King’s Speech

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I open my remarks with a warm welcome to all noble Lords who made their maiden speeches today. The speech of my noble friend Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest was striking both for her modesty about her skills in public speaking and for her very evident compassion and extraordinary achievements through Team Domenica. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, for her moving valedictory speech, which I gather got her to almost 600 contributions in Hansard in your Lordships’ House.

In particular, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, on her maiden speech. She brings not only a lot of experience but relevant experience to your Lordships’ House, and I know that this will be valued by all of us. She and I share some things. Her work with the Jo Cox Foundation focused on loneliness, and I had the privilege to cover that in DCMS. Sadly, there is one important divide between us which I am not sure we will be able to bridge: the noble Baroness clearly has great skills on the dance floor. My ballet report at the end of my first term, aged four, said “Diana has no natural talent”.

I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, to her place, and I wish her and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, every success in their new roles. My noble friend Lord Howe once said to me that there are two departments to which every person in the country wants to succeed: one is health and the other is education. They have very special roles.

It struck me, when I looked back over many years at speeches from both the Opposition and the Government in these debates, and at election results, how much commonality of aspiration there has been between different parties on all sides of the House on the issues that we are debating, although we may differ on the ways of achieving those aspirations. That is in part reflected by the legislation in the King’s Speech, as several Bills in this area were part of the previous Government’s legislative plans.

Before I go on to talk about the substance of the King’s Speech and the Government’s proposals, I will make my round of personal thank yous. I am very touched by all the thank yous I have received from your Lordships today, but I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Twycross and Lady Wilcox of Newport, who generated just the right level of anxiety for me, every time I was on the Front Bench, to keep me on my non-dancing toes.

I turn to the legislation, starting with the health Bills. On this side of the House we welcome the decision to progress with the reform of the Mental Health Act. The previous Government undertook very thorough pre-legislative scrutiny and worked hard with families, the mental health voluntary sector, practitioners and parliamentarians to make sure that the legislation would genuinely result in better decisions when someone needs to be detained under the Mental Health Act, in particular—as we heard from a number of your Lordships—when that detention relates to a child. I would be grateful if, in her closing remarks, the noble Baroness could reassure the House that the substance of the Government’s new Bill will reflect the previous Government’s commitments in this area. Understandably, the Government have said that implementation will take place in phases, when there is sufficient skilled workforce to deliver the reforms. When will the Government set out their timetable for implementation?

We also welcome the decision to proceed with a tobacco and vapes Bill, and we agree with many of your Lordships’ comments about the important contribution that this can make to the health and well-being of our nation.

I think I am right in saying that there was an announcement this morning that the Government will proceed with a royal commission on social care. There have been multiple reviews of social care, so it would help the House if the noble Baroness could explain which unanswered questions a new royal commission would focus on and what its timescale is.

On education, there are elements of the children’s well-being Bill that we on this side of the House welcome. In particular, we are pleased to see plans to set up a register for children not in school, which is something that we had wanted to do and spent many hours debating in this Chamber—as my noble friend Lady Berridge said—often ably led by the noble Lord, Lord Soley. We also worked hard behind the scenes to reconcile some strongly felt views in this field, by both home-educating parents and local authorities, as demonstrated by the consultation on elective home education guidance, which closed in January this year and which I hope will prove useful to the new Government as they work on this area.

I was pleased to hear from the Minister that the Government intend to look at unregulated settings, but are there plans to look also at the quality of the education children educated at home receive? The scale of that issue has changed out of all recognition since Covid, and of course, every child has the right to a decent education.

Turning to the proposed multi-academy trust inspections, we also recognise the need to return to the basic principle that has underpinned so much of the success of schools in England: that accountability and autonomy are aligned and require high levels of transparency. The growth of multi-academy trusts has meant that, in some cases, accountability via Ofsted inspections has been at a school level while autonomy has been at a trust level. Rightly or wrongly, that has contributed to a sense of unfairness in our inspection system. The previous Government had begun work on this area, and we will offer constructive scrutiny of the new Government’s plans. While the principle of MAT accountability might be clear and simple, the implementation will certainly be complex, with implications for school inspections—which the Government are also proposing to change—for intervention powers and policies, and, not least, for the skill set that will be required of Ofsted to deliver that. Indeed, there is a valid question about whether inspection is the only or best route to achieve accountability.

More broadly, it is hard for us to discern the new Government’s vision for our schools from this Bill. We are genuinely puzzled by the focus on requiring all academies to adhere to the national curriculum: not only is this already the case for the vast majority but, even for the small number who do not adhere to it, the rigour of the Ofsted inspection regime assures the quality of the curriculum being taught in all our schools. Similarly, with close to 100% of teachers holding qualified teacher status, we are puzzled as to why this is a priority and what problem it really seeks to solve.

These measures, together with the duty to co-operate on school admissions and the insistence on annual safeguarding checks, leave us with a sense of a Government who, ironically, trust school teachers and leaders less than their predecessors. Our programme of reform was built on the premise that school and trust leaders were the real experts and that the route to quality, innovation and better outcomes for children was to trust them and give them agency. I fear that the proposed measures in this Bill may constrain some of that.

Turning to skills, the King’s Speech also included the Skills England Bill, which commits, if I have understood it correctly, to replace IfATE with a new body, Skills England. Again, I ask the Minister: what problem are the Government trying to solve with this change? IfATE played a very important—and, we believe, effective—role in putting employers at the heart of skills development. I look forward to hearing in future debates more about how the Government expect their wider reforms of the apprenticeship levy to unfold.

Returning to schools, it will not surprise the Minister that we on this side of the House have real concerns about the proposals to require independent schools to charge VAT on their fees. I would be grateful if she could confirm whether her Government will guarantee funding for all the areas where she has committed to invest the proceeds of the VAT on independent schools, even if it is not raised in full. Also, have the Government analysed the impact on every region of the availability of places in state-funded schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities whose parents can no longer afford private education?

One thing has not changed by moving sides: I have run out of time. I tried in my speech to focus on the legislation that the new Government are bring forward, but there are so many things that I have not had time to cover, including important issues such as teacher recruitment and retention; children with special educational needs and disabilities; the proposed changes to Ofsted; the curriculum; the new Government’s commitment to our capital programmes—particularly for schools affected by RAAC and by the Caledonian Modular problems—the future of the lifelong learning entitlement; and university funding.

We know that many of these issues are interlocking. Changes to the curriculum have implications for inspection, assessment and exams, and changes to the inspection regime have implications for intervention in underperforming schools. So great care will be needed with implementation. That is where the House in general, and these Benches in particular, come in. We will be constructive and always aim to bring fair challenge based on evidence. I hope the Minister recognises the achievements of the last Government, particularly in the area of education, and sees the new Government’s role as one of evolution rather than revolution.