Brexit: Gibraltar
Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Boswell of Aynho
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the Report from the European Union Committee Brexit: Gibraltar (13th Report, HL Paper 116).
Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am delighted to have this opportunity to debate our report and I am hugely grateful to the business managers for making time available at such short notice. This short debate is particularly timely given the presence tonight in the Gallery of the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, the honourable Fabian Picardo, who gave eloquent evidence to our inquiry, and the Deputy Chief Minister, the honourable Dr Joseph Garcia. Although I cannot of course direct my remarks formally in their direction, perhaps I may say to the House at large that I hope they found our report constructive and helpful. I underline my committee’s continuing openness to dialogue with the Gibraltarian Government and people.
As our report states very clearly, Gibraltar is part of the European Union and its citizens were able to vote in the referendum last June. Just under 96% of votes cast in Gibraltar were to remain—but Gibraltar, as a dependent territory of the United Kingdom, is now set to leave. In these circumstances, particularly, the United Kingdom Government, I suggest, have a unique moral responsibility to ensure that Gibraltar does not suffer as a result of a Brexit that its people almost unanimously opposed. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that responsibility tonight.
There can be no question that Gibraltar has benefited hugely during our membership of the EU. I say “during” rather than “as a result of” our membership because I do not wish to assert any necessary causality. But we just have to remind ourselves of the position in the 1970s, when Spain was still under the rule of General Franco and the border was closed, to see that Gibraltar today, with its vibrant, service-based economy, is in a far better place. The existence of an open border, which allows more than 10,000 workers—40% of the total workforce in Gibraltar—to cross from Spain every day, is absolutely fundamental to Gibraltar’s long-term prosperity, as it is to that of Andalusia, the neighbouring region of Spain.
We urge the Government here to do everything possible to maintain Gibraltar’s access to that pool of cross-border workers. That will require intense diplomacy with Spain, the European Union institutions and the other 26 member states, which have played an important part in promoting dialogue between Gibraltar and Spain and which have a strong interest in maintaining the prosperity and stability of Gibraltar going forward. That diplomacy will become even more important after our withdrawal, when United Kingdom Ministers have ceased to participate in regular European Council meetings, and have lost that forum for frequent and informal dialogue with their Spanish counterparts.
I do not underestimate the challenges that the Government may face. Some are technical. The Government will need to explore the options in legal terms for maintaining a free-flowing frontier and we flag up the Chief Minister’s suggestion to us that the Local Border Traffic Regulation could provide a suitable basis for this. We also note that in the area of policing, the land frontier becoming part of the European Union’s external border could create difficulties. As in the case of the Irish land border, close co-operation between police forces on both sides of the border and flexible extradition arrangements will be vital.
There are other important issues such as aviation, Gibraltar’s access to the single market in services, particularly financial services, and Gibraltar’s territorial waters. I am sure that other noble Lords will touch on some of these tonight and I look forward to their contributions to this debate. Reaching solutions on these issues, in particular on the vital issue of the border, will require compromises on all sides and I hope that the Minister in responding to this debate will take the opportunity to outline the Government’s approach in more detail than we have heard thus far.
However, on one key issue no compromise is possible. The Government have made a commitment never to enter into sovereignty discussions against the will of the Gibraltarian people, and our Committee fully endorses that commitment. The reaction in Madrid immediately following the referendum was watched closely in Gibraltar and there is always the risk that someone will seek to inflame tensions with a view to their domestic political gain. The United Kingdom Government therefore need to be alert to any attempts by Spain to advance territorial claims over Gibraltar, by whatever means.
I emphasise that the rest of the European Union is potentially a useful ally in this process. The European Union and its member states have invested in Gibraltar. They have a real stake in the stability and prosperity of neighbouring states, and will not take kindly to any attempt by Spain to derail a Brexit deal over Gibraltar. It would be unwise and potentially counterproductive for the Government here to try to play off Spain against the other 26 member states. I hope that the Minister will agree that, as we approach the Article 50 negotiations, the last thing the Government should do is to try to undermine the unified approach of the EU 27. The challenge, in contrast, is to identify common interests and shared practical solutions that will underpin a durable continuing partnership.
Within the United Kingdom that partnership has to be built up across our constituent nations and regions. It needs to embrace Gibraltar, the Crown dependencies and the other British Overseas Territories, which each have a distinctive constitutional relationship with the United Kingdom and European Union. There also needs to be a partnership between the United Kingdom and European Union—that is, the whole European Union, including Spain—if we are to maintain a fruitful relationship for the future. It is important to acknowledge the strong bilateral relationship that the United Kingdom enjoys with Spain and to accept that that relationship should not be seen solely through the prism of the dispute over Gibraltar.
I will end as I began. Our view is that the United Kingdom Government have a unique moral responsibility to ensure that Gibraltar’s voice is heard and its interests respected as we approach Brexit and beyond. I look forward to the noble Baroness’s reply, in which I hope that she will clearly set out how the Government plan to fulfil that responsibility.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, timings are particularly tight for this 90-minute debate and I therefore request that Back-Bench speeches are wound up as the Clock reaches four minutes, and no later.
Schools: Funding Reform
Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
Like my noble friend, I sat through the previous debate on design, and I thought someone would ask me about it. I was expecting the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, to be in her place, but my noble friend has asked the question instead. Coming to listen to another Bill going through its Committee stage and being subjected to some of the same kind of scrutiny to which I have been subjected in the Moses Room makes a nice change.
On design, the Government want to get a balance between delivering savings through a common sense approach and not reinventing the wheel every time. I agree about not having a one-size-fits-all design that can be rolled out across the country. There clearly needs to be proper discretion about the set of standardised designs—plural—that we would work up. In that context, building schools and other buildings that are energy efficient is extremely and increasingly important.
I agree with my noble friend about the importance of local discretion in thinking about revenue. She put the point about simplicity, equity and complexity very well. It is precisely those issues that we will need to tease out in the consultation to try to get to a point where there is more transparency and openness but there is still room for people to make sensible judgments on the ground. As she also said, we want to iron out some of these inequalities across the country. The points she raised about academies and academy funding are the sorts of issues that we will be discussing with local authorities and their representative bodies to try to resolve this issue.
Special schools, like all schools, will be able to apply for funding to help with their condition because we know from the work we have done that, just as with other schools, there are special schools in great need of help with dilapidation, so they will be able to apply to the same fund.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Statement. Can my noble friend help me with a couple of details on the capital side? First, possibly in parallel with, rather than in sequence with, the study that he is to undertake into the state of school conditions, will he be giving some thought to building up a matrix that will aid him in deciding which schools have the greatest need for capital work so there is a principled basis for doing it?
My second point is something of an extension of the point made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. It is in relation to the cost of building projects. Will he make sure that the costing takes into account the whole-of-life cost so that the building projects are sustainable, rather than simply the cheapest at the time?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, the point of carrying out the condition survey is precisely to arrive at the point, to which my noble friend referred, where one can make a fair comparison between schools across the country to work out which of them have the greatest need and are most in need of having their condition improved. He is obviously right about that.
So far as the cost of the building projects is concerned, my noble friend makes a good point. One of the things that we will be looking at is how to try to secure the best possible value in a number of different ways, perhaps by grouping schools.
Education Bill
Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. Many of us have a strong interest in faith schools. I speak as a practising Anglican. I am heartened that on the whole the debate has not reinforced the view that we would take comfort from the ghettoisation of schools. They should be able to exist in our society, give of their own merits and receive of their own experiences from other citizens of different faiths. Some of the most impressive schools that I have seen—without exception, as it happens—have been Anglican schools that have a high Muslim component because that is what has happened to the demography in that particular area.
I want not to prolong the debate but to widen it slightly into a different consideration that can also be met by Amendment 138, to which I am sympathetic. If I may avert to the interest of noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, in wider issues of community cohesion, on which she has a strong record, many of us would be committed to that.
It has always seemed to me that the debates that we have about multiculturalism are often misconceived. The ideal that I want is people who believe in something and have a body of beliefs that they exemplify and wish to express along with fellow believers in their own school. They thereby have an ability to look within their own community but at the same time reach outwards to other communities. They are not doing it in an exclusive or inhibitory way; they are saying, “This is what we stand for but we listen to you, respect you, welcome you in and enjoy having you as participants”. I therefore feel strongly that as our society evolves we ought to be getting to a position where people may have their inner beliefs that will differ in many ways, or their own particular characteristics, but at the same time they are prepared to share a common citizenship, a common space and a common respect. The way that these amendments are conceived may help us to lead towards that. There should be no ghettoisation but a sensible inclusion—that is the way that I hope this debate is now going.
Lord McAvoy
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend, as he says in this debate. My noble friend Lady Massey has cited Northern Ireland. If you want, and I normally do, we can go back to 1176 when the Welsh allowed Pembroke, otherwise known as Strongbow, to first invade Ireland, and that was the start of the Troubles—English and Norman interference in Ireland. It is a long-term issue.
What is coming across to me from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and certainly from my noble friend Lady Massey, is that faith schools—especially Catholic schools, it seems—are an inherently bad thing; they do bad things and they are not good for society. Among colleagues here there is a certain detachment from reality because that is not how they are perceived outside. It is completely unfair—
Education Bill
Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I support the remarks that have just been made. Ofqual is in its early stages; it has set off on what is essentially a new path with new powers given on the Floor of this House, among other places. It is important that Ofqual has the powers and flexibility to maintain a reputation that will be essential if standards are to be properly observed in this country.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, very briefly, this is my maiden contribution to this consideration in Committee of the Bill. I am a former Minister, and perhaps I should formally declare that I am a fellow of City and Guilds, although I have no operational responsibilities there.
I also warm to this idea. There was a time—if noble Lords wish to look it up; as I recall, it was Section 24 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992—when it was in the hands of the Minister of the day, who happened to be me, to exercise a kind of nuclear option whereby everything that was not authorised could be extinguished. That is an extreme version and one that every year we fought off enacting. I am very glad that we did. The world is a much more protean place now. I happen recently to have had correspondence with the Minister’s colleagues in the department about some very sensible input by the French inspector general of education, which I had not expected to be made in quite the tones that it was. It certainly was not insular.
We should allow Ofqual, as a new institution, the maximum slack to pursue its interests and duties. There are concerns about the quality of the examination system, although I suspect—given the sheer industrial volume of what is processed through the system, including the number of entries and scripts—it is perhaps not surprising that mistakes are made from time to time. However, at least let us not ask Ofqual to confine its activities to a narrow schedule in presenting the achievements of schools and the options that it can take. My message to the Minister would be to keep as much flexibility as we reasonably can.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
My Lords, this is also my maiden intervention in this Bill. I support the final comments that were made, for two reasons. First, I declare an interest: I work with and support EAL, a bespoke awarding body. Its view is that the extremes that are currently available are really quite worrying. Secondly, and importantly for it, if we do not have those opportunities to bring to a halt and remedy the situation, it does no good for those awarding bodies that try very hard to make sure that they work very well. For those reasons, I support those comments. Perhaps the Minister will think about whether there is something in between, but certainly something detrimental should happen if things are not working out well.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 86G which is tabled in my name and I shall touch on some of the wider issues that have been raised by Opposition Members in introducing this debate. Perhaps I should say at the outset that I am a member of the independent Skills Commission, although it is not a formal interest. It has members from different parties as well as a large number of professionals. Some years ago the commission was involved in drawing up a report on independent advice and guidance in which, interestingly, we placed quite a lot of emphasis on reporting the growth in social media and online resources as well as the conventional role of the careers service. I shall come back to that in a moment. I, too, have a strong engagement with apprenticeships. The work preparation for, or the option of, opening up young people’s eyes to the world of work is critical and, as I have already adverted to the Committee, I had previous responsibility as a Minister for progression from schools and FE.
First, I acknowledge the huge amount of good done by individual careers teachers and in guidance. That is an important distinction in the Minister’s proposals set out in his helpful letter to Members of the Committee, which draw a distinction that is often blurred between education and guidance. While I acknowledge how much has been done in the past—and it is 20 years since I had ministerial responsibility—there have, in my experience, always been patchiness, failures in the system, and a system that is less ideal than the one we would wish for now. In particular, there have always been two problems in schools. The first is the moral hazard of schools seeking to keep hold of pupils who might be much more properly referred to, and have much more successful opportunities within, further education or the private training provider route. Secondly, there is a simple cultural difficulty, which is that some of those schools—particularly if they are teaching conventional and general academic subjects—are not aware of the whole complexity of the issue. That very much centres on, for example, the offer that is now made in apprenticeship frameworks, which are qualitatively different from what was available some years ago.
We have been tentatively trying to get this right for a number of years. As a result of some of the concerns that I expressed at the time, we moved towards a system of contractorisation in the 1990s. We then came back to a measure of centralisation, or at least standardisation, through the Connexions service—although that also varied very much in its salience to the target audience—and locally, in my view. Now, my noble friend the Minister, whose initiative I welcome, is providing in this clause a new duty on schools to secure independent guidance.
We were talking in the previous group of amendments about philosophy. Probably the only lesson that I remember from my moral philosophy days—although it is important—is that there is a distinction between saying that something ought to happen and saying that there ought to be a law to ensure that something happens. In this place, we should all be mindful that it is not absolutely necessary to ring-fence and litigate to achieve everything, and that there is an important duty on schools to say, “We need to think about this, obtain independent advice, and make sure that that advice is perceptibly independent”.
It is therefore important that in drawing the distinction we are not subverting the need for schools to provide good-quality careers education or work experience. They should open up the eyes of young people to the opportunities before they make critical decisions. I was once caricatured as saying at the margins of the Skills Commission, “Oh, you are in favour of work experience for five year-olds”. It is not quite like that but there is a point at which we need to keep the two worlds of education and of work at least in touch with one another through the whole school career. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is nodding. I think we understand that we need to do that, and it is something on which schools need to continue to focus.
We then reach the point of gateway—the moment of serious consideration of the next stage. It is terribly important, for the reasons of moral hazard that I mentioned, that we make it clear that schools are expected to take independent advice and guidance at that point, in the interests of their pupils. That can be supplemented by the electronic media and all the rest of it, but it is a necessary stage.
The spirit of my amendment and my concern is that we are feeling our way in trying to provide a better service in the interests of young people—one that enables them to express their choices. The Government are right in doing that. There have been concerns from the Institute of Career Guidance and other professionals. I can understand why many of them feel very strongly about it, but I would say that the status quo has not been entirely successful and we need to look at a better way of doing this that respects the different roles in education and guidance, and mentoring and development, and moves on to the adult careers service whose introduction is to be welcomed. We need to make sure that there are no wrong doors or closed doors, and that people are given good signposting through the process. In that connection, the substance of my Amendment 86G would be to say, “Do not subvert the Government’s proposals now, but do leave it open and make it a requirement on the Government to report back within three years”. I do not quite accept the tone of the noble Baroness which suggests that everything is falling apart now, although of course I understand her concerns. I do not believe that that need necessarily be the case at all. If I am wrong about that, I would at least like to feel that Ministers are monitoring this within a finite period of time, so that we may ensure –and I hope this time to achieve—the best possible experience and support for our young people.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 86AA, 86CZA and 86DB in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford. I want to start by commenting on the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho. There is a real crisis currently in career advisers’ roles as local authorities face some very difficult decisions, and a review even in a year’s time will be too late. I therefore support the proposal made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, that there be a transition plan to make sure that we do not miss it.
Our amendments focus on very specific issues arising out of the new proposals for the careers service. The first is a slightly technical one regarding schools being the responsible body for careers advice. In theory this makes sense. However, the draft legislation removes the right of local authorities to enter the school and to ensure that careers advice is appropriate. This is particular bizarre since local authorities are specifically charged with ensuring that children with special needs and those in PRUs get the advice and support that they require. The same is also true for the National Careers Service, which has no right to check on the quality of careers advice and guidance. I suppose it could do so from a distance, but, frankly, there may be occasions when it would want to look at a specific school. I therefore hope that the Minister will look at this matter again, and will make sure that the bodies charged with responsibility for careers advice nationally, but also those locally with very specific responsibility for the most vulnerable pupils, actually have an opportunity to check what is going on in schools.
I fully support the proposal that advice and guidance must be independent. I am grateful to the Minister for his helpful letter and detailed attachment which has already been referred to. Ambitions for the new careers service are set out well therein. However, the Bill is silent on some key issues which would provide reassurance and guarantee independence and the excellence quality. First, there are no plans for quality assurance to assess whether schools secure that independent, impartial careers advice and guidance. In response to the question on how the Government will monitor the new duty, the note from the Minister says:
“Schools should be accountable to the pupils, parents and communities they serve in respect of this duty”.
I suspect that most pupils, parents and communities would find the very onerous duty of monitoring quality control somewhat beyond them. I am not sure that it fulfils what we seek to cover in our amendment.
Much has been said about the importance of technology in an earlier amendment. But we are really concerned about face-to-face advice and guidance disappearing from the Bill. Young people often do not know the breadth of what is on offer, despite the fact that some excellent web careers advice is available: for example, Careers Box, with little video snips on YouTube and young people talking about their experiences of apprenticeships or their first time in work. The difficulty is that young people often do not know what is out there, and starting to look is very difficult. I can give you an anecdote from the time when I was chair of the Cambridgeshire Learning and Skills Council, where we had a very severe shortage in the construction industry of both plumbers and electricians. If you ask most 12 and 13 year-olds who know they probably want to do something with their hands whether they want to go into construction, the chances are that they will say no, and I am not sure that many school teachers would automatically guide them in that direction.
The LSA and FE colleges worked with careers advisers and Connexions to really give young people an opportunity. I am pleased to say that within one year both plumbing and electrical courses were oversubscribed and continued to be because word went back to these young people’s peers. If we remove from the loop the very specialist knowledge that careers advisers have, we might well have a problem if advice is not independent and certainly if it is restricted to just the experience that schools have.
Education: Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Children
Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I clearly accept the noble Baroness’s first point—that if children, wherever they come from, stay on at school and do well there, they are more likely to do better thereafter. As for the education maintenance allowance, one issue that we have with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children is that half of them are dropping out well before they would be entitled to claim EMA. As I have said before, there is a complex of difficult issues to which there does not appear to be a simple answer; if there were a simple answer, I know that the approaches that were in place under a previous Government would have worked in delivering improvements. Sadly, despite the best efforts of all sorts of people, including local authorities, central government and everyone else, with all the tools that they used, that did not appear to work.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, the Minister has already referred to a large number of the matters that have concerned those of us who have taken an interest in this area, including the high level of exclusions. I might add to the pot the concern about current implications of a large-scale eviction, which can of course threaten the viability of an individual school as well as the pupils’ education. Would he or his department be amenable to receiving representations from across the House to try to get to the bottom of some of these issues and to have a more informed and extended discussion on what are clearly complex issues?
Further Education: 16 to 19 Year-olds
Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I very much agree with the point that lies behind the noble Baroness’s question. There are two connected issues. One is to do with trying to make sure that children and young people are given impartial and independent careers advice. I know that there are concerns that schools not only might not have teachers who have an understanding of apprenticeships and the benefit of apprenticeships but might have an interest in advising the child in a way that is in the school’s interests financially, perhaps persuading them to stay on rather than saying that they would better placed in an apprenticeship. I accept the force of what she says. I know how much work the last Government did to encourage and promote the uptake of apprenticeships, which is very much a goal that we share.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, over and above the fact that apprenticeships are centrally important in delivering high-quality education, as well as a craft training experience, is it not very much to our benefit that they provide a contribution by employers to the process of education in this age group? Is it also not very encouraging that the Government seem in difficult times to have been able to make progressive improvements in that programme?