Times Education Commission Report

Lord Johnson of Marylebone Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak very briefly in the gap and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Lexden on convening this excellent discussion. It is an honour to follow the excellent contributions from Members of this House.

I was particularly struck by my noble friend Lord Lexden’s comments about the need for rigorous manifesto processes and the Times Education Commission being an example of a rigorous process likely to result in good policy in due course. I was privileged to serve alongside the noble Lord, Lord Rees, on the commission and have had a little experience of writing manifestos for the Conservative Party. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that the more manifestos road test their recommendations with the widest possible groups—the more they consult and the more they engage—the likelier they are to result in deliverable programmes of government. Sadly, the manifesto that I was involved in most closely, in 2015, resulted in the first majority Conservative Government in 25 years but, as a programme for government, lasted less time than I spent helping to write it due to the change in government following the referendum of that year. Good process does not necessarily get you all the way you want to go in the end.

I also want to take advantage of my time to commend the Times and, in particular, as the noble Lord, Lord Rees, mentioned, the outgoing editor, John Witherow; the person who held the pen on this whole project, Rachel Sylvester; and Sir Anthony Seldon for coming up with the idea in the first place. It is worth noting that, as John Witherow retires, after many years at the head of the Times and before that the Sunday Times, he has been a great force for good in British journalism and across the UK media landscape. He has always been a great pragmatic, calm figure. He is someone of great distinction and we owe him a lot for all the good work he has done at the Times and, before that, the Sunday Times over the years.

The commission approached its work very much in an ecumenical spirit. I was grateful to my noble friend Lord Willetts for noting the constructive tone of the report. There were very few arguments between commissioners, notwithstanding the very diverse range of backgrounds and political viewpoints from which they all came. There were very few points of disagreement. Very seldom did it get heated. There was a genuine commitment to trying to work in the greater interests of the country, setting aside party-political disagreements and avoiding point-scoring wherever possible. Rachel Sylvester helped brilliantly in that regard by not really giving us much of an opportunity to comment on the draft once she had written it. It went to print very rapidly before any of us, experts in the art of write-rounds, could stick our oar in. Well done, Rachel, in that respect.

On the substantive points that Members have made, it speaks to an issue of capability in our government system at the moment that we need an exercise such as the Times Education Commission to help us lift our eyes to the horizon and think about the big challenges that our education system faces. Why did it require this? The reality, as we all know, is that Governments of all types—it is not just true right now, although we are in a particularly turbulent time—fail to think for the long term and tend to be consumed by one crisis after another. Ministers have also struggled to think strategically and about systems as a whole. There is an opportunity to take the Times Education Commission’s last recommendation, which is for a 15-year strategy, and to think of the mechanism by which we can best put that in place. I suggest, in my dying seconds, that we could consider a recommendation for a royal commission to create that first 15-year strategy. We have not had a royal commission on education for many years and I think one is long overdue.