Sex and Gender: Official Data

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Fox of Buckley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the downgrading of data gathered from the 2021 Census question on gender identity, what steps they are taking to ensure accurate and consistent data on sex and gender are collected to ensure robust official data.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government value the collection of high quality and robust data on this topic. The Government Statistical Service will publish a work plan for updated, harmonised standards and guidance on sex and gender in December this year. This will align with the Office for National Statistics regulation guidance on collecting and reporting data about sex and gender identity, which was published in February.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. In the meantime, can she look closely at one worrying consequence? NHS data standards were updated to reflect those very same compromised gender identity questions used in the census. Genspect UK research shows that a significant number of GPs also use them, which in theory means that every time someone registers with a new doctor, patients could informally change the sex registered on their health records. Does the Minister agree that this is concerning because biological sex influences everything from diagnosis to treatment? Therefore, the recording of accurate sex data in NHS records is essential for safe and appropriate healthcare.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The reason why it is so important that we allow the independent statistical services to develop the question appropriately is precisely that it will be used more widely in other public services. Of course it is important that that has the confidence of those responding to the question and of the services being provided. To that extent, therefore, I share the noble Baroness’s concern to ensure that that statistical collection is robust and appropriate and is informing services, including the NHS, in a way that users need it to.

Higher Education Funding

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate, but will perhaps challenge its focus. When the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson halted the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act only a week before its commencement, she insisted that the Office for Students should instead “be more sharply focused” on the financial stability of universities. To me, this rather implies knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. When we discuss the challenges of a sector struggling financially, it worries me if government or university senior management think that academic freedom is a dispensable lower priority and is valued less than propping up higher education institutions as businesses.

I rather regret the marketisation of education that we have seen over recent decades. It has long since caused problems, undermining the core role of universities in intellectual freedom, and academics are told to treat students as customers who need to be kept satisfied, rather than offended or challenged. Students are educated to see degrees as commodities that can be bought and assessed via value-for-money metrics. I regret such philistinism and its consequences.

I am heartbroken, for example, to see the closure of many arts and humanities courses and to see wonderful academics lose their jobs. They are often told that, because they do not tick the production of job-ready graduates box, they are not relevant for 2024. What is the good of all that useless knowledge associated with philosophy, classical music, medieval history and so on?

Realistically, I think that we need to ask whether we should keep universities, departments and courses open at any cost and have that conversation. The question has to be asked: what price academic freedom in that context? When vice-chancellors and higher education NGOs, which lobbied the Government to smother the free speech Act, said they were worried that the legislation could lead to universities being sued at a time when they were facing crippling costs, surely the Government’s reply should have been, “Well, you won’t get sued if you promote and protect free speech on campus stridently”. The Government should also say, “You aren’t a university worth its name if you don’t understand that free speech is a core value, more valuable than anything else, and totally valuable to your existence”.

When the Free Speech Union sent a pre-action protocol letter to Ms Phillipson threatening a judicial review for the failure to commence a free speech Act, it was shocking when we found out that government lawyers noted that concerns had been raised by university managers and senior managers about the consequences of the law on doing business with authoritarian countries that have restrictions on free speech. How grubby that, because some British universities operate overseas students and do not want to lose out on the money, they are prepared to compromise on free speech. The fact that English universities want to boost opportunities for lucrative research partnerships means that they do not want a piece of free speech legislation that might upset China, Dubai or Singapore.

As for attracting more international students, I do not, in any way, do anything other than endorse that. But the self-congratulatory tone that we have heard worries me, because, too often, international students are cynically treated as cash cows rather than welcomed here as some act of philanthropic generosity. Many of the overseas students I have worked with over recent years have noted that they came here imagining that they would find free speech on campus as a value, but actually, having left China, they found it even more restrictive to face some of the cancel culture on campus. I ask for a different set of priorities here.

Schools: Gender-questioning Children

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Fox of Buckley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they are planning to issue further guidance to ensure that schools support gender-questioning children.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, following calls from schools, teachers and parents to support schools and colleges in relation to children who are questioning their gender, on 19 December 2023 we published draft guidance for consultation. The consultation will close on 12 March. Relationships, sex and health education statutory guidance is also under review, and we will launch a consultation shortly. As part of this, we are looking to strengthen the guidance to schools on how to teach this sensitive topic.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I thank the Minister for her reply and the department for the clear guidance on working with gender-questioning children. Parents really were so relieved to hear that they should be fully involved if their own children decide they want to change gender, and it is so useful to have clarity that schools should not automatically socially transition pupils and that teachers and children should not be compelled to use opposite-sex pronouns. However, does the Minister find it troubling that, since publication, a variety of lobby groups and commercial providers are targeting school SLTs, advising them to ignore and even resist the guidance? Can the Minister assure us that the DfE will counter misinformation circulated by the likes of Mermaids, Just Like Us, Stonewall, The Key and even trade unions that wrongfully alleges the guidance is in breach of equality law, discriminatory and transphobic? Will she condemn attempts to scare teaching staff by suggesting that following the guidance puts them at risk of action by regulators and litigators?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Schools are expected to consider all the guidance from the department, and this is no exception: we would expect them to follow the final published guidance. As the noble Baroness says, the anecdotes we hear are that the guidance is already having an impact on parents, who feel able to ask schools to account for their decisions. Once the guidance is published, if individuals are worried, they should talk to their school about it. I looked at some of the campaigns being run and some of the templates that charities have published. Personally, I share the noble Baroness’s concern that they are quite oppositional in tone and are pitting parents against schools, which the guidance explicitly tries to avoid.

Russell Group Universities: Foreign Student Admissions

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Absolutely. We focus on that and a sense of confidence in the fairness of the system is vital. However, I would underline universities are autonomous institutions, and we would encourage them to take the initiative to address the noble Lord’s concerns.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, we will hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and then the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I fear the problem is that we have lost sight of what universities are for. Does the Minister agree that it is a con when new university degrees are created as a substitute for high-quality skills training—the latest being estate agents’ degrees—while academic study is suffering? For example, there is the tragic closure of the music department at Oxford Brookes. Is not this university growth propelled by credentialing schemes, leading to the exploitation of overseas students who are effectively buying visas/degrees to pay for this ridiculous, non-academic growth?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think the noble Baroness brings together a number of different issues. However, the essence is: do we need high-quality degrees in this country that are accessible, particularly to those from disadvantaged backgrounds? There are areas where we have clear concerns. We have already expressed our concerns publicly about foundation years and have reduced the funding for classroom-based subjects, as well as regarding franchise provision.

Religious Education in Schools

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, we live in a period in which Jewish schools have had to ramp up security to protect their pupils, and religious symbols of Judaism are being hidden by students in fear in non-Jewish schools. My question is: given that religion and politics have got very messy, who would be an RE teacher dealing with such fraught difficulties? Over the last few days, the front pages had the story of Michaela Community School, led by Katharine Birbalsingh, whom I admire but others do not—she is certainly controversial. Of all things, the school has been taken to court by a pupil for banning Muslim prayers. The head teacher had basically said, “We shouldn’t be divided by religion. We should have no prayers”. I was fascinated that one of the things the teacher said was that some pupils were being intimidated by their peers for not being religiously pious enough, and it was a kind of bullying.

There is a poisonous atmosphere out there. Even the question of whether we live in a Christian country is rather more awkward than one would think. I loved the explanation given by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, of religion as education and knowledge, and I totally agree with him on that, but many British institutions seem embarrassed by the western Judeo-Christian tradition. Its accomplishments are more likely to be labelled as white privilege than as the repository of positive values and virtues.

Instead, in recent years the new religion is diversity and inclusion, which has incentivised faith groups to adopt politicised cultural religious identities and has proved a recipe for stirring up divisive tensions and encouraging group grievance-mongering and offence-taking. We should not forget that a schoolteacher from Batley Grammar School is still in hiding, in fear for his life, for the blasphemy of showing pupils an image of Muhammad in a religious studies class. He had no support from politicians or trade unions, was labelled Islamophobic and was told he was making a fuss about nothing, although the Parisian teacher Samuel Paty was decapitated for a similar offence of showing cartoons of Muhammad. We have to admit that this is difficult.

I shall finish with the Reverend Bernard Randall, who lost his job at a Christian school—Trent College in Derbyshire—because he delivered a sermon expressing approval of mainstream Christian teaching on marriage, biological sex and gender, and the head teacher reported him to Prevent. That bodes badly for RE teachers. I would avoid it like the plague. We have to be honest that it is more difficult than it sounds by just paying bursaries.

Schools: Transgender Guidance

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord obviously brings extensive experience and wisdom in these areas. As he is aware, the Government will publish a draft Bill to ban conversion practices, and we are committed to protecting all who are at risk of harm from them. On listening to the voices of all pupils, including trans pupils, I stress that the Government are committed to a very full and open consultation so that the guidance we produce reflects the views of all those affected.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, puberty is a difficult time, especially for young women. For example, a dread of sexualised stereotypes can lead to anxiety about the body, sometimes expressed as dressing as a tomboy and sometimes pathologised as anorexia. Therefore, can the Minister ensure that schools do not automatically affirm the fashionable gender dysphoria as a catch-all solution, which is particularly difficult for young lesbians? Can she assure teachers who do not endorse social transitioning associated with gender ideology that their employment and reputation will be protected from false allegations of transphobic bigotry?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises important points, but she paints a picture that I do not fully recognise. The vast majority of schools realise that these are incredibly sensitive issues for staff, pupils and pupils’ parents, and do their absolute utmost to keep that level of trust with all in their care and for whom they are responsible.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, while I hope the Commons will look again and restore some version of Clause 4 and material remedies for victims of cancel culture on campus, I am still really glad that we have passed the Bill. I think our deliberations have been worth while and even now are having an impact, so I thank all involved.

A highlight for me was when the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, made his “confession” last week that he had originally thought the Bill “not necessary”, but

“during the process of Committee and the dialogue and discussions … I was persuaded that there is an issue to address.”—[Official Report, 7/12/22; col. 222.]

That is a win, in my book. Credit, then, to those who have spoken so articulately on threats to academic freedom, but also to those who have been open-minded and listened. Does that not remind us of the gains of hearing all sides of a debate, the importance of free speech and why it is so valuable?

In another instance, I have a confession. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, was keen to correct any impression I had given that the University of Oxford was creating a hostile environment to academics who might oppose moves to decolonise classical music. I apologise if I was too sweeping, but I am in touch with music scholars who are extremely worried about the dogmatic atmosphere surrounding the classical music canon, disparagingly dubbed

“white European music from the slave period”.

They claim that the debate on the topic is toxic and mired in accusations of racism, so I enthusiastically welcome the University of Oxford’s insistence that this is just not true. Perhaps this shows that university authorities can be sensitised to the reputational damage of not defending academic freedom or their own academic staff’s reputation if they disagree with critical theory orthodoxies. That is a shift away from worrying only about the reputational damage of being mislabelled as bigots by campus activists, and I think the Bill has helped.

A final positive note: I was shocked last week when the UCU, the trade union of Edinburgh University, shamefully demanded that the university cancel the screening of “Adult Human Female” organised by their own colleagues, Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom and—not a good example of collegiate atmosphere. I was nervous that Edinburgh University would succumb. After all, it had only recently given into pressure to cancel the titan of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, David Hume. But no, the university stood firm. The documentary will be shown at the university’s theatre tomorrow night, despite transphobic accusations—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, is this normal?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I do not know. I apologise; I am trying to be gracious.

Perhaps the debate we have had has already given authorities a bit more backbone, and therefore I congratulate and thank everyone concerned for allowing a freer spirit and discussion around academic freedom to take place, at least outside this place.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in the interests of balance I will speak very briefly. It is important to say that there is not conviction in all parts of your Lordships’ House that the Bill is, in its current form, in any way necessary. Attempts to address some of the attacks on freedom of speech—including the influence of commercial sponsors and funders in universities, the impacts of casualisation, and low pay and insecurity for academics—were not allowed into the Bill, so not everyone is convinced that the Bill should go forward.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Johnson. Like so many other people in the debate, I strongly agree with the comments made, from the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, onwards. I also do not believe that this clause should remain. I do not believe it will do the job it is supposed to, and it will almost inevitably lead to the chilling effect that the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and others have described.

My noble friend Lord Blunkett asked why the not entirely fictitious person Kathleen could not pursue an action for unfair dismissal because she was compelled into a position that was intolerable. I believe that there was a time when she would have been advised to do that, would probably have done so, and could have counted on the support of her trade union in pursuing that course of action—I can say this directly, as my interest has been declared any number of times. Of course, she found that she could not count on the support of her trade union. I submit to your Lordships that one of the reasons she could not now count on its support is precisely the reason that my noble friend described. If you go back seven, eight, certainly 10 years, the battle that would have taken place in that union to make sure that someone’s employment rights had been sustained without having to resort to any other regulator or court would have been absolute. It would have been the determined position of that union. Some may say that if that would no longer happen, maybe we need something else.

I submit that the “something else” we need is certainly not Clause 4 and this tort. There are those who might say that they are not so concerned about the chilling effect because they do not believe that enough of these things will happen. I say to your Lordships’ Committee that if it wanted to hand-pick a group of its fellow citizens who would argue in the most tortured way about absolutely anything, it should go to one of our universities. There they are: serried ranks of people whose day-by-day enjoyment is to have furious arguments about matters of little consequence. [Interruption.] I have been one for many years.

I will tell the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that at Cambridge University, after the faculty of economics was redecorated, I was inveigled into taking part in a debate as to the order in which the portraits of its Nobel prize winners should be rehung and whether it should be Marshall or Keynes in the pre-eminent position. I left that debate after eight hours. No one was an inch further down the line of resolving it and, to my knowledge, the portraits have never been hung, because 20 years later no one is any further down the path of resolving it. I hate to say this: the only place where I have seen disputes followed with the same tenacious interest and complete unwillingness to give an inch is in my synagogue, but that is because it largely comprises lawyers. I do not make this point to be frivolous or humorous. The truth is that this is a most vexatious and disputatious group of people. They are employed to have arguments with each other; it reaches into every corner of their lives. If we think that they are unlikely to do so in these circumstances, we mislead ourselves completely.

Some people will be very well backed in pursuing this course of action. I think the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, made the point that some will be at a great disadvantage financially. The student unions that we are talking about are usually run by a small group of young people with no experience whatever of the law. Generally speaking, they are unable to exert any control over all the clubs that form the diaspora of their organisation—the Minister made that point. They will be put in a position that they cannot afford or control, and to which there will be no satisfactory long-term resolution.

All this brings me to say that the points that have been made, including by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, about having a regulator that can manage these things, and build on knowledge of how to manage them, is a route to a sensible solution. The rest of it—and I apologise if this is thought to be offensive; I do not mean it to be—is completely fanciful, and anybody who has spent more than a few weeks working in a university will know it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have a huge amount of sympathy with the fears about the chilling effect of Clause 4 and the points that the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, started off making. Basically, I am torn on Clause 4; I do not quite know where to go.

A number of people have discussed the potential of vexatious litigation. I think that is rather cynical. We keep hearing about all these bad-faith players. I am simply worried about litigiousness full stop, even by good-faith players. We know that a dependence on law courts to resolve problems can tangle us up and subsume the matter of fighting for freedom and free speech in legalese, lawyers and so forth, even if done with the best of intentions.

In other words, I do not want us to abandon what we all started off agreeing, which was that this Bill should not compensate for a need for a culture change in relation to arguing for the importance of academic freedom. It should not be seen as a replacement for that. I definitely do not want the law courts to get in the way, because they can kill off any possibility of that culture of the spirit of freedom being drowned out. That is one side of it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grabiner (CB)]

My Lords, without wishing to repeat points that I made on earlier amendments, I will refer briefly to the amendments put forward by the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Stevens of Birmingham, Amendments 58 and 59. Both draw attention to key deficiencies in the current drafting of the Bill.

On moving Amendment 58 at the outset of this group, the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, identified a problem with the priorities or procedure to be adopted. All I respectfully say about that is that we need more of a root and branch exercise on the respective powers of regulators, if Clause 4 unhappily ends up in the legislation. This Bill is currently deficient on the relationship between those two mechanisms. Although I agree with the principle identified, I would like to see a more sophisticated response to the problem.

On Amendment 59, the distinction in legislation between “may” and “must” is a lawyer’s old chestnut: “may” is discretionary; “must” is compulsory or mandatory. In order for any body to conclude whether a claim is vexatious, frivolous or a waste of time, it needs some understanding of the facts. I do not think whether it is “may” or “must” matters; it is important that a body has the power to dismiss a case if it is satisfied it is vexatious, frivolous or, for some other reason, unmeritorious.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have a couple of brief points. Following that helpful contribution on Amendment 59, I want to clarify that complaints are very often dismissed as vexatious, but it is important that we do not accept at face value that things are vexatious because somebody has accused them of so being. That can be a way of closing down the complaints procedure.

I also want to raise a query. I may have misunderstood something in Amendment 58 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, but it suggests that

“the OfS cannot intervene until a university’s own procedures … are exhausted.”

There is a difficulty there. Often, academics and students to whom I have spoken feel that their dispute is with those very academic authorities, and that even the complaint within the university can get them targeted as free speech troublemakers. It is not straightforward. In some instances, we are talking about a rather toxic atmosphere. Often, the complaint an academic has is precisely because they have been put on some procedure by the university authorities—they may have been suspended or put forward for disciplinary action—which they feel is unjustified. They then get cleared, but all the testimonies from people who have been in this situation make the point that the process is the punishment these days. As I said earlier, the period in which an academic has been labelled as a user of hate speech, suspended from their job or whatever it is can be really discrediting and damaging to their reputation. It is slightly more complicated than has been presented, and this is one of the problems with the state of universities at present, in relation to free speech.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

I know that the communication the Minister has had with my right reverend friend the Bishop of St. Albans has been greatly appreciated. It would be tremendously useful if she could confirm on the record how home educators will be both consulted and reassured as we move towards the statutory guidance that will underpin many of the provisions on home education.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very supportive of Amendment 64A. Amendments 65, 66, 66A and 94 are also ways of reassuring and protecting home-schoolers in the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Soley, made the point that, over his many years in politics, many have threatened to go to prison for their beliefs and rarely do. We all recognise that point. But it is also true that, over the many years that I have been involved in politics, I have been reassured that many a law is supportive and not a punishment or threat, and I have learned not to take much notice of that either. The notion that if you are a good actor you have nothing to fear is actually quite chilling, because then you have to ask who decides who the good actors are—who will define what a good parent is, in this instance. It is a little unfair that people who feel so strongly that they say they would go to prison are dismissed, because it speaks to the fact that this Bill has created uncertainty. The Minister has gone out of her way to be reassuring—I do not dismiss that; that is something to be taken seriously—but all that these amendments are trying to do is to codify that reassurance in a variety of ways, rather than just having it on word of mouth.

It is not helpful to say whether it is a minority of home-schoolers who are worried about the register or a majority. In a way, who cares whether it is a majority or a minority? It is the principle, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has made that very clear. I emphasise that there is a principle of freedom here that we should not just throw out or dismiss as some sort of inconvenience to more pragmatic concerns.

The problem with the register is that it is not just a register; it ends up looking as though it requires far more on details of means, as the right reverend Prelate just explained—more than you need in a register. It does not just tick a box. That is why many home educators are very anxious about it. I am not a home educator and have never been home educated; to be frank, I am not interested in home educators per se, but I am interested more broadly in a situation where the state collects so much data and information—a database of children—and interferes in our freedom in a democratic society to home educate, if that is what we want. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle explained, the cloud of suspicion being created that this is a potential assault on deeply held religious and philosophical freedoms is something we should all take seriously as democrats who support a free society.

The suspicion that some home educators have of the state and the way that education is conducted is what we should be discussing in relation to this Schools Bill—if it were not such a basket case of a Bill that we cannot get anywhere on what we ought to be discussing, which is irritating. We have a problem when many parents believe that the state cannot be trusted to educate their children. All sorts of controversial issues come up. I do not think it is a criticism of home educators that they do not trust the state or think that it does not provide the kind of education that their SEND child or bullied child needs, or that they do not want someone to be exposed to the kind of materials in sex and relationship education that we will probably discuss later, which have been all over the news. These are reasonable philosophical ideas to hold; they, and religious freedom, are things that we should be protecting in this House.

We should remember the Telford report, which I just finished reading over the weekend. We have to be careful when the state starts saying that the people acting suspiciously are the parents. I also read the Oldham report, in which state actors—councils, schools, the police and all sorts of people—ignored in plain sight the sexual grooming and abuse of thousands of young people. I am not prepared just to say that I trust the state. It is perfectly reasonable when people do not, but we at least have to reassure them about their freedoms to withdraw from state schooling. After all, it is not the law that you have to school your child, simply that you have to educate them. I trust those parents to educate them as much as I trust the state. Where there are bad actors, you act, but you do not treat everyone all the time as potential bad actors.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I said at Second Reading, putting the register aside for a moment, that we as a society have a responsibility to ensure that all our children are safe, secure and educated. If that is not happening, we need to ask why and what we can simply do to make sure that every child is safe and educated.

Over the last seven or eight years, I have put down a whole series of Written Questions asking how many children are missing from our school rolls, such that we do not even know where they are. The answer is that we do not know. The best we can do currently—this goes back to 2018-19—is information from the National Crime Agency, which, by the way, identifies as missing anyone whose whereabouts cannot be established and who may be the subject of a crime or at risk of harm to themselves; examples include child trafficking, getting involved in drug pushing, et cetera. It concluded that there are 216,707 children missing whose whereabouts we do not know. That is a very low figure. I think it is considerably higher than that.

For me, that is what this debate is about: protecting children and making sure that they are safe, secure and educated. That is why I welcome these measures on home education and congratulate the Government on having the courage to pick up this political hot potato and try to do something about it—it is not perfect; I take it for granted that there are some concerns—and about unregistered schools.

Of course, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle was right about parents’ rights and values, but society has to make sure that, when children are in schools which are not subject to any checks or inspections, they are not being taught the most appalling practices, which Ofsted highlights in its reports. There have been a couple of cases where it has taken those schools to court and managed to close them down—the right reverend Prelate would be horrified if he knew. One such school, which was not unregistered, was a Christian school as well; I am happy to talk to him privately about it.

Let us understand where we are coming from in this debate. We all have anecdotal evidence of home tuition and teaching. I listened with great interest to the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, and his worries about what might happen. I accept that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is absolutely right that there have been some appalling practices by local authorities; there have also been some fantastic practices by them, which should be the model for how we behave. That is why I will suggest in the next group that local authorities appoint home school co-ordinators.

I have been struck by the number of emails I have had—I think it was 82 at the last count—from home educators. They have concerns, of course, or they would not be emailing me, but I come away thinking, “Wow, what a tremendous job you’re doing.” I have met some of them. I met one last week, who told me about how she had ignited an interest in the Tudors in her daughter. I thought again, “What a tremendous job you’re doing.” However, those actually doing the work of home tuition are perhaps seeing problems that will not be there.

We need a simple register which collects some simple information. I did not know and was quite surprised to learn that independent schools do not provide any data—that is a new one on me. They should be doing so. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, rightly said, we should know where all our children are—whether they are in school, home educated, in an unregistered school or in the independent sector. Let that be the rallying call from these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment just spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, to which my name has been added. I thank the Minister for the meetings we have had; I think we have made real progress. She completely understands the issue and is doing what she can within the constraints she has to try to move this forward, and progress has been made, but there are still things to do. That is why it is worth this debate and worth hearing further words from her from the Dispatch Box.

I was first drawn to this issue because I thought it was merely an issue of copyright. The example that had been brought to my attention was materials not shown to a parent because of copyright; the education curriculum was being delivered by a third party which had copyrighted the materials. I thought it was as simple as that. The Minister has now made sure that, legally, you can do that, and all heads will be told—and a lot of work will have to be done to make sure that all heads realise that and act on it. But the more I look at the issue, the more difficult it appears.

Where we have curriculum content over which there is very little disagreement, the issue almost never arises because parents do not particularly want to see curriculum content all the time. It is in these tricky areas, particularly in PSHE, where there is no national curriculum content, that the real problems arise. There is no doubt that some of the issues which have since been brought to my attention and I have had the opportunity to look at have arisen from real differences of opinion and breakdown of relationships between the head teacher and the parent.

That is the problem at the core of this. If it gets to the point where there is an argument between the parent and the head teacher, and the head teacher is saying that the parents cannot look at the materials, that relationship stands little chance of being mended. That is the real risk. It happens only where content is contested, which makes the problem even worse. That is why it is important to sort this out.

I hope the Minister will agree that the contention has to be taken out of some of the curriculum content. The issue that I was interested in, as was the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, is the teaching of sex, which I believe is biologically based. Some of the materials that I saw that were being withheld from parents were hugely contentious, and many parents—quite reasonably, to my mind—would not have wanted them to be taught to their children. It is a complicated issue, and there are three main issues. First, parents should have the right to see the materials; secondly, copyright is irrelevant as a barrier to them doing so; and, thirdly, we are looking to the Government to offer some very clear guidance on subject content as far as these contentious issues are concerned.

I completely understand that we do not want to get to a position where parents demand to have the right to see every note that a teacher is going to use in a lesson. When I was a teacher, I would have been horrified if I had had to show my lesson notes to the parents. That is not where we want to be. We are talking about a broad understanding of the curriculum content so that parents and teachers can be the joint educators of children, especially in these important areas. I reassure the Minister that I completely understand the need to draw professional boundaries, but at the moment parents are being pushed into challenging those professional boundaries because they cannot have access to the materials at the first ask. I am grateful to the Minister for what she has said so far in the letters to us, and I hope she can go further.

I support the amendment by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. The argument has been forcefully made today, and I think it is unanswerable. We are all in favour of the values of British citizenship being taught. We know it is not being done well, and I genuinely think that the way forward that he points to would offer a better chance of getting everyone on the same side for a common goal.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have also put my name to Amendment 105. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, on their work on this issue, which has been very important, and the Minister on listening and moving forward.

I start off with a bit of a caveat, because a lot of good things have been said: as an ex-teacher, I too am only too aware of the dread of pushy parents intervening in the minutiae of school, turning up and demanding to see this, that or the other. More seriously, we know what happened when a group of activist parents gathered outside Batley Grammar School and demanded to dictate what the curriculum was. That is not what this is about at all.

The context for the Government, which is very important, is that at the moment, because parents cannot see this material, it has been left in an informal morass of people hearing stories and getting particularly worried. Parents have had to resort to freedom of information requests to see third-party materials, and that really is not helpful. There is a rather excellent exposé by Milli Hill entitled “Worrying truth of what children are REALLY learning in Sex Education”. We are leaving it up to journalists to do these exposés. That just worries parents, so we have to grab this back.

Most parents think that, when their children are being taught about pronouns, that is helping with their English grammar, but then, when they read in the newspaper that it has something to do with policing language and gender ideology, they understandably worry. They worry when they hear about the affirmation of radical medical interventions, such as the amputation of sexual organs. These things are really scary. I urge the Government to grab hold of these horror stories and deal with them. I would like to see them acting on this very important issue.

There are matters that go beyond the scope of Amendment 105. The issue of parental access and teaching materials talks to a problem of parents feeling that the curriculum on contentious issues is being politicised. There is an excellent new report from Don’t Divide Us called Who’s in Charge? A Report on Councils’ Anti-racist Policies for Schools, which I will pass on to the Minister and I hope she will even meet the authors. The reason why I refer to it is that I do not want people to think this is just about the gender ideology issue. It is a sort of broader feeling that many parents have that there are third-party providers creating a political atmosphere in school, and that even schools themselves are doing the same. That raises problems of parents’ trust in what is being taught to their children.

I therefore query Amendment 101, on British values, despite the brilliant speeches we have heard in support of it. I was initially attracted to this amendment. After all, it mentions

“freedom of thought, conscience and religion … freedom of expression, and … freedom of assembly and association.”

These are my passions; I go on about them all the time. I thought, “Great—can we get them into schools?”. But when I talk about freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, these days I am often written off as some sort of alt-right lunatic who—

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Surely not.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

There we go. I am written off as someone who wants free speech only in order to come out with hate speech. I say this because even something such as free speech is contentious. I do not think that trying to use an amendment such as this, including the word “citizenship” to get around the fact that there are contentious arguments about values, will resolve the problem. I wonder whether I can be consoled by those who tabled this amendment that it is not about avoiding a political argument via using the law. It could end up politicising the curriculum.

For example, I disagree with the proposed new paragraph on “respect for the environment”. We have to take into account that Section 406 of the Education Act and schools’ legal obligation to remain impartial can be compromised by things that people in this House are passionate about politically but that maybe should not be in schools.

That finally gets me to my concerns about Amendments 118B and 118H, which call for

“a review into teaching about diversity in school curriculums”.

I am concerned about their emphasis on British history including

“Black British history … colonialism, and … Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade”—

not because I do not think those things should be taught, but we have to ask whether this is being promoted for historical or political reasons. The recent controversy over the OCR syllabus on English literature being changed, when we had the works of Keats, Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen and Larkin removed, was justified not on literary merits but on the basis of an emphasis on ethnicity, diversity and identity. That kind of politicising of the curriculum does not do any service for the pupils we are teaching and is making parents rather suspicious about what is going on in schools.

[Lord Woolley of Woodford (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 118A in my name. Before I make any substantive remarks, I say on the record that, on perhaps the hottest day ever recorded in this country, this Chamber is cooler than the Central line; I was on it this morning. I never thought I could put the House of Lords and being cool in the same sentence. I want to thank a few people who have helped me put these remarks together: L’Myah Sherae, Alfiaz Vaiya and Simon Dixon in Stella Creasy’s office.

Only through a freedom of information request by the Guardian newspaper do we know that UK schools recorded more than 60,000 racist incidents in the last five years. Many people, including black community and education leaders, accuse the Government of failing to meet basic safeguarding measures by hiding the true scale of the problem. For example, the data from the Guardian excluded 80% of England’s multi-academy trusts. The scale of racial incidents in schools is therefore probably much worse, causing one academic working in this area, Professor David Gillborn from the University of Birmingham, to conclude that we have a racism epidemic in our schools.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to offer Green group support for all these amendments. Most of them have already been powerfully covered. I particularly echo the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I am sure I am not the only noble Lord who has received very distressed and distressing emails from many parents who have found themselves in similar situations to the ones that she outlined where they know and have medical advice that says that it is unsafe for their children to go to school, yet they are still coming under extreme, undue pressure to put their children into an actively dangerous situation.

The structure of these things is that we have not yet heard the introduction to Amendments 114 and 115 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox. In a sense, I want to continue a conversation with the Minister that I started on 29 March in the debate on the schools White Paper about mental health. These amendments particularly draw attention to the elements about how children’s mental health is affected by their schooling. I hope to hear a positive response from the Minister to both these amendments, which are about collecting essential information. I would like to hear a response from the Government that acknowledges that mental health in schools is an issue that cannot be addressed by simply saying, “We’re going to increase the exam marks” because that focus on exam marks is very much part of the problem.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic to Amendments 62 and 107. I have spoken several times about mental health and I want to oppose Amendments 63, 114 and 115 on mental health provision. One concern I have is about the focus on creating a duty on the Secretary of State for Education to give financial assistance to set up consultations and reporting mechanisms on mental health and well-being. I do not think it is the job of the Education Minister to have this role, and this focus could well incentivise schools to focus too much on mental health. It is inappropriate for schools to prioritise mental health issues, and it muddles the responsibility of schools and the NHS and CAMHS. I would like to see more done for young people by the NHS, and I am trying to separate those things out.

My main point remains, as I have argued before, that if adults in schools continue to focus on mental health, there is a danger that young people will see the undoubted challenges of growing up—whether they are the agonies, anxieties and confusions of being a child going through puberty and what have you or the stresses and strains of facing exams and being educated—through the prism of mental health. We should be reassuring young people about the challenges and that they are perfectly all right. I worry that we are in danger of pathologising them.

I worry about a fait accompli situation. That point was emphasised by a recent report. Since we last discussed this issue, a shocking revelation has emerged, based on an Answer to a Question tabled in this House by the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, which revealed that children under 18 are being prescribed record levels of anti-depressant drugs, a 57% increase over the last four years, and noted that among five to 12 year-olds the prescription of anti-depressant drugs has gone up 40%. That situation could refute everything that I have said—it could mean that there was an exponential growth of mental health problems among the young—but psychiatric experts and psychologists have responded to it by saying the figures are staggering and dangerous. Professor Sami Timimi calls them a generation pathologised by adults steering the young towards medical diagnosis that is not appropriate, and says that itself then leads to treatment that is often pharmacological.

This medicalisation can of course have a catastrophic impact on the young. Another expert, Professor Spada, talks about the dangers of that, saying that adult neuroses about the young will lead them on to taking drugs that are highly addictive and will create a dependency. I think there is a real warning here that we should not just say “There is a growth in mental health problems” and let it run its course. I also think that the young themselves can then develop dependency not just on drugs but on the therapeutic labels that we have given them and been socialising them into during their school years.

The amendment uses an odd phrase, which has just been referred to, which is to explore how children’s mental health is “affected by … their schooling”, which I thought sounded rather accusatory or even a bit conspiratorial. That is especially ironic when we have ample evidence that it was the lack of schooling in the lockdown, combined with fear-based messaging over the last couple of years, that seems to have done a huge amount of psychological damage. I urge the Committee not to put this into law. If anything, I would like to have a more open discussion about the real problem of mental health and what it emanates from.

Finally, I am glad to see that Ofsted has been removed from the equation—it was in earlier amendments—but I still dread that the Secretary of State is being told to publish a report on the actions taken by schools to improve mental health. That will inevitably distract from the core purpose, which is indeed about the minds of young people but it should be about improving their minds educationally, not playing amateur psychology or psychiatry in the classroom.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I support Amendments 114 and 115. I recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, has made some very helpful points about the danger of pathologising and the need for collaboration between education and health, although she put it rather more as an either/or while I would want to see it more as a both/and.

I particularly thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman of Darlington and Lady Wilcox of Newport, for proposed new paragraph (c) in Amendment 115. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and I could give the Committee a very good example of the work in local schools by the Darlington Area Churches Youth Ministry, which is outstanding when it comes to young people’s mental health and mental well-being. It is a voluntary charity that works in collaboration with schools. I am delighted that that was included.

While I acknowledge some of the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, I think these amendments are well thought through and would be of value.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 64 would require the Secretary of State to create a framework for careers education in primary schools and to give financial assistance to primary schools in areas of disadvantage to deliver the programme. We did effectively discuss this amendment in Committee three weeks ago, on 20 June, and in her reply the Minister said that the Government did in fact want to do this and would announce details in due course. I am delighted that, last week, the Department for Education issued a tender for the delivery of a programme for careers provision in primary schools in areas of disadvantage. I just want to acknowledge that; it is a most welcome development.

As we said in Committee, this is an issue of social mobility; it is about levelling up; it is about widening children’s and young people’s horizons. There is so much evidence that shows that if you start talking about careers guidance only at secondary school, it can be too late for some, because some children, at the age of seven, have already formed life-defining decisions about the kinds of careers they aspire to. I do not wish to take any more of the House’s time but I just acknowledge that the Government have made a very helpful move with the issue of the tender. I shall be withdrawing the amendment, but for now, I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to raise some quick reservations about Amendments 64, 112 and 113. I apologise that I did not speak on this before: it was always grouped with other things that I was speaking on. I absolutely understand the sentiment behind improving careers education; I just want to get some clarification on the focus of these amendments.

One real worry for me over recent years has been the constant instrumentalisation of education for non-educational outcomes—schools are always asked to solve economic, social and cultural problems. Even though performance at school can of course be related to job prospects, I am worried that a utilitarian approach to school as a means to gain employment seems far too narrow and can backfire. I would like some reassurance that a focus on careers education will not lead to that.

As a teacher for many years, years ago, I always found it very dispiriting when pupils and students adopted a rather philistine attitude and would say things like, “What’s the point of studying Jane Austen or Shakespeare? It won’t get me a job.” Knowledge for its own sake was always sneered at, and that is perfectly understandable; they were teenagers, and it was a battle one had in the classroom. The argument was always, “Why don’t you teach us relevant, useful skills that will help me earn some money—not all this guff?” I just want to ensure that we do not inadvertently encourage that kind of philistinism here. I suppose I am wary that too much focus on careers education can chip away at the importance of what is a young person’s entitlement, even if they do not thank you at the time, to the best of what is known and thought, regardless of whether the students appreciate why it is important, or even if it is totally useless for job acquisition.

In that context, I worry about the proposed mandatory work experience of 10 days in one of the amendments, when there is so much to teach the young. I also notice the amendments focusing on primary schools. Although it has just been explained why—that by seven, perhaps you are already fixed in life—I am less deterministic. For primary school pupils in particular, it is a time for dreaming, imagination and a notion that the world is one’s oyster—that you can be anything—and I am concerned about bringing them down to earth with a mighty bump if we send them off on careers skills education.