Independent Schools: VAT

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I strongly support VAT on tuition fees. If parents want to avoid it, there is a perfectly acceptable alternative: send children to boarding schools in the state sector, where VAT is likely to apply to boarding alone and not to tuition. For example, Keswick School, formerly a grammar school and now a comprehensive with a wide curriculum, in my former constituency, which three generations of my family have attended, provides day-pupil and boarding facilities in a beautiful environment in the heart of the Lake District, and attracts pupils worldwide.

Whereas public school fees average over £40,000 per year, state boarding schools such as Keswick School average at around £14,000. It is their wide social mix, in an atmosphere of local intake, parental aspiration and teacher commitment, that enable such schools to top state and private sector academic listings. Such schools are few and far between. I would like a huge expansion. Too many parents commit to public schools in the belief that a narrower social mix uniquely provides for the standards that they seek. They are mistaken. There are far too many casualties in the system that so often go unreported.

Russell Group Universities: Foreign Student Admissions

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is participating remotely.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as someone who benefited from free higher education in France, and in gratitude has remained a lifetime Francophile, I argue that the best way to develop sympathetic international relationships is to invest not by bringing the rich, unqualified undeserving into the United Kingdom just for the money, but bringing instead the brightest and the best from problematic parts of the world, even at our expense? Is that not one of the best investments we can make in developing international understanding?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Developing international understanding is important, but I imagine that universities would argue that there are a number of other potentially greater priorities in terms of the quality of the education they provide. We are very proud of our track record in terms of international students. Everyone, including the Government and universities, need to have a shared interest in upholding the quality of and confidence in the system.

Children in Public Care: Unregistered Accommodation

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite correct that this will need a great deal of inter- departmental co-operation and discussion. It involves departments such as the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government as well as the Department for Education. We are all working closely on a number of initiatives to try to improve the situation, as I outlined in my previous answer to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Earl is correct that the “staying put” programme is having a positive impact: around 35% of 18 to 20 year-olds are still living with their former foster carers, and 55% of children in a foster placement are now still with them on their 18th birthday, which is an improvement. On “staying close”, again, I agree with the noble Earl that there are one or two situations when moving a child out of the area is important—for example, to get away from gangs or from county lines drug-trafficking— but we are trying to help in this area. We are initiating a move-on accommodation offer in suitable and sustainable accommodation, located as close as possible to their former children’s home, as well as a package of practical and emotional support provided by member of staff from the young person’s previous children’s home, who are providing some continuity in support during the transition to adulthood.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords—

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I commit to my noble friend to go back to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State today to seek clarification.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, for how long have Ministers known that these children were being placed with minimum cover in these caravans, and what action are they now taking to ensure that the practice is stopped?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

As I said in answer to an earlier question, the quality of social care provision is inspected by Ofsted—

Child Sexual Abuse: Safeguarding Failures

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is absolutely unacceptable for anyone to conceal abuse. The Government are committed to ensuring that legislation can adequately deal with this. We will scope this issue fully during the current Parliament. What individuals and organisations should do is already clear in statutory guidance. The guidance also makes it clear that there is a legal duty on employers to make a referral to the Disclosure and Barring Service in certain circumstances.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, have the Government considered how IICSA’s current inquiry with the 13-strand remit to examine the role of institutions, including educational institutions, has decided to single out and give priority to the case of the late Greville Janner, where there was no arrest, no proceedings and therefore no challenge on evidence, no conviction, all civil claims collapsed and where the deceased’s family has been denied the right to cross-examine and test the evidence? On what possible basis has IICSA been allowed to decide to identify Janner uniquely, effectively trying a dead man in his absence? Do I detect a hint of institutional anti-Semitism here? This is a question about process, and something is very wrong.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I can assure noble Lords that there is no religious prejudice of any kind. I am happy to take this matter up with the independent inquiry and write to the noble Lord.

Social Mobility Commission

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the process of appointing a new chair of the Social Mobility Commission will be run from the Department for Education, and internal discussions have already started to begin that process. It is a public appointment and so will receive the scrutiny that that requires. In terms of regional growth, the social mobility fund of £140 million that we have established in the last year is very much aimed at helping education in the areas of need which go beyond the opportunity areas referred to by the Social Mobility Commission.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

Why were the commission’s resources cut and the membership reduced by over half?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I have not been privy to the discussions about the size of the commission and its commissioners, but I reassure this House that it remains a very important part of our strategy for social mobility and that we look forward to appointing a new chair. As your Lordships will be aware, Mr Milburn served five years, and it is time for a new face.

Schools: Children in Care

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes a very good point, as local authorities do remain responsible. In holidays there are some facilities that may be able to keep children and we have initiatives to try to extend such arrangements, but it is certainly the case that local authorities continue to be responsible.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, is it true that this whole programme is being driven by the need to save money, as against placing children in foster care? In so far as we know that only 100 children nationally are now in such placements, surely we should fully evaluate the effect on those children before we proceed further down this route.

[Lord Nash]

It is not driven by money at all; it is driven by a passionate belief by a number of people, including the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and others who have been to boarding school that it can help and that we had lurched into a certain prejudice against boarding schools. We are just inviting local authorities to look more widely at the options and making much more information available to allow them to evaluate those options.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 16th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

I shall be very brief indeed. The comments of the noble Baroness from the Liberal Democrat Benches hit the nail on the head. We have introduced a scheme that worked in Cambridge prior to its introduction. With the introduction of individual registration, we have complicated the scheme. We need to go back to why it was introduced: there was electoral fraud in a very small number of local authorities in the United Kingdom. To be frank, they were areas of the country with high ethnic-minority populations, where for cultural reasons it was felt acceptable within some of those populations to conduct elections in a way which proved fraudulent under the law of this country.

It was a Labour Government who introduced this scheme and we spent tens of millions of pounds—it must be much more than that now—implementing it out of political correctness to deal with a problem that should have been dealt with in individual communities where a particular problem arose. Now, of course, it is too late and we are left to pick up the damage that was done. This amendment, in its simple way, seeks to remedy at least some of the damage. But the only way of dealing with the damage that has been done through individual registration is to abolish the scheme and do what the Electoral Commission seems to recommend in its most recent report, which refers to taking action in specific areas, particularly those areas of the United Kingdom where there is a problem with electoral fraud.

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

My Lords, I will reflect very briefly on what actually happened in Cambridge on 23 June last year. That fell at just the end of term. A lot of students were graduating and a lot of them were still in Cambridge. As the head of a college, I had spent rather a lot of time over the preceding two or three months encouraging students to register and explaining to them how they could register individually. For many of them, the decision made on 23 June was about their future. They were very strongly engaged with the issues. But quite a number of them ended up unable to cast a vote on 23 June because they had not got round to registering.

Yes, of course, it was their fault in not registering. They should have done so. None the less, we as a society ought to make it as easy as possible to ensure that every young person is registered and has the ability to vote. The amendment would solve the problem. I support it.

Academies: Sponsors

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am delighted that the noble Lord is so concerned to see value for money. It is a pity he was not around in the Labour Government; when we came into power, waste was seeping out of every pore. To get the matter into context, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in 2013-14 the Audit Commission identified 206 cases of fraud in local authority maintained schools—given the much less rigorous accounting procedures that are required in relation to those schools, that was generally acknowledged to be an understatement—compared with 22 cases identified in academies. As I said, we need to set that in the context of such a small budget. It is a great pity that people from philanthropic backgrounds are not more appreciated. This is a move started by the Labour Party under the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and it is something that we have continued with gusto. I find this constant sniping from the sidelines very depressing.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, who is responsible for monitoring and verifying that these contracts are let at cost in the way that the Minister suggests?

[Lord Nash]

First, academies are required to have their accounts audited annually by independent auditors, which is not a requirement for local authority maintained schools. These accounts are studied rigorously by the Education Funding Agency. Each school must have an accounting policy, and we have various analytical tools for evaluating the accounts to ensure that those procedures are followed correctly.

Schools: Health and Well-being

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, cigarettes damage health, so we introduced taxes to put the price up and save lives. Why can we not target certain types of food and drink in exactly the same way?

[Lord Nash]

We certainly do target certain types of food in schools, such as crisps, as being unhealthy. That is what the school food standards are all about. As for taxing sugar et cetera, that, I am afraid, is rather out of my ken.

Schools: British Values

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I think we will all reflect deeply on the events in Birmingham. I am also sure that all noble Lords will study Peter Clarke’s report when it comes out. We will then decide what other actions should be taken. As for flying the flag, I think it is a matter of individual choice and for individual schools to decide.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

The Minister referred in the first part of his Answer to the word “encourage”. Then he said that the new position will be “will have to promote”. What does he mean by “will have to promote”?

[Lord Nash]

It does not seem to us to be satisfactory to ask a school merely to teach about British values if it does not also teach the importance and primacy of them and promote them. It is not satisfactory to teach about British values and then have a separate lesson that teaches that other values are more important. This will be inspected by Ofsted, within some clear frameworks, by Ofsted inspectors trained to do so. The governors’ handbook will reflect this, as will our guidance on the equality Act.