Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

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

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

That is very much appreciated. I also pass on to my noble friend the Minister the thanks of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for engaging with home educators. I emphasise that we see that as a very important part of the process for the Bill.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to hear that the Government continue to give thought to the question of an independent appeal. The current system, where the first appeal goes to the local authority, is obviously right; you want to resolve as much as you can without going outside. But, beyond that, the idea that the Secretary of State provides a satisfactory route of appeal really does not stand up. First, there are far too many relationships between the Department for Education and local authorities to allow independence. Secondly, I believe I am right—although the Minister may contradict me if she wishes—that, in the entire history of this right of appeal, the Secretary of State has not granted any, but he has come down in favour of the local authority on every single occasion. That may or may not be true—as I say, I hope the Box will be able to confirm it when we return to this issue in two groups’ time—but that there should be an independent appeal is important.

My noble friend Lord Wei’s proposal for an ombudsman is one that should be considered, although there are others. One way or another, there should be a point where someone truly independent casts their eye over what the home educator is doing and how the local authority has handled it and says either, “Yes, come on: get into line,” or “No, I can see here that the local authority has pushed things too far and ought to take a step or two back.” That would make a big contribution to keeping the relationship straight between home educators and local authorities.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Storey—I apologise if it was not—who said earlier that this bit of the Bill meant that local authorities had to give support. I can see nothing that makes it compulsory. I hope we will get the Government to give this a budget so there is an indication that support ought to be given, but at the moment I do not believe there is anything compulsory about it.

My noble friend Lady Penn said local authorities could consult a doctor when they consider it appropriate. I think the right balance is that the home educators ought to be able to able to evince that evidence when they consider it appropriate too, and the local authority ought then to pay attention to it. From cases that I have seen, I rather doubt that that is the arrangement at the moment. However, as my noble friend asked, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I can absolutely take that point away and see whether it is possible. If that is not the mechanism by which we can provide further detail and assurance, I will look at what else we can do to explore, and reassure on, that issue further.

As my noble friend the Minister said, under UK GDPR, parents have the right to object to any processing where UK legislation requires such processing, which would include the sharing of information to prescribed persons. The organisation responsible for that processing would then need to review the request and decide whether the processing is in the best interest of the child or family, and either uphold the request in the specific circumstances or proceed with the processing. The parent also has a formal route of complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office, which has a range of powers in this area. It is essential, however, for local authorities to be able to share information, if needed, to support multi-agency safeguarding and education efforts, with the appropriate safeguards in place.

On the question of statutory guidance, which the noble Baroness asked about also, this will help ensure the consistency of interpretation and implementation of duties across local authorities. As we said, we will ensure that it is created in close collaboration with local authorities and home educators, and includes advice on how local authorities can best promote positive engagement, as we have heard the concerns from parents where that has not been the case. We have also heard examples of best practice, and that is what we will seek to draw on in drafting the guidance.

There was a concern about financial penalties for tutors or childminders and home education groups. The duty on providers to share information on request will be important in helping to identify those children who are not—but should be—on registers, and those regulations will be used to set a threshold at which an education provider comes into the scope of the duty in Section 436E, ensuring the duty is only placed on providers that provide a substantial proportion of an eligible child’s education. There is also the power to make regulations to create specific exemptions to this duty, and we have indicated our intention to use that power to exclude informal groups of home-educating parents from the scope of this measure.

I thank the noble Baroness once again for the opportunity to reiterate some of those points, and I think we have heard the areas that the Government will take away and look at to ensure that we continue to have a message for support for home educators, but not lose sight of the importance of what we are trying to achieve with these registers.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, that was a good answer, but I feel my noble friend has not addressed the reasonable fears of some home educators about the way this Bill is drafted at present. For instance, in new Section 436C(1)(c),

“such details of the means by which the child is being educated as may be prescribed”

is a completely open phrase. This is an area which is used by some local authorities to pressure parents. They pursue parents for timetables, the details of subjects of studied and other things which do not necessarily form part of home education. Home education is not subject bound. Schools have to do it that way; if the Times has its way, schools may not have to do it that way, but they do so at the moment. Home education may follow timetables, or it may be something much looser. The age at which a child begins to read can be quite late in home education, or it can be very early. These things vary enormously from the practice which is necessary in school. That new Section 436C(1)(c) is in this Bill, and opens and then flows through to the school attendance order provisions, is a source of considerable worry, and I think reasonably so.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, just to pick up briefly on what—

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid the noble Lord was not here at the start of the debate on this group, so we should move to Front-Bench contributions.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The Bill does not provide for that, and it is not government policy to open further grammar schools. It is about regularising their status within the legislation, and the provision makes sure that only a parental ballot can trigger an end to selection, whether that grammar school is a local authority-maintained grammar school or an academy grammar school. It will remove one of the main perceived barriers to them joining a MAT, while retaining the right of parents to choose whether they should continue to select by ability. I therefore hope that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, will feel able to withdraw his amendment and that other noble Lords will not move theirs when they are reached.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, might I just drop in before the noble Lord, Lord Knight? My noble friend is not right in saying that academies currently provide all the data required on admissions. I have written to the Minister and demonstrated many examples of where this information is not provided. Yes, you can go to the school and ask for it, and it may be somewhere on the school website, in an irregular place, but it is absolutely not given to local authorities in a way that makes it easy for the local authority to publish a booklet that gives parents complete information on the admissions structure in their demesnes. This hurts parents a lot. As editor of the Good Schools Guide, I know how much this disadvantages parents who do not have the time and experience to crack the code of 20 different schools and find out how to get the information and how it all knits together. It really gets in the way. If my noble friend would be willing to grant me a conversation with officials on that, I should be most grateful.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, it is probably worth my reiterating my noble friend the Minister’s comments that we have heard and understood noble Lords’ concerns about the breadth of the power we are discussing and the fears about the centralisation of power over academies with the Secretary of State, and I know that we have heard other concerns about the nature of the power. It is worth reflecting on what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said in terms of how we use this Committee stage. While we have heard those overall concerns, it is useful to have a discussion on specific elements within those clauses where noble Lords have issues that they wish to raise or questions that they wish to discuss so that we can make the best use of the time that we have in Committee.

I shall deal directly with the amendments tabled by my noble friend. We share his desire in these amendments to protect academy freedoms. The first set of regulations made under these powers are intended to consolidate and reflect existing requirements on academies. They will not represent a change of requirements on academies. This includes those areas referenced in my noble friend’s amendments: curriculum, length of school day, leadership and admissions. It is important to bear in mind that some requirements exist in these areas for academies, such as the requirement to teach a broad and balanced curriculum, including English, maths and science, and the requirements of the Academy Trust Handbook in relation to management and governance. The Secretary of State needs to be able to set standards in these areas. As my noble friend the Minister previously said, it is important that there is a clear set of minimum standards for academies to ensure that we get the basics right. At this point, it is also worth repeating that the Government have no desire to intervene in the day-to-day management of individual academies other than in cases of failure.

I turn specifically to Amendment 29, which seeks to protect the provisions within existing funding agreements. My noble friend Lord Nash touched on this, as did others. As we move to a fully trust-led school system, it will become increasingly unwieldy and difficult to regulate thousands of schools on the basis of individual funding agreements with no consistent set of minimum standards that apply equally to all academies. That is why, alongside a more proportionate compliance regime, we want to move away from a largely contract-based regulatory regime to a simpler and more transparent statutory framework—one fit for a system where every school is an academy.

I just touch on the debate and scrutiny that we might need in that circumstance. Some of the requirements are in a handbook that is amended by Academies Ministers; in bringing what is currently in a handbook into a form of regulation, with consultation with the sector in advance, there was the intention of having an increased level of parliamentary involvement and scrutiny in that process compared with the status quo, reflecting the fact that we are aiming to move towards a system where every school is part of a multi-academy trust. I hope that helps to reinforce the Government’s intention behind what we are seeking to do here. It also ensures, as I have said, that academy trusts are subject to a set of requirements over which Parliament has oversight and to which they can be held to account by parents. My noble friend’s amendment would enable funding agreement provisions and academy standards to co-exist and potentially conflict, if the former are not rendered void where there is a corresponding academy standard.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 34, which seeks to prevent primary legislation relating to the curriculum being amended by regulation unless it relates specifically to the curriculum in academies. Academy trusts are already subject to many of the same requirements as maintained schools, as set out in numerous pieces of primary legislation. As I have said, the intention here is to consolidate these requirements on academy trusts as much as possible into the academy standards regulations. This will be a gradual process; we want to work with academy trusts on the implementation of the academy standards at a pace which is right for them. As my noble friend reassured the Committee in her previous contribution, for each and every change of those regulations, there would be consultation in advance.

As we move towards a school system in which all schools are academies within strong trusts, we will want to ensure that the legal framework is fit for purpose, including by removing requirements that should prove excessively onerous or unnecessary. Clause 3 enables the Secretary of State to make these adjustments, subject to the affirmative procedure, and to be responsive to the changing needs of the school system.

I recognise that the autonomy to decide on key aspects of running a school, including the curriculum it chooses to teach, enables academy trusts to deliver the best outcomes for their pupils, and we have no intention to undermine those freedoms. This Government and I share my noble friend’s commitments to the principles of academy freedom, and, with this reassurance, I hope that he will therefore withdraw his amendment at this stage.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her response. I think that it merely illustrates how far apart we are on the appropriateness of the structure of this Bill that we cannot have a serious discussion about what the curriculum freedoms should be. It is entirely undefined, and the Government say, “We’ll just make it up as we go along in the next few months, and that is what you are allowing us to do if you pass this Bill”. That is where the serious discussions lie; we ought to be having discussions about how the curriculum works. That is the level of responsibility we ought to be taking in this House, and this Bill seeks to take that away from us and place it with the Executive. I am delighted that we have had such unanimity around the Committee on what we think of that as a process.

So far as these individual amendments are concerned, yes, I applaud the diversity, innovation and freedom which the academy structure has had. It will be a problem to move that into a national system, but it will not be impossible. We ought to look at it, because this Bill gives the Government the power to introduce a totally prescriptive national curriculum. They could say what every school was going to do at every moment of every day, and we would have no more right to intervene on that—

Biodiversity: Dasgupta Review

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is correct in his assessment of the importance of the Dasgupta review. I reassure him that some of the measures in the review touch on areas where the Government are already taking action. We will consider the findings of the review carefully. The Environment Bill already contains world-leading proposals, including for mandatory biodiversity net gain for development, and I believe we will be taking it forward this year.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, if we are to value nature in all that we do, then nature needs to be part of our education system. Will my noble friend therefore ask her friends in numbers 11 and 10 Downing Street whether they will encourage the Department for Education to give a fair wind to the very well worked out proposal from OCR for a natural history GCSE, and will she let me know what they say in response?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will be very happy to undertake to make those representations and will let the noble Lord know the response.

Special Educational Needs

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Thursday 26th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, since 2018 the department has funded the National Association for Special Educational Needs on behalf of the Whole School SEND Consortium for a programme of work to embed SEND into school improvement practice and equip the workforce to deliver high-quality teaching across all types of SEND, including dyslexia.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

Does my noble friend agree that the enormous difference between local authorities in the rate of giving EHC plans, the huge variation in schools in the percentage of children labelled as having SEND, and the variation in SEND by birth date all indicate that we have serious problems in both diagnosis and definition? Does she agree that, unless these are sorted out first, any data that we collect is going to be seriously compromised?

VAT Retail Export Scheme

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the Government conducted a public consultation on the future of the scheme in which we took into account the views of business leaders and those within the sector. We also did our own analysis and had to weigh up the costs of extending the scheme against its potential benefits.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, what research and monitoring will the Government undertake after 1 January so that they know what the effect of their decision has been? Does the Minister agree that Shop & Ship merely demonstrates the inevitability of goods being taxed effectively in the country where they are consumed—that being the logic of the internet—and that we ought therefore to give way on tax-free shopping but be much better at collecting tax from goods that people ship to the UK?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

Well, my Lords, I am sure that we will keep the impact of this decision under review. With regard to Shop & Ship, it is a much more effective way to deliver on the international norm when the consumption tax is paid in the country in which the good is consumed. The VAT RES is open to much more potential for fraudulent use compared to Shop & Ship.

Net Zero Review

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Thursday 1st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, bringing people and our citizens along with us will be a big focus for our work on COP 26—making sure that it is not just Governments getting together but businesses and citizens from the UK and across the world. Part of the point of the review cited in the original Question was to have a clear and transparent analysis of the costs and benefits, and to look at how and where they should fall, so that everyone can understand the path towards transition and the contribution that we will all have to make towards it.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, will the Government commit to creating an open, shared resource, with all the data, conclusions, research and arguments generated as part of the Net Zero Review, so that we can all go forward and benefit, as professionals, from a shared resource in creating ideas and opportunities to make progress—and, in particular, reflecting what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, so that we as citizens can share the conclusions that are reached, and the effects that they will have on us?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will take back to the Treasury the desire for the review to be as transparent as possible. I think that that is exactly the intention. We will publish an interim report this autumn. It will set out our approach to the review and will contain the analysis done to date, which will inform the final findings.

Covid-19: Furloughed Space Grant Scheme

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Monday 15th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn]

Our approach to commercial landlords and commercial tenants is to support the code of practice being developed so that between the two of them, they can resolve payment structures and solutions that work for both of them.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that at this time it is important that commercial landlords should bear their share of the pain? Will she therefore institute a register of those landlords that sign up to the code of practice and fulfil their obligations under it so that in the future, when businesses look to choose which landlord to contract with, they will know who behaved well during this time of crisis?

[Baroness Penn]

That is an interesting proposal from my noble friend. At the moment, our focus for the code of practice is to ensure that tenants, commercial landlords and lenders all find solutions so that viable businesses are able to continue working while we deal with the period of lockdown. However, we may want to look at such things in the future.

Covid-19: Economy

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Lucas

Thursday 30th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn]

The Government are putting in place measures to respond to this crisis to protect against the economic harm that is being done now so that we can bounce back quickly. That is exactly why we have put in place schemes such as the job retention scheme, so that we can protect people while we have to have social distancing measures in place and ensure that the economy bounces back afterwards.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

In Eastbourne, where I live, we are looking at a very substantial level of unemployment due to the restrictions on the hospitality industry perhaps lasting for really quite a long time. Will the Government encourage communities such as ours around the country to come forward with their own plans for their renaissance and support them, rather than trying to create plans in the centre, or even at LEP level?

[Baroness Penn]

One thing that is unchanged in this crisis is the Government’s commitment to levelling up across the country. The Government fully acknowledge the importance of local plans in building our economic recovery once we are through this pandemic.