"My Lords, in moving Amendment 97A I shall speak also to the other amendments in my name in this group.
The substantive amendments in the group concern the completeness of the register. I personally see no justification whatever for the register targeting only people who are home educating. To my …..." Lord Lucas - View Speech
"My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for her answers to my amendment. By and large, she has answered extremely well, and I thank her for that.
I would like to press her a bit further on the business of identifying people who identify themselves as elective …..." Lord Lucas - View Speech
"My Lords, I am grateful for that. Perhaps we will get to the stage when there is a single identifier for a school. At least three different numbers are used by the Department for Education, as far as I know. It would be nice to have consistency. There is a …..." Lord Lucas - View Speech
"My Lords, I have a few amendments in this group. Amendment 97E is an echo of Amendment 101B and may well have already been answered. Amendments 98A, 101A and 104A seek to offer a defence of reasonableness for withholding. An obvious example of that would be where a parent has …..." Lord Lucas - View Speech
"My Lords, I too have an amendment in this group, but first, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, I very much share his vision of taking local authorities to the point where they are advocates for parents. If we look back to the old days, that role was …..." Lord Lucas - View Speech
"My Lords, might I just drop in before the noble Lord, Lord Knight? My noble friend is not right in saying that academies currently provide all the data required on admissions. I have written to the Minister and demonstrated many examples of where this information is not provided. Yes, you …..." Lord Lucas - View Speech
"My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is right about getting Ofsted into multi-academy trusts. It would make a great difference to how parents are able to interact with the eventual system. Parents need the level of information and reassurance that will come from an Ofsted report, and I hope …..." Lord Lucas - View Speech
"I have a great deal of sympathy for what the noble Baroness has just said. The phrase that comes to my mind is, “Better the devil you know”—if I am allowed to refer to the Church of England in that way. We know that religion is an immensely powerful and …..." Lord Lucas - View Speech