Sue Gray Report

Debate between Lord Desai and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

The Metropolitan Police put out a statement this afternoon in which it said it was working “at pace”, but it did not give a specific timescale. I am afraid that I cannot say more than that, but it has confirmed what it is investigating. It has had a lot of evidence from the Cabinet Office and is now working at pace to continue the investigation, but I am afraid I do not have a timescale.

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that 10 Downing Street and the structure of the Prime Minister’s office is the poorest accommodation of any Prime Minister of the G7, the G20—or the G140? You cannot have a Prime Minister living in a flat with 50 or 60 people running around below, day and night. Not only do we need an office of the Prime Minister, but we need a dignified working environment away from the private home of the Prime Minister which does justice to the complexity of the work and to the dignity of the Prime Minister. We cannot have the Prime Minister living in a top-floor flat with people running around having parties in the evening. Whether he likes it or not, he will be blamed for it. That needs urgent reform. I know it sounds trivial.

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

I very much want the Prime Minister of the country to be properly housed.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

The noble Lord picks up some of the points made by Sue Gray—for instance, the use of the garden and No. 10 not being able to be made particularly Covid-secure. Some of the points he makes have been recognised. The report also finds that, while

“The number of staff working in No 10 Downing Street has steadily increased”


to the point that

“it is now more akin to a small Government Department… The structures that support the smooth operation … have not evolved sufficiently to meet the demands of this expansion.”

That is what we will look into trying to solve.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Lord Desai and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I hope the noble Viscount will be pleased to know that, last week, we confirmed that we will join the global COVAX initiative, with the aim of expediting the discovery, manufacture and fair distribution of a vaccine to 1 billion people.

[Lord Desai (Lab) [V]]

Will the Government, at some stage, explain to the country how come we have the same mortality rate per million as the United States, yet while the United States has achieved a 33% growth of GDP quarterly in the third quarter, we are still in a recession? We have protected neither lives nor livelihoods. Can the Government not do better?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am not sure I heard everything the noble Lord said, so I will go back and check. I think he was talking about the economy, but if I have got that wrong, I apologise. We have put in place one of the most comprehensive economic responses of any country, with more than £200 billion of support. We have protected 12 million jobs through the furlough and self-employed schemes, and we will continue to provide all the support we can to businesses that are struggling at this time.

School Admissions Code

Debate between Lord Desai and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Wednesday 11th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai]

If there are more complaints, have more staff to deal with them. What is the problem?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

What we also want to do is free schools from bureaucracy where possible, while of course making sure that they abide by the rules and are able to focus on delivering high-quality education. We want the adjudicator to be able to focus on the concerns that local parents might have about the admissions arrangements of a school they may genuinely wish their child to attend. That is why we have announced our intention that local parents and local authorities should be able to refer objections about a school’s admissions arrangements.

Let me be clear: this change does not mean that we will ignore concerns raised by campaign groups. These groups can, and do, raise their concerns directly with government and we will continue to encourage that. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, that it is helpful to have others’ views on how schools’ admissions systems are working. I assure noble Lords that officials from the department meet organisations such as the BHA regularly. We welcome the constructive relationship that we have and want it to continue.

We do not believe this change will have a negative impact on compliance with the School Admissions Code. In spite of the large number of objections referred by campaign groups over the past two years, it remains the case that most objections are referred by parents and local authorities. I am aware that concerns have been raised that parents do not have the expertise necessary to refer objections to the adjudicator—but, as I have said, given that a significant proportion of objections that are received now are from parents, this does not seem to be the case in reality.

We want parents be able to refer an objection where the admissions arrangements of their local school feel unfair or wrong to them: for example, if the boundary of a catchment area seems to be have been drawn in such a way as to leave out a particular street, or if admissions arrangements lack key information parents need to be able to understand how they will affect them, such as how “home address” will be defined.

Parents do not need a detailed knowledge of the admissions code to be able to spot such flaws—but, of course, if they felt they wanted to seek the advice of a group or organisation in referring an objection, they would not be prevented from doing so. Again, this change is about supporting parents.

Admissions teams in local authorities, who we intend will still be able to refer objections, have a detailed understanding of admissions law, and they have a legal duty to refer an objection to the adjudicator if they believe that a school’s admission arrangements are unlawful. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, said that the onus would be just on parents. No, local authorities will also have a role. They may be more likely than parents to spot some of the more technical issues which the noble Lord raised, such as failing to include an effective tie-break.

I know that there is also a concern about widespread non-compliance among faith schools—a number of noble Lords mentioned the report, An Unholy Mess. That report was based on a small-scale sample confined to just 43 schools, so it is misleading to say that it is representative of the faith sector as a whole, which comprises some 6,800 faith schools. Of the 43 sets of arrangements that were reviewed, the Office of the Schools Adjudicator found that most of the issues were not related to faith. There was also an issue with the methodology, which did not examine non-faith schools as a comparator.