we debated in Grand Committee and we supported then and still have some sympathy for today. However, we acknowledge the difficulties that can arise in primary schools where very often there are not teachers of an appropriate sex available. We believe the presence of a witness provides in all circumstances the overriding protection both for staff and for pupils being searched. The witness is the most necessary requirement.
A common view has arisen from our debates that children’s rights must be paramount. A number of children’s charities have raised concerns about the safeguarding issues should this clause go through unchanged. For example, Barnardo’s has argued that the extension of the powers of school staff to search pupils without their consent is troubling and the existing safeguards to protect both the child and the teacher must remain. It also argued that searches must be witnessed, carried out by a person of the same sex as the pupil, and recorded.
In the earlier debate I was particularly struck by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, who was able to give a practical insight into how the Bill would impact in the classroom. He said:
“If there is a crisis, the best way to deal with it is not to provoke the situation further but to calm everything down. My concern is that if a teacher carries out this act by themselves and no one else is present, it could put them at risk”.—[Official Report, 30/6/11; col. GC 261.]
As I also mentioned in Grand Committee, this clause gives school staff powers that go beyond the powers of the police in respect of stop and search. Can the Minister clarify whether this is in fact the consequence of the changes and has he consulted his colleagues in the Home Office to learn the lessons of the overuse of stop and search?
Throughout the debates on the Bill so far no one has been able to come up with a convincing range of examples of the circumstances in which these new powers need to be used. Teachers already have powers to intervene in the classroom in an emergency and, in other examples, the situation of a lone teacher carrying out a search is likely to aggravate not dissipate a situation as well as putting the teacher at risk. There does not seem to be a clamour from heads or from classroom staff to have these new powers. In the absence of any compelling reasons, despite thorough debate on these clauses in both Houses as to why searching without a witness would ever be necessary or sensible, and recognising the risk to pupils and teachers that the removal of the witness requirement may bring, my amendment would simply make it a requirement for people to undertake searches with a witness present.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I wish to speak to my Amendment 8 to Clause 2 and Amendment 13 to Clause 3. Amendment 8 addresses same-gender searches and teachers or other staff searching alone in schools. Amendment 13 refers to colleges in Clause 3.
In Committee, the Minister pointed out that in primary schools with staff of all, or nearly all, one gender—usually women—it would usually be very difficult to find a member of staff to search boys. Of course, the opposite may also be true in some single-sex boys’ schools. We have taken that objection on board and come forward with a compromise which we hope will find favour with the Minister. Amendment 8 would allow opposite-sex searching of children under 12 as long as there is a witness of either gender present. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that that is vital. However, we hold to our view that searching a child without a witness opens up the teacher and the child to danger in a quite unnecessary way. We accept the extension of the items for which teachers can search, and that these will be specified in published school rules. However, we feel that children’s privacy and dignity should be protected under their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that teachers should be protected from false allegations and possible physical harm if a child does indeed have a weapon in his pocket. If such a thing is suspected, a teacher would be very foolish indeed to search alone.
Like the Government, we trust professionals: 99.9 per cent of teachers will use these powers sensibly and carefully in their own interests and that of their pupils. However, we do not believe that legislation should allow something to be done lawfully which is quite wrong and dangerous. I fear that a tiny minority may not behave with the wisdom we hope for.
I wish to say something about the draft guidance that has been sent to us. Guidance is vital—all Governments think that is the case. Indeed, on many occasions when I pressed the previous Government to include measures on the face of a Bill, they said that it was absolutely fine to have them in guidance, and this Government are no different. Therefore, it is important that we work on the guidance. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has just said, the JCHR has also asked that the guidance should be very clear.
As we have said, as the child gets older his right to privacy increases and the guidance mentions this on page two. However, there is no explanation of what is meant by Article 8 of the ECHR, which enshrines this, and how this could affect a searching scenario. Neither does it say that this right means that, wherever possible, a person of the same gender should search a child. On page 5 the teacher is told that a child should be searched by the same gender in the presence of a witness with limited exceptions. It is explained that a search of the opposite gender can take place without a witness if the teacher believes that there is a risk that serious harm will be caused to a person if the search is not carried out immediately, but there is no warning to the teacher to consider whether, in doing so, she is putting herself or nearby pupils at risk. There is no warning to the teacher to consider whether he is opening himself up to malicious allegations of inappropriate touching. I find it difficult to understand that given that the Government are protecting teachers from publication of allegations in Clause 13, but in Clause 2 of the same Bill they are potentially giving teachers a green light to do something that may risk their reputation even more, without such warnings in the guidance. It is not even put in a positive way, such as, “where at all possible, you should summon another teacher”. Nowhere is good practice mentioned.
On the matter of training, on pages 5 and 6, the guidance does not really encourage head teachers to ensure that staff authorised to search have adequate training. They only have to “consider” the matter. There is no mention of the sort of situation management training that takes place in young offender institutions, yet teachers are to be allowed to do the same things as the staff there.
Teachers do not want to do these things. It has often been said that they will completely alter the basis of the teacher-pupil relationship. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, makes a very good point about the need for sensitivity, understanding and knowledge in searching children with special needs or disabilities.
On page 10 of the guidance, reference is made to the power to examine and erase electronic files on such as mobile phones. While this may be perfectly okay in a case of simple bullying, there are more serious situations in which deleting a file may be deleting evidence in a criminal case. My noble friend Lady Benjamin will, I think, have more to say on this. I suggest that a single person’s decision about this is not good enough; reference should at least be made to a senior member of staff and the guidance should say so. I also think that parents should be consulted before this is done; this would involve parents in the school’s discipline arrangements, which is always a good thing.
The guidance is currently totally inadequate and I hope that the Minister will tell me that the department is willing to strengthen it. I am prepared to continue to work with officials until I am satisfied that the guidance truly helps teachers to make these very serious judgments. If we get this right, the situations that we fear will be very rare indeed, because teachers will know what is good practice and what is bad practice. Will the Minister allow his officials to continue to work with us in order to achieve the very good-quality guidance that this Government and the previous Government both wished for?
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, this is indeed a complex issue, as illustrated in the previous speeches. It was debated extensively in Committee and many issues have been raised again today. I was not planning to intervene here, but I am prompted to do so by the number of teachers who have contacted me and whom I have spoken to about searching. I wonder whether the Government realise and understand just how concerned teachers are about this and how distasteful they find it to have to do this in school. It is not only an issue of the rights, mentioned many times already today, of children, schools and teachers; I think it is a matter of common sense. There is a risk that searching a child in a school could destroy trust between teachers and pupils and have a detrimental effect on the ethos of a school. Many teachers have said exactly that.
I have one small anecdote: I was speaking today to the Children’s Commissioner, who said that she had also had many representations from teachers about this issue. She told a story about a 12 year-old boy who was on a newspaper round with a friend of his. The newspapers have to be cut out of a plastic band when they are given out for distribution to the boys and girls. One of the boys had put the knife used to cut the band into his pocket by mistake and ended up in school with it. He was searched because someone said that he had a knife and he was excluded from the school. There is a great danger that without excellent guidance, that kind of thing will go on.
Of course, there should be training and a careful exploration of the issues within the school. But it is important to have strong, clear rules about what is brought into school and strong enforcement of those rules, involving parents and the community. That should be emphasised in guidance—in fact, it should be the first lines of any guidance on prevention. Many good schools already do that. They are tough about bringing things into schools because that is in the school rules. I hope that the Minister will consider the amendments because this is a very serious issue for teachers and schools, and liable to be very destructive unless handled carefully.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I wish to comment briefly on Amendments 8 and 10, and to give my warm support to Amendment 8. We had an important debate on that amendment in Committee and the Minister pointed out the difficulties with primary schools. The difficulties have been met in a reasonable way, I believe, and I hope that in the spirit of good compromise all round we might move with the amendment and see it eventually in the Bill.
On Amendment 10 and following the remarks of my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, guidance is immensely important—at least as important as what is in the Bill. I hope that the discussions that she seeks can be taken forward, and I hope that guidance, especially from the Secretary of State going down to schools, can be liberally sprinkled with the word “normally”. This is a very important word. It is not a weakening but indicates what the standard is and what good practice is meant to be. It indicates strongly that if the guidance is not accepted in any set of school rules or school practice, there has to be a very good reason that can be stated either when the inspection system requires it or alternatively, sadly, when it comes to exclusions or even court cases. I stress that the difficulty we had in Committee was over legislating for every item that might be searched for or for every individual case in which a search might be made.
It is difficult to specify each case. At one time who would have dreamt that we were supposed to use plastic cutlery on airlines? Yet that has come to be. We would rather have general guidance indicating good practice and good sense with the use of the word “normally” and therefore a requirement to give a reason for a change in what has been regarded as good practice until now. I ask the Minister to look closely at Amendment 10.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, I would like to pick up the subject of searching, as I would like to talk about the need for guidance to be provided by the Secretary of State regarding the erasure of data from electronic devices taken from pupils during a search incident. The erasure of data from electronic devices is a concern that was brought to my attention by the children’s charity Barnardo’s, and I declare an interest as a vice-president of the charity.
Barnardo’s understands the concerns around the use of mobile phones for viewing and displaying offensive material, and that teachers may wish to remove offensive material to prevent it being viewed or shared. However, there are concerns that teachers may use this power to erase data which could otherwise be used as legal evidence in court that a child is being sexually exploited or groomed for sexual exploitation.
It is well established that mobile phones are used as command and control devices in child sexual exploitation. Through the cases Barnardo’s has dealt with, the charity has found that one of the “tell-tale signs” of child sexual exploitation is the secretive use of mobile phones and the internet away from parents’ eyes. Children as young as seven are carrying mobile phones and they are increasingly accessing the internet via mobile phones from a variety of locations. The national guidance to local safeguarding children boards recognises that mobile phones are themselves often given as gifts to children who are being exploited and that they can be used to lure young people into being exploited or exploited further.
This is also recognised by police forces across the country; they acknowledge that gathering evidence for child sexual exploitation can be difficult. To deal with this problem, West Yorkshire Police has drawn up a list to help agencies, carers and young people provide the police with the intelligence they need to make convictions through phone-based intelligence. Intelligence is gathered and used in situations where there may be no evidence available or the victim is unable or unwilling to provide a police statement. This occurs in the vast majority of cases of sexual exploitation. Therefore, the opportunity to provide information as intelligence means that the police can build a comprehensive picture over a period of time and act upon it. This could interrupt and disrupt criminal activity in which young people are being exploited.
Child sexual exploitation intelligence includes details on suspects such as their names and nicknames, details of phone numbers and mobile phones used by suspects and details of any text messages or phone calls made by them or to them. It also includes details of locations where offences have taken place or which the suspects or victims visited, and dates and times that incidents of child sexual exploitation occurred—in fact, any links between suspects, their cars or locations and young people identified as being at risk of child sexual exploitation.
There are examples of prosecutions of men using Facebook to groom children for exploitation, but the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre—CEOP—also warns of the use of smartphones and 3G technology. CEOP warns that online child sex offenders are using more intimidating tactics to engage with, exploit and abuse children and young people. Reports of this are increasing. Text messaging is used as grooming behaviour, and this is also increasing.
This is not just an issue of the loss of child sexual exploitation evidence, but there are also similar concerns around deleting messages or data which may have been used for bullying or harassment. It is important that victims of cyberbullying are believed and get the support they need, and that the bullies are dealt with appropriately. Therefore bullying messages received on mobile phones should not be deleted in case they can be used to support victims of such harassment.
Conviction rates for child sexual exploitation remain disappointingly low. In 2009 Barnardo’s was aware of 2,893 victims—perhaps just the tip of the iceberg—yet there were only 89 convictions. Organisations such as CEOP and Barnardo’s are committed to making everyone at every level become aware of how we can all identify child sexual exploitation. They believe that texts and e-mails will be one way of showing behaviour over time.
The power in the Bill to erase data will be new to teachers. Therefore, the Secretary of State's guidance should be explicit about what data can be erased and should advise caution. I ask the Minister and Secretary of State to consider giving the guidance that teachers must record the nature of any material erased and the reason for its erasure. This should be done with a witness present.
Lord Peston
My Lords, I support these amendments, but I am bound to say it is with a heavy heart. I will explain why. I have been involved with education, educational philosophy and research into education for more than 50 years. When I think about what I believed when I started out, I realise that I must have been hopelessly naive. If I had been asked what the nature of a school was, I would have said that it was a place where people went to learn and teach, where values were developed and where one’s life was enhanced. Central to that were the teachers themselves. All of us know the difference that they have made to our lives. When I consider this group of amendments, I am forced to ask myself what has happened to our society. This section of the Bill, headed “Discipline”, could have been written for a prison or a concentration camp—but it is written for a school. It is also simply a repair job: at best, an Elastoplast. It does not solve any fundamental problems whatever.
I believe strongly that my noble friend's amendments do improve matters. They certainly make the Bill much more sensible and deal at least to some degree with the role of the teacher and the relationship between the teacher and the pupil. However, the fact remains that what is stated totally changes what some of us feel the teacher/pupil relationship should be. I do not believe for one minute that the Minister will accept the amendments, but it would be right to do so. It would certainly be right to test the opinion of the House on these matters. Some day, despite Governments of all parties kicking and screaming about these things, we will have to face up to the problem of social improvement and ask what has happened to our way of life and whether there is anything we can do about it.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments—in particular Amendment 10 —and to say how much I welcomed the words of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. In a strange way, I do not think that there is a difference of purpose across the House about what we want to achieve. We understand the importance of good discipline in schools and we want to equip teachers to be able to secure that discipline in their classrooms, and for head teachers to lead in that. There is no difference of opinion here. We are talking about the necessary safeguards that need to go alongside it in an area as crucial as physical contact and search.
I remind Members of the House how we have already come unstuck on this in a different context, 10 or 15 years ago. There is confusion among teachers in schools about touching children at all—even about putting their arm around a child's shoulder to comfort them, patting them on the head to say well done, or acting in a human way towards children, however small they are and whatever their needs. We politicians know that what teachers think is the case is not the case in law and has never been the intention of Governments of any party. I remarked in Committee on the Bill that the Minister was sending out further guidance on the circumstances in which teachers could appropriately touch a child. It sounded just like the guidance that I sent out 10 years ago—and it will probably be just as ineffective. The lesson we learn from this is that once practice is embedded in a school and a set of things is believed by teachers, it is very difficult to shift it. What you cannot do in an area such as this is to set it in motion and then try to back-track at a future date. The guidance, the intention, the parameters and all those things have to go out clearly with the initial message, otherwise teachers get fearful and do not know what is expected of them and the law becomes confused. That is why when I look again at Amendment 10 in the light of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, I see it as letting the Government stick to their wish to empower teachers to keep discipline. It has regard to the necessary safeguards for children, but does not make the mistake we made by not adding the clarity that we need at this early stage when we are giving teachers new powers. The Minister may reflect on that in his response.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I have listened to this debate with mounting unease, concern and sadness. It is just over 50 years since as a young graduate schoolmaster I began to teach in a school. I listened with great interest and considerable sympathy to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, a few minutes ago. What has happened over those 50 years is that we have seen the destruction of childhood innocence and an erosion of trust. We have seen a situation where normal and reasonable behaviour—to take up another point that was made earlier—has to be legislated for. It is a very sad day. I do not know exactly what the solution is, but we must reintroduce trust into our lives at all levels, if we possibly can. We have got to be able to trust parents and those who teach. The way in which those who teach have been deprived of virtually all sanctions and all powers to discipline children is something the Government are seeking to address in the Bill, as their predecessors sought, very reasonably, to address it.
We have reached a very sorry state when we have to legislate for searches and decide when they are permissible and when not. I have one overriding feeling here. It is that if legislation seeks to prescribe and proscribe in too great detail we are continuing on a very slippery slope. I have great sympathy with the Minister’s desire to have notes of guidance to give advice, but at the end of the day we must be able to trust head teachers in schools to orchestrate discipline within those schools and to know what it is proper for children to bring to school, how they should be dressed and how they should address those who teach them, because the absence of any form of respect in many schools is at the root of the problems within those schools. Let us move towards a situation where in all schools, as in some that we have read about recently—sink schools that have been rescued and become beacon schools—we really trust those who are in charge to behave normally and reasonably, and have the expectation that those they teach will behave normally and reasonably and that the parents do likewise.
Just to take up one point that has been alluded to, I do not believe that any child of any age should be allowed to have a mobile phone in his or her possession during school hours. It may be necessary to have possession of a phone as a means of communication outside because of transport and all the rest of it, but they should leave it in a secure place—a locker—when they get to school and remove it when they go, but not be allowed to have it in school. It is entirely permissible to examine those instruments if there is reasonable ground to suppose that they are being misused in the way to which the noble Baroness referred a few moments ago.
I close my random remarks, which I was not intending to make but felt provoked into making, by saying that unless we can reintroduce trust and recreate a climate where childhood innocence is regarded as a precious commodity, we are not going to achieve what I think in all parts of the House we want to achieve.
Lord Elton
My Lords, since we are on the subject of context in these amendments, I rise very briefly to say how exceedingly complicated that context is and how it needs to be kept in mind. If there was perfect discipline in every school, none of this legislation would be necessary. Why has it been lost? Has human nature changed? No, it has not. Has the perception of Governments and lawyers changed as to what is acceptable behaviour? Yes, it has.
The noble Lord, Lord Baker, is no longer in his seat, but back in 1988 he had a problem and asked me to write a report on discipline in schools. Actually, I commend it to the Government again; it remained on shelves for many years. Basically, you have to start discipline preferably before a child comes into school and when it comes into school. It is not beating them, it is managing their behaviour. I suggest that what the Government need urgently to do, if things have not changed since the days when I was better in touch with these things, is to see what teachers are taught in colleges of education about how to do that.
When I began that inquiry, I was told by every teacher training college in the country that of course they taught classroom management. We then did a survey of those they had actually through their hands in the past 15 years and found that only one of them did. All the others said they did it as a cross-curricular subject. I discovered this ahead of the report because I was a teacher myself and I finished up teaching in a college of education. I lost the attention of my adult class, quite unexpectedly, halfway through a term and I asked them, “What are you thinking about?”. They said, “We are thinking about our first teaching practice next week”. I said, “You needn’t bother, you know far more than any of the children will and all you have to do is see they behave properly”. “How do we do that?”, they said. I said, “The Department of Education will have told you—hasn’t it?”, and nobody said a word. So we abandoned the French Revolution and moved into classroom management.
I am becoming garrulous. I merely want to say that these measures are necessary because, broadly speaking, in an enormous number of schools teachers have really lost control of how the children behave in the classroom. They began to do that in the 1960s with child-centred education. We are drawing back from that now but the senior ranks in many of our schools are actually the products of that who have now reached the top of the teaching tree, and remedial action is necessary. Therefore, I think that we are right to be discussing these issues and I am very interested to hear what my noble friend will say about how we are going to put discipline back into the classroom.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, this has been an extremely interesting debate about a very serious subject, which has encouraged a lot of your Lordships to look back at better times when it would seem that it was somewhat easier to make the right decision. We have to face the fact that things have moved on. I particularly support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, because it seems that what was being said about the guidance, and indeed what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said, is probably fairly accurate in that it needs tidying up. My reading of the guidance was that teachers had the right to refuse to take part in searches, so there is at least that aspect in which a teacher can exercise their own feelings and responsibility about these things.
The points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, were worrying. It may well be that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is right, that if every school could agree a principle—and maybe that should be written into the Bill—that no telephones are to be brought in, or that they must be left at the gate and picked up on the way out, that might be an answer. I suspect that it would not be as simple as it might sound. Alas, we have got to look practically at what we do now. I do not envy the Minister and his team, because to get it right for this current moment is a very important but difficult job.
Lord Storey
My Lords, I was not going to speak in this debate, but so many important comments have been made that I feel that I want to add my few words.
I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that this is about safeguarding both the child and the teaching staff. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that we need to engender trust in a school. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, reminded me about his report on discipline, which I remember quite well. I remember having to write an essay on it—so he is to blame.
The problems of discipline in schools are not just to do with pupils. They are to do with that group of people we were talking about in a very positive way: parents, and—dare I say it?—the legal profession. You can just imagine a situation that happens daily: that of a teacher, say in primary school, who in innocence says “Come on, hand over that game you’ve got in your pocket”, stupidly goes to reach for it, and the next thing is that there is a legal action. So all that trust has evaporated.
The guidance has to be very clearly laid down. Pupils should not have mobile phones in classrooms—and this is hugely important. It is very dangerous, for all the reasons that we have heard. Of everything that has been said, that is probably the most important, because it is not just about grooming children, but about other pupils bullying each other through mobile phones.
So why on earth schools are allowing children to have mobile phones in schools, I do not understand. In small schools, they can be handed into the school office or, as has been suggested, go in a locker. I hope the guidance is very clear. It is about ensuring the protection and the safeguarding of the pupil, as much as the safeguarding of the teacher.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I had not intended to speak, but it was in hearing the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talk about clarity, that reminded me that I had had a letter from someone in a school. Your Lordships will understand why I quote it:
“Please could you register my welcome overall of the trust put in teachers and school leaders to manage behaviour more effectively in schools and colleges. However, I am concerned that the measures taken to improve the authority of teachers are being seen as threats to the child and to the member of staff concerned. Searches should be allowed by staff and good practice ensures that a teacher will ask for a witness for the search”.
It shows that the common sense that the ministry is trying to encourage exists in schools, but that there is a lack of clarity. The real need is for clear guidance, and indeed the amendment put down by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, would help people to understand. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, who said that there are so many things that are believed in schools that are not actually the law or statute.
This has been a wonderful Second Reading debate, I have to say. I have thoroughly enjoyed some of the speeches, and not having had an opportunity to get to the actual Second Reading, I am now taking my opportunity, too. We have to remind ourselves that not everything was wonderful in the past, and that there are some things that are significantly better. One thing that is significantly better is child safeguarding. We abandon anything that continues to safeguard children, as the noble Baroness was saying with regard to Barnardo’s, at our risk.
I am not an educationalist but I suspect that my pedigree in safeguarding is probably as good as anyone in this House. I encourage the Minister to think carefully before abandoning those controls where it is quite clear that teachers have the common sense to think that they need a witness. But it is not always the teachers who end up doing these things. I have known of caretakers being asked to “take that mobile phone off young Jones”. It is about people who would have other motives for touching a child.
I also believe that no male adult should handle a young woman aged 12 or 13, and certainly not without a witness. If you talk to young girls, they say that they feel that that is an assault on their dignity and it is something that goes with them. I encourage the Minister to think carefully about ensuring that we have either the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—to confirm to the Front Bench, I am suggesting one of the amendments—or extremely clear guidance for teachers so that they know that they do not search in unsafe situations.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Perhaps I may start with some general comments about some of the themes that have emerged. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said about her underlying point, consistency, and the difficulty that we as legislators have in translating what we are trying to do in classrooms so that teachers know where they stand. That links to the point again about clarity in guidance, to which I will come back later.
My noble friend Lord Cormack, who has not spoken on the Education Bill previously, made a powerful speech about the importance of trust, which we all share. By the same token, some of the discussion today highlighted tensions between wanting to get to a position where we trust professionals more—and I think we would all agree with that—while wanting to have our own safeguards in place to ensure that in trusting them the things we most care about are protected. That is a difficult balance. My noble friend Lord Storey also threw in parents and lawyers for good measure.
It is absolutely right that schools are operating in a far more complicated environment than was the case in the past. I very much recognise the description given by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, of the purpose of a school, which I think still holds true today. But they certainly have to operate in a far more complicated world where they are asked to do much more by society than was once the case. I recognise that there are anxieties, which I will attempt to address, about the extension of the powers on search. I see them as an attempt to provide greater space in a very small number of exceptional cases for professional judgment to be exercised by heads and teachers, and to try to enlarge the space where we can trust heads to make the judgments that they believe are right to safeguard the children in their care.
There was broad agreement that we want head teachers and teachers to be able to ensure the safety of the children. In fact, it is important to say that most schools are safe places in which children can learn. It is important to get that in proportion and not to imagine that we are confronted with a problem that does not exist—it is important to focus on the problem that does exist.
When the previous Government introduced searching legislation, they recognised that unfortunately there are instances where children have items that can cause harm or injury to themselves or to others. Under existing law, members of school or college staff can search for a number of harmful items, including knives and weapons, alcohol, illegal drugs and stolen items. We are proposing a small extension to those powers so that teachers can keep all potentially harmful items out of the classroom.
I want to set out briefly, on the record, the safeguards within the legislation that ensure these powers are used appropriately. A search of a student without their consent can only be carried out in certain circumstances. First, the staff member conducting the search must be designated by the head teacher or the principal. I agree that the head teacher should consider the skills of any staff member they are designating, and I am sure that most will do so. In the light of views that were expressed in the debate on this issue in Committee, we have taken on board the recommendation that, when designating a member of staff, the head teacher should consider whether that member of staff needs any additional training. That recommendation is included in the department’s published advice to schools.
Secondly, a member of staff must reasonably suspect that the pupil is in possession of a prohibited item. A pupil cannot be randomly searched on a whim. Thirdly, staff may not require the student to remove any clothing other than outer clothing. These conditions—which are in law—will remain unchanged. It is also the case that a search can only be carried out by someone of the same sex as the student and in the presence of a witness except—and this is the change which we are seeking to make—in certain emergency situations. The requirement that the searcher is the same sex as the pupil and that a witness is present will continue to apply in nearly all searches, as a number of noble Lords have argued. Where it is practical to summon a staff member of the same sex as the pupil and a witness then a teacher wishing to conduct a search must do so. There is no disagreement at all on that.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
We have had a good debate on this set of amendments and once again we have explored some of the items that we considered very thoughtfully in Grand Committee. The important point to make is that we already have legislation on this issue. It is legislation that has been crafted over many years, it is carefully balanced and it does many of the things that noble Lords around the House have been talking about in terms of balancing the rights of parents, teachers and pupils. It goes some way towards doing what my noble friend Lady Morris considered, which is safeguarding pupils. I accept that that has to be at the heart of this.
What we are confronted with is a Bill that extends powers which already exist, and we are trying to reflect back to the Government the fact that if they are going to extend those powers, they still have to maintain the balance between all the rights we have talked about. I understand the noble Lord’s points about the role of guidance and, as someone quite rightly pointed out, in previous Governments we provided it as well. But guidance has a role to expand on the core principles set out in legislation. I think that that is the issue at heart here. We have lost sight of the core principles in terms of searches, discipline and how all that is carried out. We are attempting to redress the balance.
The noble Lord talked about training and the guidance, which has come out relatively late. I point out to him that, on the issue of training, the guidance states:
“There is no legal requirement for a head teacher or authorised member of staff to be trained before undertaking a ‘without consent’ search”.
I hope that, when the guidance is worked on, that wording will be reflected on further and redrafted into a more positive statement about the need for training. I certainly feel that the view of the House is that it is important. However, the noble Lord has gone some way to reassuring us on the point.
I come back to the more fundamental points that we have been addressing: whether it is right for these searches to be carried out alone, whether a witness needs to be present, and to some extent the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, about the need for same-sex searches. Our key point is that a witness is the key, core and fundamental protection of the rights both of the pupil and of the teacher. A number of noble Lords around the Chamber have talked about teachers being concerned about the extended role being placed upon them. They were fearful of their role and they are becoming more fearful of the expectations that are being laid on them. We have not heard of any pressure coming from teachers demanding this additional power. If anything, they are saying that they do not want the extra burden and responsibility. The issue of having a witness present is absolutely fundamental, and I shall return to it in a moment.
Finally, Amendment 10 concerns school rules. Again, the debate around the Chamber has highlighted how easy it is, if we are not careful, for rules from school to school to vary quite considerably. We have already heard that the rules for maintained schools may be different from independent schools, which in turn could be different from academies. Where is all this going in terms of a kind of consensus about what is right and what is wrong? All we have asked for is that the Secretary of State should issue guidance to specify what would be prohibited items in the broadest sense so that parents throughout the country would have confidence that there was some unanimity across different schools.
Our position is this. On Amendment 6, the noble Lord has gone some way to reassure us, and therefore I shall withdraw it shortly. But in doing so I give notice that we intend to divide the House on Amendment 7, which relates to the issue of a witness being present at all times. We think that that is a fundamental, core principle that should be on the face of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 6.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Low of Dalston
“( ) Regulations must make provision that if a pupil has been excluded from school for a fixed period on two or more occasions in a 12 month period or is at risk of permanent exclusion, a head teacher shall ensure that—
(a) there is an assessment of whether that child has unidentified learning needs;(b) there is a review of the effectiveness of the special educational provision being made if that pupil has identified special educational needs;(c) there is a review of the effectiveness of the reasonable adjustments being made if that pupil has disability.”
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 24 to 28. I shall speak as briefly as I can because these amendments had a good airing in Committee. However, I was unfortunately unable to be present when they were discussed and so I will take this opportunity to say a few words on them—not just for the sake of it, of course, for the Government have come some way to meet us, but because some concerns remain, which have been raised with me by the Special Education Consortium, on which it would be helpful to have reassurances from the Minister.
The amendments relate to Clause 4, which toughens up the arrangements for pupil exclusions. Clause 4 makes significant changes to the appeals process and removes the power from the proposed independent review panel to order the reinstatement of an excluded child except in cases of direct disability discrimination. There are many children with special educational needs who are not the subject of disability discrimination, and the purpose of the amendments is to introduce safeguards into the exclusion process to deal with their case.
Amendment 15 makes provision for regulations to require that where a pupil has been excluded from school for a fixed period on two or more occasions in a 12-month period, or is at risk of permanent exclusion, a head teacher must ensure that there is an assessment of whether the child has unidentified learning needs, that there is a review of the effectiveness of the special educational provision being made if the pupil has identified special educational needs, and that there is a review of the effectiveness of the reasonable adjustments being made if the pupil has a disability.
Amendments 24 to 28 would require regulations to make provision for a number of things: for parents to request a SEN expert to advise the panel on SEN issues; about the information parents are given on their right to request a SEN expert; the skills and qualifications that a SEN expert must have; the ability of the SEN expert to review the needs of the child and whether the school has put the correct support in place; the duty of the school to co-operate with the work of the SEN expert; and the ability of parents to select a SEN expert of their choice.
The Government have moved some way on these issues from where they started in the other place and it is clear that they do not wish to disadvantage children with special educational needs. Indeed, they have published draft guidance on exclusions which recognises the need to protect children with SEN, which I very much welcome. However, there are some outstanding concerns. The guidance is clear that head teachers should, as far as possible, avoid permanently excluding children with SEN. However, the guidance needs to be more specific and detailed at this point. Have all the steps been taken which need to be taken? This could include additional adjustments, critical extra support or other interventions which may play a crucial role in preventing exclusion. The guidance moves too quickly to discussing alternative placements without encouraging schools to consider whether they have answered all these questions. I should be grateful if the Minister could address this point in his response.
The guidance focuses heavily on preventing exclusions of statemented pupils. This is, of course, very important. However, it is important also to bear in mind that some 18 per cent of children, or roughly 1.4 million children, with a special educational need do not have a statement. I ask the Minister to consider extending the guidance to address the needs of children on school action or school action plus. Children on school action plus may have substantial needs but do not have the protection afforded by a statement of SEN. Such children are more than 20 times more likely to be excluded than the rest of the school population and so additional safeguards are clearly needed in their case.
I turn now to the remaining concerns about the SEN experts and the role they could play in advising an independent review panel. I welcome the clarity that the draft guidance brings in relation to the impartiality and expertise of the SEN expert, but retaining parental confidence is key to the success of these reforms and it is with that in mind that I have tabled these amendments again. The school’s role is key here and yet the guidance does not make clear that schools should be required to inform parents of their right to request a SEN expert when their child is excluded. The SEN expert clearly has a vital role to play in protecting the interests of the child and yet the guidance states in terms that the expert’s role does not include making an assessment of the pupil’s special educational needs or making a judgment about whether the school has taken the appropriate steps to meet the child’s needs.
As I have said, I welcome the guidance’s clarity on the need for an expert on special educational needs. However, it remains unclear whether this expert will have the requisite understanding and experience of the disability or SEN in question. I ask the Minister to consider revising the guidance to make it clearer that “expert” should also mean “relevant”.
My final point on the expert relates again to parental confidence. As it stands, the expert will be paid for by the local authority if the child is in a maintained school and by the school if in an academy or free school. While I welcome the guidance stating that local authorities should take reasonable steps to offer a choice of expert and that the expert cannot be connected with the case, it remains a concern that the paymaster should be the institution that the parent is appealing against. If it could be made unambiguously clear that parents could have the expert of their choice, that would surely help to bolster confidence in the independence of the system. I hope that the Minister can give me some reassurance on this point and on my other points as well. I beg to move.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low, who has made a powerful case articulating the concerns that still exist despite the good debate that we had in Committee on exclusions. I do not intend to rehearse the arguments deployed in Committee, save to remind the House that the Government’s equality impact assessment states that 72 per cent of all pupil exclusions from schools in England are youngsters with special educational needs. That 72 per cent is a very high figure, and one we need to keep in mind as we seek to resolve these issues.
Yesterday, I attended the launch of Finished at School, arranged by an organisation called Ambitious about Autism. This document poses the question:
“Where next for young people with autism?”.
It contains a number of case studies and poses questions about post-16 education for youngsters with learning difficulties, particularly with autism. Among its questions, it asks for a clear, legal right to educational support up to the age of 25 for young disabled people. It says that a funding system that gives young people and families more information, choice and support is needed, as is a cross-government focus on outcomes and destinations for young disabled people, and a further education workforce with the skills to support young people with autism to achieve their ambitions. Sarah Teather, the Minister of State responsible for these matters, was present and warmly welcomed the report yesterday. She said that the Government had every intention of living up to the ambitions set out in their Green Paper. All this is to be welcomed.
Before any noble Lord questions how my argument is relevant to the question before us now of exclusions, I will explain. In England, we have 66,000 young people with autism in the 16 to 25 age group. Yet only one young person in four with autism in that age cohort continues their education beyond school. That is why we have to do everything possible to reduce the huge level of SEN exclusions from our schools. For three-quarters of young people with autism, attending school until the age of 16 is the only education experience they will ever have. That is why we have to be so careful about exclusions.
On Amendment 15, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, pointed out, the draft guidance makes some welcome noises on this but the trigger for assessment is not as clear as this amendment would make it. On Amendments 24 and 25, it would appear that parents will be told that they can request a SEN expert of their own but we do not know how this will happen or what information parents will be entitled to receive in order to achieve that.
On Amendment 26, the guidance makes it clear that the SEN adviser should have appropriate training. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Low, I am still concerned that that training should be specific to the disability of the person with SEN being examined. On Amendment 27, the guidance is clear that it will not be the role of the SEN expert to undertake an assessment of needs, which is somewhat disappointing. Finally, on Amendment 28, it will be for the local authority to select the SEN experts for the parents to choose from.
There are still many questions to be asked and answered on the whole issue of the exclusion of youngsters with SEN. I look forward to the response from the Minister, who has demonstrated to me, and no doubt to others across the House, that he is listening. He certainly did that in Committee. I hope he listens to us now.
Baroness Warnock
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment introduced by my noble friend Lord Low. There is often a tendency to treat SEN as if it contains only one group of people. I have had many letters from parents who find that the school may think that anybody is an expert in their child’s particular special need as long as they are an expert in SEN. That is far from true. This is particularly noticeable in the case of autistic children where understanding the management of autism, as far as it can be managed particularly in the school context, is a very specialist subject. That is why so many autistic children are excluded from school. It is of enormous importance that the SEN expert, who must quite properly be on the panel, should be an expert in the relevant disability.
It is also important that one should not think of SEN as completely contained in those children who have statements. As my noble friend said, at least 18 per cent of people with disabilities do not have a statement. Long ago, this 18 per cent without a statement came to be known as the “Warnock children” because I was particularly interested in them. They were often neglected because their disability was not serious enough or perhaps did not seem so. Therefore the local authority had no statutory duty to provide for them.
Exclusions, which I am sure all noble Lords agree should be avoided as much as possible, need to be carefully scrutinised for any child who is on the lower grading of disability. This often involves children with behavioural and emotional difficulties, who are likely to behave badly at school and incur either temporary or ultimately permanent exclusion. I welcome the improvements that have been made and I think that things are going in the right direction. However, these questions about children who do not have statements and about the choice of relevant expertise on the panel are of the greatest importance.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 17, 19, 21 and 29, and also support Amendment 15 and Amendments 24 to 28 that the noble Lord, Lord Low, and my noble friend Lord Touhig have spoken to. In particular, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Low, that Amendments 24 to 28 have, in quite large measure, been addressed by the guidance that we received from the Minister yesterday. I am pleased that, certainly at the stage of the review panel, which is the final stage in the process of reviewing an appeal, the Government have seen fit to make provision for most of the things demanded in Amendments 24 to 28: for a special needs expert to give their views, for the parents to have a right to that, for the parents to be told about that, and so on. That is all welcome.
However, the Government guidance does not address Amendment 15, which is similar in intent to our Amendment 17. They both seek to ask—the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, just alluded to it—whether we can make sure that relevant information, particularly about a child’s special educational needs and especially unidentified needs, has been brought into the process not at the final stage of the review panel but at the very earliest stage of the head teacher’s decision and particularly at the point at which the responsible body—that is, the governors of the school—has been asked by parents to review that decision.
Amendments 17 and 19, in particular, concern the exclusion of pupils who have unidentified special needs. There is a principle of natural justice underlying the amendments: that where a child is at risk of exclusion, the decision-maker should have the full facts about any special educational needs—not at the final stage, as I say, but at the earliest possible stage. This is particularly important where needs have not been identified, so these amendments would ensure that children with special educational needs but whose needs have not been adequately addressed by their schools are not permanently excluded. In Amendment 17, that is by ensuring that when “the responsible body”—that is, the governing body—is making the initial decision on whether to affirm the head teacher's decision, it must,
“consider a report … from the special … needs co-ordinator”,
or expert. In Amendment 19, it is by ensuring that when the review panel is considering the case at the final stage, it has a report.
I accept that, alongside Amendments 24 to 28, Amendment 19 has largely been covered by the Government, which is great. Yet in relation to Amendments 15 and 17, while the Minister’s letter accompanying that guidance says that the responsible body as well as the review panel should take account of any relevant information in relation to pupils’ special educational needs when reviewing the decision to exclude there is, first, no requirement for the head teacher to take cognisance of that information when taking the initial decision to exclude and, at the level of the governing body in deciding whether to review that decision there is, secondly, no right for the parent to have a special needs expert. The guidance refers simply to the governing body having information on the child's special educational needs already held by the school. It does not precisely cover the circumstances where such needs have not been identified because it simply refers to the school making available to the governing body information that it already has, not seeking a wider assessment of the special educational needs that the child may have.
Surely it is better to have this expert view early in the process so that an exclusion may be prevented rather than only at the final stage, when a review panel is deciding whether to endorse the decision. That is particularly so given that the review panel does not, according to the Government's proposals, have the power to reinstate the pupil. I very much support Amendment 15 but if the noble Lord, Lord Low, decides not to press that amendment then I give notice that I would like to take the opinion of the House on Amendment 17, which would similarly bring the special needs expert person into the process earlier on to prevent the exclusions.
Amendment 21 would empower the exclusion review panels to require the schools to reinstate a pupil if they are satisfied that that is the right thing to do. We had a long debate about this in Grand Committee, when there was a very strong view across the Committee that this was a principle of natural justice—that if a decision made against someone is later found to have been flawed, that decision should not stand. Yet that principle is not upheld under the clause and the right to insist on the reinstatement of an unfairly excluded child is withdrawn.
In Grand Committee the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, among others, expressed similar concerns. It is rather surprising that the only amendment in relation to the power to reinstate has come from me and my noble friends, because I thought that the consensus of opinion in Committee was in support of that. I accept that heads may be in a difficult position if a panel were to reinstate, but we also had a sensitive discussion in Grand Committee about what should prevail in those circumstances. I think we agreed that given the impact on the child of having a decision by the review panel to reinstate, that is a far better outcome for the child, even if after discussion the child goes to another placement because of all the issues that have preceded that decision. It gives the child some rights in relation to flawed decisions which, at the moment, are not contained in the Bill.
Amendment 29, briefly, would require,
“a school to retain an excluded pupil”,
on its school roll,
“and to fund the pupil’s education until the pupil is no longer of compulsory … age”.
Our intention here was that the schools should retain financial responsibility but, more importantly, the responsibility for progressing that child and for their final outcomes in whatever alternative provision they went into. The intention was twofold: first, to give schools the opportunity to have a second thought before making the final decision on exclusion, knowing that they would retain responsibility for a child, as a kind of check and balance in that system and, secondly, to make sure that the school has some responsibility for the final outcomes for the child—even if the child goes elsewhere.
The Minister has sent me a letter and the department has issued a press notice on the pilots that the Secretary of State has announced, which are not the same as those proposed in our amendment but go some way to exploring the potential for schools to have responsibility for arranging an alternative decision. It is not the same as giving schools the responsibility of keeping a child on the roll. However, it involves the schools having the finance that goes with arranging alternative provision and the responsibility for ensuring the equality of that provision and for staying in touch, albeit more informally, with what happens to that child. I welcome that provision and I look forward to hearing the outcome of those pilots.
Although there is some movement in relation to Amendments 19 and 29 in the guidance, if the noble Lord, Lord Low, does not press his amendment to a vote, I would like to take the view of the House on Amendment 17.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I welcome the movement that there has been on the principles of Amendments 19 and 29 because they are sensible principles. The moves of the Government go some way to reassuring me there but I want to comment on Amendment 21, which is clearly a crux amendment in terms of overturning the powers that are specifically included under subsection (1) of the proposed new clause in Clause 4(2)—the power of a,
“head teacher of a maintained school”,
to exclude permanently.
I want to retain that power and I do not wish to give the review panel the powers to overturn it. The reason I give for that is that it would produce a virtually impossible situation for both the school and the pupil. The case would be a cause célèbre by the time it came to this stage and it would not do either any good. There is sufficient safeguard in the Bill for the school to be very careful before it moves to such an extreme conclusion. The safeguards come in subsection (4)(c) of the proposed new clause in Clause 4(2), where it is hinted—indeed, it is said explicitly at one point—that the review panel may consider the procedures of the responsible body as flawed,
“in the light of the principles applicable on application for judicial review”.
That seems a very serious warning to a responsible body, be it a head teacher or a governing body, before making such a final judgment.
I would hope that that would be sufficient to deter bodies from, not frivolously, but perhaps injudiciously or in some weakening sense, causing an individual to be excluded unnecessarily. The suggestion that the school would be considered responsible for the financial provision for the future education of that individual is a fair warning to the school. Even if the higher motive did not prevail, the lower one might well do so in the school taking responsibility for what could be a very expensive course of education. I beg to differ on Amendment 21.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, powerfully argued, we know that exclusion disproportionately affects some of the most vulnerable children in society. It affects particularly children with special educational needs or disabilities and we know that pupils with statements of SEN are eight times more likely to be excluded than an average child. That knowledge lies behind the amendments in this group, and I will try to address as best I can the concerns that underpin them.
There is agreement across this House that the goal of policy overall should be to reduce the number of exclusions by improving behaviour in schools. We are seeking to do that with these measures but we also know that there are many potential factors that contribute to a pupil’s behaviour. Therefore, there needs to be a wide-ranging response to this issue, which is why we are looking at trying to reform the whole exclusion process and trialling, as was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, a new exclusion system in local authorities across the country. I will come back to that in a moment. Overall, the aims of our reforms are to try to support schools to intervene earlier to identify underlying issues; to ensure that proper consideration is given to pupils’ needs throughout the exclusion process; and that where a child has to be excluded, to ensure that they receive a decent education, suited to their needs, so that exclusion from a school is not an exclusion from a good education.
We are trialling this new approach over the next three years and are looking at making the schools taking part in the trials responsible for any pupil they exclude, and accountable for both their attainment and attendance. Schools will get a devolved budget from which they will be expected to commission suitable alternative provision for excluded pupils, holding providers to account for the quality of the education that a pupil receives. Schools will also be able to use this budget to intervene with pupils at risk of exclusion—trying to spot these issues before it is too late—to tackle any underlying causes of poor behaviour.
The evaluation of these trials will pay particular attention to the outcomes for pupils who are most vulnerable to exclusion, such as pupils with special educational needs or those—we have not mentioned them today but we did in Committee—from ethnic groups with a disproportionately high exclusion rate.
Lord Elton
My Lords, will the noble Lord forgive me as I may have misunderstood him? Did I understand him to say that there is a separate budget for children who have been excluded? If so, would this be additional? That would be an inducement to exclude which is not what we wish to encourage.
Lord Hill of Oareford
The idea behind the trials—I think it is based on what has already been happening in Cambridgeshire—is that the budget which currently sits with the local authority to pay for alternative provision would effectively be devolved to schools. Schools in that case would have a very clear incentive not to end up dumping a child in expensive provision but to do their best early on to make the best possible provision they can and seek to avoid exclusion. In Cambridgeshire the number of permanent exclusions fell when it tried this approach from more than 500 a year to fewer than 100. However, the experiences of these authorities also show us that this is not something to be rushed and that it requires careful implementation. Our view would be that we should test the approach rigorously, evaluate it and then legislate.
The point about an automatic trigger was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Touhig. We are seeking to promote early intervention through the use of multi-agency assessments. Following comments made at an earlier stage, we have already made clear in our guidance that schools should consider arranging such an assessment for pupils who display continuous disruptive behaviour. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, said that the issue of early intervention was not properly addressed in the draft guidance. I thought we had addressed it but it is draft guidance so I welcome her views on it as I would views from other noble Lords. We have reinforced the importance of multi-agency assessments in the draft I have circulated. I would argue that we should leave the detail of the trigger for such assessments to the discretion of schools. I accept that in a lot of cases two fixed-period exclusions might be an appropriate trigger but in some cases a single serious incident of out-of-character poor behaviour might be sufficient cause for concern.
With regard to allowing independent review panels to be able to reinstate, there are cases—the Government would argue and I think it is a point that has just been echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood—where sometimes unfortunately exclusion is necessary as a last resort. We want a system which works for the education and welfare of all pupils at a school. It is right that, in some cases, schools should be directed to reconsider their decision to exclude a child. It is also right that a school should retain a level of responsibility towards a pupil, even if that pupil is excluded. However, a directed reinstatement is not necessarily in the best interests of an excluded pupil and, as we heard in Committee and from evidence given to this House and in another place from head teachers, it can have a devastating impact on the morale of the other pupils and staff.
We hope that our system of independent review panels will provide access to a quick, fair and independent process for reviewing an exclusion. However, we have put in safeguards in particular regarding the role of the special educational needs expert. Our revised guidance gives particular emphasis to ensuring the fair treatment of pupils who are most vulnerable to exclusion. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rix, who sadly is not here today, and to the noble Lord, Lord Low, who I am meeting again tomorrow on this subject. I am grateful to them for the meetings we have had on this issue and to the Special Educational Consortium. I am grateful for the very helpful contributions they have made while we have been developing the guidance.
The guidance makes clear that schools’ duties under the Equality Act not to discriminate against, harass or victimise pupils because of disability need be taken into account when deciding whether to exclude a pupil. It also says that schools must ensure that their policies, such as their behaviour policy, do not discriminate against pupils by unfairly increasing their risk of exclusion. We have retained the existing statutory guidance that, as far as possible, schools should avoid excluding a pupil with a statement of SEN. We have strengthened this position to make it clear that, where a school is considering the permanent exclusion of a pupil with a statement, it should begin a discussion with the responsible local authority, highlighting its concerns about the placement of the pupil in the school and the possible need for an alternative placement. I hope that these discussions would decrease the likelihood of pupils with a statement being excluded. Where a pupil does need to be excluded, we hope it will help support the local authority to ensure that appropriate provision is put in place quickly.
Amendment 17 relates to the governing body review of exclusion. We think that where a pupil is permanently excluded there needs to be a quick and fair process for reviewing this decision and that the process should give proper consideration to a pupil’s SEN. The governing body review provides an appropriate and proportionate first stage for reviewing a head teacher’s decision to exclude.
The revised guidance makes clear that governing body reviews should have access to relevant information about a pupil’s SEN, such as a statement of special educational needs and the outcome of any multiagency assessment arranged by the school. I agree that in many cases an important part of this information would be a report from the special educational needs co-ordinator, but there may be occasions where another member of staff is better placed to provide detailed information on a child’s special needs. I think that requiring information about the pupil’s SEN to be provided to the governing body is absolutely right but I do not want to prescribe precisely who needs to provide it.
Where a pupil is excluded, there must be a quick process for reviewing the decision. As we have said, we think that the governing body provides an appropriate and proportionate first stage for reviewing a head teacher’s decision to exclude. Where a governing body takes the difficult decision to uphold a permanent exclusion, there must be a right for a parent to ask for it to be reviewed by an independent body. Our independent review panels will allow that to happen quickly and will improve on the current system in providing extra help for excluded pupils with SEN. The introduction of an SEN expert offers a significant additional safeguard. The SEN expert would be free to submit written evidence to an independent review panel but they must be present at the review. We propose to place a requirement on independent review panels that, where appointed, they should seek and have regard to the expert’s views.
As regards the detailed points on regulations made by the noble Lords, Lord Touhig and Lord Low, I can reassure them that many of the things they are seeking to place in regulations will be there. Regulations will set out the right for all parents to request an SEN expert and put a duty on schools to notify parents of this right when a governing body upholds a permanent exclusion. We are clear that the expert must be someone with sufficient relevant professional expertise—that point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Low—to be able to offer expert advice; for example, an educational psychologist. Because we do not want inadvertently to rule out someone who would be suitable for this role in a particular case, we intend that the details of who is eligible to be an SEN expert will be clarified in statutory guidance rather than in regulation, so that review panels have discretion to choose the most appropriate expert in each case. We have had very helpful discussions with the Special Educational Consortium about the sort of person who would be eligible for this role which we are keen to continue.
I agree with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Low, that all parties to an independent review panel must have trust in the advice of the SEN expert. This is why we are proposing to make it clear that local authorities and academies should offer parents a choice of SEN expert in order to reinforce their confidence in the appointment. These expectations will be set out in statutory guidance. The guidance also makes clear that where a pupil has identified special educational needs, we expect schools to provide to the panel, and the expert, any relevant information about those needs and the steps that the school is taking to manage them. This includes a pupil’s statement of SEN, the annual review or the outcome of a multiagency assessment. Parents will also be able to submit written evidence explaining if they feel that their child’s special educational needs are relevant when making their case to the review panel.
Parents will have the right to request an SEN expert and the expert will be able to advise the panel on the parent’s case. That could include advising a panel on whether the actions taken by a school to identify or address a pupil’s SEN might be considered reasonable and whether a school might reasonably have been expected to intervene earlier in order to prevent the exclusion. We also propose to include an evaluation of the role of SEN expert as part of a study of the relative benefits between independent review panels and the First-tier Tribunal. This will provide us with the views of all parties on the effectiveness of the role of the SEN expert, including parents and pupils. We will consider the findings of this review in deciding whether there is a need to strengthen the regulations or guidance to ensure that the role is being used effectively.
I am sorry to have spoken at some length but these are important issues and I was keen to set out the Government’s response in as much detail as I could because I know that there have been concerns. I hope I have reassured noble Lords that we are taking steps to support schools to identify and address pupils’ special educational needs and we are committed to the effective use of the SEN expert. We believe that the new process, supported by the revised guidance, provides significant additional safeguards for pupils with SEN. I will continue to seek the input of noble Lords and the Special Educational Consortium in finalising the guidance. As I said, I am meeting the noble Lord, Lord Low, tomorrow and I am sure that we shall discuss the matter further then. With that, and looking forward to that conversation, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I am very grateful to all those who have spoken, particularly to the Minister for his very full response. It should not have wearied the House as a lot of issues required to be addressed. The Minister has done justice to them in addressing them so comprehensively. In his response he has shown that he has been listening to the debate, as the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, requested. That being the case, it would be churlish not to withdraw the amendment.
The Minister has indicated that quite a lot of what these amendments are asking for will be included in regulations or statutory guidance and that there will be ongoing consultation with noble Lords and the sector about the form of those regulations and the guidance—at least, I take it that that is what there will be ongoing discussion about. The Minister has also shown that he was responsive to the points that were very well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, about the importance of intervening early. The more we can get that into the guidance, the better. The more we can indicate that the guidance is meant to apply not just to pupils with statements but to other pupils with special educational needs who are at risk of exclusion, the better it will be. However, we can address that issue, along with others, in the ongoing discussions that we will have with the Minister. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Walmsley
“( ) requiring the responsible body to ensure that the pupil—(i) has an opportunity to make representations in relation to any exclusion under subsection (1) or (2), and(ii) receives relevant information that may be relevant to such representations in language capable of being readily understood by the pupil;”
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 16 and to speak to all the other amendments in the group, apart from Amendment 31, because they are also in my name. As we have heard, Clause 4 proposes to change the arrangements for hearing appeals against permanent exclusions from school. Many issues arise in the case of the high proportion of children in this situation who have special needs. Clearly, a driver for this legislation has been those head teachers who have asked the Government to change the system because they have been subjected to what they believe are bad decisions and have lost confidence in it. In such a situation the logical thing is to change a bad system to a better system. Instead, I believe the Government are in danger of changing a bad system into an inferior system.
In Committee, I asked the Government to consider allowing all exclusion appeals to go to the First-tier Tribunal, where provision for children with special needs is appealed. That would mean changing to a system which one of my advisers said is light years better than what we have now, with a qualified solicitor of seven years’ experience in the chair. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will confirm on the record that the Government have agreed to pilot this idea and test it out. I am grateful for that, which is why I have not laid that amendment again but instead have laid this group of amendments which seeks to improve the Government's independent review panels in the mean time. However, I hope that my noble friend will confirm that the pilot will be a proper one and give the First-tier Tribunal the same decision-making powers that appeals panels have now, including to reinstate a child if, in its vast experience, it considers that an injustice has taken place, bearing in mind, as always, the best interests of the other children in the school as well as those of the excluded child.
Another idea has been put to me only in the past few days. I wonder whether the Government might consider whether the magistrates’ courts might have a role which does not suggest that either party has committed a criminal offence. They are used to dealing with young people and they understand how to judge difficult cases, so that is an idea worth considering while we are piloting alternatives.
Amendment 16 requires that a child has an opportunity to make his own representations to the IRP and receives all relevant information to help him to do so. I hope that this will also be allowed in the First-tier Tribunal pilot. It is now becoming good practice for children to be able to represent themselves in all sorts of spheres, according to Article 12 of the UNCRC, including in SEND tribunals. It would make sense for them to be able to do it here too.
Amendment 20 is about the training of panel members, which should be provided by accredited independent providers and cover all relevant issues, as outlined in my amendment. Amendment 30 defines what is meant by independent and accredited providers. Amendment 22 would ensure that the panel understands whether it was being asked to consider a case that should really be before SEND and then be able to refer that case to that First-tier Tribunal instead. Amendment 23 seeks to support the head teacher in a situation where the independent review panel has asked the school to reinstate the child, perhaps because it feels that exclusion was too harsh a punishment for the offence. Under the legislation, of course, we know that it cannot insist. However, in such a situation the head teacher may wish to put a condition on accepting the child back and involve the parents in ensuring the child’s future good behaviour in the interests of the other pupils in the school. That is why I have suggested that a parenting contract or parenting order might be a good idea—something else in the head teacher’s armoury.
Finally, Amendment 32 would provide a last resort for the child and his parent if he believed that the IRP had erred on a point of law. It would allow an appeal to an Upper Tribunal, rather than judicial review. An Upper Tribunal is a judicial body with expertise in this area. SEN cases already go to it and it consists of members of the senior judiciary. They look at a case on the basis of error of law or fact, so moving beyond the process under which the decision was taken, which is all that a judicial review can look at. The Upper Tribunal can look at a panel decision and remake it, or refer it back to the original panel.
Of course, we all hope that, if properly trained, the independent review panels would make sound decisions and that is what this clause seeks to ensure. However, no one is infallible, so this is a failsafe natural justice mechanism which I hope commends itself to my noble friend the Minister. I beg to move.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I want to briefly speak to Amendment 31 in this group. This is a very simple amendment which would ensure that Clause 4 on exclusions and all that we have been talking about would apply also to academies. As the clause stands, it says:
“Regulations may make provision for this section and for regulations made under this section to apply, with prescribed modifications, in relation to Academies or a description of Academy”.
This amendment simply changes the “may” to “must”, so that the exclusions legislation and the guidance covered in Clause 4 apply equally to all state-funded schools. We cannot see any reason why these provisions, especially with the movement already made by the Government in guidance, should not apply also to academies. Why should the parents of children at academies not have the right to a special needs expert at the review panel? Why should the detailed requirements now in the guidance on the head teacher at the decision-making stage, on the governing body and on the review panel not also apply to the arrangements in academies?
Apart from the point of principle, there is a very practical reason why we need to do this. It is clear that the Government, in clauses we will discuss later—with presumptions that all new schools will be academies, with powers for the Secretary of State to intervene in schools that are in difficulties so that they immediately become academies—intend, as they have made clear, that as many schools as possible, if not all schools, should become academies in the fullness of time. If that is to happen, if we have many more schools becoming academies, I cannot see why we are discussing this legislation. If it does not apply to academies, it raises the question of the point of the guidance—it will become redundant if all schools become academies and this clause does not apply to academies. So we have very practical reasons for making sure, right at the outset, that this applies to all state-funded schools, including academies. I hope that the Minister will accept this amendment and I look forward to his response.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, let me start by talking about supporting pupils to participate appropriately in the exclusion process. I very much agree that that is important. The guidance on exclusions, which I have circulated, makes clear our view that pupils should be actively supported to participate at all stages of the process. In strengthening this aspect of the guidance we sought the views of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England. In response to its suggestions, the guidance now sets out: first, that head teachers should take steps to allow a pupil to present his case before an exclusion decision is made and take account of significant contributory factors, such as bereavement or bullying, that come to light after an incident of poor behaviour; secondly, that consideration should be given to how to enable and encourage the excluded pupil to participate in governing body reviews and independent review panels; and, thirdly, that independent review panels should be conducted in a non-threatening and non-adversarial manner. I am happy to discuss this draft guidance with my noble friend Lady Walmsley and will consider any suggestions that she may have.
I also agree with her point that schools should be able to agree with a parent clear measures to address poor behaviour when a pupil returns to school following exclusion. She talked about parenting orders and contracts. In fact, schools do have the power to agree a parenting contract or to apply for a parenting order, so I hope she will feel reassured that that is possible as things stand.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, raised the question of how the new exclusions process will be applied to academies. I can reassure noble Lords that the requirements will be the same on all state-funded schools, including academies and free schools. We have already updated academy funding agreements to reflect the changes proposed in the Bill, but the Bill also allows us to apply requirements that are placed on maintained schools equally on academies through regulations. I hope that that reassures the noble Baroness. As for training, which is an important issue, if a parent requests an independent review of an exclusion decision it is important that independent review panel members have the capacity to perform their role effectively. As is currently the case, local authorities and academies will be required to provide training to panel members every two years on specific areas set out in regulations. No individual will be permitted to be a panel member without receiving this training, which must cover issues such as the legislative requirements in relation to exclusions; the need for the panel to observe procedural fairness and the rules of natural justice; and the duties of the review panel under the Equality Act 2010.
I understand the point made by my noble friend about the quality of training that some local authorities may provide or commission, but I am not sure that we would want to introduce a requirement for independence which would prevent a local authority which can deliver high-quality training itself from doing so. We want to draw on best practice in training for other bodies that make important administrative decisions. To that end, we are talking to the Ministry of Justice about what more we can do to support this training to ensure that local authorities are clear about the new requirements and are able to develop or commission effective training.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for his response. On the issue of the pupil’s voice, I thank him for pointing out what it says in guidance. I will have another look at it to see whether I wish to feed in any suggestions for strengthening it to ensure that that is done. I think that a child should have a right to have his or her voice heard, rather than just have the head teacher encouraged to involve them in the process. It depends how strong the guidance is, when I come to look at it.
I am grateful to him for pointing out that parenting orders can already be used by head teachers and there may also be other measures that a head may wish to use as a condition of accepting a child back when there has been some sort of bad behaviour. I also very much welcome what the noble Lord said about the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones; that this will be made to cover academies and free schools through regulations. As she rightly said, if all schools became academies this clause would be totally unnecessary. On training, the Minister pointed out that local authorities and academies will have to provide it. In that situation, specifying independent training may not be appropriate. I accept that local authorities may well have the skills in-house and I would not want to press that particular amendment as I have had a good answer to it.
The Minister said that the parent may request an independent review panel instead of a First-tier Tribunal. I think it is more likely to be the other way round; they will ask for a First-tier Tribunal rather than an independent review panel if they can find a way of suggesting that their child has special needs. The decisions of First-tier Tribunals are likely to be better-quality decisions, but I will also leave that point. On the study, I had the impression that it was to be a pilot that would take place in a part of the country where a First-tier Tribunal could hear all the appeals. That is not what the Minister said in his speech, so I need to go away and inwardly digest the significance of that. As I say, that is not what I understood from behind-the-scenes discussions. I may feel the need to come back to that.
On the last resort, the Minister points out that decisions of the IRPs are indeed judicially reviewable, and in some cases the child might have the opportunity of going to the Secretary of State, depending on the sort of school he has been excluded from. I have to say that neither judicial review nor the Secretary of State is very accessible. Having been through the process of judicial review, I was fortunate to have the support of my husband who is a QC, so managed to get through the process successfully. Most parents of children who will be appealing against exclusions do not have the advantage of the support of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford. I therefore do not think that the provision is quite good enough as a last resort. That is another matter that I want to think about but I will not press any of the amendments tonight. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
“( ) requiring the responsible body to consider a report about the pupil from the special educational needs co-ordinator when considering whether a pupil should be excluded;”
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I gave notice that if the noble Lord, Lord Low, withdrew his amendment, I would take the opinion of the House on this one, which has the same aim. It would bring forward to an earlier stage in the process a requirement that the governing body seeks the views and assessment of a special needs expert. It is in the interests of children to bring that forward earlier in the process. I beg to move.
India
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Parekh
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of economic, political and cultural relations between the United Kingdom and India.
Lord Parekh
It is a great privilege to initiate this debate. Since it is a common practice to declare an interest, I begin by saying that I have close ties with India, I actively participate in the public life of India, I have been a recipient of two of its highest honours and I am a member of the Indian Prime Minister's global advisory committee.
For us in the UK, relations with India are of the utmost importance. Britain shaped the cultural and political physiognomy of modern India. Indians are a significant presence in the UK: in your Lordships' House alone, they number about 15. India is also an emerging economic power, destined to play an important global role in the decades to come. It is therefore important that we should periodically take a careful look at relations between the two countries and ask how they can be strengthened yet further.
At the political level, there is considerable co-operation and mutual respect between the two countries. The UK is greatly admired for its good sense and maturity. However, there are important areas of disagreement. Given India's colonial past and view of the world, it does not share our enthusiasm for high-minded so-called liberal intervention in the affairs of other countries. It is also critical of our fluctuating policy in Afghanistan. India has also felt, both in public and parliamentary debate, that we misused the United Nations resolution in Libya to justify action that the resolution did not justify, and undertook actions such as equipping the rebel army that the resolution did not permit. This is why India voted, and continues to vote, in a different way from us in the United Nations, though it has not been openly critical of us. We should appreciate this difference of view and not allow it to stand in the way of good relations. This is what most successive British Governments have often done.
India's ambition to secure a permanent seat on the Security Council is legitimate. It has more than 1 billion people and represents a distinct voice in the global conversation. Its claim is no less weighty than China's, and perhaps weightier than our own or that of France. It is only a matter of time before India's claim is met, since about 120 members of the General Assembly have indicated their consent. We can expedite this and earn ourselves good will by, for example, moving a resolution in the General Assembly, on our own or with France, as we did in the case of Libya and as we have done in other cases.
For years, India has been a victim of cross-border terrorism and has repeatedly complained about it—but we did not take it seriously until it began to affect us at home. Even now, we have not shown sufficient sensitivity to India's deepest concerns. I am not suggesting, even for a moment, that India's policy on, say, Kashmir is right. Like many in your Lordships' House, and many in India itself, I have been greatly critical of it, and I wish that it had been different. However, that cannot justify the horrendous acts of terrorism that we have seen in Delhi, Mumbai and other parts of India. We in Britain could give India greater active support and enable it to sustain its open and democratic society.
At the economic level, our ties with India are strong but could be stronger. India is the second largest investor in the UK after the United States. More than 500 Indian companies are based in the UK, and their businesses generate more than £14 billion. Our visa regime stands in the way of intracompany transfers, and some Indian companies have begun to move to Belgium. That cannot be in our interest. We are the fourth largest investor in India, but our investment is about 5 per cent of its total foreign direct investment. That is a very small amount for a country of our size and stature.
India is expanding its infrastructure in a very big way, involving nearly 1 trillion rupees. We ought to be involved in a much more active way than we are. India does not need to raise money in the UK market: it has enough indigenous resources. What it needs is equipment, expertise, consultants, efficient organisation and experience. That is what we are ideally equipped to provide. I am sorry to see that we have not been involved as actively and comprehensively as we should have been in India's programme for the development of its infrastructure, such as roads, airports and energy plants.
Of course, India needs to do more itself. It needs to improve its bureaucracy and carry through its programme of reform to make itself a more attractive destination for foreign investment. However, that has not stopped other countries such as Malaysia, France and the United States from stepping up their investment. There is no reason why we should not do the same. Sometimes I have a feeling that we—or at least our companies—tend to be averse to risk and seek a guaranteed return before we consider investing. That attitude needs to change. It is only when we seek active engagement with India that we will have a moral right to put pressure on it to reform its policies.
I now turn briefly to an area that matters a great deal to me and to India: the field of higher education. India is expanding its higher education at an unprecedented rate. Nearly 700 to 800 new universities are expected, along with new Indian institutes of technology and central universities. There is enormous scope for Britain. The UK India Education and Research Initiative has made a significant contribution but we need to do much more. I welcome the announcement of UKIERI stage 2, but it will need significantly enhanced financial support from public and private sources. It also needs to be given a new direction and greater depth. For example, British universities should be encouraged to set up campuses in India. I assume that the Indian Government’s attitude will be a little clearer than it is at present. There is no reason why our great universities cannot adapt academic departments in Indian universities and build up their teaching and research capacities.
India badly needs highly qualified faculty staff, and here too Britain can do much. For several years I have been urging a scheme. We have a large number of professors who either have come to the end of their career and retired or wish to take early retirement. There is no reason why they cannot be persuaded or incentivised to spend a lot of time in India. They have their occupational pension guaranteed here, and the Indian Government could be asked to top it up and make it attractive for them to spend either a few years in India, or part of every year teaching and guiding research in Indian universities. A rough calculation suggests that there are at least 3,500 university professors in the natural and social sciences who, I am told, would find it attractive to go and teach and do research in Indian universities. We ought to tap into that resource.
University education is not the only area of co-operation. Much can and should be done at the level of secondary education. There could be sizeable exchanges of teachers. That would benefit both teachers and students in the two countries, and would build strong and lasting intellectual and cultural bonds. If I may digress for a moment: I have a family foundation, and it has been arranging exchanges of teachers between a top school here and a top school in India. During the three years that the scheme has been going, I have been struck by the enormous enthusiasm that the English teachers have aroused in Indian schools. A teacher of English from a top school here teaching Shakespeare in an Indian school has been a remarkable experience for Indian students, and I know from my close contact with that school that many students are immensely excited and have turned to literature as their special field of interest. If one school can do that, imagine hundreds of schools being able to do that.
Finally, I think the Government have made a great mistake in restricting post-study work visas. Under the current scheme, students coming here can work for two years after graduating. This allows them to recoup part of their expenses and to contribute their skills to this country. It benefits both sides. The restrictions that the Government are proposing are very rigid. Last year, 39,000 students were guaranteed a visa to work for up to two years. The Government want to reduce that by half, which is extraordinary. Germany has decided that students who have graduated will be allowed to stay up to a year to look for an appropriate job if they have sufficient maintenance funds. New Zealand and Canada have done the same. I am really sorry that we seem to be creating a situation in which we are discouraging Indian students from coming here.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, for initiating this debate and offer him my apologies for arriving a tad late in the Chamber. The joy of Divisions is that you get talking to a colleague or two outside, and it is funny how time flies, but there we are. Life is like that sometimes.
The noble Lord spoke very eloquently about the importance of the relationship between India and Britain. There are many in this Chamber and in our country, and I count myself among them, who have a very strong love and affinity for India. In my case, it is very personal. Both my parents were born in pre-partition India. My mother is from Jodhpur and my father is from Gurdaspur, so the cultural and family ties to the great country of India remain very strong. I am also reminded that we as a country share many strong ties with India. The Indian diaspora is very strong here in the United Kingdom. It is one of the strongest ethnic communities, if not the largest, here in Great Britain, but with that comes responsibility. The Indian diaspora here has responded most positively. If you look around Britain today, there are success stories in every field. In commerce, business, education and, dare I say, even in politics, you will see the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi diaspora—the subcontinent that was greater India—today flourishing in every element of British society.
One cannot move forward and talk about India and Britain without mentioning sport. If one reflects, the noble game of cricket resonates in both India and England, although if we reflect on the current results between the two countries, the less said the better.
In the time I have today, I wish to focus briefly on business and commerce. When my right honourable friend David Cameron became Prime Minister, one of the first trips he made, along with leading lights from Britain, was to India. One of the things you do in government is give a very strong statement of intent. That intent is very clear: Britain believes not only in commercial ties with India, but in India itself. It is the largest democracy in the world. It has shown inspiration in its culture, history and people.
If you look at the Indian economy, many would be proud of it. I was reading a recent report that said that India’s growth rate slowed somewhat this year. When you see that it slowed to 7.7 per cent, you perhaps reflect on the strength and vitality of the Indian economy. When we read about India, we look towards its emerging middle classes. It is a very aspirant and ambitious nation and is making great strides in IT and technology industries. In the past week or so, I have had the good fortune to attend a couple of events. One was the Institute of Directors event that was organised by the Indian IOD. It was most heart-warming to see that one of the key areas of focus for Indian business is climate change. That again shows that Indian commerce and Indian business are responding not just to the needs of their nation but to the global challenges of climate change.
Yesterday, I attended an event organised by India800. It is not an organisation that I was that familiar with, but it kept my attention. It focused not only on the successes in India, which are many, but did not forget that poverty is still an important challenge facing India. There are between 270 million and 450 million people still living on a dollar a day in India, so the challenges are immense, but that is where business and commerce count. Therefore, I believe that it is incumbent on the British Government to extend their ties to India: ties of culture, education, to which the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, referred, and, most importantly, business. We in Britain have a large stake in India, but let us not forget that India has a large stake in Britain as well.
Ultimately, when we reflect on the two nations that are India and Britain, we are tied together by history, by culture and, most importantly, by people. It was the noble Mahatma Gandhi who said:
“A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people”.
And India resides in the hearts and in the soul of Britain.
Lord Loomba
My Lords, I, too, apologise for my late arrival. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, for initiating this important debate. As a British Indian, I am delighted to participate in the debate on UK-India relations today. India is the largest democracy in the world. It has a population of over 1.2 billion, which is 17.3 per cent of all the people living on this planet. It is more than the population of the US, the UK, France and Russia combined. They are the four permanent members of the UN Security Council, so why is India not a member of the council? I am pleased that the UK supports India's membership of the UN Security Council. Therefore, I ask the Minister: how can Britain work with other UN nations to ensure that India has its legitimate place on the Security Council?
India gained its independence 63 years ago, and since then it has gone from strength to strength economically and politically. A country that rose from poverty and illiteracy to become an advanced country is now competing with the rest of the world. India is now an economic power which is recognised all over the world. Recently, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in New York that the US should learn from emerging powers like India and Brazil to put economics at the centre of foreign policy if it is to retain its position as a global powerhouse.
The legacy of the British Raj may have been a long freedom struggle, but it has created a lasting friendship between India and Britain. It is no surprise that India is now a major investor in the United Kingdom, and credit goes to people like Ratan Tata and many other businesses from India.
Our Prime Minister, David Cameron, and many Cabinet Ministers have visited India since the coalition Government was formed last year. These visits have seen the relationship between the two countries elevated in line with the Queen’s Speech in Parliament in May last year. I am also aware that many people in the House of Lords have close ties with India. My noble friends Lady Williams of Crosby and Lord Dholakia, and many other Peers, are heavily involved in working with India.
The strength of India can be explained in three words: democracy, diversity and diaspora—the three famous Ds. India is the largest democracy in the world. The transition of power between government and opposition has always been smooth. This may be a lesson to other neighbouring countries. This is what democracy is all about and this is what the world values.
India is a diverse country of many religions and cultures. Different religions are able to coexist side by side. The population of Muslims in India is greater than in Pakistan. Sikhs can build gurdwaras, Hindus can build temples and Muslims can build mosques, and they all live in harmony together. Let us not forget the Jewish community. The Paradesi Synagogue in Kochi in south India is the oldest active synagogue in the Commonwealth. It is important to note that in the past five years India has been represented by a Muslim president, a Sikh prime minister and a Catholic Christian leading the ruling party. Over 100,000 women play an important role in state and government initiatives.
There is a strong Indian diaspora of over 25 million people. They are contributing both economically and politically. We are loyal to Britain but our ties are never weakened as far as India is concerned. My own charity, the Loomba Foundation, is educating thousands of children of poor widows in India. I declare an interest as founder, chairman and trustee of the Loomba Foundation.
We want the Minister to inform us how he sees the links between India and Britain developing. We are equal partners in global politics and it is time to ensure that this is reflected in our politics on issues such as commerce, science and technology, immigration, defence, education and others.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, 2011 is the 20th anniversary of India’s economic liberalisation. In 1991, India was a closed, protected, insular, inward-looking country and economy. Over the last 20 years, India has taken a gigantic leap on to the world stage as an emerging global economic superpower. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, while our economy is struggling, India’s GDP is today is growing at over 7 per cent.
In 2003 I was appointed the UK chair of the Indo British Partnership by the British Government. Subsequently I was the founding chair of the UK India Business Council and am now its president. I have been privileged to accompany our current Prime Minister and both his predecessors on their visits to India, and the relationship between Britain and India is today stronger than ever.
Trade between our countries has increased from £5 billion a year in 2003 to £13 billion today. However, we are just scratching the surface. As the Indian Cabinet Minister Kamil Nath said when I shared a platform with him in London last week, investment has to be a two-way street, and we have seen huge investment going both ways. As the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, said, Tata is now Britain’s largest manufacturer, owning Jaguar Land Rover and Corus, British Steel. We have seen giant investments going the other way into India—for example, Vodafone.
My own business Cobra Beer formed a recent joint venture with Molson Coors, the last of the global giant brewers to go into India, and we now own the only brewery in the state of Bihar. I am a director of Booker Group plc, a FTSE 250 company, and the original sponsors of the Man Booker Prize, which is being announced this evening. At Booker we have just opened our second wholesale cash and carry branch in Pune after having opened up in Mumbai two years ago.
This investment has been happening but it is against a backdrop where actually very few reforms have been taking place in India. The major reform of air service between the two countries opened up in 2004, and now there are over 100 flights a week, but there are so many other barriers and so many reforms we are crying out for. As the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, said, foreign universities still cannot operate in India. British lawyers cannot operate and open up offices in India. British banks can only open a handful of branches a year. Our insurance companies can only own 26 per cent of Indian insurance companies. Lloyd’s of London is the world’s most important reinsurance market but India is the only major country in the world where it cannot operate to this day.
I chair the Cambridge-India Partnership Advisory Group and we have so many exciting plans for India, to build on our strong links going back to Jawaharlal Nehru and beyond. All these reforms, if they took place, would benefit India and would help it attract the $1.7 trillion of infrastructure investment it desperately needs. As members of the EU, we cannot even enter into a bilateral free trade agreement with India, but have to do this through the EU. Could the Minister inform us when the EU-India free trade agreement that we have been talking about for four years will actually be signed?
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, for initiating this really important debate. We sit together on the Prime Minister of India’s global advisory council. India is a country of two stories: an emerging global economic superpower on the one hand and a country where, as we have heard, hundreds of millions of people live on less than a dollar a day. India is a country where corruption has now reached tipping point in its prevalence and magnitude, leading to the emergence of Anna Hazare and the Jan Lokpal Bill.
There are those in the UK who say that we should not be providing aid to India. However, I have seen the amazing work that DfID, the British Council and our team at the British high commission are carrying out on the ground; for example, in Bihar, where we have our brewery. Bihar is a state of over 100 million people and one of the poorest states in India, but through sheer good governance it has been turned around over the last six years under the leadership of its inspirational Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, and the Deputy Chief Minister, Sushil Modi. There are initiatives to provide bicycles for schoolgirls and uniforms and books for schoolchildren. The Chief Minister is recruiting 300,000 school teachers and introducing the Right to Public Service Act—all this is turning around the state. However, we are talking about a country of 1.2 billion people.
As a country, Britain is so close to India. Our relationship is wonderful and yet we shoot ourselves in the foot by introducing the new Immigration Rules. Until 2010, the number of Indian students had been increasing multifold. I am a member of the advisory board of the Judge Business School at Cambridge University and the Cranfield School of Management. Both institutions have seen a significant drop in the number of applicants from India, and I am hearing that the Indian students are saying, “Does Britain want us any more?”. What are we doing? Do we not want to attract the brightest and the best? Dr Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister, is himself a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge. My own family has been educated here for three generations. These are generation-long links.
What are the Government doing to rectify this situation? I am a member of the UK-India Round Table. I fought so hard for foreign graduates to work in the UK for two years after graduation, as the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, spoke of. There is a perception that this rule has been removed and this is deterring so many foreign students, especially Indians, as this is a way of earning extra money to pay for the expensive higher education and to gain some work experience in this country. To build bridges, can the Minister clarify the situation?
Our links with India are so strong, whether it is the armed forces, culture, sport, cricket or the four Indian Booker Prize winners. We could do so much more to further our political links; we could have more exchange between our two Parliaments. Could the Minister look into this opportunity to further our political links?
To conclude, the reality is that the whole world has woken up to “incredible India”. In the words of Dr Manmohan Singh:
“India is an idea whose time has come”.
India was highlighted in the Queen’s Speech by the Prime Minister as a country we want to have an “enhanced partnership” with. However, we need to do so much more. We are competing with the rest of the world to engage with India. Given our special relationship, we in Britain could do so much more to encourage British industry, particularly SMEs, to do business with India. If only India would implement all the reforms that have been on the cards for so long. If those two things happened, I would be happy, and in the words of Mahatma Gandhi:
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”.
Lord Bhattacharyya
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Parekh for securing this debate, and I declare my interest as chairman of Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick.
In this debate, it is worth recalling the long history of Indian innovation. Some noble Lords may have visited the Qutb Minar in Delhi and seen the Iron Pillar which stands there unrusted since its forging a millennium and a half ago. For an engineer, the knowledge that Indian metallurgists were able to produce rust-proof iron is an inspiration still worth studying today. If the West had had such technology then, the history of the world might have been quite different. This reminds me of an important truth: only innovation and partnership can drive global progress.
As time is short, I shall focus on the economic aspects of the relationship between India and the UK. Britain used to have a dominant position in Indian trade, but we now account for less than 1.5 per cent of Indian imports. India’s desire for economic independence and Britain’s post-war atrophy both contributed to decades of decline in our partnership. India was not an easy place to do business—but while Japan helped build the Maruti and more, Britain still stood for the Morris Ambassador.
Since the early 1990s, when the then Foreign Secretary liberalised India’s economy from the finance ministry, India has enjoyed huge growth, topping 8 per cent a year. Indian GDP has more than trebled in that time and per capita GDP has grown by over a thousand dollars. So it is no surprise that everyone is trying to woo India. This weekend I was in Mumbai, as I am once or twice a month, and the number of businesses and delegations there to drum up trade is astonishing.
The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, anticipated this growth in 1993, setting up the Indo British Partnership. He was the first to consider India as equal, with the equally charismatic Richard Needham as Minister of State, with whom I had the pleasure of serving as a founding board member. The Indo British Partnership was a business-led initiative. Our partners were not the Government but the Confederation of Indian Industry. This gave British business a real profile for the first time, and our exports to India surged by 10 per cent a year in the 1990s, increasing to 14 per cent since the millennium. Yet this did not prevent our share of Indian imports falling from 6 per cent to a mere quarter of that. The perception was that Britain was more interested in Europe and the Atlantic alliance. What is more, the language we used was often counterproductive. Britain should not appear to be lecturing to India with haughty superiority—and it is still there. I hope the new Government will avoid such pitfalls. The early visit to India by David Cameron was recognised as a very good start.
I have persuaded a number of Indian businesses to invest in Britain, so may I offer a little advice on building such partnerships? First, we must understand how important Indo-British relations are to us. Take one example—a company which I brought to this country—Tata’s. Tata Group employs over 45,000 workers directly in Britain and supports a further 100,000 indirectly. The UK Tata Group spent over £700 million on R&D last year—this year it will probably be more than £1 billion. Yet a failure to see how we gain from these investments still affects British decisions. During the financial tsunami, loan insurance was requested by Tata but it was turned away, being an Indian company. People remember such slights.
Next, we must ask what we can offer our partner. Our science base, high-tech workforce, infrastructure and access to Europe complement our cultural strengths. I have escorted many Indian business leaders around factories in Britain and seen them become enthused by our technology and our workers. We have many hidden gems. But we make it difficult to invest in them by putting up needless barriers. Of course we need strong Immigration Rules, but we should show flexibility for those who have a lot to contribute.
India knows what this takes. In fast growing sectors of the Indian economy, like pharmaceuticals and biotech—today the biggest investment worldwide in India is in the pharmaceuticals and biotech industry—the world’s biggest companies are moving to India, bringing top people, even though India has many graduates. Indeed, 700,000 science and engineering students graduate each year in India. These numbers mean we must never think of India as just a home for low-cost outsourcing.
But quality counts more than quantity. In a knowledge-based economy, there is a global drive toward higher skills to meet shared challenges. India’s technologists are at the cutting edge of that charge. I came from an Indian university—the first Indian university of technology—and 95 per cent of my classmates went to America, because it was easy. When I go and see American companies and American universities, they are full of Indian students doing their masters and doctorates, and doing research. Leading US universities and technology businesses such as Google and Microsoft are being led by graduates of Indian universities like my alma mater, IIT Kharagpur.
We could seek to join these leaders in their current challenges and thus share in their future successes. In other words, we must welcome India here as well as sell Britain there. The coalition clearly wants to do business with India. It has made a strong start after about 12 years of neglect. I only hope it ensures that India wants to do business with us.
Lord Giddens
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Parekh on having initiated this debate, along with Amartya Sen, who is one of the few intellectuals equally well known in India and in the UK, and of course across the rest of the world. He is one of our best ambassadors, linking the two countries, and I congratulate him on the breadth and importance of his work across the years.
I would like to make some remarks about the links between India and the UK, which could be developed around areas of climate change and sustainability, briefly touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad.
For a long time the Indian leadership essentially saw climate change and sustainability as “not our problem”. As the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said, using slightly different statistics, with about 30 per cent of the population living in or close to absolute poverty, development was seen as a priority, and climate change was well down the agenda.
That attitude has now shifted very radically—and quite rightly. I had two conversations with Prime Minister Singh on these issues, separated by about five years, and his attitudes over that time had changed quite substantially. That was not as a result of what I said to him, I am sure—I am not claiming that. In general, India has assumed a leadership position globally on climate change and sustainability issues. It was one of the five nations that forged the Copenhagen accord, and has been very active over the past few years in climate change debates across the world.
It is now recognised by the Indian leadership how dangerous climate change is to India. About 70 per cent of the River Ganges, for example, comes from runoff water from glaciers. Those glaciers have melted dramatically over the past few years, and it is clear that in a country that already has a monsoon season—quite extreme weather—one of the consequences of climate change is much more extreme weather. These things are very dangerous for India, and are now fully acknowledged by the Government.
I therefore see several key areas of potential collaboration which could be of value to both countries, and I will mention three of these. First, the most obvious one, I suppose, is in the area of low carbon and sustainable technologies. India now has substantial investment, particularly in solar technology, but also has quite a large number of wind farms. So far, those two technologies combined make up for less than 1 per cent of the total energy mix in India. In India and the UK, a key issue in both those technologies is to bring down costs so that they are comparable to fossil fuel energy production. An enormous amount of valuable dialogue could be carried on about that. Even though the UK does not have much manufacturing capacity in these areas, it has a lot of technical know-how. Collaboration could be very important to both countries.
The second area is urban design. I think we know that in future we will have to construct our cities differently to follow the demands of sustainability. In an Indian city, for example, where there already is a fair degree of solidarity and connection between people, it does not make sense simply to build supermarkets around the edge of that city, thus creating an evacuated city centre and breaking down the connections which exist. I think that we are all looking for new models of urban development which have sustainable bases to them. Again, we in the UK have a lot of expertise in eco-technology, not just for dwellings but for city design. We have a number of famous architects who have worked extensively in India in some part on these issues. We should try to develop these ties in a much richer way.
Thirdly, we could have intellectual and political collaboration between the two countries. Both countries will need to think of alternative models of development. We know that in the UK growth will be limited over the next few years. That invites us to think what kind of model of growth we should have. India, we hope, will have much higher growth rates but there is no way in which India can recapitulate the western model of development beyond a certain point. It is too destructive, as we have seen in the case of the environmental destruction in Chinese development. India should seek to avoid that.
There could be a lot of collaboration, which is where jobs will be created. Jobs will not be created in just alternative technologies; they will be created through alternative lifestyles. We could have a sort of coffee-shop model of development. Who knew that the British, after years of drinking horrible coffee, really wanted to drink nice coffee and get together in coffee shops? Well, no one very much knew that but this created lots of new jobs. The same thing will be true of the lifestyle changes associated with increasing sustainability.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, the Government have set themselves a bold ambition to put the British relationship with India on a new and stronger footing. The Conservative manifesto at the last election called for a new special relationship. At the Prime Minister’s visit in July 2010 there was launched what was called an enhanced partnership. We are grateful to my noble friend Lord Parekh for enabling us to have this debate, which is an opportunity to assess progress on that bold ambition.
On these Benches, we are strong supporters of what the Government are trying to do. India has made remarkable progress in the past two decades. Its growth is spectacular even though inflation poses a problem to its sustainability. On the official measures, the numbers of people living in extreme poverty have fallen from 26 per cent of the Indian population to 16 per cent, which is a great achievement.
For reasons of sentiment and self-interest, and because people from India and south Asia make a crucial contribution to our society here—while recognising the point emphasised by my noble friend Lord Parekh that India has a different perspective on world events than often we have—we must try to strengthen the relationship. But we must not do that on the basis of false premises.
One false premise was that the previous Labour Government neglected India. One of the things of which I am proudest is that development aid to India under the previous Labour Government was three times the level in the past three years of what it had been in the 1994-97 period; that is, £825 million being spent from 2008-11. I know that there are question marks about whether we should continue to do this but we on these Benches will always remember that there are more poor people in India still than there are in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.
A second false premise is that a choice is to be made between a bilateral relationship and a multilateral relationship. The truth is that the two have got to go together. The only point on which I would disagree in the excellent speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, is that it is the capacity of the European Union to mobilise hopefully an agreement on a Doha trade round but certainly to agree a bilateral free trade agreement with India. It is that capacity which will lead precisely to the kind of liberalisation in India that he is seeking. But on our own I do not think that we have that ability.
I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, and many other speakers have said; namely, that the economic relationship has tremendous potential. But let us remember that it is starting from a very low base. Of our outward investment in Britain, it is regrettably the case that only 1 per cent of Britain’s foreign direct investment is located in India. More than 50 per cent is in the European Union. On looking at Indian exports, I found an extraordinary fact today: India exports more to the Benelux countries than to the United Kingdom. There has been no dramatic expansion of our trade in recent years. Indeed, I picked up an article that told me that in 2008, Britain was India’s eighth largest trading partner, exporting goods worth about $5 billion. By 2010, that figure had fallen to $4.4 billion. There is an awful lot of work to do to make this economic relationship work.
Our fear on these Benches is that the Government are putting crucial new obstacles in making this relationship a success. Last January, we were all greatly relieved when the right honourable Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, told us that the visa problems he thought that there would be in the business relationship with India were being solved. Only a month ago, I read in the Times that whereas four years ago it was possible for an Indian business person coming to Britain to get a visa within a few days, it now takes 15 days. People have been saying that it is a lot easier to go to France and other countries in Europe to do business because of these visa rules.
The Government set lots of other objectives for their partnership with India, including higher education, on which noble Lords have spoken. Last week, in the debate on universities, we heard how the number of applications from Asia to Russell group universities is falling fast. How can any nation so comprehensively shoot itself in the foot simply to fulfil a stupid, populist policy that was included in the Government’s manifesto in terms of immigration? I repeat: it is simply shooting our future prospects in the foot for the sake of rank populism.
The same applies to the future leaders’ network that the Government hope to set up. How can we have a network of future leaders if we prevent them from coming to this country? Let us have a constructive approach to this relationship and try to build it, and not put obstacles in its way.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, for initiating this debate. He said, among other things, in his opening remarks that “only when we seek active engagement with India” will we gain the right to criticise Indian policy. This Government is seeking active engagement with India. That is why the Prime Minister and a very large number of Ministers went out to India this time last year, and that is why we have a continuing programme of visits. We hope to have a bilateral summit very shortly, on a date which is yet to be agreed. It is a major and continuing project. So it is not a question of “only when”—we are attempting to do so.
There are some obstacles—perhaps on both sides. We have to engage with the Indians and we must recognise that in pursuing an enhanced partnership we have a great many competitors. Much has been said in intervening speeches about the decline in the number of Indian students coming to the United Kingdom. Indians have been going to the United States. The United States is the most popular foreign country within India and that is part of what we now have to compete with. As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and others know, this is in sharp contrast to the flow of Chinese students to Britain, which has continued to rise and is at a far higher level. It will take a good deal of time and effort to catch up to where we would like to be across a very broad number of spectrums. We have to attract the attention of the Indian elite and of the rising young Indian middle classes—the rising young Indian educated generation. We have to have a broad effort at trade and investment on both sides and further develop relations in the fields of climate change, defence and as an aid partnership.
Having such an excellent Indian diaspora here is a tremendous asset. As the flow of investment in both directions shows, this is already helping to develop closer links, in addition to the historical cultural relationship with India. We are all conscious that we have to build on this. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, castigated the populist policies of the coalition Government on migration. As someone who does his politics in Yorkshire, I am very conscious that it is very often our settled ethnic communities who are themselves strongly supportive of tougher rules on immigration. This is not an easy subject. I often find myself talking to people whose parents or grandparents came from south Asia and who want to know when we are going to stop more people coming in. I have a vivid memory of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and myself talking at the Hindu Cultural Centre in Bradford in the last election but one. The second question we had from the floor was: when are we going to stop more of these foreigners coming in? The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, understands that there are many difficulties in making a simple answer to the problems of immigration.
Noble Lords have already remarked that India is by now the third largest foreign investor in the UK. I believe the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, claimed that it is now the second largest. The UK is the fourth largest investor in India. We are attempting to encourage a rising flow in both directions. The enhanced partnership is, I stress, a partnership and it has to be a partnership of equals. We have to get rid of any sense that this is an ex-colonial relationship. As you will all know, the continued existence of the aid relationship with India has become a matter of some controversy in the right-wing press in Britain. It is our intention to move from an aid relationship concentrating on the four poorest states in India where—as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has remarked—there are still a great many extremely poor people, into a partnership with an Indian government which now has its own steadily increasing aid programme, so that we can share our experience in Africa and elsewhere with the Indians as they come in. That is a pattern which we see ourselves using across the board.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, has, to my great pleasure, mentioned that we already have a very useful partnership with Indian scientists and others in climate change and that has been invaluable in getting the global debate on climate change under way—not as the white countries telling others what to do, but as a shared concern about long-term environmental degradation.
The defence partnership is, at the moment, less developed than we would like it to be, although we find ourselves sharing the anti-piracy patrol with Indian ships off Somalia in the Indian Ocean. The Indians are now the largest single contributor to UN peacekeeping forces, so as a country which expects that its forces are most likely to be engaged in helping to reconstruct failed states—post-conflict reconstruction—we will very often find ourselves alongside forces from south Asia. We already have a number of officer exchanges on both sides, and again there are traditions on which to build. I was astonished and delighted to find myself at the National Defence College in Pune, sitting next to an Indian general who told me that his regiment was called Skinner’s Horse. I did not know they still had regiments like that in the Indian Army. We see ourselves moving towards future joint training, and I hope also to greater celebration of the past. That is because our young generation in this country, including the children of Asian immigrants, have forgotten that the largest single Commonwealth contingent in the Second World War came from the Asian sub-continent in the form of the Indian Army.
Many noble Lords have talked about the importance of universities and education. Already much effort is being made. The second tranche of the UK-India Education and Research Initiative is under way. Research Councils UK is working to improve collaboration at the highest levels, and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, knows what the British Academy is doing in this regard. I regret that student flows are not larger. My former university, the London School of Economics, has developed a number of joint degrees with Chinese universities, but it has been much more difficult to get into partnerships with Indian universities. We need to move further on this. We hope very much that the Indian Government will now complete the passage of the law which would allow foreign universities to set up campuses on the Indian sub-continent. It is a way of trying to increase the two-way flow, and I should mention that the Department for Education and others are hoping to encourage more British students to study at Indian universities. After all, India has some top quality universities. I can speak with some feeling on this since some years ago my son led the British “University Challenge” team that played the winner of the Indian equivalent and was soundly beaten in Delhi.
On visas, I have already mentioned that the situation is extremely complex and we are faced with a British population which has a range of contradictory pressures. However, we are aware of Indian concerns and are doing our best to meet them. On economic relations, many noble Lords have remarked that there is a great deal of good news on the way, but we need the Indians to open their market for services. The United Kingdom is above all a service exporter. Insurance, banking, legal expertise and accountancy are areas where we have the strength to compete much more effectively in the Indian market. We see the EU-India free trade area, which is still under negotiation and we hope will be completed in the next few months, as a major step forward.
I should like to end where I began by saying that the strength of the UK-Indian relationship lies in our historical ties and in the personal ties which the largest diaspora community in this country provides. It is economically successful in this country and the loyal links that people still have with India help to build economic ties in everything from the brewing industry to the pharmaceutical industry. We look to that as one of the many strengths we can pursue further in building a stronger relationship. Again, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, for allowing us to return to this subject, and I hope that we will consider it again soon.
Education Bill
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Walmsley
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, this amendment seeks to ensure that if a school wishes to keep a child in detention after school, it must ensure that it has successfully contacted the child’s parent or carer. When we discussed this matter in Grand Committee, I asked that the school should get the agreement of the parent. I believed that I was offering a compromise when I moved towards simply asking that the school should inform the parent, but I understand that the Minister does not think so.
Clause 13 has the potential to put a child in danger and I hope that I will be given a strong reassurance by the Minister that this will not be so. While I trust the vast majority of teachers, surely the Minister must accept that it takes a while for a young teacher to develop the sort of good judgment and common sense that we believe would prevent them from putting a child in danger on the way home. That is why we need to make it abundantly clear in guidance that no teacher may detain a child after school without informing the parent if it in any way compromises the safety of the child.
My noble friend the Minister made the point in Grand Committee that schools already have a duty of care to their pupils under other legislation. That may well be so, but noble Lords know the difficulty of cross-referencing other Acts when we are considering a current Bill that makes changes to earlier legislation. That is why I am asking the Minister to ensure that in the guidance that accompanies this new power, the school is made aware, on the same page, that it must not use this power if it in any way puts the child in danger. In order to check on this, the school will have to find out what the child’s transport arrangements are and ensure that either the detention is so short that it avoids the child missing a bus or that other safe travel arrangements have been made. The school may also need to check on whether the child is a carer, where detaining that child after school may cause another vulnerable person in distress. Schools should already know which children are carers, but they need to be sure in this case. I also think the guidance should make it clear that it is good practice to inform the parents anyway by phone. I can envisage the distress of a parent, waiting at home for a child to step off the school bus, only to find that he does not. The parent will worry herself sick; I know I would have done.
I think that this provision is entirely contrary to the respect with which this Government treat parents otherwise. Only this week, we have received a letter about changes to the way complaints about school admissions arrangements are handled, which said:
“We believe that parents should be given the opportunity to be part of the system that holds schools to account, properly supported and championed by the local authority, the Secretary of State and independent adjudicators”.
At the same time, the Government seek to write parents out of their discipline arrangements by letting schools avoid telling them that their child is in detention. As I understand it, this idea has come from one of the head teachers’ unions, but not the other one. I can tell the Minister what parents want: they do not want this. They want to be respected and informed.
Points were strongly made in Committee that rural schools, if they adhere to their safeguarding duty, will not be able to use this sanction at all. Yet I can reassure my noble friend that children in rural schools will not run amok because of it. There are many sanctions already in the armoury to ensure good behaviour and most schools use them effectively. Most have maintained good discipline to date without this power. I question the competence of any school that feels it needs this power to maintain good order and discipline. Yet, in order to give them this power, the Government may risk the safety of children unless the guidance is clear, unequivocal and powerful. We want only one more case like that of poor Milly Dowler and the Government’s good judgment will be called into question, rightly or wrongly.
This is entirely unnecessary if the Government get the guidance right. Will the Minister assure me that our comments about the guidance, and the strength and clarity that it needs, are taken on board by Ministers and officials? Without that assurance, we will remain with the concerns that I have expressed. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, our Amendment 34 is similar to the one so ably outlined by the noble Baroness. It is a requirement that schools should always give reasonable notice to parents or carers of any detentions and that before going ahead with a detention, they have received from the parent or carer confirmation that they are aware of the detention. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has described, we thought that we were eminently conciliatory in our amendment, that it was common sense and would be warmly welcomed by the Minister. Perhaps it still will be.
We return to this issue after a detailed debate in Grand Committee in which we felt there was consensus that this was a common sense position between, on the one hand, an instant response to bad behaviour, while on the other, ensuring that pupil safety is protected. As it stands, the Bill removes a requirement to give 24 hours notice of detention and as a result schools would not be required to give parents or carers any notice at all. We have had a letter from the Minister today setting out new proposals, but those ask teachers only to judge,
“whether it is appropriate to give notice to parents”.
Frankly, we do not think that that is good enough. We recognise that it is usually the case that the nearer the punishment is to the original incident, the more effective it is. However, as a number of noble Lords in Grand Committee recognised, this would potentially create a number of safeguarding issues, which the Minister’s letter attempted to address. It would also potentially damage the relationship between parents and schools and could have a knock-on effect on the success of the school’s broader behavioural policy.
A number of objections remain to no-notice detentions, specifically because of the damage to the school’s relationship with parents. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has outlined some of those, such as it being impracticable for parents to rearrange children’s transport at short notice when they might have other commitments —other childcare commitments, and so on. There could be unnecessary worry for parents in rural areas especially on dark evenings, when they are anxious about their child’s travel home. There could also be concern if parents think their child is travelling home alone, separately, because they are travelling later, rather than earlier with a group, when they are all leaving school together. There is also the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised about caring responsibilities, of which children might not always have made the school aware. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in this catalogue, there is the basic discourtesy to parents which this Bill would represent and which would do little to help schools forge strong partnerships with parents.
When we discussed this in Committee, the Minister expressed some sympathy with the arguments we had put forward, but went on to argue that head teachers already had to produce behaviour policies which were publicised to parents. She also argued that there were existing legal safeguards that protect children's welfare if they are given detention. However, we do not feel that these points adequately address our concerns and they put the onus on parents to object to the school’s actions after the event through the complaints procedure or through legal action. Surely this is making heavy weather over what should be a common-sense policy. To be frank, we have not yet heard any valid arguments against what we are proposing.
The simplest way through is to support our amendment —or, indeed, the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—which make it clear that schools can organise no-notice detention provided the parent has confirmed that they aware that it is happening. This will provide adequate safeguards for children and ensure that parents are kept in the loop and treated with respect. I hope noble Lords and the Minister will feel able to support this amendment.
Lord Storey
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, used the right words—“common sense”. I cannot understand this. As a parent and as a teacher, I have no objection to same-day detentions. As has been said, if there is to be a sanction or punishment often it is best that it is done straight away. However, the notion that young people, children and students are kept behind at school without their parents or their carers knowing does not seem right and proper.
If a school organises an after-school activity, whether it be football, netball, swimming or whatever, parents give their permission for their children to take part in those activities, understanding that their children will have to make other arrangements to come home. Why cannot that be done for same-day detentions? All we are suggesting, which is eminently sensible and supported by all the unions bar one—of the unions supporting it, even the National Association of Head Teachers thinks that it is right and proper that parents are notified—is that when a same-day detention is held the parent is contacted, not through a message left on a voicemail, an e-mail or a text but actually contacted. If they cannot be contacted, the same-day detention would have to be held the next day. That is the right and proper common-sense approach.
I have had various e-mails today saying that it would be a breach of the law if the child was not safeguarded and so on, but in all this guidance, about which no doubt we will hear in a moment, I cannot find an understanding that the parent comes first—that the parent matters. I hope that in the guidance it is made absolutely clear how we will protect the well-being and safeguarding of children.
We have spoken about rural areas and the school bus, but in urban areas—in my own city—children often have to travel two miles across the city to go to school. On dark nights they are placed in a very vulnerable situation. If the parents know their child is being kept behind, they can make arrangements.
I hope the Minister will understand the real sense of concern about this issue and give an assurance that the guidelines will clearly spell out what we are asking.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I recognised that there would be a number of reasoned arguments and I stand with my colleagues who made them. I took a rather different way on this. During the summer I consulted a number of friends and my family—it was a random experiment—and it became absolutely clear that they did not believe that I was telling the truth when I said that it was the Government’s plan that when their child was going to be detained they would not be told. They said, “You are making it up”. That was the first response.
The second response from rural parents—I work and have friends in London but I live in a rural area—was, “But there is only one bus. They cannot be detained without notice because if they do not get on the bus they do not get home at all”. We have to remember that not every poor parent in a rural area has a car; they depend on that transport. There are no other bus services or taxis; you catch the school bus or you do not get home. The third response was the sheer indignation that this was “my” child, not owned by anyone else.
The common thread through all that was that the parents were quite keen for the child to be disciplined at school. There was no disagreement that the child should not receive their discipline, that detention might be the right answer, or that the closer it was to the incident the better little Jonny would learn from it. The disagreement was that parents had to know that their child was going to be detained so that they could ensure the protection of their child and were not worried out of their minds. I hope noble Lords will forgive my anecdotal bit of research but it was pretty consistent with the reasoned arguments that we have heard this evening.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I also support Amendment 33, which I have added my name to. I will not rehearse the arguments that have been made by noble Lords who have already spoken except to say, as I said in Committee, that these issues about safeguarding are absolutely paramount. There is one area that no one has picked up on but of which I have personal experience. Looked-after children, foster children or children with difficult family arrangements often have complex arrangements at the school gate. For this particular group, it is always vital that the parent with the residency order knows exactly what is happening.
My own experience was at primary school level, where the school was fully on board with all the issues. In a large secondary school with 1,200 pupils, I worry that a teacher or head of department handing out a detention might not be aware of such complex arrangements. For such reasons, which also come back to safeguarding, this is really important. Amendment 33 does not ask for much. The key thing from this Side is for the Minister to please look again at the wording. We want a really clear statement that nothing will be done that will compromise the safety of the child. That is the absolute nub of it. We can all give many more anecdotes but fundamentally, at its root, this is about the safeguarding of children.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, there is clear evidence that good standards of behaviour are vital if children are to receive a high-quality education. We know that a clear and consistently applied behaviour policy, including rewards and sanctions, helps schools to achieve these standards—indeed, noble Lords have acknowledged that in their comments.
There is strong public support for improving the standards of behaviour in schools. A recent survey for the Times Educational Supplement found that 91 per cent of parents and 62 per cent of children favour tougher discipline in secondary schools. The same poll found that 88 per cent of parents and 60 per cent of pupils supported teachers in giving after-school detentions. The head teachers who gave evidence in the other place made clear that detentions are a key part of maintaining good behaviour. As has already been mentioned, Sir Michael Wilshaw went so far as to say that detentions were,
“a crucial plank in our behavioural policy”.
There is a certain level of agreement among us that behaviour patterns and detentions are part of a way in which a school operates effectively.
This clause removes the requirement for schools to provide 24 hours’ written notice of detention outside school hours. In doing this, we seek to enable head teachers and teachers to use detention in the way most suited to the circumstances of their individual schools and in the way that is most appropriate to the pupil or incident with which they are dealing.
Various concerns have been raised today. It might be helpful to noble Lords if I set out what a school has to do, by law, to issue an after-school detention at the moment. First, under Section 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, the head teacher must determine and make generally known in the school and to parents whether the school issues detentions outside school hours.
Secondly, Section 91 of the same Act requires that detentions must be reasonable and constitute a proportionate punishment in all the circumstances. There must also be strong assurances that, when issuing a detention, school staff must have regard to any known special circumstances of the pupil, including the pupil’s age, any special educational needs, disability or religious requirements. That would certainly affect any looked-after children or children with caring responsibilities.
Thirdly, a further safeguard in Section 92(5) of the Act provides that if arrangements have to be made for a pupil to travel home after a detention then, when deciding whether a detention is reasonable, the member of staff must take into account whether suitable travel arrangements can be reasonably made by the pupil’s parents. Many noble Lords have raised concerns about children being unable to get home after detentions in rural areas but we believe this safeguard is designed to address that concern. It is already there, as one of the safeguards that the school must have regard to. A detention that left a child unable to get home in a safe way would not be reasonable in the circumstances and would be in breach of the existing safeguards. I can well understand my noble friend’s point about children with caring responsibilities, and with these other difficulties that we have outlined, but the safeguards above prevent a young carer being given an out-of-hours detention if it is unreasonable, given their individual circumstances.
There is one additional requirement: that parents must be given 24 hours’ written notice of a detention outside school hours. So, in the long list of requirements that schools must follow before issuing an after-school detention we want to remove just one. Why do the Government want to remove the requirement for 24 hours’ written notice? We have had briefing from the Association of School and College Leaders, which made it clear that,
“generally such punishments are most effective if they take place as soon as reasonably practical”.
Indeed, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Howarth, both acknowledged the fact that immediacy of punishment for a crime is a much more effective way of disciplining young people.
The requirement as it stands also places many good schools that issue 15-minute detentions at the end of the school day in breach of the law. These schools do not and would never for a moment consider jeopardising a pupil’s safety or damaging relations with parents. Of course, even with the present requirement for written notice in place there is no guarantee that parents will be aware that a detention is happening. Schools may send the notice home with pupils, who may or may not pass it on to the parent. Equally, an e-mail from the school may not be read that day or parents may not be contactable by telephone. This means there may be cases where parents have not been aware of detentions in advance, but we have absolutely no evidence that this has led to children’s safety being compromised.
My noble friends’ amendment seeks to replace the present requirement, which I think we agree is problematic, with one under which parents must confirm that they are aware of a same-day detention after school, or must receive 24 hours’ notice of it. We well understand their intentions; we would all want parents to play a full part in ensuring high standards of behaviour and to be aware when their child is at school. I fear, however, that the amendments would cause similar problems to the current requirement. Asking that a parent confirms that they are aware of a same-day detention means that a teacher would be prevented from keeping a pupil back, even for 15 minutes at the end of the last lesson of the day, without first making arrangements to contact the parents. Noble Lords can imagine how long that could take and that on many occasions it will be impossible to gain confirmation at short notice that a parent is aware of a detention. I remind noble Lords of all the safeguards which are already in place to make quite sure that transport is there and that the young people do not have caring responsibilities, where after-hours detention would obviously not be appropriate.
There are other cases where an unco-operative parent could, in knowledge of such a requirement, ignore attempts by a school to contact them in order to prevent a same-day detention. They could simply let phone calls go to voicemail or not answer an e-mail, so the whole thing could escalate way beyond the 24 hours —and way past the time when the young person had done the disciplinary matter—and escalate the punishment to a level which was never intended. It is because of these consequences of well intended regulation that we believe it is necessary to remove the requirement and rely on the extensive existing safeguards, which require schools to act reasonably in all the circumstances.
Having said that we are not attracted to regulation we take immensely seriously the concerns raised today and in Grand Committee. We therefore propose that advice to schools on this matter could be strengthened to make sure that schools understand what they should do to act reasonably. An addition to the guidance on behaviour and discipline in schools will say:
“When judging whether a detention outside school hours is reasonable teachers should consider whether it is appropriate to give notice to parents”.
They should obviously make every effort to contact parents, but with all the other safeguards in place, and never in any circumstances take actions that would compromise the safety of the child.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I am grateful for the Minister giving way. Will she consider this point? She is stressing that the other requirements, particularly that the school act reasonably, are sufficient safeguards. Would she agree that in removing the requirement to give parents notice she is, in a sense, changing the threshold of what schools could regard as reasonable? Reasonableness is going to mean something else and it could mean—would mean I would argue—that it would be reasonable for the school not to try to inform parents. Therefore, the stress she is putting on the safeguard of reasonableness would actually be completely diminished.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I take the point the noble Baroness makes. However, we have to accept that schools take massive care of the children in their care and do not take these measures lightly. We are talking about short periods of detention after school for pupils who can get home safely; those who do not need to catch the school bus and so on. All those are already enshrined in the care and the regulation. We seek—and we hear the very grave concerns being expressed by noble Lords—to make quite sure the guidance is strengthened to ensure that child safety is never compromised by the school’s actions. We feel that the safeguards already in place strike the right balance between ensuring that children are safe and allowing schools to take proportionate action—to use their discretion and professional judgment—to establish the arrangements that work best for them.
We hope that my noble friends and the noble Baronesses will agree to work with us to see how we can strengthen the guidance that goes with these measures and meanwhile will feel able to withdraw their amendments.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
Before the noble Baroness sits down, I want to clarify when she is proposing now. We were sent a copy of a draft document on detention, which says:
“When judging whether a detention outside school hours is reasonable teachers should consider whether it is appropriate to give notice to parents”.
Is the noble Baroness now saying that is going to be strengthened or is that the wording that is on offer? I want to clarify that point.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
These are draft guidance documents at the moment. We hear the strength of feeling that has been expressed around the House and would certainly welcome consultation to see if we can find a form of words that reassures noble Lords. We feel that all the measures are in place, but obviously some noble Lords feel that they are not strong enough, so we will be looking at the draft guidance to make quite sure the wording is appropriate.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for her reply. We would all agree with some of her opening remarks that there is strong public support for good behaviour in schools. We all know that that helps children to learn. However, I do not accept there is strong public support for this particular measure and like the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, I, too, did some research over the summer with some ordinary parents and I had exactly the same responses as the noble Baroness.
The Minister said that schools must do this in a way which is most appropriate for the pupils with whom they are dealing. Where does it say that? It certainly does not say it in the legislation. It must say it, or something like it, in the guidance. My noble friend carefully went through the other duties that schools have to safeguard children, which have been laid into other statutes. I accept all that. Punishments have to be proportionate and reasonable and travel arrangements have to be considered. They are already there, but the question for a teacher looking at the guidance is: where are they? The guidance needs to have these duties clearly spelt out on the same page where a teacher is being told what they can do under this new law. It needs to be very clear.
I often wonder where this idea came from. My noble friend the Minister has told us that it came from the ASCL. Why does the ASCL have such influence over this Government? The other head teachers’ union does not have the same influence and other ordinary teachers’ unions do not. I am afraid I have a nasty suspicion that this bit of the Bill seeks to enable legislation to catch up with practice, and that some schools are following this practice without giving 24 hours’ notice. I accept that notes in satchels do not always get to parents and that the current requirement for 24 hours’ written notice often does not reach the parent and the parent is not notified. We are asking for something better than that. We are suggesting a way of ensuring that the parent is informed to enable them to make other arrangements for the child to get home safely, if possible. If they are not able to do so, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, because they do not have a car and an alternative bus is not available, they can make the school aware that there could be a safeguarding problem if the child is kept in. It is then up to the school under the other duties that my noble friend has outlined to punish the child at a different time.
My noble friend suggested that some unco-operative parents may fail to answer the phone and let the message be recorded on the answerphone. I do not think that these parents have a crystal ball. When the phone rings, they cannot possibly know that it is the school ringing up to say that little Johnny will be kept in after school that day. That is stretching things beyond reality.
I am delighted that my noble friend has accepted that there is scope for strengthening the guidance. I was very pleased to hear that. She made it very clear on the record from the Dispatch Box that teachers should not do anything that compromises the safeguarding of the child. That gives me comfort. If we can work together to ensure that that is made crystal clear in the guidance, I will not feel that I need to return to this at a later stage. Can my noble friend nod and affirm that we can do that work and get the guidance to say something of that nature? It is vital that we help teachers to make good decisions about when to use this weapon in their armoury.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
Before the noble Baroness concludes, will she also reflect that essentially what we are setting in place is a two-tier style of punishment? If you think of it from the teacher’s point of view, what is underpinning this is that a detention on the same day as the crime that has been committed is more effective because it is closer in time to that crime. We will now have schools with two groups of pupils—those pupils who are eligible to receive that punishment and those who are not.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I apologise to the noble Baroness but I am double tasking as a government spokesman and a Whip today. The rules at Report state that a noble Lord may not come back after the Minister has spoken.
Baroness Walmsley
Perhaps I may complete my remarks. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. As I have said, rural schools will not be able to use this measure but some urban schools will. However, as my noble friend Lord Storey said, not all urban schools will be able to use it because there may well be safeguarding issues in urban schools as well. However, as I said, I am comforted by what my noble friend the Minister has said. I look forward to further discussions with officials on how we can produce guidance that really helps teachers to do what they need to do but at the same time not compromise the safeguarding of children. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Locally based cooperation and collaboration
The Government must issue guidance to encourage locally based cooperation and collaboration between schools in areas including—(a) behaviour,(b) attendance and registration,(c) peer improvement,(d) raising standards.”
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, this amendment relates to Clause 6 which repeals the duty on secondary schools to co-operate with other schools to promote good behaviour, discipline and attendance and to make an annual report to the children’s trust board on how they have done so. Through behaviour and attendance partnerships, schools have worked together; for example, to help children at risk of exclusion, or to place in another mainstream school, through managed moves. Partnerships enable groups of schools to collectively fund specialist support for children with behavioural problems; for example, to employ a parent support worker, or whatever, and to provide the resources that individual schools, especially small schools, may not be able to afford on their own. That means that parents’ ability to access specialist support for a child with, for example, behavioural problems could be reduced.
This amendment takes at face value the Government’s commitment, stated at Grand Committee, that although they want to repeal the requirement on schools to engage in behaviour and attendance partnerships, they support the principle that schools should co-operate and work together to resolve a range of issues, rather than work alone. The original behaviour and attendance partnerships came into being following Sir Alan Steer’s Behaviour Review: an Initial Response, which said:
“It remains my firm view that all secondary schools—including new and existing Academies, Foundation schools and Pupil Referral Units—should participate in behaviour partnerships”.
I recognise—we discussed this in Committee—that partnerships work best when all the partners are committed to working together and are not simply ticking boxes to meet requirements. However, as I mentioned in Grand Committee, Sir Alan Steer also said:
“Good collaboration between schools is often prevented by what are perceived as unfair practices operated by a minority of schools in admissions and exclusions”.
So without partnership working being required and in addition to the broader fragmentation of the education system that this Government risk bringing in, there is a real risk that schools will stop collaborating in this important area. There is also a real danger that this may signal to schools that the general collaboration and co-operation that the Government say they want to foster is not something that schools are required to do or that the Government are particularly concerned about. That could have a negative impact on partnerships that exist, albeit voluntarily, at the moment. So while our amendment would not maintain behaviour and attendance partnerships in statute, it would require the Government to issue a clear statement of their view that partnership working is beneficial and is to be expected from schools. It would require the Government to issue guidance to encourage local co-operation and collaboration between schools in areas including behaviour, attendance and registration, peer improvement—schools working together—and raising standards. It could address other issues as well: for instance, schools co-operating on what happens to excluded pupils; identifying children missing from any school in a locality; and so on.
If we are all agreed—and I think we are—that schools working together will achieve the best outcomes for children generally, and particularly those with behavioural difficulties or at risk of exclusion, then it makes sense for the Government to signal their clear expectation by providing guidance to schools to help them work together and to set out what they would like schools to do. I hope, given the comments in Grand Committee and the Government’s commitment to school collaboration and working together, that the Minister will accept the amendment and I look forward very much to his response. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, I understand the intention of the amendment, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, which is to promote co-operation and collaboration between schools to improve behaviour, attendance and standards. I agree with her about the importance of this. It goes with the grain of the existing culture in schools, which by its nature tends to be collegiate. I also agreed with her when she said that these kinds of partnerships work better when they are formed voluntarily, when they bubble up and take the shape that individual schools want them to take. I hope that I am as keen as her to encourage co-operation and schools learning from each other.
Where we differ—perhaps the only point in this amendment—is that I am not convinced that government guidance on these issues will deliver change locally. We think that it is best led by professionals on the ground. I accept that in some cases, legislation can help, such as for example, the duty on all state-funded schools to participate in a fair access protocol, which will remain. That is a good example of a solution to a specific problem. But we know that the previous set of guidance on behaviour and bullying from the department ran to some 600 pages, which is difficult for schools to take on board. The direction that we seek is to help schools to learn from each other. I just want to mention a few of those today. One would be our proposals for teaching schools. We are hoping to set up a network of teaching schools around the country and have announced the first 100. Those schools have a track record of working with others to raise standards for children and young people beyond their own school.
Under that model, groups of schools will work together within a teaching school alliance supported by the leadership of a teaching school. These alliances can work across local authorities and involve many different types of organisations. This first wave of teaching schools will be given the opportunity to take the lead in a variety of specialist areas including improving pupil performance and behaviour in schools. We have also asked the national college to build on the work started under the previous Government, designating excellent head teachers to be local and national leaders of education who will work to support underperforming schools. The college is now creating a new group of specialist leaders in education. They will be outstanding leaders in their particular field of expertise, which could include pupil achievement, quality of teaching or behaviour management. Teaching schools will designate specialist leaders and deploy them into schools that need support, thus ensuring a school-driven approach to improvement.
The noble Baroness talked about academies briefly. I know that she has some concerns but one of the features has been partnerships that have been formed to support school improvement in the widest sense. Before entering into a funding agreement with an academy, we ask them to identify a school or group of schools that they will work with to improve their performance. That collaboration is a vital part of our overall strategy to tackle long-term problems and inequalities that sadly exist in parts of our education system. The practical benefits of this collaboration are obvious. Young people can enjoy a wider range of facilities and try out new subjects; underused resources will be employed better; teachers will have more opportunities themselves for learning and professional development.
These partnerships with academies are a natural progression from those informal, local partnerships between schools that have been developing for a number of years and which I know the previous Government were keen to encourage. The fact that these ideas are emerging from within the system rather than being imposed by central or local government to my mind makes the effect all the more significant and the benefits likely to be greater. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, will agree that these systems for peer-to-peer and school-to-school support will make a contribution to improving standards of attainment, behaviour and attendance. I recognise that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating but I believe that they build on the ideas behind some of the previous Government’s successful initiatives, and we think that that is a better way forward than issuing more guidance. We are committed to ensuring that all schools will have access to the expertise that they may need to address these issues. With that, I hope that the noble Baroness may feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. I welcome the information he has given us about teaching schools. I support that initiative. In a sense, the whole idea of teaching schools substantiates the points I was making in support of guidance: those schools that are designated as teaching schools will be under no illusion that in order to be so designated they will have to accept the expectation that they will collaborate and disseminate good practice with other schools—it will part of the deal for being a teaching school.
I had hoped that the Minister would see the distinction in this amendment. It is not placing a duty on schools at all, but rather placing a duty on the Secretary of State to signal the clear expectation of the Government that schools, in taking public money and being responsible for the education of our children, will understand that there is an expectation that they work together and collaborate. I think most schools are willing to do that, but, as Sir Alan Steer said, not all schools are. That is why we thought that this would be an appropriate signal for the Government to send. I can see that the Minister is not minded to accept the amendment. While I am disappointed in that, I accept that that is the Government’s position, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Register of teachers
The Secretary of State shall have a duty to maintain a register of qualified teachers.”
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, the Bill abolishes the General Teaching Council for England. However, in abolishing it, there is a fear that the Government are getting rid of some of the crucial features and functions that it has previously carried out. One of those crucial functions is to maintain a register of teachers.
The register and the requirement to be qualified, to which we will come later, are important for maintaining the professional status of teachers. The register of those qualified and entitled to teach in our schools has been successful in enabling employers to make recruitment checks and is valued by employers and teachers alike. Under the Government’s proposals, all that will be held is a database of those prohibited from teaching, which is a very different thing.
The Bill sets out that certain GTCE functions will transfer to the Secretary of State and others will stop completely. In his letter to us of 13 June, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, confirmed the Government’s intention that they will not continue to maintain a register of teachers. I acknowledge that he has subsequently written setting out how the Government believe that the database of teachers prohibited from teaching will be established. To be frank, we do not accept that that meets our concerns.
There does not appear to be any pressure from educationists for the register to be discontinued. Indeed, as I reported in Grand Committee, the ASCL told us that,
“abolition of the GTCE and discontinuation of the registers removes the public’s guarantee that all registered teachers are, ‘eligible, suitable, properly qualified and of good standing’”.
In Grand Committee we were also told that independent schools value the existence of the register. Parents and pupils want high quality, qualified teachers. They want an assurance that the profession is regulated. As I mentioned in Grand Committee, a survey showed that,
“93 per cent of parents want teachers to be regulated, to have an agreed level of training and to be registered with a regulatory body before taking up a teaching post”.—[Official Report, 4/7/11; col. GC 55.]
The GTCE has told us that it carries out something in the region of 676,000 checks on teachers’ registration each year, saving employers significant time and money. At the Committee stage in the Commons, the Minister acknowledged the benefit of a register of people with qualified teacher status and said:
“We recognise the central benefits of providing head teachers and employers with access to a central record of who holds qualified teacher status. We will explore whether and how to provide that in future”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 17/3/11; col. 498.]
Our amendment would go further than that and make the Secretary of State accountable for an up-to-date register.
If the register of teachers in England is abolished, we will be left with a farcical situation where up-to-date registers are maintained in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but not in England. Those three nations have seen the sense in keeping the register. What are the implications of England not keeping the information? Will rogue teachers slip through the net? Will the lack of an English register undermine those being kept by other countries, as teachers move between the four nations? What does that say about how England perceives the professionalism of teachers, compared to the other nations?
The abolition of the English register is unnecessary and provocative. All other professional sectors in this country keep a register of those entitled to practise. Some—for example, the General Medical Council—share the information publicly on a website, along with details of any disciplinary action that has been taken against a doctor. Is this not the way that we should be moving if we believe in empowering parents?
The abolition of the register is a retrograde step that the Secretary of State will grow to regret. In the past, the GTC has administered the register, but it does not have to be this body in future. The Secretary of State is equally able to carry out this function. Given that he has been so keen to take on so many additional powers himself, we hope that he will see the sense in also taking on this responsibility. We trust that noble Lords will see the sense of these amendments and hope that the Minister will feel able to support them.
Lord Puttnam
My Lords, I rise to support both amendments in this group. I will not go into detail because they have been beautifully set out by my noble friend Lady Jones. I must point out that in passing these clauses we will effectively be officiating at the funeral of the General Teaching Council. It would be quite wrong of me, as a former chairman, to allow that to happen without saying a few words about why it is a catastrophic mistake.
It is not just a catastrophic mistake. I have absolutely no doubt that within 10, 15 or 20 years, this or another Government will come to the Dispatch Box and announce the creation of something remarkably similar to the General Teaching Council. The reason goes to the heart of the paradox that the Government have embraced in their approach to the teaching profession. Unless I misheard the Minister, he referred just now to the emergence of an outstanding generation of leaders, particularly in the teaching schools. I celebrate and support that. However, these are leaders of a very peculiar type: they somehow fall short of being allowed professional status. I am not sure that there is any other area of British public life where that is true: where we seek and promote outstanding leadership but refuse to acknowledge the professional status that ought to go with it.
I do not for one moment defend the clumsy and frankly inadequate legislation that led to the creation of the General Teaching Council. It was not good enough and I and many others suffered from trying to make it work. However, it was a dream and an ambition that was worth while. In rejecting and scrapping it, the Government must acknowledge that they are flying in the face of the ambitions for the profession of every leading educationalist of the 20th century, from Sir Alec Clegg onwards. Every single educationalist sought, promoted and fought for professional recognition for teachers.
There is a very simple line to draw. Skilled, professional teachers lead to well educated children, who in turn give us some hope of a successful society. The key is the skill of the professional teacher. The notion that you can have a successful education system without the wholehearted buy-in and support of the entire profession is a fantasy that all noble Lords in this Chamber would agree is unsustainable. We will not get the profession buying into educational reform and improvement until it comes to understand that it is just that: a profession.
The disastrous mistake that my Government made was in ever contemplating the notion that we could have a professional body that was not paid for by the profession. I am afraid that what is happening here—it is a tough thing to say—is the infantilisation of the profession. We are scrapping its professional status because no one has the courage to say to the profession: “Grow up, understand the responsibilities you have, understand that there is no possible success for this country unless a generation of brilliant teachers emerges, and understand that along with that responsibility comes the need to be professionals—and professionals pay for their professional status”. We will have something like the General Teaching Council. I hope it will be in my lifetime, but it may be after it. Today, I want to register the fact that this is a sad day for the profession, a sad day for the Government and a sad day for the future of education because, as I say, we will have to return to it. When we do so, I hope we will return to it in a more constructive spirit than the manner in which we are scrapping it.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. I find it very difficult to support this part of the Bill at all because for many years we have struggled to establish a proper professional organisation for teachers. I find it quite extraordinary that we are now destroying it. It gives teachers a sense of profession and of belonging to that profession. It is quite out of kilter with what is happening in the further education profession where those who get QTLS are being required to register with the IFL. I cannot support the Government on this issue.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, as always, I listened to the arguments made by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, with a great deal of care. I thought that with his customary honesty he made the point clearly about some of the shortcomings of the GTC which are linked directly to the decision that the Government took to bring about its abolition. The point he raised powerfully about the disinclination of the profession to pay for its membership and the fact that it is largely taxpayer-funded is important and one on which we should all reflect. I would not disagree with a word that he or my noble friend Lady Sharp said about professionalism and the need to have a profession and raising the status, esteem and standing of teachers as professionals.
Earlier today, we spoke about the importance of trust. Before I talk about the specific amendments, where we disagree on the fundamental principle is on whether the GTC as constituted is an embodiment of professional status. We contend that it is not, although I agree with the noble Lord that it is perfectly possible, indeed likely, that in future years something will well up that captures and speaks for the professionalism that he advocates and that I know he feels strongly about, but it probably will not be the GTCE.
When we discussed this in Committee, I set out some of the things that the Government are trying to do to raise the status of the profession and the quality of entrants to it and to help existing teachers to develop and improve. As we discussed on the last group, one of the overall themes that we are trying to develop is to give teachers and head teachers greater responsibility for improving teacher quality. I think that is a very good symbol of greater professionalism. I am as keen as other noble Lords to support schools and head teachers to recruit high-quality teachers and to ensure that they are able to access the information that they need to do so. At present, the GTC has a register that contains detailed information from every teacher and employer in the country. This ranges from personal data and qualifications through to information on the types of posts held in previous employments. Schools and teachers are required to update this information at least three times a year. I am told that that costs around £500,000 a year, and that is before one counts the cost of the time spent on it in schools. I do not believe that maintaining that amount of information at a national level is desirable or necessary.
However, we have been persuaded by concerns raised in this House and elsewhere that there is a genuine need for the Government to help schools to know who has qualified teacher status and who has passed induction. The profession proposed an alternative to the GTCE register that I think achieves this objective, and the two leading head teacher unions wrote to the Secretary of State to express their strong belief in the need for an online database of all qualified teachers that is accessible by schools to replace the GTCE register.
We talked about this in Grand Committee but I can confirm that, having considered this, the Secretary of State has agreed that the teaching agency will establish and maintain a database that will record which teachers have attained qualified teacher status and which have passed their statutory induction period. That database will be available online to all employers from April 2012 and will be in addition to the prohibited list database, which will also be available to employers online. Together, the QTS database and the prohibited list will give employers an important resource in assessing qualifications as well as establishing who should not be employed as a teacher.
Baroness Walmsley
Perhaps I may ask my noble friend a question. Will these two databases be linked? I can imagine a head taking on a teacher might look at the original database to see if that person has been qualified and done the induction but they will not necessarily look at the other database to see if that person has been struck off since. Will there be a suggestion for somebody using the first database that they really ought to check the prohibited one as well?
Lord Hill of Oareford
That sounds a very sensible suggestion. I will need to check where we have got to on developing the two databases but that sounds eminently sensible because clearly one would want to make sure that there was read-across.
I hope in light of the reassurance about providing the information, which I accept there has been widespread agreement that we need, including from the party opposite, and about maintaining such a register, that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, may feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I listened to my noble friend Lord Puttnam with a great deal of sadness as he described the demise of the GTC and what it had originally intended to represent, which was a strong professional standard for the teaching profession and something that they could all aspire to. It is a very sad day that we are here reflecting on its demise. The Minister said very warmly to my noble friend Lord Puttnam that he would not disagree with a word that he had said about teachers’ professionalism, and he went on to say that he hoped that something would “well up” to replace it. That is not much of a response to the profession. In the intervening period, while we are waiting for this welling up, the teaching profession will have been sent a signal that the Government really do not think that it is terribly important and it has got to bide its time before anything appears from the ether to be a standard for it again as a professional body. I echo the comments that have been made about the messages that this sends to the profession.
My noble friend Lord Puttnam went on to say that we would end up recreating the GTC and I think that is really where we are ending up. As we have heard, we have got one list, or maybe two. Somebody is going to have to administer those lists. At a very basic level, if they are not a register then they are moving towards becoming a register, and I acknowledge that the Minister has made some gestures towards what we were arguing. The question that has been raised about whether they will speak to each other is very valid.
I also think that there is a difference between a database of those who are qualified to teach and a register of those who are currently teaching. A register of those who are qualified to teach would very quickly get out of date. It would become a moribund list of people who have potentially not taught for 20 years or more, whereas the idea of a register is as a current, lively thing that enables access to people’s current status. It seems that we have got two poor substitutes for what was a perfectly reasonable arrangement in the first place. More work needs to be done on this.
As for this applying only to England and what happens to the other three nations. I am not sure that I heard the Minister address that issue. Three registers are going to exist in the other three UK nations, and England will be the only one which does not have one. We have made heavy weather of this. It would have been a lot easier if we had just kept the register as well, and be done with it.
I am absolutely sure that the thinking behind this is that the GTCE, for whatever reason, was not in favour with the current Government, and this is why we have ended up where we are. A lot more work needs to be done on this, but I take on board the Minister’s intention to come back and clarify some of these issues. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) Where subsection (1) applies, the employer must provide information about the teacher to the Secretary of State.”
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, as the Bill stands, where a teacher may have been dismissed due to serious misconduct or dismissed due to serious misconduct had they not already resigned, the employer,
“must consider whether it would be appropriate to provide prescribed information about the teacher to the Secretary of State”.
The same holds for teachers employed through an agency.
Also, as the Bill stands, the Secretary of State,
“must keep a list containing”—
the names which we have just been discussing, of those—
“to whom a prohibition order has effect”.
But as we have heard, under the Bill there is no requirement for the Secretary of State to maintain a register of qualified teachers. Again, this is an issue which we have just been rehearsing, and on which we require further clarification.
The original requirements that this clause now removes were put in place to ensure that any future potential employers were aware of previous dismissals for serious misconduct. It protected employers from a safeguarding and quality perspective and it protected the pupils in these schools. We believe that these protections are still essential. Our amendments would make it compulsory and not discretionary for employers to inform the Secretary of State about cases where an employed teacher or an agency teacher has been dismissed due to serious misconduct.
If the Bill went through unamended, there would no doubt be a variation in treatment from employer to employer, and the picture held by the Secretary of State on the database that we have been talking about would be incomplete. It would mean that checks by potential employers would not be complete, and the risk of employers unknowingly hiring teachers previously guilty of serious misconduct would rise. This would reduce confidence in the whole referral system. And more importantly, it could put pupils at risk.
In Grand Committee, the Minister argued that the proposals made no change to the duty on all schools to refer any cases of serious misconduct relating to children to the Independent Safeguarding Authority. But this does not appear to provide the safeguards that are necessary. For example, what about other cases of misconduct, for example financial misconduct? And what does the ISA do with the information that would stop the teacher being hired by an unwitting employer in the future?
The proposals are a recipe for confusion, with employers not being clear where to send information on misconduct, and a danger that several agencies will end up holding partial records. Surely the safest way out of this is to require all information to be held in one place—in this case, as we propose, to be held by the Secretary of State.
I know it has been argued that the current system does not work well in that different employers are providing different levels of information to the GTCE. But surely the solution to this is to provide a clear national obligation on employers to inform the centre not to give them even more discretion and therefore make an even more patchy picture of what is happening out in the schools.
This issue is too important to brush aside. It is not about the bureaucratic flow of information; it is about pupil safety and the guarantees that parents rightly expect as regards proper checks being carried out on teachers before they are employed. That can work only if the Secretary of State provides clear leadership to schools and ensures that his department receives a consistent and comprehensive picture of the misconduct issues taking place in them. I therefore hope that noble Lords will support our amendment.
Lord Storey
My Lords, this matter is very important and I very much look forward to what the Minister has to say on this. We are rightly concerned about safeguarding. All staff in schools rightly have CRB checks and the CRB register is regularly maintained. It is equally important that when a member of staff commits an act of gross misconduct which goes to the disciplinary processes and is dismissed, we have a mechanism whereby that teacher cannot move to another authority, job or school. As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, we would put at risk the whole basis of the safeguarding of schools. In the Minister’s reply, I hope that he will give us comfort in that we can be assured that this situation cannot arise.
Let us take an example. A teacher comes into school under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He or she is sent home and the matter is investigated. Gross misconduct is alleged and the matter goes to a disciplinary hearing of governors. The governors decide to uphold the gross misconduct allegation, after which the teacher appeals. The appeal panel of governors upholds the action and the teacher is removed from his or her job. In that situation, we would want to be assured that that information is retained so that the member of staff cannot move to another authority or school. This is hugely important for the safeguarding and well-being of our children, as well as being important to the parents.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Jones on this issue. In respect of the non-safeguarding issues—the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has just talked about the safeguarding ones—my noble friend mentioned financial irregularity and misconduct. I know that the Minister is likely to repeat the defence that schools have to inform the Independent Safeguarding Authority, which to some extent deals with the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. But it does not deal with the other issues.
I know that it is a great frustration to governors and head teachers when they find that they have employed someone who clearly is not up to the job and who had not been in their previous job, but the new school did not know about it. In terms of the professionalism of the workforce and teachers, it is very important that we respect that when things go wrong as well as when they go right and ensure that the facility is there to ensure that schools notify a central body. The Secretary of State would seem to be a sensible outcome, which is surprising given that much of my nervousness about this Bill is giving ever more powers to the Secretary of State, but on this occasion it is warranted. I would be interested in the Minister’s response if he happened to have in his back pocket any information around the numbers of teachers who are dismissed on grounds of gross misconduct that are not related to safeguarding. That would give us a better understanding of the exposure around this issue than if he relies just on the Independent Safeguarding Authority.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I do not think I have that in my back pocket, but I will rootle in my clothing after this and see what information I can find. If there is relevant information which would shed some light on this I will, of course, send it to the noble Lord and circulate it more widely.
I will briefly set out the Government’s overall proposals on teacher regulation to try to put them in context. The GTCE currently deals with referrals for both incompetence and misconduct. I start with that because it touches in some way on the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Knight. There is pretty clear evidence that the approach taken by the GTCE on incompetence has not been working and this is one of the things that drove us to try a new approach. In 10 years, the GTCE barred only 17 teachers for incompetence, and research has shown that employers are often reluctant to make referrals relating to competence to a national regulator. As we have discussed, they have previously only had a nuclear option and this has discouraged heads from making referrals, on the understandable basis that someone who might not be guilty of serious misconduct, but might need to move on and try teaching in a different school, finds himself grinding through the GTCE process. We are therefore seeking to separate issues of competence from issues of misconduct.
So far as dealing with incompetence is concerned, we want to put that into the hands of head teachers. To help them carry out this responsibility, we are also currently consulting on some streamlined arrangements for performance management and capability procedures. So far as misconduct is concerned, we certainly think there is a role for a national regulator, but we also want to try to give head teachers an appropriate level of responsibility, with only serious misconduct cases that may warrant the ultimate sanction—a bar from the teaching profession—being dealt with by the national regulator.
On the issue of safeguarding raised by my noble friend Lord Storey, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is partly a response to that. Our proposals will not alter the current arrangements in relation to child protection. The legal duty on employers to refer any issues that relate to safeguarding to the Independent Safeguarding Authority will remain. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, asked what happens when the Independent Safeguarding Authority is informed. If a person is barred by the ISA, a flag would appear on their CRB check and a head teacher carrying out a check would then know.
The present regulatory regime requires head teachers to refer all teachers who are sacked as a result of misconduct to the national regulator. The regulator then investigates those cases and imposes one of a range of sanctions depending on the severity of the misconduct. Our basic position is that we do not think that a national regulator should need to administer intermediate sanctions such as restrictions on the use of the internet on school computers. The purpose of the national regulator should be to investigate the most serious cases in order to decide whether a teacher should ever be allowed to teach again. Under the current system, only 10 per cent of referrals have resulted in prohibition orders. In other words, a lot of the GTCE’s time—and a significant amount of money—has been spent investigating cases of a lower order of significance. Similarly, the current system requires head teachers to go through the process of referring a teacher, even if they believe that there are no grounds for barring them from the profession. This is inefficient and risks placing a perverse incentive on head teachers not to confront issues of conduct, because they think it is inappropriate and unnecessary to refer the case to the national regulator.
The amendments effectively seek to reverse the changes we are proposing to make to the role of the national regulator in relation to misconduct. The reason that I am resisting them is because experience of the current system has shown that requiring employers to refer all cases has had two undesirable consequences. First, as I have said, it means that the regulatory system has spent too much of its time focusing on cases that are not sufficiently serious to warrant the teacher being barred, and secondly, that heads have avoided sacking teachers for misconduct because they know it does not warrant an investigation by the regulator and they would not want them ending up on that path.
There is a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, about inconsistency, which I accept. I agree that arrangements for teacher regulation should seek to achieve consistency, but I do not believe that the current duty which she prefers is delivering that. Research published in 2008 found that between 2001 and 2008, nearly one-third of all local authorities had never made a referral for misconduct. Even when we take into account the different numbers of teachers employed in different local authority areas, the variation of referrals among local authorities indicates significant inconsistency in the current system. To reduce that, and to support head teachers in exercising their discretion, we are developing prohibition advice which sets out the kinds of misconduct that should lead to a teacher being barred from the profession. I circulated a draft on 12 October. We are currently carrying out a consultation on the guidance, which we intend to publish following Royal Assent. I would be happy to receive comments on that consultation from noble Lords to see whether they think it will help us to deliver greater consistency.
We are taking those steps and I hope, by explaining the rationale behind wanting to move to a more differentiated system, that even if the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, does not accept my reasoning she will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, made a powerful case on the issue of consistency, and I think that it is the key word in this. We are grappling towards a system that is best going to deliver that consistency. The Minister said that it did not work in the past and that incomplete records were provided by different authorities. My answer to that is that what he is proposing now will make it even more inconsistent and patchy. The draft regulations he has recently sent out show that it will very much be discretionary rather than compulsory for employers as to whether they feed information into the centre. The onus of the wording is that employers “may” decide whether they wish to inform the Secretary of State, members of the public “may” be able to refer cases to the Secretary of State, and the police and the Independent Safeguarding Authority “may” also refer cases to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State will have a very patchy and inconsistent picture, and I do not know that that helps anybody. What we really want is a resource that future employers can access and in which they will have some faith.
I understand the steps the Minister is taking, but we need to revisit the draft regulations. We need to make a much better attempt at trying to find a consistent and useful resource for future employers. I do not think that this is it, but there is room for further dialogue. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Lord Hill of Oareford
I should like to speak briefly to this and the other government amendments which make up the majority of this group. A number of these amendments were prompted by the debate about Clause 13 that we had in Grand Committee. My noble friend Lord Phillips and a number of other Peers were concerned that the way the clause was drafted might lead a judge to place undue weight on the welfare of the teacher involved when considering applications to lift reporting restrictions. It was not our intention to skew the judge’s consideration to the disadvantage of the pupil, or pupils, who had made the allegation.
Amendment 44 therefore makes it clear that courts must have regard both to the welfare of the teacher and to the alleged victim of the offence when deciding whether to lift reporting restrictions. My noble friend was also concerned that the clause could lead to one-sided reporting of an allegation. It provided that the written consent of the individual about whom allegations had been made should be a defence to a charge of breaching the restrictions. However, that could lead to a situation where a teacher defended himself publicly against an allegation while those making the allegation were unable to respond.
We thought that my noble friend Lord Phillips was right to say that when a teacher is responsible for a publication identifying him or her as the subject of an allegation, then restrictions should lift and other parties should then be able to publish their side of the story. Amendment 49 and the consequential Amendments 53 and 54 make this change. The remaining amendments are technical improvements to the drafting of parts of Clause 13 following discussions between officials at the Department for Education and officials at the Lord Chief Justice’s office. They do not represent a change to the policy intention behind the clause.
Amendment 42 clarifies that tentative allegations that a teacher may be guilty of an offence should be treated in the same way as firmer allegations that they are guilty. Amendment 43 and consequential Amendments 45, 46 and 50 clarify that applications for reporting restrictions to lift should be made to the magistrates’ court, with appeals going to the Crown Court. Amendment 50 and the paving Amendment 47 help the clause more accurately to reflect our original policy intention that reporting restrictions should lift automatically when a teacher is charged. I beg to move.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I do not want to oppose any of the amendments that the Minister has tabled but I want to sound a cautionary note and put it on the record following our extensive discussion of the principles underlining the Government’s proposals in Clause 13. We had an extensive debate in Grand Committee and part of it was around the question that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, put acutely: whether the Government had made the case that teachers are in a unique position in relation to allegations of abuse, such that the restriction on reporting was justified. He said that,
“if Clause 13 goes through unamended, it will repose in the teaching profession a privilege unique in English law”.—[Official Report, 6/7/11; col. GC 158.]
I want to preface my remarks with great concern for any person in any profession against whom allegations of child abuse are made and are not true. I completely understand the concerns about blighting a career and suspending a person in an anxious time while investigations take place. I have a son who is a teacher at a primary school and many sisters and some brothers-in-law who are teachers, so I am appraised of and concerned about that side of the argument. I also understand why the teaching unions make it. However, I am also concerned about safeguarding children and that is the difficult territory that we are in here.
The Government offered, in response to our debate in Grand Committee, to do some research to see what the figures were. That research has now been published and was referred to in the press at the weekend. When noble Lords look at the figures, they will see that of the cases examined—more than 12,000 where allegations were referred to local authority designated officers—under a quarter were in relation to teachers. If you add in the smaller, but none the less substantial, numbers of non-teaching school support staff, it is still well under a half of all the allegations. It is more telling that for teachers—this was the headline in the press—nearly half of the allegations, which came to 2,800 cases, were classified as unsubstantiated.
This does not mean that there was no truth in the allegation but that the threshold of evidence for prosecution could not be reached. This is difficult territory because most of those allegations will depend only on the word of the pupil against that of the teacher. There will not be witnesses present in most of those allegations. “Unsubstantiated” means that there was insufficient evidence to proceed; it is not a judgment about whether the allegations were true. Even more telling than that is that only 2 per cent of the allegations against teachers and FE lecturers were classified as malicious. The guidance issued by the Government in August makes great play of, and refers extensively to, malicious allegations, and yet we now have from the research a finding that only 2 per cent of allegations were malicious.
I am not going to oppose the amendments. I understand why the Government have acceded to the pressure from the unions, although we decided at the time, because of the problems that arise and the concerns about safeguarding, not to accede to that pressure because it opens up the other argument about where to draw the line. As I say, there were smaller but substantial numbers of non-teaching staff—some 1,700—against whom allegations were also made. I simply sound a cautionary note to the Minister. I hope that we do not find further down the line that a serial abuser—there have been serial abusers in schools—gets away with abuse over a long period because none of his—they are generally men—crimes could be reported because the evidence in relation to each one never reached the threshold for prosecution. I hope that in passing this legislation we are not responsible for the preventable abuse of any child. I say this without wanting to castigate the Government, but it is very difficult territory and I am not sure we are in the right place. I understand why the Government have done this but we will have to watch the situation very carefully.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, my name is attached to all the government amendments bar one. As the Minister said, these amendments arise out of the debate in Grand Committee and I welcome them all. The only amendment about which I have reservations —because I do not understand it—is the first one, which would insert “or may be” in line 12 on page 20. It would then say that:
“This section applies where a person who is or may be employed or engaged as a teacher”.
Perhaps the Minister could explain the purport of that insertion when he responds.
The only thing I cannot resist saying is that sometimes we make life difficult for ourselves—or, more truthfully, for those who have to understand this legislation. There are two references in Amendment 49 to “a matter”. It states that,
“the person who is the subject of the allegation includes a matter in a publication”.
Such arcane language is surely to be avoided if at all possible. Why we cannot say “includes information in a publication” I do not know, except that there is reference in an earlier subsection to “matter”.
Amendments 48 and 51 concern a more important issue. They represent the two most important amendments I put forward in Grand Committee, which the Government decided not to accept. I have reworded the second of these amendments, Amendment 51, but the first is more or less verbatim the amendment that was argued in Committee. I remind the House that in Committee on 6 July—in cols. GC 158 to 178—not a single Member of the Committee objected to any of the amendments put forward, largely for the reasons that we have just heard. In my view, and I think in that of all who have spoken so far in relation to Clause 13, this is utterly wrong in principle. As has already been said, it will be the first time in English law that free speech has been curtailed in this way and where a statement that is true can be the subject of a criminal prosecution. It is not an issue just of press freedom but of individual freedom. It will curtail the freedom of speech no less of worried parents or guardians. The full panoply of criminal law can be arraigned against a parent who suffers the greatest anxiety in relation to a child, where the child maintains that he or she is being abused. The parent is prevented by law from publicising the allegation of the child, however true, and for what? To protect teachers.
There is no one in this House more admiring of teachers than I am. I find myself in a very strange position on this clause. I wish it were not teachers at whom I seem to be aiming my gun. Freedom of speech and protection of children come before the pain and embarrassment which undoubtedly occur for some teachers with regard to false allegations. I have to say—I do not like saying it—that my Government are bending over so far to placate the teaching profession, and perhaps make up a little to that profession for other actions that they have opposed, that they are committing us to a law which our successors will think was a blot on the great and fundamental freedom of speech that is indispensable, particularly today.
I was a governor for 10 years of one comprehensive school and of another comprehensive school as a parent governor. My wife is a state school teacher. The prejudice that I have is for the teaching profession but I do not speak from ignorance. I should quickly say what I said last time: it is almost a declaration of interest. I was unfortunately at a school where a predatory pederast was allowed for 12 years to do his doleful work. He eventually resigned or was dismissed—one does not know which—in the middle of a term. He was never seen again and absolutely nothing was made of it although he had blighted the lives of dozens of children. The reason that nothing was heard of it is the reason why nothing is heard of these cases in today’s educational world. It is no good the Minister saying that there are regulations for this and obligations to report on that. For schools that suffer some of the worst abuses—fortunately they are few—the truth is that the cost to the school’s reputation and standing of the truth being publicised will be devastating. Often, as in my own case, the governors hushed up the whole grisly affair, as governors today will, if they can, hush up grisly affairs of a comparable nature. That is why I have put forward these amendments and persist in them.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I apologise for interrupting my noble friend but he will be aware that the convention of the House is that 15 minutes is normally considered the maximum speaking time, and he has now been speaking for 19 minutes. I wonder whether he would be kind enough to wrap up his comments.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I apologise to the House for overrunning the conventional time. I suppose it is because I take such a profoundly serious view of these curtailments of free speech that I have overrun the 15 minutes. However, I will wrap up my remarks quickly. Not one of the statistics to which I referred relates to the subject matter of Clause 13, which is pre-charge publicity—not allegations but pre-charge publicity. As regards allegations, 28 per cent led to disciplinary proceedings, more than 50 per cent had some substance and 18 per cent involved suspensions.
I am grateful to my noble friend for the concessions he has made. He may have had to battle for some of the concessions that he has wrung out of his colleagues. However, he does not accept my Amendment 48, which deals with the raising of the cap on freedom of speech in the case of a teacher who resigns or is dismissed, or Amendment 51, which allows a parent whose child has come home complaining of an assault to at least e-mail the other parents in the class to ask them whether they have had any experience of Mr Jones doing what he ought not to do, or e-mailing the staff, for example. To prohibit that seems to me utterly wrong. I speak to these two amendments in that spirit.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I have some amendments in this group. Like my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, I welcome the Government’s amendments. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Phillips on his success in persuading the Government to improve this clause as far as they have. However, I join him in urging the Minister to consider whether he could go a little further. There is devastating logic in what my noble friend says. I am also aware of cases where the abusing teacher has been asked to go away quietly so that no more will be said about the matter. Speaking of logic, I have two amendments in this group which seek to follow government policy and prevent an unintended consequence of this section of the Bill.
Noble Lords may remember that in Committee, speaking to Clause 42 stand part, my noble friend Lady Brinton said on behalf of both of us:
“I would also like to ensure that, where there has been abuse, the subsequent inspection overtly inspects what action has been taken, and openly reports whether the failures that allowed the abuse to occur have been put right. … Parents expect it, and children deserve it”.—[Official Report, 12/9/11; col. GC 117.]
I hope that the Minister will agree with that because it was the 22nd recommendation of the report of Sir Roger Singleton of June 2009, which was agreed to by the then DCSF under the previous Government. Significantly, the DfE under this Government also confirmed adherence to that positive response given in June 2009. Indeed, I know that our honourable friend Mr Tim Loughton has been considering how he can implement this and other recommendations of the Singleton report. There was some news of that only this morning.
Of course, I am aware that Clause 13 only prevents a publication identifying a teacher who is the subject of an allegation. However, the difficulty sometimes arises where writing anything at all about an event might lead to readers having a very good idea of who it might have been. For example, if something occurred on a field trip and there had only been one field trip that year, then it would be possible to identify the alleged perpetrator. So my amendments seek to ensure that we do not fetter the ability of a regulator or a responsible Ofsted inspector to do their jobs properly and to write in their reports about what happened and how the school has, or has not, put measures in place to prevent a repetition. This is what Sir Roger Singleton recommended should happen and that wish has since been endorsed by the previous Government and the current one.
So I hope that the Minister will now see that, in tabling Amendments 50A and 50B, I am trying to avoid that unintended consequence. I believe that Clause 13 as currently written could prevent a regulator or inspector from producing an adequate school inspection report following a case of abuse; a report which stated what action the school has taken. Has my noble friend had time to consider these small, but, I hope, helpful amendments, since they seek to implement what I believe to be the intentions of the Government as well as of the previous Government; intentions which were so well set out by Sir Roger Singleton’s recommendations?
I support what my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, have said about the research that has been circulated to us from York Consulting. I looked at that myself, quite independently of my noble friend and the noble Baroness, and it occurred to me too that there was not a single fact in there that supports the need for this legislation; not one fact that talked about hyped-up, unwarranted publication of the name of a teacher prior to charge. There were lots of statistics about the increase in the number of allegations, lots of statistics about how many of those were eventually found to be unwarranted, but not a thing about publicity. So I still have great reservations about this legislation, despite the fact that in Amendments 50A and 50B I am trying to improve it, because I just do not feel that the Government have yet disclosed to us the pressing need for it, despite what the teaching unions would perhaps like to see. I really would say to the teaching unions—and I have said to the teaching unions—give me the evidence. Where is the evidence about these large amounts of terrible publicity that have brought the Government to decide that they need this legislation? I simply have not seen it yet.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, despite the late hour I think that this debate should not be curtailed, because it is so important. I have to express my great disappointment in the Government for not listening to the arguments that were made so cogently in Committee and again by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. I want to ask the Minister whether some of my experiences would not now be possible. For 13 years I was chief executive of Childline, the helpline for children in trouble and in danger, and this month that helpline is 25 years old. During the time it has been operating, it has cracked a large number of rings and groups and situations where teachers have been abusing children. Children have been able to telephone the helpline and describe what has been happening to them.
Let me tell your Lordships about two cases because they are crucial. We had a series of boys ringing independently from a particular school, all telling us about the same teacher and similar abuse. We were able to get those boys to talk to their parents, to get the parents to come together, and together to take that issue forward, which ended up in a very serious prosecution of that teacher who went to prison. The other situation was that of Crookham Court, a very famous case, where a group of teachers were preying, just as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, described, on a group of children. We intervened in that situation by getting the proprietor out of the school and getting my chair, who happened to be Esther Rantzen, into the school to bring the whole situation into the open. That was again a very famous case when a series of people went to prison for a long time for serial abuse of children in a school.
I believe that those two cases could not happen under these arrangements. We would be prevented from encouraging people to share information that brings serial abusers to court. I do not think that the Government intend that to happen. I do not wish to believe that the Minister and his colleagues would wish that to happen. I do not like speaking at length as it is late and I, too, would like to go home, but the only other point I want to make is that if the Minister had worked for years, as I have, with young people who have to come to court and describe their abuse—the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, made this point—he would know that it is extraordinarily difficult for children and young people to make allegations because they know they have to say it again. Would noble Lords like to have to stand up and tell me about their recent sexual experience? We ask children to talk about extraordinarily painful sexual abuse in court, which they find extremely difficult. That is why I spent nine years of my life working towards children, as witnesses, not having to face the court but being able to give their evidence behind a screen. I am proud of that achievement.
If the Government take it through, we will condemn a large number of children and their parents to terrific pain. I ask the Minister to take it back to his masters and convey the message in the strongest possible terms, otherwise I predict there will be cause to rue the day.
Lord Black of Brentwood
My Lords, I do not wish to detain the House for terribly long but I would be grateful if I can say a few words as I raised this issue for the first time at Second Reading and then talked with the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, about it in Committee. As this is an issue that affects the media, I declare an interest as executive director of the Telegraph Media Group. On Second Reading, I originally raised three concerns. The first was about the workability of these proposals and whether it was possible to muzzle the printed press and broadcast media in a digital age when gossip at the school gate would simply be transformed into dialogue on social media. The second was about the impact on press freedom and open justice, particularly because of the lack in this legislation of a public interest defence. The third, about which we have heard eloquent testimony this evening, was about the welfare of vulnerable children. Underlying all that was a belief that the case had not been made out for a substantial incursion into freedom of expression. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, spoke earlier of the latest statistics showing that only 2 per cent of cases related to malicious allegations. That is a very small number and in none of those has it been proved that publicity was responsible for that.
Those were my concerns. All that said, I am very grateful to the Government for having taken a number of those issues on board. Amendment 44 goes a considerable way to protecting the rights of children. It gives the courts the opportunity to balance the victim with the perpetrator of the crime. Amendment 49, which relates to individual teachers putting material into the public domain, again goes some way to dealing with the impact on the media and open justice, and I think helps to bring this legislation much more into line with the Human Rights Act 1998, which protects material which is in the public domain. That seems to me to be of especial importance in view of the concern I expressed about the impact of social media on this legislation.
I wish that the Government had been able to go further. Indeed, I wish that this clause had not been in the Bill in the first place. However, these changes seem practical and welcome, and may go some way to ensuring that these provisions will have a much less significant impact on the rights of children and on the free media than when the Bill was originally drafted.
I should add that, as a result of these amendments, and the explanations that the Minister has given today, I see no need for my own part—although it is still a matter for the noble Lord, Lord Phillips—to press Amendment 48 or Amendment 51, and withdraw my name and support from those.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, we had a very good debate about this issue in Committee, and, although the hour is late, we have just had another such debate this evening. I recognise the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, made at the beginning: this is not a completely straightforward issue. There are difficult interests to balance. I understand the force of the arguments that have been made about the importance of safeguarding children. I am extremely clear that a huge amount of progress has been made over the years in making children safer in school, thanks to steps taken by the last Government, and no doubt Governments before that. To respond to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, we have no desire to do anything to unwind or undermine any of that. I listened with care to the point she made about Childline. My understanding is that the Bill would not prevent children talking to Childline, and Childline talking to parents. However, I understand the force of what she was saying, and I will check that that is the case. Clearly one would not want a measure inadvertently to have the effect which she raised.
At the heart of this, and the reason why the Government are doing this, is the evidence that has been provided to us on this issue. I think that that evidence is not contested: I know that there is a difference of opinion about the strength of the evidence of the number of cases of pre-charge publicity in the press, but there is an acceptance that we have a problem, that there is a growing number of allegations made against teachers, that teachers are fearful of this trend, and that they are fearful of the effect that it has on their ability to exercise their position of authority in the classroom. We think that they have a particular position—
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend the Minister, but he is wrong about these statistics. The JCHR misread the NASUWT statistics. I said in Grand Committee that,
“for the past three years there has been a decline”,
in the number of allegations—and this is on the statistics in the JCHR report. In 2008, there were not 181, as there had been the previous year,
“but 148; in 2009, 115; and, last year, 107. Yet the Minister in the other place said that the number of allegations had increased, which is simply wrong”.—[Official Report, 6/7/11; col. GC 172.]
With great respect, I suggest to the Minister that he does not follow down that fallacious track.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I will look at the figures again in the light of what my noble friend said. I would not want to go down a fallacious track. I recognise the difficulties that the issue poses. I know how strongly my noble friend feels about it. I have been able to discuss it with him on a number of occasions in recent months. He made a very powerful speech tonight and I know that underlying all of this is his passionate commitment to the principle of freedom of expression. I know that that drives him and that it is an important principle.
I know as well that his amendments are designed to improve a clause that he and my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood would rather see removed altogether from the Bill. I thank him for his approach in trying to come up with ways of improving what clearly he thinks is a deficient measure. Two government amendments in this group are improvements that he has prompted to the clause. I am grateful to him for that and for the remarks that my noble friend Lord Black made about those improvements and the reassurance that they provided for him.
The fundamental concern of my noble friend Lord Phillips is that the clause interferes with the principle of freedom of expression. I understand that. That is part of the reason that the Government have sought to draw the clause in a narrow way, limiting it to pre-charge reporting of allegations against teachers by current pupils, despite calls that we faced at the beginning of proceedings on the Bill from various quarters—including a number from this House—for us to go much further in extending these measures. We resisted that pressure and I think that the feeling of the House at this point is that it was right to do that. I understand the principle of which my noble friend is a passionate champion, but I contend that it needs to be balanced with the need to protect teachers against the damage that can be done by false allegations and by press reporting of them. We seek to strike a balance and this debate is about whether we have got it right.
Baroness Walmsley
Perhaps I may ask my noble friend a question. I apologise and will make it very quick. Can he tell us how many allegations where the teacher has been identified have been reported prior to charge in the past two or three years? My noble friend suggests that there have been six. Another noble Lord said five. Do the Government think that the correct number is a multiple of that? We simply have not been told.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, getting an accurate picture of the extent of the problem is difficult. I accept the point made by my noble friend Lord Phillips that, through the research that the department has carried out by going online and looking at local press reporting as best it can, so far the number of cases that it has come up with is a multiple of five, but not many multiples of five. I think that the number circulated after the recent survey carried out for the department was 15. I accept that that is not a large number. However, the principle and the concern that underlie it are what we seek to address.
I will now address the amendments that my noble friend tabled rather than the general principle. The first area where he thinks that the clause gets the balance wrong is in relation to communication within the school community. His Amendment 51 seeks to ensure that pupils or parents will not breach reporting restrictions by communicating with other parents and other members of school staff. An example of where this might happen is if the parent wishes to communicate with other parents about an allegation that their child has made against a teacher. I should clarify that parents would not breach reporting restrictions by holding private conversations whether in person or online. The reporting restrictions would apply only to communication to the public at large or any section of the public.
My noble friend argued that a parent might wish to communicate with a section of the public in this way in order to seek corroboration of an allegation against a teacher before raising it with the school. We think that the effect of his amendment would be wider than that and would exempt from reporting restrictions communications by any pupil or any person acting on behalf of the pupil to any section of the school community and so reduce the protection the clause gives teachers against malicious or unfounded gossip. For example, it would allow pupils or parents to use a forum on the school network to publish an allegation against a teacher widely within the school community. I agree with my noble friend that parents should be free to follow up allegations made by their children, but I do think—I know he was dismissive of this point—that they should do that through appropriate channels by raising the issue with the school or the relevant authorities rather than by launching their own inquiries or campaigns. He knows, because I have discussed it with him before, that I am aware of a number of cases where e-mail campaigns against teachers are led by parents to whip up a campaign against them. We would not want that to be allowed to happen.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
The Minister is surely aware that if anybody whipped up, as he put it, a campaign that was untrue, they would be subject to very heavy libel or slander damages.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am aware of that, and we have discussed that point before. I know that is the case, and I defer to my noble friend who is a very distinguished lawyer, who I think used to do libel. To expect a teacher who finds himself the subject of a malicious campaign to take a libel case on his own account, financially, emotionally or in any other way, is not a practical course of action.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
In making that comment, does the Minister feel that a teacher cannot take that action but that a parent, with all the distress that they are feeling about their child having accused a teacher of abuse, can go to a judicial review with all that means without the support of other parents? That is simply not the real world. Does the Minister not agree that there is some imbalance in the two things that he has just described?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I did not say that a parent who has concerns would have to go to judicial review. I am arguing that for a parent who has those concerns— I agree 100 per cent with the noble Baroness that a parent would want to have them investigated and taken forward—there are a number of ways, whether through the police, the local authority, the LADO, and so on, to make sure that those concerns are investigated. I am not at all saying that if they have concerns I would expect them to have to go to judicial review.
We are absolutely clear that genuine victims of abuse must be able to disclose the abuse and that such reports must be investigated properly. These provisions do not interfere with that. They do not prevent the police interviewing witnesses. We think that effective investigations are possible without press reporting. The police can seek to lift the reporting restrictions if necessary to draw attention to an issue if they are seeking more information about a particular person.
The other amendment proposed by my noble friend would mean that reporting restrictions would lift when a person who is the subject of an allegation resigned or was dismissed from the relevant employment. He is concerned that without this amendment, Clause 13 may help schools cover up misconduct and argues that press reporting is an important check on such behaviour.
One difficulty with the amendment is that its implications would go well beyond this issue; for example, it would mean that any teacher who resigned to take up a post at another school would lose their protection against the reporting of allegations, even if the allegation was unfounded and had no influence on the teacher’s decision to resign. We are committed to ensuring that genuine allegations of abuse are investigated properly by the appropriate authorities. Schools have a statutory duty to investigate allegations and, where appropriate, to refer them to the relevant authority. Our new statutory guidance on this subject makes absolutely clear that if a person tenders his or her resignation or ceases to provide their services, that must not prevent an allegation being investigated. If it is well founded, the investigation will lead to the police bringing a charge or to the regulator holding a hearing. At that point, the reporting restrictions will lift. If there is insufficient evidence to reach this point, we think it is right that the teacher’s anonymity is protected and their reputation and career safeguarded.
I accept that a small minority of heads may in theory seek to cover up allegations or may not be as swift in acting on them as we would wish. However, I do not think that press reporting is the best or the only way to counter this possibility. If parents or others are not satisfied that schools are dealing with an allegation, they have recourse other than through the press: they can refer the case to the national regulator; they can ask the Secretary of State to investigate and exercise his powers of direction; they can go directly to the police if they consider a criminal offence may have been committed. In addition, if any person feels that there is a strong public interest in publishing details of identifying information about a teacher against whom allegations of criminal behaviour have been made, they can apply to the local magistrates for reporting restrictions to be lifted.
I will quickly reply to a couple of less contentious points. My noble friend Lord Phillips asked about government Amendment 42. In order to cover ambiguous allegations that someone might be guilty of an offence where, for example, a pupil claims, “I think it was teacher X who did it”, we have changed the definition from,
“an allegation that the person is guilty of a relevant criminal offence”,
to “may be” guilty of an offence.
My noble friend Lady Walmsley was worried that Clause 13 might unintentionally hinder Ofsted from including information in its reports that it would otherwise want to include. I recognise her concerns about that. In cases where a school is found to be failing to implement arrangements for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children appropriately, we expect inspectors to include judgments or commentary about such failings in published reports. In light of her concerns, my officials contacted Ofsted today to ask whether it thinks there is a risk that Clause 13 might constrain inspectors in making their reports. Ofsted said that inspectors would not feel constrained in reporting on a safeguarding issue. As a matter of general policy, they always take care in writing reports to ensure that no individuals can be identified. Of course, if the inspectors uncover safeguarding concerns during an inspection they can and should provide full detail, including the identities of those concerned to the appropriate authorities and the reporting restrictions would not interfere with that in any way.
Those were the less contentious ones. I understand the strength of the feeling of my noble friend Lord Phillips, and the passion with which he has argued this evening. I have been able to agree with him on two of the improvements to the clause that he has proposed. I know he will not agree with me but I think there are difficulties with the two further ones he has put forward—that they would weaken the protection that we are seeking to give to teachers—and I ask him to withdraw his amendments.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall)
My Lords, I should point out to the House, if I may, that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, has not actually moved his amendment. It has not yet come up. My duty at this moment is to ask the House whether it wishes to agree to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hill, which, if I may, I will now do.
Lord Hill of Oareford
(b) the victim of the offence to which the allegation relates.”
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
(c) the person who is the subject of the allegation resigns or is dismissed from the relevant employment or engagement.”
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, in the light of what the Minister said—if I can put it this way without seeming to be patronising—he made the very best of a lousy hand. Given the time of night and the payroll vote visibly present on the Front Bench, prudence gets the better of passion, and I fear that, for tonight, free speech and the protection of children will have to be left on the sidelines, so I do not move the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
“(11A) The restrictions in subsection (3) also cease to apply if—
(a) the person who is the subject of the allegation includes a matter in a publication, or(b) another person includes a matter in a publication with the written consent of the person who is the subject of the allegation;and, in either case, the inclusion of the matter in the publication would otherwise be in breach of subsection (3).(11B) Written consent is to be ignored for the purposes of subsection (11A)(b) if it is proved that any person interfered unreasonably with the peace or comfort of the person giving the consent, with intent to obtain it.”
Lord Hill of Oareford
“( ) For the purposes of this section, proceedings for an offence are instituted at the earliest of the following times—
(a) when a justice of the peace issues a summons or warrant under section 1 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 in respect of the offence; (b) when a public prosecutor issues a written charge and requisition in respect of the offence;(c) when a person is charged with the offence after being taken into custody without a warrant;(d) when a bill of indictment is preferred by virtue of section 2(2)(b) of the Administration of Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1933.”