Pedicabs (London) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Storey

Monday 11th December 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I have tabled a stand part notice in this group. First, I will support my noble friend Lord Berkeley. I particularly welcome his Amendment 9, which sets a sensible context in which TfL can take forward its work in pedicab regulation. In Amendment 7, he could have listed the organisations but chose to take a light touch, simply requiring that TfL looks carefully at the organisations that it consults and making sure that it covers the interests that he suggested. That seems eminently sensible and I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept it.

I have tabled my stand part notice for a reason that follows on from something that my noble friend said in his winding-up speech on the first group. I am still puzzled about why the legislation is so narrowly limited to pedicabs and not to e-bikes or e-scooters. I am also puzzled about why there are two transport Bills going through at the same time, and why we could not have had a rather more comprehensive Bill in which we could have been allowed wider input. Perhaps that is why we have two limited Bills—to prevent us having such input. It seems an extraordinarily bureaucratic way to deal with two very limited pieces of legislation.

Dockless e-bikes have had huge growth, unique to London. They are an unregulated market and pose significant traffic and pavement obstruction issues, with some health and safety concerns. There are similar issues with e-scooters. We now have an estimated 28,000 dockless e-bikes in London—up 180% from 2021. It is likely to increase still further in the next few years, which raises a number of issues. First, on-street parking of dockless e-bikes is unregulated, so they can be left anywhere. We have all seen the results of that, strewn around the streets: often, they have either fallen over or someone has thrown them over. They look unkempt and are accessibility and traffic obstruction issues. I understand that dockless e-bike operators are not subject to any procurement rules, so they do not have to adhere to minimum operational standards. I acknowledge that some bike operators have entered memoranda of understanding with specific boroughs, but they are not enforceable and can vary, so there can be inconsistency in crossing from one London borough to another.

Campaigners on disability issues have highlighted and alerted me to the challenges that an increase in e-scooter use may pose for pedestrians with disabilities. I think we have all experienced that. I refer the Committee to a paper published by Policy Exchange’s liveable London and crime and justice units, which has revealed a significant increase in the usage of public hire e-bikes and e-scooters, particularly around Westminster, making pavements impassable as a result of their regularly being abandoned by users at the end of their journey. Again, I think that many noble Lords will have experienced that.

E-scooters fall within the legal definition of a motor vehicle. That means that it is normally illegal to use them on public roads unless they comply with the legal requirements to do so, or are rented as part of an official trial. Concerns have also been raised that the batteries in e-scooters have been linked to fires. In 2021, London Fire Brigade was called to 130 fires related to lithium batteries, 28 of which have been directly linked to e-scooters.

The Government published an evaluation of the scooter trials in December 2022. According to the Library’s briefing, this was followed up in May 2023 with a question from the House of Commons Transport Committee, which was answered by Jesse Norman from the Minister’s department. He said that the Government were

“considering the fact that, since they were initially introduced, trials had shown that e-scooters primarily displaced active travel rather than travel in private vehicles”.

He also acknowledged the safety concerns around their use and

“said that the government planned to lay regulations … under existing rules rather than pass primary legislation. He said the government would also consider legislation on ‘light electric vehicles’. In July 2023 the government said it intended to introduce legislation on micromobility vehicles, which would encompass e-scooters, ‘when parliamentary time allows’”.

Well, we have all used that phrase before. I gently suggest to the Minister that, if his department has the energy to take two Bills through at the same time, parliamentary time would definitely have allowed it to bring provisions in relation to e-scooters and dockless e-bikes.

Getting some regulation here has huge support from the boroughs, TfL and the GLA. Indeed, one of the providers of dockless e-bikes in London, Dott, is also calling for regulation for dockless bikes. The case is overwhelming. I hope that the Minister might be a bit sympathetic and at least give us some indication of when the Government will bring this to fruition.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, first, I apologise for not being present at Second Reading.

I have added my name to Amendment 16, which is about safeguarding. It follows what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said at the beginning about how we want to encourage people to use pedicabs but also to ensure that they are safe. We must be aware that many vulnerable people, such as young children or young women, use pedicabs. This amendment says that the operator should have an enclosed Disclosure and Barring Service certification, formerly known as a CRB. There are three types of DBSs: basic, standard and enhanced. This amendment suggests enhanced. It is not expensive—it costs £20 and the renewal cost is £4—but it shows quite clearly to anybody who is an operator of these vehicles that the person who is driving or cycling one of them has no criminal convictions for rape, murder, sexual assault, cruelty to persons aged under 16, sexual intercourse with somebody aged under 16 or the possession or distribution of inappropriate images of children. If we want to ensure that pedicabs are safe, this requirement should happen.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Storey

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord in what I thought was a very moving and profound contribution. My Amendment 118M takes us back to the role of regional schools commissioners, which we touched on in Committee. Commissioners have enormous power but they are civil servants and act on behalf of the Secretary of State, who remains accountable for their decisions. Each regional schools commissioner is supported by an advisory board, and they have a wide range of responsibilities including intervening in academies that Ofsted has judged inadequate, intervening in academies where government is inadequate, and deciding on applications from local authority maintained schools to convert to academy status.

In the schools White Paper earlier in the year, the Government stated that they would be changing the name of the regional schools commissioners to regional directors. A new regions group has been established within the noble Baroness’s department, which is bringing together functions currently distributed across the department and the Education and Skills Funding Agency. In Committee my noble friend Lord Knight raised a question about regional directors, as part of his thinking on what an all-academy schools system might look like in practice, particularly relating to the accountability of multi-academy trusts. He referred to the fact that many think academies insufficiently accountable. He felt that the advisory boards that regional schools commissioners have might be one way of strengthening accountability, particularly if they had a majority of local authority people on those advisory boards. The Minister was not very encouraging, I have to say, at that point.

I want to come back to this, because it seems to me that the review the Minister is now undertaking must take account of the relationship between academies, multi-academy trusts and regional directors. The direction of travel is that, by 2030, all schools will be academies. In essence, the Secretary of State is taking direct responsibility for each school in the English school system. In reality, the regional directors will take on that responsibility on behalf of the Secretary of State. Those regional directors are nominally civil servants, although they are not really civil servants in the way we think of them because they are external appointments. The sort of people who are appointed are not career civil servants; they are people who have come mainly from outside the system, as far as I understand it, so to call them civil servants is misleading in many ways, because it suggests they are functionaries directly accountable to the Secretary of State. The reality is that they take on huge powers. My argument is that they need to be more accountable to the system. I think the Minister should spell out in more detail the role of these regional directors. Recent research on Twitter—this is where we get information about them—shows that five of them have announced themselves on Twitter setting out their responsibilities. Each of them says that they are now responsible for children’s social care. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm if that is so or not. Does it mean, for instance, that these regional directors will be taking a lead on the regional adoption agencies? If there is an inadequate judgment under the Ofsted inspection of local authority children’s services framework, what is their role there? Do they have intervention powers?

What are the transitional arrangements between the regional schools commissioners and the regional directors? Will the regional directors be responsible for maintained schools that are not going through the academisation process as yet? I agree with my noble friend Lord Knight: there should be much greater transparency about what regional directors do, with the role of the advisory boards beefed up. There is actually a strong case for them becoming statutory agencies in the end, given that so much power is going to be given to them.

My substantive question to the Minister is: given the review she is now undertaking, will she assure me that the relationship of the regional directors and their accountability will be part of that review? She may argue that this has all been settled in the White Paper following Sir David Bell’s review but, given the scale of the change in many schools, which are going to be forced to become academies, I do not think that is the answer. We need to see much more accountability about how the system is going to operate. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond on that.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, before speaking to the amendments, I want to quickly say how much I agree with Amendment 101 on British values from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and Amendment 105 from the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst. I do not see it as an issue of culture wars or whatever—parents should see the material that their children are being taught. I am quite surprised that we cannot do that. When we had parents’ evenings, the textbooks and the material that we were using were freely available for parents to look at. It was quite an important aspect of those meetings, as well as children’s work being on display. I hope the Minister can answer this issue about copyright because that seems to be a red herring.

On Amendment 118H, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, is absolutely right: there should be a review of diversity in the curriculum. When you ask about black studies or black history in school, you get a list and you might find a black author or an Asian poet on it, but there is no guarantee that that is actually taught in schools; invariably, it is not. I want that audit on diversity to be carried out so that we know exactly how our curriculum should be developed.

I will come to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, at the end, if I may.

I have a slight reservation with the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman. We do not have a national curriculum: it is not taught in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, so it is not national. It is not taught in academies or free schools. It is taught only in maintained schools, so it is not a national curriculum.

I like the fact that academies and free schools have the freedom to devise their curriculum and I wish that freedom were given to maintained schools as well so that schools can devise their curriculum to suit their particular circumstances or issues. I gave an example to the Minister only today: Liverpool was the centre of the slave trade and I know that in academies in Liverpool they will do a unit on the slave trade, but it is not part of the maintained school curriculum. Maintained schools should be free to develop their curriculum.

The noble Baroness’s amendment lists the things that should definitely be part of this mandatory curriculum. They are probably the right ones. Financial management should be taught. Certainly, some personal, social and health education issues should be taught. I have a Private Member’s Bill on water safety, because I believe passionately that that should be taught in schools. Yes, there are things that should be taught, but let us not be prescriptive now. What we need is a review of our curriculum. It has not been reviewed for 10 years and we need to do that—for all the reasons we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman. So this is an important amendment but it is perhaps too prescriptive.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Storey

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, my amendment is based on discussions with the Local Government Association—although, unlike almost every other noble Lord in your Lordships’ Chamber, I am not a vice-president of the LGA, despite years of endless work as a local government councillor.

My amendment, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has kindly added his name, would enable the Secretary of State to lay regulations to delegate responsibility for calculating and administering aspects of school funding to local authorities, should future government consultations on the direct national funding formula conclude that local authorities would be best placed to do so. Concerns were raised in Committee about the Government’s plan to set more than 24,000 schools’ budgets centrally from Whitehall and remove input from local authorities. School funding is complex, and local education authorities that work closely with maintained schools are very well placed to understand the unique circumstances of each school.

The Government’s own fact sheet on the implementation of the direct national funding formula recognises that there may be some instances where the Government are not able to set school budget allocations at the national level—

“for example, where this is related to specific roles and duties of local authorities, or where local authorities have better access to information that would allow them to determine the funding more accurately.”

The document goes on to say that councils may be better placed to determine certain aspects of school funding, such as additional funding for PFI schools and funding for schools with growing or falling school rolls. The approach to those aspects of funding will be consulted on in the second-stage consultation on the direct national funding formula, which is set to close in September.

As schools’ local point of contact, naturally councils have access to local education data and can work more agilely to respond to changing local circumstances than can be done from the centre. None us should underestimate the huge work involved in having a national system of funding when you are dealing with thousands upon thousands of schools. I wonder at the Government’s nous in taking on that responsibility, but of course this change means that Ministers are accountable to this House and the other place for anything to do with school funding.

I hope the Government will reconsider this measure and that, when they come to consider the results of the second-stage consultation, they will see local authorities as being a partner in the whole funding of local schools. At the very least, if the Government’s ongoing consultation concludes that councils are indeed best placed to deliver certain aspects of school funding, surely the appropriate power should be delegated to councils in order to avoid causing schools unnecessary financial difficulties as the direct national funding formula is implemented. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for reminding me that I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I have three amendments in this group. I think Amendment 59 is pretty self-explanatory: it would increase the pupil premium in 2023-24 by £160 per primary pupil and £127 per secondary pupil from 2022-23 levels, before pegging it to inflation. That is clear.

Amendment 60 is about alternative education. Members will have heard me going on about that for some time, but it really is important that we look at ensuring that when the most vulnerable pupils—often with special educational needs and often from poorer backgrounds—end up in alternative provision, the financing is transferred swiftly along with their education, health and care plans.

That brings me to Amendment 58, which is the one that I really want to concentrate on. This issue is important. Yesterday I sat in on the child vulnerability debate, which was as a result of the Public Services Committee report. During that debate, I heard our Minister say:

“As your Lordships have reflected, the real test of any society is how it treats those who are most vulnerable within it”.—[Official Report, 11/7/22; col. 1350.]


She went on to say, quite rightly, that the priority of her department is to support the most vulnerable children. Who could be more vulnerable than the 800,000 children that the Child Poverty Action Group has found live in relative poverty and do not qualify for a free school meal?

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Storey

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, in the unavoidable absence of my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, I shall move Amendment 99A, which is tabled in her name, on her behalf. The amendment has been drafted because there are concerns about the impact of the removal a child on the parents. Clearly the interests of the child must come first, but the removal of a child, whatever the challenges facing the parents and whatever the circumstances, is a momentous event, so it is right to consider what support should be given to the parents. It also makes sense because the parents may well go on to become parents again, and indeed sometimes again and again. Surely to give those children any chance at all, it makes sense to see whether an intervention being made post a child being taken into care might help any future children.

I know that, in the light of her experience, my noble friend feels that this is an important issue, and I hope that the Minister may be able to be sympathetic to looking at whether we can find a way of encouraging local authorities to do the right thing in this regard. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, this is an important amendment that is worthy of serious consideration. There must be something worryingly and seriously wrong when mothers constantly have their babies removed from them. We have seen social services almost having to get care orders in place as the child is born, and it can happen three, four, five or six times. Obviously in all circumstances the interests of the child must be put first, but there also must be a realisation that something must be done to support the mother. Are there mental health or emotional issues at play? This constant removal of children safeguards those children, but it does not safeguard the mother. We need to try where possible to look at why this is happening.

This is an issue of which I do not have any experience and, indeed, I have not considered it. The amendment asks in a sensible and supportive way for us to look at therapeutic support and so on. There is also the cost aspect. If a child is taken away from its natural family and we as a society have not considered effective treatments that could reasonably be made available to keep the parent and child together, then surely as a society we are failing.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Storey

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I shall speak to Amendment 15. I preface my remarks by saying that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that it should not all be about processes. There are thousands upon thousands of teachers out there working their socks off to provide for our future generations, many of them in very difficult circumstances.

I would not want us to leave this discussion just talking about the successes of academies. We have many successful maintained schools. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, put it all one way. Although he complained about education in his native country of Scotland, he did not give a fair reflection of what is happening in England. As we know, more than 80% of council maintained schools are currently rated as good or outstanding by Ofsted. Councils perform above the national average in terms of progress made by pupils by three times compared with the largest academy chains.

When the Minister replies, will he put his mind to three issues about coasting? The first was rightly raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. The Bill gives power to future Secretaries of State to decide what may or may not constitute coasting. What will be the process for that? What consultation will be taken on that? We must be clear what is being said.

Secondly, it is not just about particular progress measures but the intake—the cohort—in a particular year. We must consider the number of children in a particular year or particular school for whom English is a second language; we must consider disadvantage. All those issues have a huge impact on the results that the school obtains. It might appear at first glance that it is coasting in terms of the strict definition as laid out in the Bill, but what is being achieved may paint a very different picture. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, is right: other issues in a school are hugely important for not just academic progress but the well-being of our society.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, first, I must apologise to the Minister: I referred to Amendment 20, as the noble Lord, Lord True, rightly pointed out. All I can say is that perhaps that has given the Minister advance notice of any issues that might be raised when we come to that group, but I apologise for misleading the House on that point.

Secondly, my noble friend Lady Hughes and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, until he got into his view about academies and other schools, made the point that these debates on structures are rather tedious and sometimes detract from our overall concern about the outcome for individual pupils at our schools. I thought that the chief inspector, in his recent report, had it right when he said:

“Much of the education debate in recent years has revolved around school structure”.

He refers to academies as having,

“injected vigour and competition into the system. But as academies have become the norm, success or failure hasn’t automatically followed. The same can be said of those schools that have remained with local authorities”.

I appeal for some balance in our debate. I do not understand the argument that academisation is automatically the route to be followed, because the evidence is not there. Where is the evidence? It is a fact, is it not, just to take the recent DfE 2015 data, that recent key stage 2 improvement results show that improvement is significantly greater in primary schools that are not academies—that it is actually greater in maintained schools? This becomes a very sterile argument. We have been debating this Bill for many happy hours and I am still waiting for the Minister to say something positive about maintained schools. Surely the 133 local authority schools graded as outstanding since 1 January deserve some recognition.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Storey

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I will be brief. I know how important transparency and accountability are to the Minister. This amendment is to do with the cost of conversion to academies. If, as the Prime Minister says, by the end of this Parliament all schools will become academies, it will put an enormous burden on resources to make that happen. Will those resources be available from within the existing budget or will extra resources be needed? Can we be assured that any school that becomes an academy will get the same financial advantages as academies currently do or will there be a reduction in that provision? I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, there were some pertinent questions in the noble Lord’s short introduction to his amendment. One might think that the Explanatory Notes to the Bill would provide some helpful information in that respect but I pay tribute to the drafting of officials in the Minister’s department because they elegantly provide no information whatever.

The Explanatory Notes acknowledge, as the Minister has done, that this policy is bound to lead to increased expenditure by the Minister’s department. They say:

“The cost of any additional intervention will be considered as part of the normal Budget and Spending Review process”.

We will know the outcome of that next week. I do not know when we are coming back on Report but I assume that by then the department will have worked out the consequences for its own spending programme over the next three years, and that we might get some reassurance that we will be given some more information on Report. In the expectation that the noble Lord receives no comfort this afternoon, perhaps he will bring this back on Report to probe a little more on it.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Storey

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak to Amendments 57B and 62. First, on Amendment 57B, the Government are to be congratulated. The package that they propose—if I dare to use the term “package”—of proxy purchase, e-cigarettes and looking at the whole question of standardised packaging of cigarettes and tobacco products is to be welcomed. I think it will result in thousands of people being saved from getting respiratory and lung diseases; it will save literally thousands of lives. I congratulate the Minister and the Government. I want also to thank those cross-party noble Lords who put down the original amendment, because they initiated this debate.

On Amendment 62, I said in Committee and say again: some noble Lords have mentioned their grandchildren. Can you imagine carrying your grandson or granddaughter in a carry-cot, putting that child into a metal box—a car—and allowing somebody to pump cigarette fumes into that metal box? You would not do that at all; you would not allow that to happen. Whatever our concerns are about personal space or civil liberties or whatever it is, this is about the rights of a child; the rights of a baby. A baby cannot say, “Well, actually, I don’t mind”; a child cannot say, “Actually, I don’t mind”. In fact, research—certainly from talking to children—shows that they do mind. As we have heard, we can see when we look at the figures that children are particularly vulnerable to second-hand smoke. Why? Because they have small lungs, because they have faster breathing, and because they have a less developed immune system. That makes them more susceptible to respiratory problems: asthma, bronchitis and lung malfunction. Knowing that, and that passive smoking results in more than 165,000 new episodes of all sorts of diseases associated with lungs and respiration—and I am talking about children here—are we serious about allowing children and babies to be strapped in a car where that happens? Surely not; all the other arguments pale into insignificance.

We seem to cite lots of surveys here. Interestingly, in 2010 a survey that directly asked 11 year-olds and 15 year-olds found that one in five reported being exposed to second-hand smoke in cars.

A number of people have said, “How are we going to make this happen? The police are very busy; can we really make it happen?”. I have two answers to that. Do noble Lords remember when seat-belt legislation was suggested? People got up and said, “Oh no, this is an attack on my civil liberties; oh no, we will solve the problem by advertising”. It was the “clunk click” advertisement, was it not? Oh—perhaps we had better move on from that. With the “clunk click” advertisements, in fact, something like 24% of people started to belt up in cars. Legislation was then brought in and we found that 97% of people then put on a seat belt. We do that automatically; we do not think about it, or sit in our cars saying, “This is an infringement of our liberties; we shouldn’t be doing this”; we do it. Why do we do it? Because it saves lives: it saves our lives and the lives of other people who are travelling in the car.

Interestingly, a study conducted in Scotland—we talk about Scotland a lot in this Chamber, thank goodness—suggested that air quality inside a smoker’s car was comparable to industrial smog in cities such as Beijing or Moscow, even when the driver has the window open. Are we seriously suggesting that children and young people should be subjected to air quality which is akin to that in Beijing or Moscow? Of course, we are not. Research by Aberdeen University found that 7% of 11 year-olds experience smoking in cars. That is why I am pleased that one of my colleagues in Scotland, the Liberal Democrat MSP, Jim Hume, is introducing a Private Member’s Bill looking at safeguarding children by banning smoking in cars. That is now going out to public consultation.

I end by making two further brief points. It is easy to find all sorts of reasons why you cannot do something. We could ask, “What about cars that are convertible? What about yachts? What about this? What about that?”. However, if you believe in something and think that it is right, you get on and do it. My only regret regarding the amendment is that it was initially an all-party amendment. When I listen to the news, I hear that it is a Labour initiative. I am sorry that it has been politicised and has become a party-political issue; I hoped that it would not be.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

The noble Lord has made an impassioned speech. My understanding was that the original cross-party amendment had been degrouped and would be taken only late at night. I therefore brought forward this amendment to enable the House to make a decision. I agree with him about the cross-party nature of the debate.

[Lord Storey]

I respect what the noble Lord says and thank him for it.

The Minister is a listening Minister. I hope that he will reflect on what has been said and accept the amendment because it is important to take the whole House with him on issues such as this. I hope that he will look again at continuing the advertising campaign but, perhaps more importantly, that he will consider a review of this issue so that we can go forward on it together.