European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Earl of Clancarty and Lord Storey

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard continued) & Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard continued): House of Lords
Thursday 16th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the referendum on Brexit shows that young people in particular want to remain in Europe. Now that we are leaving, it is important that young people’s opportunities to learn, study and exchange in Europe are an opportunity to bring young people back together again. Nobody can doubt the value and importance of Erasmus+. Every year, through the Erasmus programme, 17,000 UK university students, plus hundreds more college students and apprentices, study or work abroad. The opportunities that Erasmus offers to UK students, particularly young people, to study, work, volunteer, teach and train abroad are irreplaceable.

For school pupils, the scheme offers the youth exchange programme and volunteering opportunities, and volunteering is something that the Government have always been very keen on. Erasmus+ has paid out tens of millions of pounds in grants to UK schools for exchanges, collaborative programmes and professional development. If we want to be an outward-looking country that realises the importance of friendship, sharing ideas, culture, language, education and opportunities, and brings people together, this is not a programme that you would consider watering down or dispensing with.

As my colleague Layla Moran has said about her amendment,

“what people remember most about studying abroad normally isn’t that they increased their employment prospects”—

which of course they do—

“They recall learning a new language, falling in love with the culture and building new friendships.”


I am somewhat confused about the Government’s stance or policy on Erasmus+. Is it that of the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson, who said:

“We do truly understand the value that such exchange programmes bring all students right across the United Kingdom, but to ensure that we are able to continue to offer that we will also develop our own alternative arrangements should they be needed”?—[Official Report, Commons, 14/01/20; col. 912.]


Or is it that of our Prime Minister, who said:

“There is no threat to the Erasmus scheme, and we will continue to participate in it. UK students will continue to be able to enjoy the benefits of exchanges with our European friends and partners, just as they will be able to continue to come to this country”?—[Official Report, Commons, 15/01/20; col. 1021.]


Perhaps the Minister would be good enough to tell me which version it is. The amendment that we are moving certainly supports the Prime Minister’s view that the Erasmus scheme is under no threat.

Currently the in-phrase in government is “levelling up”. We want to ensure with this amendment that there is no levelling down for students and young people across the UK, whether they be from the south or the north. By staying in the Erasmus+ scheme, we can keep that level playing field. UK universities are clear that Erasmus is not broken and so does not need fixing, and they warn that a UK replacement would find it impossible to match the reputation, brand awareness and sheer scale of Erasmus+. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this important amendment. I will be brief.

The Government should have a fairly good idea by now of the views of academics, universities and other institutions. Hopefully, they will have taken note of the strong views of students and former participants in the Erasmus programme that have been expressed in the press and on social media in the last week or so, and their huge concern about the potential loss of this programme.

In terms of projects, Erasmus is now about more than learning and higher education. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has pointed out, there are schemes for apprentices, adult learners, schools, youth programmes and entrepreneurs. On that point, what is less heard and discussed is the implications of Erasmus for business. The Russell Group has spoken of the considerable opportunities in industry that Erasmus opens up for students on their return to the UK. If we are also to maintain our business links with Europe, it will become more important, not less, that young people learn and use languages such as French and German, an issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, will no doubt expand on.

I hope the Government will look at this objectively and understand that the loss of Erasmus would represent a significant overall loss in terms of the choices that students will have to study abroad. In those circumstances, where the choice remains it will be at a considerably greater cost, to the extent that for students from poorer backgrounds, that choice would disappear. That is an important point. Erasmus favours those from less privileged backgrounds, a point that has been well made by former participants.

One of the arguments that is put is that we can replace Erasmus with a global arrangement. We have such arrangements already, which Erasmus does not preclude. The loss of Erasmus would be a net loss for students, and a reduction of opportunities to study abroad and to broaden horizons. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that the loss of Erasmus would, in the Government’s own terminology, be a levelling down, not a levelling up. I earnestly hope that the Government will do everything to maintain our meaningful membership—that is, programme membership —of Erasmus. Surely this being an intention endorsed by Parliament will only strengthen our hand in negotiations with the EU. I fully support the amendment.

Education (Pupil Information) (England) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2016

Debate between Earl of Clancarty and Lord Storey

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, it is important that schools know how many of their pupils have English as an additional language. I hope that means that extra resources and support can be provided for those pupils. Indeed, schools and local authorities have been doing this for decades. However, the requirement for every school in England—by the way, we are not talking about Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales—to collect information en masse about every child’s country of birth is, frankly, unbelievable.

These regulations were made on 20 July and laid before Parliament on 27 July, after Parliament had risen for the Summer Recess. They were rushed through Parliament in the six-week summer holiday with no debate, no proper scrutiny or, indeed, public consultation. You might have thought that the DfE would have wanted to consult, take soundings and take the views of a range of organisations before embarking on this requirement. However, that was not the case. The regulations were rushed through Parliament and that was it.

Against a backdrop of a massive increase in anti-immigration rhetoric, as witnessed by big increases in hate crime, and at one stage the Government considering asking firms to report on the number of foreign staff they employed, there is real concern among members of different ethnic groups about victimisation and being targeted. I am afraid that this proposal has all the hallmarks of racism, particularly as language codes are already recorded for pupils with English as an additional language, as are codes on their ethnic background. We have already seen the effects of this new requirement. It became a duty for schools to collect this information this September. Some schools have asked pupils to bring in their passports. Can noble Lords imagine pupils having to bring in their passports? In investigating the school census, Schools Week found classroom discrimination whereby only non-white children were being asked to bring in their passports to school. The Independent reported that where parents do not provide information, teachers will be asked to guess the ethnicity of pupils. Is it any wonder that children and young people have felt discriminated against and embarrassed in front of their peers? The Government may say that the guidelines state such and such, but that is a very different matter from practice in schools.

What is the purpose of collecting the information? The Minister says in his letter to me that the information will help us to understand the impact of migration on schools—for example, what extra support we may need to provide. However, there is no extra budget financing. He goes on to say that it will help us plan how we ensure there are enough good places for every child. However, knowing where a child was born has nothing to do with school place provision. The DfE says that the information will not be accessible to the Home Office, but already on 18 separate occasions since 2012 the National Pupil Database data have been handed over to the Home Office, while information has been granted to the police 31 times.

The actions of the Government and statements from them on nationality and country of birth have also raised real concerns about the confidentiality of the school census as a whole and the child’s personal data given by parents in good faith when their child enrols at school. If information from the school census can be shared with other agencies, for example the Home Office and police, without any oversight at all or consent, what does that say about the confidentiality of such information? By acknowledging that the nationality and country of birth data are too sensitive to be kept on the National Pupil Database with other data, are the Government suggesting that that database is not a secure place for a child’s data to be stored? How does this rest with our child safeguarding responsibilities?

I am very grateful to the Minister for his letter of 26 October, in which he made a number of key points. I hope that when he responds to the debate he will deal with some of them. He says that the new data on nationality and country of birth will be provided to schools by parents only if they choose to do so. It will be entirely optional. What is the point of all this if, at the end of the day, it will be entirely optional? How will that affect the need for extra resources or school placements?

On the question of passing information to the Home Office, the Minister says that it is solely for internal Department for Education use. How can we have a 100% cast-iron guarantee that this information will not be passed on to other agencies? He also talks about how we currently give information to private organisations and for research purposes. Is there to be carte blanche? What checks and balances are currently in place when people ask to see this information, and how do we ensure that if we agree that information goes to a private organisation, we are happy that it will be treated correctly and properly?

Finally, to go back to the point I made at the beginning, the Minister talks in his letter about extra support. Are we to understand that there are plans to provide extra financial support for schools which have children from different ethnic backgrounds?

Children are children, and to use their personal information for immigration enforcement is disingenuous, irresponsible, and not the hallmark of a tolerant, open and caring society.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for introducing this Motion and I agree with his concerns.

There are two aspects to this. One is concern over whether school census data might be passed to the Home Office for immigration purposes, and the other is whether the gathering of these data oversteps the bounds of privacy, whether or not there is any usefulness for education. I have to say that but for the perseverance of campaign groups such as Against Borders for Children and Jen Persson of defenddigitalme, we would be none the wiser about the sharing for immigration purposes of the National Pupil Database between the Department for Education and the Home Office that has already gone on.

It has taken two freedom of information requests by Pippa King as well as Parliamentary Written Questions from Caroline Lucas to uncover, for instance, that in the last 15 months alone, requests to a total of 2,462 pupils have been made by the Home Office. I therefore feel that it is already very difficult to trust any reassurances that the Government now might make for the future. These revelations also contradict the statement that the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, made in this Chamber on October 12 when he said,

“I reassure the House that the information is kept within the Department for Education and is not passed on to the Home Office”.—[Official Report, 12/10/16; col. 1890.]

This is clearly untrue, and I hope that this statement will be retracted. So far, the Government have said nothing about these disclosures.

We learned at the weekend from the report in Schools Week that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has said that the nationality and place of birth data would be kept in a separate database. This raises a number of questions, not least whether this is a tacit admission that the NPD is not a secure place already in terms of data sharing—and of course we know now that it is not. But I would like to know what would be so special about this separate database. What is the precise wording that will ensure that these data will not be shared with the Home Office? Will this be a legally binding agreement? That these data would be on a different database seems to me to be meaningless in itself. What, then, of the NPD? Can the Minister assure us that those data, aside from nationality and birthplace, will not be shared in the future with the Home Office? What is the wording of any agreement which will ensure that?

Parents are upset, not just about how this information might be used but because these questions are asked at all. They are fundamentally intrusive in the same way that the listing of foreign workers would be. We also know that the same questions are also being asked of school governors. If it is unclear how pupils’ data can be used for the improvement of their education, it seems that the same information on school governors does not have anything at all to do with either a good education or good governance.

One of the things that ought to be emphasised is that these questions are in one important sense mandatory. You cannot leave them blank and, despite what it says in the guidance, parents have been asked for their passports for the simple reason that when the department asks a school to do something, they will naturally try to do so as effectively as they can. It is true that you can currently put “Refuse” as an answer, which parents are quite rightly doing out of protest at being asked these questions, but for many parents this will appear a provocative response. Can the Minister say whether there would be a straightforward opportunity for parents who are unhappy about having already given the information to have it retracted? Having “Refuse” as an option is a telling recognition that this is a sensitive area and, if these regulations continue, it will not surprise me at all if in a year or two that option is removed.

As everyone in education knows, it is a hard job to get pupils who may be excluded from mainstream education by circumstance into education. We need to get all our children into school, not frighten them away. In a sense, the Minister let the cat out of the bag in answer to a question from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, that,

“it better enables us to monitor immigration issues within this country”.—[Official Report, 12/10/16; col. 1889.]

How is that a function of the DfE? Data gathered by the DfE should not be used to monitor immigration issues. Teachers are not border guards.

This is a children’s rights issue. Many parents are against the provision of these data and campaign groups have displayed serious concerns about it. The regret Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, is unfortunately well founded.