Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I am not going to reveal all my researches and enlighten the Committee on the meaning of “ultimate”, except to say—

[Baroness Thornton]

Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord that I very happily follow him.

Localism Bill

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Greaves

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

I am standing up to give the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, time to move his amendment, which comes before mine in this group.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, if the House is willing to be tolerant, I will admit that I was asleep.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thornton]

In that case, I will speak to my amendments and give the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, a chance to catch up on his amendments in this group. Before I do so, I declare an interest as an ambassador for Sporta, the trade group of social enterprises which deals with local sports and leisure services, and as the founding chair of the Social Enterprise Coalition. I shall speak to Amendments 130A and 131A, and comment on some other amendments in this group, although I may leave that until they have been spoken to. My noble friend Lord Patel is right to say that Clause 68 is important. I have always believed that socially owned businesses, founded and run in this case by local people, have an important and valuable role to play in the provision of public services.

Amendment 130A seeks to put beyond doubt the kind of enterprise which can challenge and be considered appropriate to contract for the services under consideration. I seek clarification from the Minister about this because, as it stands, it seems that the expression of interest could be used by local authority employees setting up a private company. I believe that that might be a loophole that would need to be closed. Amendment 130A states that,

“after ‘authority’ insert ‘who have formed an organisation for charitable purposes or a community interest company or industrial and provident society’”.

That covers basically all the organisations that are not private enterprises.

Amendment 131A again seeks to make completely clear an issue which is, in a way, about the size of the organisation. I believe that there should be a requirement that the expression of interest can be initiated by a local organisation or in collaboration with a local organisation. Many national charities already provide and contract for services at a local level—for example, Barnardo’s and Action for Children, which I know about through a long association with them. I believe that those national charities, along with any national social enterprise—indeed, there are those that are contracting which are building social businesses providing social care—would want to contract for those services at a local level. But they have to prove that they are working collaboratively with local agencies to provide locally integrated solutions.

This would still allow national organisations, which have great skills and experience in delivering these services, to bid but would ensure that the Bill meets its main objective of devolving power and giving a voice to local communities. The involvement of a national social enterprise or a national charity may be the difference between a local body being able to challenge and contract for local services and it not having the capacity to do so. It is important that large and small, and local and national, collaborative working is part of this Bill and is put beyond doubt. That is what these two amendments are about. I beg to move.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I apologise for falling asleep; it is these Zs all over the place which are doing it. I am not speaking to Amendment 130ZD, which I missed. However, Amendment 133ZN has exactly the same meaning. I was going to apologise for putting down the same amendment twice in the group but it seems that that was providential. I certainly have a great deal of sympathy and support for what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has just said.

We put down amendments to take out the reference to employees not because we do not think that in appropriate circumstances it is a good idea for employees to take over running the services for which they are employed, but because we are not at all convinced that this Bill is the best place to legislate for employee buy-outs, employee buy-ins, employee takeovers or whatever. They do not quite fit with the concept of the community—however the community or somebody in the community is defined—making a challenge and saying, “We can run this service. Can we have a go please?”. Employees are very different in that sense as they represent the producer side of the service rather than the consumer side and, clearly, if consumers or citizens or residents take over a service, they become producers as well. Equally, employees can make the same journey in the other direction.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Greaves

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the honesty in his considered reply. I am a little alarmed by the idea that Baldrick may be in charge of government education policy, but I do not think that he quite said that. If I cite him correctly, he said: “We have not come up with a clear answer to the role of local authorities”. The more that we have considered the Bill, the more obvious it has been to me—this point was made by some of my noble friends—that it would have been a good idea for it to have had pre-legislative scrutiny to try to bottom out some of these issues and at least to present us with some considered alternatives on these important matters.

The future role of local authorities in relation to schools is vital. Clearly, a few hundreds of academies can be created without, in most areas, severely affecting the role of local authorities, but not once it gets into the thousands. I think that there are about 20,000 schools in England. If 5,000 or 6,000 of them, a quarter of them, converted to academies, which is clearly possible under the criteria that the Government propose, during the next four or five years, that would have a severe effect on the viability of local authorities—at least in some areas, because their creation would tend to be geographically patchy.

I believe that we are to get a schools Bill or an education Bill which will be a bit fatter than this Bill later this year. If so, this issue should certainly be returned to at that time, if not before. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he will reflect on the matter. Finally, the answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, as to why we are rushing this, is that we have a Secretary of State in a hurry. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but if it results in bad legislation with all sorts of unintended consequences, we will have to sort them out in due course.

[Baroness Thornton]

Before the noble Lord withdraws his amendment—which I expect he will do rather than test the opinion of the Committee on the matter at this time of night—does he have a view on what is the tipping point? If he does not, perhaps he would like to ask his noble friend what he thinks the tipping point is before a local authority becomes unviable.

[Lord Greaves]

That is the $64,000 question, or perhaps more than that at present exchange rates. I do not know. We will all have a view on that. It will depend on how big or small the local authority is. A big local authority, such as Lancashire, could probably survive quite a lot of its schools becoming academies, because it would still have a critical mass, but if a small local authority—a small London borough that has only a few schools—is left with just two or three primary schools, it will be in serious trouble.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Greaves

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I fundamentally disagree with the eloquent but mistaken case that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has just put forward. I discussed the matter this weekend with two chairs of school governing bodies in the area where I live. One of the schools is not sure what to do but has probably made further investigations and is therefore probably on the Government’s list of those schools that have made inquiries. It would rather not take this step but is wondering whether it will be forced to do so because otherwise it will be bad for the school. However, schools should not take this step for that reason. The second school has said plainly that it will not apply, no matter how good it is, because it does not want to break its links with the local authority. That is the school’s decision. Just because a school is outstanding does not mean that it is the right thing for that school to become an academy. A decision has to be made by the people connected with the school and, in my view, by the local community as a whole. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, if the proposal does not have considerable local support, it is unlikely to succeed.

I have a further amendment on this matter in the next group. As well as being confused about other things in the Bill, I am confused about today’s groupings, which all seem to be mixed up. Unfortunately I was stranded in Yorkshire this morning—the overhead wires were down in the Keighley area, and now I cannot even ask the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to intervene in the situation—so I could not get here in time to sort out the groupings in relation to my amendments. Noble Lords will therefore have to listen to me again on the next grouping.

However, the issue of the wider community—to which I referred at Second Reading, in comments to which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, kindly referred—is crucial and must be addressed. That would address some of the problems which the noble Lord referred to in terms of getting it right. Of course you have to get it right. However, I do not agree that the principle of consultation should not be in the Bill because the specific amendments which have been put forward are not quite right. I think that the Government will find it a great deal easier to get support for the Bill, and to get it through Parliament a bit quicker, if they are prepared to look very seriously at this issue.

The real problem is that the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, whom I admire in many ways, is a man with a rather revolutionary mission on this and other matters. Although I am all in favour of revolution, I am a liberal, and revolution must be based on two things. First, it has to be evolutionary—however revolutionary the end product is—and you must get there slowly or fairly slowly. Secondly, you have to take people with you. A sort of Leninist revolution whereby there is a leadership which everyone follows, and if people do not follow it someone such as Stalin comes along and makes them follow, is not the way forward. You must take people with you. A good process of consultation and debate locally among interest groups such as teachers, who have a legitimate interest in the school, and the wider community, is crucial.

The Secretary of State has impaled himself on a problem by setting September as the date by when the first new academies should be set up. Looking at the parliamentary timetable, I am not sure that this legislation can get through by September—not because it will be blocked or obstructed, but simply because of the time that it takes to reach the statute book. There is talk of bringing the Commons back, but if the Commons makes a few changes to the Bill, it will have to come back here, which would mean that it will not go through until we come back in October, unless we are all to be dragged back here screaming in September to get the Bill through in the interests of the revolution. I am not sure that the House of Lords is a body which usually marches behind revolutions—but who knows?

The Government must get themselves off this hook on which they have impaled themselves. They should accept that to do it properly—and it has to be done properly if it is going to work—it will take a bit longer. That is not delaying the legislation by years. Clearly that would be ridiculous. We need a sensible timetable, a sensible way of doing it, and a sensible way of getting local communities—all the people involved in the school, and other schools—to understand and to come to agreements on what is going to happen. If the process is done on the basis of a school selfishly and aggressively breaking away, it will not work. If it is done by agreement among people locally that this is an evolutionary way forward that will probably lead to other schools in the area becoming academies in due course, and if it is done in a sensible and organised way, then it might work.

[Baroness Thornton]

I cannot resist a comment on a division in the coalition between gradualist and vanguardist politics. I wish to make only one comment, which is that this coalition Government trumpet local responsibility and empowerment for local people. All that I urge the Minister to do is to pay heed to his noble friend Lord Greaves, not his noble friend Lord Bates.