Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

This is not the end of the story. There is still a huge amount of influencing to be done. It is important to note that the statutory guidance is in draft. There are lots of ways of thinking about how it could be improved. The influencing work will go on. Rather than giving attention to further amendments, we should focus on improving and finalising the statutory guidance.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene because I have not participated earlier, having been absent from the House for some months. I come in at the middle and it is always irritating when people do. However, I am astonished to discover that there is not a mandatory assessment, as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, when children are going into care. We should not dream of admitting adults into care without a mental health assessment. As a psychiatrist, I am not experienced with children but, knowing the outcomes of looked-after children in the longer term and the likelihood of their developing problems of all kinds that we do not need to outline, I am astonished that we do not assess mental health as a matter of routine.

The government amendment uses fair words. I allow that it is a nice amendment, but it does not address the practicalities. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said, these children will often have profound delays in all kinds of neurological developments that will have led them to have had many mental health problems leading up to their going into care. I am astonished that mandatory mental health assessment does not already exist, so I strongly support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. I hope that she takes it as far as she can.

[Lord Faulks (Con)]

Briefly, in response to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, he and I were both members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. He may have seen the third report of the session 2016-17. Paragraph 3, commenting on the Children and Social Work Bill, reads:

“Lord Nash, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education, has certified that in his view the provisions of the Bill are compatible with the Convention rights”.

Education Bill

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Murphy]

126:, page 44, leave out lines 24 and 25

[Baroness Murphy]

I shall move Amendment 126 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, myself and the noble Baroness, Lady Flather. I should apologise to the Committee for not participating in debates because I was abroad at the end of last term, so this is my last appearance, as it were, before the windup.

I return to the issue of faith schools. The noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, have an important group of amendments that we shall come to later in relation to the employment of teachers in faith schools, but this little one has been taken out and put on its own, which is the right thing to do.

I would like to say a little about where I stand on faith schools. I shall not launch into a Second Reading speech on the divisiveness of faith schools because it is important that we offer some choice and that the wishes of parents can be best articulated in those schools which have a faith-based ethos and come within the ambit of the general system of inspection and inclusion, which takes place under the national curriculum, and so on. I also declare that I understand completely the vital and proud role that the Church of England voluntary-aided and voluntary-controlled schools have played right from the early 19th century. They have been socially inclusive and have integrated with the local community. They have also been very broad about their employment policies and so on. I have enormous admiration for some of these schools, but I am concerned, as many people are, about the rise of some of the rather more eccentric-based faith schools and about this small issue which we have tabled here.

In Part 6, this is an amendment to Clause 54 to reverse the increased role for religious bodies in the academy conversion process. The Bill introduces a new requirement for the Government to consult with the appropriate religious body when converting a maintained school with a religious character into an academy, despite an existing provision to ensure that trustees and others in charge of the management of the school will be consulted. This clause serves exclusively, it seems to me, to hand further control of education to religious authorities and stands in stark comparison to the lack of provision to consult with the wider community when transforming a community school into an academy or opening a free school or academy. This amendment simply removes that new requirement. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Hereford]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her generous comments about the inclusive nature and history of our Church of England schools, and for affirming the importance of our continuing to offer choice. While I have some sympathy with what she is saying with regard to some of the risks that might be involved with some of the newer faith schools that might be planned, the difficulty that her amendment presents for the Church of England is that it would take out the requirement for consultation with our diocesan boards of education. They may or may not be the trustees but they are nevertheless the religious authority for our Church of England schools. In trying to address the issue that the noble Baroness has raised, it is of the utmost importance that we do not sideline the Church of England boards of education. They play a role across all the dioceses.

In my own diocese of Hereford, which covers Herefordshire and south Shropshire, we have 84 church schools. The boards of education are involved in appointing the head teachers, supporting the schools and in policy-making in conjunction with the schools, trustees and governors. They have a key role as far as the local authorities are concerned in that they can relate to the diocesan boards of education. That does not mean that they do not relate to individual schools but that, corporately, they can relate to the boards as a whole. That is a real plus and a virtue. Therefore, while I am sympathetic to the issue that the noble Baroness is trying to address with this amendment, I caution that, as worded, it would have an unintended consequence. We should not allow that to happen and should ensure that our diocesan boards of education continue to have the recognition and, indeed, the requirement that they are consulted in the way that exists at present. If I may say so, we are back to the “as is” issue that has been mentioned in Committee on a number of occasions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Murphy]

I thank the Minister for that. To be honest, I am convinced but I would obviously like to talk to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, before deciding whether to return with another question on this. I am particularly fond of good manners. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and the right reverend Prelate have reminded me that consultation and asking people is no bad thing under any circumstance, as long as we can be reassured that there is no veto and that it will not extend the influence over the decision-making process any more than an expression of an opinion. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 126 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

There is even some doubt about whether the opinion would ever have seen the light of day if we had not become aware of its existence and applied pressure for its publication. Since it entered the public domain, it has been drawn to the attention of Ministers and every interested agency, including those in the European Commission responsible for directive enforcement. I ask the Minister to let us have copies of the correspondence that has ensued between EC officials and his department since then. Yesterday, I notified the Minister's office that I would refer to the matter in the debate. I hope that he has come armed with a full reply. Perhaps the best way forward now—I bow to the noble Baroness who moved the amendment to see whether she endorses it—is for the Minister to let us have the detailed point-by-point response called for by an analysis that makes shocking charges of lawbreaking against the Government. Before Report, we should sit down with the Bill team and our advisers to see how we can best rescue the Government from a disaster of their own making.

[Baroness Murphy]

I shall speak to Amendment 133 in the group. It has very similar effects to Amendment 134 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. Clause 58 introduces a new power for the Secretary of State to override by order the rules that have been imported governing the employment of teachers at voluntary-controlled and foundation schools with a religious character, which allow discrimination on religious grounds in favour of reserved teachers. Of course, Clause 58 allows new and wider discrimination, so that the academy school may apply preference to the appointment, promotion or remuneration of all teachers at the school in accordance with the tenets of a religion or religious denomination. This has the potential for many thousands of teachers to be implicated in changes of rules.

I understand that the Minister for Schools, Nick Gibb, has said that, as with maintained schools, the Secretary of State would allow this change only where a strong proposal was made and a thorough consultation had been carried out. However, it seems extraordinary that any state-maintained school should be able to discriminate against teachers or staff on grounds of religion. There is no statutory guarantee that future Secretaries of State will not simply allow all schools to make this change under Clause 58. It seems strange to allow this new and potentially wide discrimination against teachers in an academy school that has transferred from a voluntary controlled school with a religious character. Amendments 133 and 134—the latter is perhaps a little weaker in terms of the consultation that it asks for—basically ask the Government to withdraw this. In the light of the discussion by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, of the legal implications, I wonder why Clause 58 is in the Bill at all.

[Lord Peston]

Noble Lords will not be surprised to know that I take it for granted, somewhat cynically, that religious schools will be biased in favour of appointing and promoting people of the same religion. That is part of human nature and it is how people carry on. I do not need to remind noble Lords that I am not qualified in the law. However, I am absolutely horrified to hear what both my noble friend Lady Turner and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, have said about the legal advice they have been given from lawyers, who are certainly well qualified to give such advice.

I have a couple of points for the Minister. First, do we have any data on what actually goes on in these religious schools? They are financed using public money but do we have data on the religious mix of their staff and of who gets promoted and who does not? Are there any facts at all that could guide us? Secondly, if the law is being broken, I am not clear who is breaking it. I would have guessed that it was the schools that were breaking the law but the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, seemed to suggest that it was the Government, so I am a bit lost on that. I wonder if the Minister could tell us something about that as well. I assume that for one lawyer who you could buy to give you one opinion, the Government could buy another one to give them a different one. That adds to my cynicism. Finally, I hope that the Minister is not going to go through a legal document sentence by sentence, otherwise we will be here past 10 pm.

Marriage

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy]

My Lords, it happily falls to me to warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, on her thoughtful and erudite maiden speech. The fact that it was knowledgeable and eloquent was no surprise, bearing in mind that this debate on marriage and marriage support could have been constructed specially for her in her role as chief executive of Relate. But it was a bonus to have her added insights into marriage support. She has worked for 20 years in influential government positions focused on improving the life chances of children and young people and tackling social exclusion. Her knowledge at the policy coal face, devising practical ways of measuring some of the impacts of government policy, will be valuable in this Chamber. We look forward eagerly to hearing her speak often in the future on the topics that she has made her own.

I turn to marriage. I add my thanks to those offered to the right reverend Prelate for raising this topic. I agreed with so much of what he said. The speeches by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester and the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, also really caught my heart.

I love being married. It is so great to find that one special person whom you want to annoy for the rest of your life. That was not my observation unfortunately; it was said by the Jewish American comedienne Rita Rudner. A kindlier quote is from Bernard Shaw, who said:

“Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open”.

Is that not true?

We keep stubbing our toe on the awkward issue of how widely government should interpret their responsibilities across matters of personal relationships. We stub our toe on whether cohabiting is okay or whether it has to be marriage. To me, the contract of marriage is entirely justified by its impact on the public purse and the emotional and intellectual growth of children, our society's future.

There is a difference between marriage and civil partnerships on the one hand and cohabiting on the other. The overwhelming majority of young people in Britain want to marry. There is a striking relationship between income and family structure, and a poverty divide between the marrieds and the non-marrieds: it is the divide between the haves and have-nots.

If young people are in stable employment, they will eventually marry. Stable employment, not tax breaks, enables them to marry. Commitment happens when the circumstances are right. Middle-class cohabitees either marry eventually or, in the same way as married couples, split up. Eventually, however, they usually marry. Non-marriage and parental separation in the UK today disproportionately represent the problematic, as opposed to the progressive, elements of family diversity. We misjudge the importance of family structure in undermining our equalities agenda, perpetuating inequality both between the classes and the sexes. A child born to cohabiting parents is nearly twice as likely to see his parents break up before his 16th birthday as a child born to married parents. An unmarried parent is therefore much more likely to become a single parent.

It is all very well being non-judgmental about mothers and children in separated families—it is a worthy aim with which anyone can have sympathy, but, in reality, legitimises irresponsible fathers. So what should we do? First, we must end the situation whereby the benefit system encourages families to live apart or to pretend that they do. It is estimated that 200,000 more people claim support for single parents than in reality live alone. Secondly, all policies around the family should favour equal responsibility between men and women for child-rearing. Even if the relationship ends, the responsibilities towards children do not. Child poverty is strongly connected to the failure of non-resident fathers to contribute financially. I ask the Minister how the Government plan to strengthen the collection of child maintenance and provide a better range of options for separated parents.

Should marriage and relationship counselling be more freely available? Should the Government commit more funds to it? Perhaps because I am a psychiatrist, I am quite sceptical and worried about how we best target that support. Sure Start has faced similar challenges. It has often unfortunately been targeted at well heeled, knowledgeable people. If we need to reach people who do not understand why marriage is so important, we need much better targeted support. We must therefore be very careful before just investing more money in non-fiscal support, even if, as we know, the support that can be given by organisations such as Relate produces remarkably satisfactory outcomes.

I raise finally our discriminatory laws in relation to humanist marriage ceremonies. At the moment, only the religious have the option of a ceremony conducted according to their own religious beliefs without the need for an added civil ceremony. That was not the case when I married in a Catholic church in 1969. Then, all Catholic weddings, as I am sure the Bishops will remember, had to be witnessed also by a superintendent registrar. That has now changed, but not for humanists. Why do the Government not recognise that this discrimination is out of date and change it as we have done for non-Church of England churches? They have put this right for humanists in Scotland. Why not here in England, too?

Educational Psychology

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I very much agree with my noble friend that there clearly must be an opportunity cost if those professionals are not available. I have not seen any cost-benefit analysis but I do not need to be convinced of the benefit and the good that educational psychologists do.

[Baroness Murphy]

My Lords, given that 50 per cent of adult mental health problems begin in childhood, and that educational psychologists are utterly crucial in identifying those and providing the children concerned with the right care, does the Minister agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and me—I think he was agreeing with us—that leaving training to the vagaries of the local authority is simply not working? Can he reassure us that educational psychology will join the other healthcare professions in having a training strategy that is determined by central bodies rather than being left to the vagaries of local authorities?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am not sure that I can give the noble Baroness the specific assurance for which she has asked. However, I can give the assurance that all these issues and the best sustainable system will be considered by my honourable friend Sarah Teather as part of the Green Paper consideration. There are a number of ways in which one can approach this matter and I know that she will be keen to give it the fullest possible consideration.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

Foundation schools, both Anglican and Catholic, are allowed to appoint a majority of governors, and those schools in turn have the right to be admissions authorities for their own schools if they are voluntary aided. It is a very important power that currently exists. It is not clear from the Bill—perhaps the Minister can tell us—whether the foundation retains the right to appoint a majority of governors. Does it retain the right, if it is a voluntary aided school, to be involved in the admissions process? Can he tell us broadly whether that situation is expected to continue?

[Baroness Murphy]

I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, although he has not yet spoken to them. I also support the amendment of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Garden and Lady Sharp.

We have not yet addressed this fundamental problem relating to faith schools. My questions at Second Reading about the status of faith schools, and the Government’s approach to encouraging the development of faith schools, have not been responded to. Does the Minister have the teeniest anxiety that a quarter of academies are presently faith schools and that the Bill will encourage more?

I shall recount a tale of two schools. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, in his place, because I am going to talk about Brockdish primary school. He and I are probably the only two people in this Chamber who know where Brockdish is. It is my local school, serving the entire community of Brockdish. It is a Church of England school that has received an outstanding report and will be in the running to become an academy. It is an extraordinarily good school. I love it dearly and hope very much that it does become one, for all those reasons.

It was established in 1843 in the parish workhouse for the children of paupers. The curriculum then was the Catechism and the Ten Commandments for half the day. In the other half of the day, when they were not at work—they had to do some work in the fields as well—they did the three Rs. That was 160 years ago. During the past 160 years, the curriculum at Brockdish Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School has changed dramatically. As it is the only school in the village, it is entirely inclusive. If you ask people in Brockdish about the school, they will say that they do not really think of it as a religious school. Its teachers come from all faiths or none; it has a non-denominational assembly; and it gives the most brilliant education.

However, according the Bill as far as I understand it, the school has two choices when it becomes an academy. The first is that it could become more religious and more faith-based, which would be an imposition on our local community. The Minister looks puzzled. The school might have to stay with the religious denomination which it has adopted historically but from which it has gradually been moving away. Under the Bill it would have to stay like that and would have no option to become a more generalist school. There would be no choice for those of us who live in the community because the other schools are too far away. It is our local school. It is a good one and we would like it to stay as it is.

Now take the case of the Ebrahim Academy in Whitechapel, an academy school for boys. It is highly selective and employs only male Islamic teachers. The school day is, again, just like 160 years ago in Brockdish primary school, divided into two sections. The school day begins with Tahfeez, which is reciting the Koran and getting the pronunciation right, which takes up half the day. Then the national curriculum takes up the second half of the day. It is a state-funded, tax-funded madrassah for the Islamic faith.

Perhaps that is an extreme example, but there are many such faith schools. I stress that I have no objection to Sunday schools—I was a Sunday school teacher. Noble Lords might be amazed to hear it, but it is possible to deliver good Sunday school teaching without any faith whatever. I suspect that it is like the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, to Anglicanism. It was possible for me to do that and I enjoyed it greatly.

I have no objection to families teaching their faith in their own time and making sure that every child has an understanding of all religions. But is the Minister not the teeniest, weeniest bit worried about the creation of more faith schools under the freedoms that we are providing today? What reassurances can he give to those of us who do not like these divisive, incohesive schools that they will not further separate a divided community?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I must confess that I was not aware that that was the purport of the noble Baroness’s amendment. However, off the top of my head I would say that I think that those schools should.

[Baroness Murphy]

The noble Lord is raising an issue about pupils. He implied that the important thing about many of our religious schools or faith schools at the moment is that they have an open selection policy. That seems to me utterly crucial. The possibility of people of all faiths sending children to schools whose ethos and culture they like is one thing. It is certainly the case with most of the Anglican schools, some Catholic schools and some Jewish schools. However, it is not the case with many schools set up recently, such as some Christian fanatically evangelical schools, some Catholic schools and a majority of the Islamic schools, although some Islamic schools are inclusive. The point is about the selection of pupils. There is a highly concentrated, exclusive quality to some of our schools, which causes me anxiety.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I have no wish, in what I am saying, to stray at all from the current arrangements for the pupil composition of church schools, which seem to me on the whole sensible, undogmatic and tolerant. Indeed, in the village of Brockdish and every village that I know of, of course schools do not discriminate on admissions. What the noble Baroness refers to is a very small number, as I understand it, of extremely zealous schools. I have no means of knowing whether she is right or wrong but, if she is right, that is something that we should address specifically. However, to mark the whole of the church school sector, which includes thousands of excellent schools, as carrying the imprint of the excesses of the tiny number that she is talking about and amending the legislation on that basis seems to me counterproductive.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy]

My Lords, I support the Bill. First, however, I declare an interest as chair of St George’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, which has been an enthusiastic advocate and implementer of the widening participation agenda. We started early, long before Alan Milburn advocated that the profession should take it more seriously. We have used what I know some have described as social manipulation to ensure that we recruit, from the widest possible number of state schools, the very best medical students and health scientists. The policy has been enormously successful, and the recruits that we have had as a result of this “social manipulation” have been extraordinarily successful in becoming excellent doctors and health scientists. However, I do not really like the social manipulation that we have to go through to do it, because of the extraordinary variability of the quality of the schools from which our applicants come. We need a step change to ensure that there is not this variability of quality; everybody needs to ratchet up.

What I like about the Bill is that it is intended to move us from a system of direct performance management by local authorities to an autonomous, regulated system. This is what we have been trying to do in health policy, and I entirely support it. I particularly like the proposals to allow these schools to set their own pay and conditions for staff and to change the length of the school day and the terms, as well as a wide range of other provisions which the noble Lord, Lord Baker, so eloquently described. I know that we shall hear from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, about what has happened in the schools that he has sponsored. These are freedoms that we should now give to so many other schools.

I also like the potential for creating a broader range of 14 to 19 year-old technical schools, an area which we have neglected so much in recent years. The idea of free schools is encouraging, although I hope very much that they will in due course be able to make a profit, because we see from evidence from the United States and Sweden that that degree of competition, and the ability to have profits to reinvest, really gets schools to make their mark.

Conferring academy status on a school will, of course, not automatically improve it. Turning a poor school round will take even a good head teacher far longer than one year. All schools in tough areas need support, but the Bill provides the structural context in which teachers can get on with teaching. There is ample evidence from abroad that competition for pupils and the market agenda is to the good, as long as we have key regulatory systems in place to monitor quality. Is the Minister confident that the regulatory system currently available will be adequate to monitor the performance of these schools?

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, in an article in the Guardian last week, made the observation:

“This choice agenda is in some ways little more than a shift in power, from local authorities and schools, to parents”.

That is exactly the point, I should have thought, and all to the good. But it also brings me to the dangers, and I echo some of the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, repeated.

Around one-third of all state-funded schools are schools with a religious character or faith schools, and this number is growing, with some minority religions and Christian denominations running new schools or taking control of the increasing numbers of schools in the state sector or of academies. Many faith schools are exclusive, most are divisive, and all are counterintuitive to social cohesion. Despite claims of inclusiveness, many have control of their own admissions, creating school populations that are far from representative of their own populations in religious or socio-economic terms. Many also discriminate in their recruitment and employment on religious grounds; applicants can be rejected and teachers barred from promotion because they are not of the right religion or of no religion or because of their sexual orientation. Teachers can also have their contracts terminated while in post, if their conduct is deemed incompatible with the tenets of the school’s religion. In addition, many faith schools teach—instead of the religious education taught in community schools, which I believe is a crucial part of the curriculum; we need to know about each other’s beliefs—their own syllabus, which the law permits to be confessional and which does not have to include learning about other religions or non-religious philosophies.

I draw attention to Professor Ted Cantle’s interim report last year on community cohesion in Blackburn and Darwen following the 2001 Oldham riots. He pointed out that the level of segregation in schools is high, growing and more extensive than the level of residential segregation would suggest, with the number of faith schools a particular issue. Although the report calls on faith schools to reconsider their admission policies in the light of the impact on cohesion, some schools in the towns have already made it clear that they do not intend to change their policies. At the launch of the report, Professor Cantle stated that faith schools with religious admission requirements were,

“automatically a source of division”.

Freedom for parents to educate according to their principles is one thing. Freedom for a faith group to exert an influence on the very structure of the community is another. At the medical school, we do have difficulties when people come from segregated schools of faith; some things have to be changed and restructured, and they have to be re-educated in another way of thinking. This is profoundly concerning.

I support this Bill very strongly because of the general policy direction, but the Government must think very carefully about what may be created in the name of parent power. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that my fears will be guarded against.