Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Brixton and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Committee stage
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to return, very briefly, to something the noble Lord, Lord Mann, raised earlier. I can understand in the broader sense why universities have been included, because very often it has been universities that have been at the cutting edge of popularising boycotts. They have taken a wide range of forms—and not just in terms of what is sold or invested in. As the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, pointed out, it could be denying people research, not letting Israeli academics come over to speak or whatever. There are all sorts of ways that this happens. So, I understand why the university sector is in scope. My problem is that it is not clear to me how a Bill like this can do anything other than attack academic freedom, which I am interested in defending. I think we have to deal with what is happening on university campuses in a different way.

Regardless of that, the reason it is frustrating—and why I am referring to what the noble Lord, Lord Mann, said—is that, if you have a conversation with anyone outside this Chamber, if they are like me, they are worried about BDS and anti-Semitic campaigns against Israeli academics. Something has just happened at King’s College London in fact, where an event has been called off, and there is a University of Leeds chaplain in hiding —all these things are going on. Ironically, if anything, this Bill is too narrow to deal with what is really happening. The point that the noble Lord, Lord Mann, made was that the way wording happens, there are ways around it that this Bill will not deal with. He and I might differ about how we would deal with that—I think we probably would. None the less, given what a public authority is, it is understandable why universities are in here—but, as people have said, which bit of the university?

For the Minister to say “Oh, no, it wouldn’t count, student unions”, would be utterly ludicrous. From the Government’s point of view, even if I go with you, why would it not be student unions? That would be mad. They are part of what the public authority of the university is about, along with research councils and everyone else. I am not trying to encourage the Government to wipe up every part of a university to bring them in scope, but to keep saying that they are not in scope makes no sense from the point of view of the public justification for this Bill by Michael Gove when he has argued for it, and anyone else who supports it. So we do need some clarity here.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, this debate has referred consistently to universities, but I do not want the point to get lost that there is an equivalent problem with local government pension schemes, where a succession of bodies take part in the decisions that are reached. Every fund has advisers, in particular advisers on ESG. The trustees are responsible for the decision, but they are under a legal obligation to give due regard to their advisers’ views. Now, because of the encouragement by the Government, the individual funds are not actually investing the money; the money is passed on to a pooled fund that equally has its advisers and its decision-makers. Somewhere in that thread of control, someone is a decision-maker, but I defy the Minister to tell us precisely, in the terms of this Bill, who it is.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Davies of Brixton and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I missed the opportunity to speak before the Front-Bench spokesperson got up. The point I want to make on home schooling is that it is as much about the rights of the child as it is about the rights of the parent. In the debates on Monday and today, I think that we have heard too much about the rights of the parents, but the rights of the child not to be abused and to get a decent education are important. They are not important; they are crucial. Those rights might be a counterpoint to those of the parents.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, asked a rhetorical question: is the state going to adjudicate? The answer is yes. Who else will adjudicate between the rights of the parent and the rights of the child? The education authority and the social services authority clearly have crucial roles there. Noble Lords need only cast their minds back to all the dreadful cases that have occurred where the school or social services have failed. This is not about home education. What is notable about many cases of child abuse is that those children were at school, although their absence from school too frequently was a hallmark that should have been picked up. The local education authority and the local authority more generally have an important role. They should not be demonised, in the way some speakers have suggested, as if the hallmarks were bureaucracy and interfering with parental rights.

I have two more points, the first of which is on the point of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, on data. I am afraid he made two conflicting points: first, that the data was available anyway and, secondly, that it would be hacked. If the data is available anyway, it can be hacked.

The other point is a genuine, not a rhetorical, question for the Minister. Noble Lords have referred to decisions made by the local authority. Do they not come under the aegis of the Local Government Ombudsman in any event? Why do we need a special ombudsman service? If the Government are trying to cut back on bureaucracy, they can use the tried and tested system we already have.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I just want to clarify or ask a question. At the moment, we have a system in which social services or child protection agencies, quite rightly, are the part of the state that intervenes in those terrible cases where we suspect that a child is being abused. Is he not concerned if, through its education role, the local authority now has to do that job? That is almost the implication. In schooling, we have the phrase “in loco parentis”: the idea is that parents entrust their child to teachers and the education authority, because they say that “You educate them, but we parent them.” Is there not a danger of posing a conflict between parents and children in this competition of rights? For the majority of the time, that is not a problem. Even when it is, the appropriate body would be social services. I am worried about education being dragged into what is effectively social services. Keeping an eye on kids is one thing; it is not the same as being social workers with their expertise.