Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee stage
Monday 22nd April 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 199, I will also speak to the other amendments in this group. In so doing, I declare an interest as the principal proprietor of the Good Schools Guide; we make a lot of use of cookies on our website.

I am completely in favour of what the Government are doing in this part of the Bill as an attempt to reduce cookie consent pollution. It is a tiresome system that we all go through at the moment. The fact that it is tiresome means that, most of the time, we just click on it automatically rather than going through to the details. In a way, it is self-defeating. What the Government are trying to do will very much improve the quality of people’s response to cookies and will make them more aware, in situations where they are asked for consent, that this is important.

However—this will be the request at the end of my speech—between Committee and Report, I would really like to sit down with any noble Lords who are interested and are representatives of the relevant industry to discuss how we should deal with cookies that relate to supporting advertisement delivery. A lot of the web relies on advertisements for the revenue to support itself. By and large, for a lot of sites that you are not asked to pay but from which you get a lot of value, that value is supported by advertising. As a website, if you are going to charge someone for delivering advertising, you have to be able to prove that the advertisement has been delivered and to tell them something about the person to whom you are delivering it. In this process, you are not interested in having individual information. What you want is collective information; you want to know that you have delivered 24,000 copies of this advertisement and know what the audience looks like. You absolutely do not want to end up with personal information.

Within that envelope—absolutely excluding the sorts of cookies that chase you around the internet saying, “Do you want a deckchair?”, just because you bought one two days ago—this is a vital part of the way the internet works at the moment. In Amendments 199 to 201, I suggest ways in which the clauses could be adapted to make sure that that use of cookies—as I say, it does not involve the sharing of personal information; it very much involves collective information—is allowed to continue uninterrupted.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My apologies to the noble Lord but his microphone does not seem to be working. I wonder whether he could speak more clearly.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I am sorry. I assumed that my microphone was on.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

It is but I do not think it is working. I do not know whether anybody else is having problems with it.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

Okay. It does not quite reach me up here; I could sit down if that would be helpful.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

No, carry on.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I will try to line up with it better. Amendments 202 to 205 flag concerns with proposed new Regulation 6B, which sets out to remove cookie banners automatically when the technology is available. The concerns very much relate to that last phrase: “when the technology is available”. How will this work? How is it to be managed? There is only a thin layer of controls on the Government in the way that they will use these new powers; it is also unclear how this will affect consumers and advertisers. There could be some far-reaching effects here. We just do not know.

I am looking for, and hope the Government will agree to, wide consultation because, on something such as this, it is never true that everybody knows everything. You want to put the consultation out to a lot of different people with a lot of different experiences of how to use the net to make sure that what you are doing will have the sort of effects that you want. I want to see proper, thoroughgoing impact assessments, including of the impact on competition and on the economic health of participants in the net. I would like to see a real analysis of the readiness of the technology, not just an assumption that, because somebody likes it, it will work, but a real, critical look at whether the technology is actually up to what it is hoped it will do, and proper testing, so that, in giving the Government the carte blanche that they have asked for with these clauses, we do not end up letting ourselves in for a disaster.

As I said, most of all, I am looking for a meeting between now and Report, so that I can go through these things in detail, and we can really understand the Government’s position on these matters and, if necessary, discuss them further on Report. I beg to move.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

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

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 74 I will speak also to Amendments 75 and 78. It is important in the context of the relationship between local authorities and home educators that there is a very clear statement of that relationship. I have set out a couple of versions of that in Amendments 74 and 75. I would be content if this was to find its way to the top of the guidance, which is a document that both local authorities and home educators will need to be able to refer to and get clear guidance from. Amendment 74 contains a statement of the fundamentals of the relationship which seem important to me.

On Amendment 78, I will defer to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, when she speaks to Amendment 77. I am thoroughly in support of what she is proposing. That home-educated children should be enabled to take exams has been a long-running problem and ought to be one of the things that we and local authorities are doing to support them.

I am also very much in favour of the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Storey, and look forward to hearing from them. If we happen to have the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on the line, which I hope we do, I think her direction of asking local authorities to take account of expert advice is important. I know of several occasions when local authorities have said, “It doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter. We’re interested only in what we hear directly from the parent. Expert advice is not something we listen to.” I do not think that is the right attitude; the attitude described by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is right. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 77 is in my name, and I am delighted to have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. This is a very modest amendment so I hope the Minister can agree it without too much difficulty—one always lives in hope in this place.

Home educators save the country thousands of pounds because they are not using state-funded education systems, but they often have difficulty finding a test centre for their children when they want to take public examinations, and when they do find one they have to pay exam fees, which can amount to hundreds of pounds, for the privilege of doing so. Of course, many home educators are not wealthy and struggle to find the money for the fees, but surely home-educated children are as entitled as other children to have public recognition of their learning in the form of examinations. This amendment would guarantee that home-educated pupils had a place at which to sit their national exams and financial assistance to ensure that no child is denied recognition of achievement because their parents cannot afford the fees.

As I say, it is a very modest amendment and I hope the Minister will look on it favourably.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I shall move Amendment 120 and speak to Amendments 122, 123 and 134 in my name. I can be brief because we have effectively discussed all this already. The first three amendments all refer to wishing to lengthen the relevant period from 15 to 28 days in a number of different situations but, of course, I would be very happy to accept the amendment that suggests 30 days. I really will not go into detail on each of them, although Amendment 134 does ring the changes, as here, for some reason, it is 14 days. One wonders why, when we have had 15 all along, suddenly here only 14 days are given to challenge a monetary penalty. Could the Minister explain how these periods are arrived at? It would be helpful if we knew how the Government decided that some should be 14 and some 15. Anyway, my amendment does not waver. We still consider 28 days a reasonable time for such representations. I will not repeat previous arguments but will just say that that is a much more reasonable period in which to challenge and work out an appropriate response. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have a couple of amendments in this group. My noble friend covered the government arguments on this subject clearly under the previous group. I expect to come back at her in one form or another when I have the time to analyse the detailed timescale she is looking at—in other words, the whole distance between a worried local authority saying that a child is not being looked after properly and being able to enforce, and how that all works together. But I shall not move my amendments at this time.

Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for his comprehensive replies, but there are a number of areas I would like him to expand on—if he chooses, by correspondence. In the case of the first, it may be best to have an online meeting, should that be possible.

I would really like to walk through with him what happens if we have a medium-sized housing development with on-site diversity gain and, 10 years later, someone questions whether that gain has been maintained, or even achieved. What information will be available to that person? How will they, in practice, be able to challenge it? Exactly what will that information look like? Professional good practice guidelines do not seem a very strong basis for challenging whether something comes up to standard; they are pretty woolly at the moment. Will something be set that can actually be judged against?

If there is a question over whether the gain has been maintained, who will be responsible for taking action? How can an ordinary citizen kick them into taking action? Where, in practice, will the money from a housing estate of maybe a couple of hundred houses be extracted from to make good the lack of performance? How is this actually going to work? As I said, this may be best dealt with as a meeting, but if the Minister chooses to burst into print on it, I shall be delighted.

Secondly, can my noble friend share with us his concerns about perpetuity rather than 30 years? There are lots of aspects of land where perpetuity is normal. No one expects to get out from under an SSSI or building listing, and I do not expect to get out from under the covenants that apply locally to the Duke of Devonshire. Those go with the land and one expects them to be there forever. If one has made improvement to the biodiversity of a piece of land, maintaining that forever or compensating for a failure to do that by providing additional biodiversity elsewhere or onsite seems to fit well with perpetuity, and I cannot comprehend where this opposition is coming from in practice. We are all [Inaudible].

Thirdly, can the Minister answer on whether the biodiversity gain in a particular development will be linked to the local nature recovery strategy or be independent from it, and if it is linked, how does it work?

Lastly, I should be grateful to understand the Minister’s response to the letter that the department has received from my right honourable friend Bim Afolami.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

Minister, I think that it is your turn now.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 8th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

[Inaudible.]

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

We cannot hear you.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

It will be immensely helpful to have a process of gathering information ahead of the Law Commission report on whether extension of hate crimes to embrace misogyny will work, and how. At present, we do not have good information. This is a really difficult area; I do not think that any of us has trouble with the concept of hate crimes, but the Scottish Parliament is currently undergoing extreme difficulty with the concept of hate speech. Many police forces in the UK are doing some very strange things with “hate incidents”, where these can be recorded just on the say-so of one person and then appear in another person’s DBS check. There are some difficult things happening around hate crimes and hate incidents generally; having good data must, surely, be at the core of reaching good conclusions.

Here, we have a difficulty in that the police have changed their recording of crimes and reports so that they record only the reported gender of a person and not their natal sex, as is the protected characteristic under the Equality Act. Recently, we have seen extraordinary rises in the reported level of sexual abuse by women. Is this real? Is there something happening to women in our country that we really ought to understand, or is this a fiction of the change in the police reporting method? Not having accurate data disables us in understanding what to do.

I very much hope that, if something comes of this—I hope it will—the police will not only record the natal sex but will record the gender of all the people concerned so that we can understand exactly what is happening. It really does not help trans people that the hate they are subject to is subsumed under misogyny if they are trans women. We need to know whether this is happening to them because they are trans. We are trying to gather data and understanding; the better the data we have, the better our response.

I support, but would like to see extended, the definition at the end of this. It is really important that we have clarity and completeness. Let us record sex as per the Equality Act definition because that is, as my noble friend on the Front Bench has confirmed to me on previous occasions, the basis on which the Government are working. Let us also record self-identified gender or whatever other formulation works best—we could perhaps adopt the one from the forthcoming census—so that we have a complete picture of misogyny and trans misogyny and can, when the time comes, craft effective laws about it.

Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I appreciate that we are near a borderline and that this is a matter for discussion, but a lot of the people whom a home educator leaves their children with are other home educators, as it is a way of sharing the burden. On many occasions I have sent my child off to spend a play day or night in the company of a friend’s child without having the parents checked to see whether they have any relevant convictions. One should be conscious that this is an area where we are quite comfortable to rely on personal judgment. It tends to be when you are putting your child in the company of strangers that you want to know that they have been properly checked, particularly those who are part of an institution where they might expect to deal with children on a regular basis. I am very comfortable with that system but I do not think we should start letting that intrude into personal decisions about with which of one’s friends one should let one’s child spend time overnight in their house or spend time with their children being educated by the parent.

A border seems to be being drawn here on the basis that in some way home educators are worse or more risky than the rest of us. Not only is there no evidence for that but it is entirely unjustified to say it. I keep feeling that people say it because they are different: “They are not people like us and therefore we’re suspicious”. I hope that in many aspects that is something that we can educate ourselves out of—we should not allow ourselves to slip in that direction. Therefore, I feel that the noble Lord’s amendment goes too far, although I understand what he says about it. However, I do not think that it fits with the general pattern of home education.

We will come to the subject of unregistered schools in a later group, and that seems a substantial problem to address. Effectively there are institutions run by strangers that purport to provide education. Children are dropped off and collected later and, because the institutions are not registered or formally classified as schools or other institutions, there may be no DBS or any other checks on them. That is a problem that the Department for Education needs to deal with. We know that there are a lot of such places and that they need attention, but we do not seem to have given ourselves the tools to deal with them.

However, I do not think we should trespass on the privately run institutions, where parents are permitted to drop their children off with friends and acquaintances to receive a bit of education. We all do that at the weekend but we do not for a moment consider that formal checks have to be made. We should recognise the difference between the need to check in the public realm and there being no need to check in the private realm. We should draw a rational and natural division between the two and not let the checks of the public realm bleed into the private. I do not think that that would work. We should trust parents to educate children in the same way as we trust them to bring them up outside school hours and we should be comfortable with the processes around that.

Coming back to the main amendment, I am comforted by what the Minister effectively says in the draft guidance that he has published about how a local authority should establish whether a parent is providing a proper education for their children. I again urge him to accept that this will all work much better if he can find a way of providing a proper level of support. Then, in almost all cases, that assessment can be carried out in the natural way—in the same way as it is carried out by a teacher, observing a child over a period of time and forming a professional judgment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the noble Lord has made some very valid points but I am concerned by the length at which he is speaking. The Committee would much appreciate being able to finish Committee stage today. If he could possibly curtail his remarks, the Committee would very much appreciate that.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I do not think that with the point that we have got to there is any great danger of running over the time. I am taking a bit of time on this group because it is the last important and substantive group. There is only one other point that I wish to make at length and that is on flexi-schooling, but I will not speak about that at great length and I do not think that it is contentious. However, I believe that the whole business of assessment is a point of great concern for home educators. Many of them undertake education in their own way. Helping them with that—giving them support, direction and information so that they do it better—seems to be an entirely good idea. However, trying to corral them into a system of education which has largely evolved to make schools work but which is not followed in many schools of which we approve, as well as a lot of schools abroad, seems to be entirely inappropriate. Therefore, if we are to have something that works, and if we are to support and accept home education, we have to be very careful what we say on assessment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, Amendment 6 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Storey. I will also speak to Amendment 28, which is in my name and supported by the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and my noble friend Lord Storey.

I make no apology for bringing back Amendment 6. It is very simple. As we discussed in Committee, it would cost no money but would make a great difference. Craft and creative skills, personal services such as care or hairdressing, and professional skills such as business or accounting are not automatically seen as primarily technical. I accept that there has been a move away from the long-standing term “vocational” to cover non-academic qualifications and that the decision seems to have been taken that “technical” is the word of the moment, particularly now as we seem out of the blue to have T-levels—as the noble Lord, Lord Young explained. It would be interesting to know what consultation went on before the arrival on the scene of T-levels from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In order not to narrow the Bill to purely mechanical technical subjects, an explanatory clause would be a helpful addition and ensure that this legislation is seen to be inclusive of all work-based qualifications and across the range of courses offered in further education.

Arts subjects should be held in the same esteem as other courses. It is of great concern to hear that creativity and the arts are being squeezed out in schools. Between 2003 and 2013, there was a 50% drop in GCSE entries for design and technology, 23% for drama and 25% for other craft-related subjects. It stands to reason that this will have a knock-on effect on the take-up of further education courses in creative subjects. We would like to ensure through this amendment that there is no doubt that the attempts to improve technical education, as outlined in the Bill, apply equally across all courses.

Amendment 28 is for clarification. As we discussed in Committee and as the noble Lord, Lord Young, set out, we would like to clarify the transition process between these schemes. There is already a comprehensive list of approved technical education qualifications in the Ofqual regulated qualifications framework. We seek to clarify the relationship between that framework and the list in the Bill. It would certainly introduce complexity and confusion to have multiple qualification lists. Can the Minister clarify that the institute’s list will be a transfer from rather than in addition to the Ofqual list? If so, what systems will be set up to ensure that the transition and transfers are as straightforward as possible? Does the Minister envisage any major differences between these two lists? I look forward to his reply and beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I add my support to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. If I remember rightly, in Committee the noble Baroness, Lady Cohen of Pimlico, asked whether the word “professional” might be added to “technical” in the Bill to provide a broader and more prestigious view of what was covered. I think “professional” has a lot of attractions to it in bridging the divide between academic and vocational qualifications. “Technical” gets some of the way but not all the way. I thought it was a good suggestion. The Minister said that he would take it away and think about it. I am sorry if I have missed the results of those deliberations in the letters that have been sent out. But if I have not missed them and we have not had them, could we have them now, please?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 26 and 29 to 33, which are in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Watson, and my noble friend Lord Storey.

This series of amendments is intended to limit the institute’s ability to acquire wholesale the intellectual property relating to materials developed by awarding bodies. We expressed serious concerns about this in Committee. This is a significant proposal, which was not canvassed in the skills plan. As drafted, it is unclear whether awarding organisations retain any copyright to potentially key documents relating to a qualification once ownership transfers to the IATE. It is further proposed in paragraph 23 of Schedule 1, proposed new Section A2IA—“Transfer of copyright relating to technical education qualifications”—that:

“The Institute may assign … or grant a licence to another person”,


in the copyright transferred to the institute. These are draconian proposals.

The arguments we have been offered include that the Government—that is, the taxpayer—will have paid the awarding body to develop the materials and are therefore entitled to ownership. Publishers often give advances to authors, but they do not thereafter claim copyright. The payment is for the skills and expertise; the contents should remain the property of the author organisation. Another reason given was that it would provide continuity. If awarding body A loses a contract to awarding body B, there could be a seamless transfer. This begs a few questions. If awarding body B has won the contract, how could it do so without providing its own materials, and what self-respecting awarding body would opt to take over a competitor’s materials? But what if awarding body A had gone bust? I find it sad and inexplicable that so much of the Bill presupposes that those involved with further and technical education are overly liable to go into insolvency. It is a pretty robust sector. Might it have gone into insolvency because the Government have taken over all its materials, one wonders? In any case, in the unlikely event that a key awarding body went into liquidation, I feel sure that measures could be taken to retrieve any materials which had not already been handed over lock, stock and barrel to the Government.

We have heard from City & Guilds and other awarding bodies that the provisions in the Bill on the ownership of intellectual property and qualifications are unclear. As many awarding organisations operate outside England and export their current qualifications overseas, this lack of clarity will have an impact on the development of qualifications. We note, as we did in Committee, that in both general academic studies and higher-level studies the Government do not attempt to own the copyright qualifications. We caution that this approach could have a disproportionate impact on the technical qualifications market in the UK.

We propose that institute-owned copyright is more appropriately applied at the level of national standards, allowing awarding organisations to retain their copyright in their own materials. The power of the institute is so uncertain that it makes it impossible to ascertain the value of investing in developing qualifications going forward. Further, it should be noted that there is no mention in the Sainsbury report, which was the progenitor of the skills plan, or in the skills plan, of the handing over of copyright to the institute in documents related to qualifications.

As to single awarding organisations, what evidence is there that the current awarding arrangement has led to distortions of the vocational market? As we pointed out in Committee, there is a certain inconsistency in government policy, which is going all out for more competition in universities—raising considerable concerns in this House—with a move to a monopolistic model for vocational awarding. The current mixed-market model may not be perfect but it supports and encourages investment and innovation, as well as giving choice and safeguarding learner interests in the event of any awarding organisation failure. A similar model was proposed for GCSE and English baccalaureate subjects, and was abandoned following robust evidence from the Education Select Committee and Ofqual. Why should these qualifications be treated differently? If a single-supplier franchising approach was deemed too high-risk for the general qualifications market, why should it be deemed suitable for technical qualifications? I wonder whether these restrictions might be connected with the fact that those in government—whether in Westminster or Whitehall—will predominantly have achieved their own success through academic routes. How many people in the DfE have followed an apprenticeship or a work-based route and understand first-hand just how relevant and rigorous those programmes are? The Civil Service used to have graduate and direct-entry routes, both of which could lead to the highest levels. These days, most will be graduates. It is therefore all the more important that those in government listen to the practitioners and heed their advice. I hope the Minister will be open to these important amendments, and I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I completely support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. I do not think that any Peer who has been involved in the Bill wishes it anything other than complete success. We are all behind the objectives and the methodology which is set out in the Sainsbury report and what has been built upon that. We want to ensure in the passage of the Bill that what we are producing will work well.

In the process of putting the Bill together, certain ideas have been developed which will not weather exposure to practice. When it comes to sitting down with industries, awarding bodies and others, the ideas that are being touted as the way things will be under the Bill will not be the things that work out. I want to make sure that the Bill has sufficient flexibility built into it so that, if things need to take a different turn to make this project succeed, they will be able to, and we will not find ourselves hobbled by primary legislation.

I have one separate amendment in this group that is aimed at the question of multiple qualifications within one particular sub-route—I do not yet know what they will be called; in the picture supplied to us they look like the fingers of a hand, although I do not think they will be called fingers. To restrict yourself to one single awarding organisation creates a monopoly in the short term, and in the long term it reinforces it. If you take one particular skill set within the universe covered by the Bill, and you say, “Only this awarding organisation can create qualifications for this for the next seven years”, what other awarding organisation will maintain the ability to compete? None of them will. Why should they? There is no business for seven years and they cannot afford to do it. It is all based on a collection of people, and anyway it is not something that stays still; it continuously evolves. There is no way that they will remain in a position to compete, so when you come up to the renewal of this single licence, there will be only one competitor.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

I am grateful for what my noble friend said on my amendments, but to turn to the main group, where she has adumbrated some new ideas in very few words, might we have a meeting between Report and Third Reading so that we can better understand the details of what is proposed?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for her full reply on all this, but I am left as confused as at the start. There is this curious thing that the institute can grant a licence back to the awarding body that actually created the materials in the first place or can give them to multiple awarding organisations. I find that a curious concept given that awarding organisations have to have a commercial structure and to make ends meet, and the materials with which they trade are very often their assessment materials. The Minister has made great play of the fact that there is flexibility in the Bill. But the trouble is that, by the time the Bill goes through with these measures enshrined that copyright is transferred to the institute, there is not much flexibility there if copyright is once lost to the institute.

There were a number of other things that I will read in detail in the Minister’s reply. I will not go through the different points that I have scribbled down because they merit a lot of thought. I also pick up the request made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that we will need some serious conversations about this because it will come back at Third Reading for a vote unless we can get some clearer reassurance.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment, as I did in Committee. I add my regrets that the noble Lord, Lord Patten, is not here and wish him well. My support comes for all the important reasons set out so persuasively by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—and it was evidence-based persuasion, which is always the very best sort.

Our higher education sector has derived immense benefit from collaboration with European research establishments—not just financial, but benefit in research, scholarship and international understanding and good relations. In this new, uncertain world, those relationships are ever more important.

We have discussed international students at length; they are valued and valuable and should in no way be deterred by any undue immigration categorisations or controls. In the light of the overwhelming view not just of this House but of people around the country in all the messages we have heard, I hope the Minister can assure us that the amendment will be accepted.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

The purpose of my Amendment 151 is, by collecting data and publishing it, to drive improvement and collaboration. That has been urged on me by several universities. They feel that there is another way—that we do not need to proceed by confrontation if the universities and the Home Office will agree to work together. That is something that we should insist on. Particularly given what we are going to spend the rest of today doing, this is not a time for argument, however hallowed by time that argument is; it is a time for pulling together for the good of the United Kingdom. This is not a one-sided thing; it means that the great universities really have to join in the great campaign that the Government run to support the whole of British education abroad. At the moment, it is really supported only by those who do not have sufficient of a reputation to justify marketing on their own. For this to succeed and for the good of the nation, we need the great universities to join in. There are a few which have and a few more on the periphery, but it has been a shameful show, by and large.

We need universities to recognise that, in their alumni, they have an enormous ability to help us to trade internationally. This is not something that they should seek to keep to themselves for their own commercial interests, although, obviously, that is important. This is a time when they should actively look for ways in which to make this available to the nation. However, as was seen in Committee, this is not the case, and universities really need to recognise that they have a role to play in helping the nation over the next few years.

Universities also have a role to play in supporting the immigration system. It is not there, like some tax-avoiding man in the pub, to be gamed to see how much money you can make out of it by taking the money from overseas students and not shouldering the burdens. I know that universities are better at this than they used to be, but they are by no means perfect. They are at the focus of a lot of people coming into this country. As a House, we are offering Amendment 150, which I shall support wholeheartedly—but there needs to be reciprocation from universities; they need to recognise that cheating on immigration is the same as cheating in examinations. They need, for the good of the country and of themselves, to get wholeheartedly behind supporting that concept.

The Home Office, as we all know, is not set on collaboration. I asked the Home Secretary a question a month ago in a meeting as to whether the Home Office would collaborate with universities, and she said that it would. I wrote her a follow-up letter to which she has not replied. I think that that is pretty typical of the attitude at the moment. It seems to think that it is in a little box and that all it has is its responsibility to keep people out of this country, but it is not true. At this moment, everything is all our responsibility; we must all help the Home Office to do what it has to do, and it must help us to do what we have to do to make a success of leaving the European Union.

The Home Office is, to a substantial extent, at the front sales desk for universities. It talks directly to the customers who universities wish to attract, but it runs an antagonistic website; it has impenetrable documentation and treacle-filled systems in which it can take six months for an appeal to be heard. It refuses visas on the basis of unanswerable questions such as, “What modules do you expect to take?”. Nobody knows that until they have had a bit of experience of the university and the modules may not even be set. There are even some cases where students have been told that they are being refused a visa because the equivalent courses are cheaper in their home country and they ought to be following them. This is not collaboration in any sense of the word.

I hope that we will achieve a notable victory on Amendment 150, but when it comes back to this House we should be looking not for victory at the end but for reconciliation. We need the Home Office and universities to be working together for the good of us and for each other.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

The amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Storey. I have previously raised concerns about the limitations of the word “technical” in the Bill. The long-standing term “vocational”, which was inclusive of all trades, crafts and professions that involved skills and practical aptitudes, has apparently fallen out of favour and “technical” has been deemed to carry more status. However, stonemasons, florists, film-makers, nurses, care workers and caterers do not see themselves as primarily technical operatives.

I worked for City & Guilds for 20 years. In my day, we did not think of it as a quasi-governmental organisation but rather as a long-standing, highly respected, royal chartered, charitable educational organisation. But there we are. I hope that times have not changed too much. In my day there were two main strands of vocational qualification—technical and craft. Then there were personal services, which was another important skill area, in which people skills were of paramount importance.

At Second Reading, the Minister, in reply to my question about whether craft, creative and service skills were intended to be covered by technical education, said:

“The answer is that they are”.—[Official Report, 1/2/17; col. 1261.]


However, the Bill does not say that. It is surely only in an Alice in Wonderland world, or perhaps even under the new American regime, that words mean what I say they mean. I checked the dictionary—at my age, one has to do that sort of thing—and found that the prime definition of technical is,

“pertaining to the mechanical arts and applied sciences”.

It was some comfort to find a secondary definition, which was,

“appropriate to a particular art, science, profession or occupation”.

That is better but not what is widely understood by “technical”.

For everyday purposes, the Bill should not be marginalising all those whose practical, work-based achievements are in craft, personal services or creative fields. The wording in my amendment may need some changes but the gist is that “technical” does not cover the myriad of work-based achievements. It needs expanding to be more inclusive if the new institute is really to be seen as a champion for all types of skill and practical achievement.

Rather than go through the whole Bill expanding “technical” each time it is mentioned, I propose that at the outset we explain that non-technical work skills will also come within the remit of the Bill. I hope that the Minister will see that this makes sense and be prepared to accept this modest and, I hope, helpful amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, there is virtue in encompassing all this sort of education within one structure. I do not see the point in excluding bits because, presumably, they are felt to fall below the status of “technical”. Areas such as retail or caring are as technical as a lot of jobs that are included in this structure. I therefore hope that this is an amendment and approach to which the Government will give consideration.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. Amendment 371 urges the Government to make as much of these data open as possible. This is not really the pattern with university data at the moment. Even HESA, which is an easy organisation to deal with, none the less guards them closely so that it can charge fees for their release. I think life will be a good deal better for prospective students if that information is more widely used, available and circulated. It is a principle the Government have established in other areas such as Ordnance Survey and the Land Registry, and it has worked extremely well. I would like to push the Government in that direction so far as university data are concerned.

My second amendment is Amendment 383 and we have been here before. It should be obvious that the principal customers for these data are prospective students. They are the ones who need to know about universities. We really ought to take the views of people who look after prospective students into account in deciding how data should be made available.

I have tabled Amendment 413 because there is a tendency for bodies, once you have given them the power to charge, to start inventing things to do, because they can always get them paid for. Look at UCAS, for example; it probably does five times as much as it needs to. The central “apply” function, which everybody uses, is only about 20% of UCAS’s activity. The rest it can get paid for and it is interesting, so it does it. This body ought to be under tighter financial discipline than that.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 368, which is about the number of staff on non-permanent contracts and zero-hours contracts, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, set out. As we have discussed before, these sorts of metrics might be more valuable to the TEF than many of the metrics already in it, because the non-permanent staff and zero-hours staff will have a greater impact on teaching quality than many of the other things which the TEF purports to measure. On Amendments 376 and 377, it is important at all stages of the Bill to ensure that adult, mature and part-time students are included as part of the student population.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support the amendment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, the possible proliferation of new universities is likely to include a great many offering subjects such as business and management, and far fewer offering subjects such as civil engineering, artificial intelligence and modern languages—whereas it would make sense for any new provision to arise out of shortages in disciplines and skills within the UK.

Secondly, there are parts of the country that are ill served by further and higher education. I have noble friends from Berwick-upon-Tweed who often relay the lack of local provision for local people to study. This is a cause of unfairness, not only in the north-east but in other parts of the country which are also ill served. If new provision were being set up it would make a lot of sense to look geographically at the parts of the country where there is less provision for people to study. Surely it would be a helpful part of the duties of the Office for Students to ensure that new providers should be established only—or mainly, perhaps—where they meet needs both of location and of provision. The amendment therefore seems a helpful addition to the Bill.

[Lord Lucas]

I too support the amendment. There are things that only Governments can do. If we want an example of creating universities, we should look at the career of our late colleague Lord Briggs and what he did, and what the status of the institutions he created is now. They are considered to be top-ranking universities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, they were just made and put in place and they ran. It can be done. Indeed, it is happening overseas: other countries are doing it.

We are proud that we have a collection of top-ranking international universities. Why do we not want another one? What would it take to make another one? It would take substantial action by the Government. Do we need a tech powerhouse on the lines of Stanford or MIT? Yes, I think we probably do. As my noble friend Lord Ridley said, there is a space for that—but it is not going to happen through little institutions founding themselves. We have seen enough of what that is like. I am involved with a couple of small institutions trying to become bigger ones, and it is a very hard path. Reputation is hard won in narrow areas, and it takes a long time. Look at how long it has taken BPP to get to its current size: it has taken my lifetime.

The Government can make things happen much faster, and if they realise that things need to be done, they can do that. For them to come to that realisation, a process of being focused on it is needed, and the committee proposed in the amendment certainly represents one way of achieving that. I would like to see, for instance, much wider availability of a proper liberal arts course in British universities. By and large, they are deciding not to offer such courses. If the Government said, “We want to see it; we will fund this provision”, and if the existing universities did not respond, we could set up a new one, in a part of the country that needed it. That would be a great thing. Equally, the idea might be taken up by existing universities. That is not going to happen through the market, because the market in this area is far too slow. But the Government can do it, and they ought to be looking to do it.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on this amendment. It is only the OfS that will do these things when they need doing and keep an eye on them, and it ought to be part of what it is meant to do. It is far too easy for schools, colleges and universities to continue with their current practices and to grouse about what is happening. However, no individual or small collection of individuals ever has sufficient incentive to kick against the current system and to try to get a motion for change going. An example of that is post-qualification admission. I speak to a lot of schools, and a large number of them would like to move to post-qualification admission. Nothing will happen unless the OfS or a similar body decides to take a look at it. I hope that my noble friend can reassure me that, should the OfS or the Government wish to take a look at these things, they can do so without any powers beyond those provided in the Bill.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I support both the amendments in this group. I think that the arguments for post-qualification admissions are very strong and need further review. I would also welcome a mention in the Bill of part-time and mature students, who deserve to be given full consideration and are too often overlooked. I think that there is merit in both the amendments.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support the right reverend Prelate’s amendment. We hear increasingly of mental ill-health and stress among students, so building in provision for them would be helpful.

On Amendment 138, as the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Norton, have said, it seems strange not to have such a provision in the Bill. I see in the guidance notes that the wording is not quite the same, but these same provisions have been put as “the measures for a protection plan could include”, so there seems no reason why there should not be the extra assurance of having these measures spelled out in the Bill.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, we are surely clear that the route that we are going down will mean that institutions go bust and find themselves unable to function. My noble friend the Minister said in one of his replies to me on Monday that information as to whether a university was getting near the borderline, in terms of having the ability to admit overseas students removed from it, would be concealed. So we must expect students to be faced with the closure of their courses at short notice, and we must expect the institutions running those courses to be completely incapable of helping them.

In those circumstances, we need what my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth has proposed, which is a mutual scheme. That must have the ability to organise for the courses to happen—so it must have money and it must have agreement that room will be made for students. It must have enough leverage to deal with the Home Office, because any student who is looking at an extended time here to complete a course will be in real trouble—returning home; six-month waits—trying to organise extensions. It is difficult enough for a student at Imperial who needs an extra year for his PhD; it will be extremely difficult for students in a failed institution. We need some money, some clout and some organisation behind this. If it is not to be the sort of structure that my noble friend proposes, my Amendment 163 would dump the obligation to look after such students on the OfS—but it has to be somewhere.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 16th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, although I am a thoroughgoing advocate of freedom of information, I am very conscious of what my noble friend Lord Willetts said shortly before supper: we must be careful of the degree and direction of obligations that we put on universities. This amendment is therefore very much phrased as not prescribing any particular outcome but saying that it must be equal. That is born of my experience, when, under the last Government, UCAS was deemed to have public functions and made subject to the Freedom of Information Act. I immediately requested some information from it and was refused, and went through the appeal procedure. The case having been ruled partially in my favour, UCAS went through two sets of tribunals, with QCs. It must have cost it about half a million quid to resist the commissioner’s attempts to pin it to the Freedom of Information Act obligations. That is perhaps why I reacted so fiercely to the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, when she quoted “commercial interests”. It was quite clear then that UCAS’s order of priorities was: first, making money; secondly, looking after the universities; and thirdly, the students. I did not think that was right and nor do I think it is right that universities put money first and other things second.

We are dealing—or ought to be dealing—with different kinds of institutions. On the bits that I did not get through the commissioner, some of which is information now being made available through this Bill, I failed because of the inequality of treatment of universities, which were subject to freedom of information, and other higher education institutions, for instance BPP, which were not. That inequality created a commercial tension between those who might have been asked to reveal information and those who were not subject to FoI, which prevented information being released under it. My recommendation to the Government is, whatever you do, do the same for everybody and then everybody has to comply. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 238 in this group. It was proposed by Universities UK and follows on from what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has just been saying about equality of treatment. The Higher Education and Research Bill creates three types of registered providers—basic, approved and approved with a fee cap. Universities, as public authorities, are currently subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000. However, to ensure a level playing field for access to information it is important for all registered providers designated for the purpose of student support under Section 22 of the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 to be subject to the same level of public scrutiny. Schedule 11 to the Bill as currently drafted leaves open what categories of provider should be caught by freedom of information by leaving it to the Secretary of State to specify categories and regulations. If there is the appetite to be more prescriptive, the schedule could adopt the revised new Clause 4A wording as proposed.

Universities are currently subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We propose further consideration be given to whether adherence to the FoI Act should be a condition for initial registration for higher education providers designated for the purpose of student support under Section 22 of the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998. This new clause would amend the Freedom of Information Act to apply its provisions to all higher education providers designated for the purpose of student support registered with the OfS. This means registered providers eligible for public grant funding and/or access to student loans. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 9 and shall speak to Amendments 31, 32 and 172. I have added my name to Amendments 41 and 46 in this group. The amendments all support adult lifelong part-time and distance learning. A prosperous part-time higher education market is essential now, more than ever, to address the challenges and opportunities which lie ahead to deliver economic growth and raise national productivity by closing skills gaps and increasing social mobility.

Only 13% of the 9.5 million people in the UK who are considering higher education in the next five years are school leavers; the majority are working adults. Up to 90% of the current workforce will still be in work in the next decade. Over the next 10 years, there will be 13 million vacancies, but only 7 million school leavers to fill them. Such learning is a cost-effective way of raising skills levels and training, so people can earn and learn, as do 75% of Open University students. The benefits are also felt immediately—from the first day of study—by the individual as well as the employer. One in five undergraduate entrants in England—22%—from low participation neighbourhoods either choose or have no option but to study part-time, and 38% of all undergraduate students from disadvantaged groups are mature students.

It is essential that these far-reaching proposals are not developed solely through the policy lens of an 18-year-old student entering higher education for the first time. Reskilling and upskilling the adult workforce are essential, as I mentioned. Economic success in the coming years depends on embedding a lifelong learning and training culture which rests on three coequal pillars: the highest quality further education and higher education, undergraduate and postgraduate, after leaving compulsory full-time education; the highest quality apprenticeships for all; and flexible lifetime learning opportunities.

Part-time study is often the way that people from disadvantaged backgrounds or places enter higher education. In 2015-16, almost one in five of all new Open University undergraduate students were from a low socioeconomic status background—that is, they came from the most deprived 25% of neighbourhoods across the UK and had no previous higher education qualifications. But the number of part-time students continues to decline. Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency published in January showed that in England, 58% fewer students started part-time study in 2014-15 than in 2009-10. This equates to an almost 40% drop in the market, although the OU continues to be the largest provider, with a growing share of the market.

This decline is of particular concern in relation to widening participation in higher education by students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Bill’s equality analysis references, on page nine, the dramatic improvement in the participation rate of disadvantaged young people but omits to point out that this has not been seen for mature students, most of whom can only study part-time.

There are opportunities in the Bill to give more explicit reference to the different modes of higher education provision and different types of student. Both the White Paper, Success as a Knowledge Economy, and the teaching excellence framework technical consultation on year 2 are explicit in this area. Amendment 9 provides an opportunity to make it clearer that the membership of all key agencies, boards and committees should reflect the full range of different types of higher education provider. Amendments 31 and 32 ensure that an express commitment to all forms of higher education is included in the general duties of the Office for Students to,

“promote quality, and greater choice and opportunities for students, in the provision of higher education by English higher education providers”—

Clause 2(1)(a). The wording used here is consistent with that used in the TEF technical consultation. This is also an opportunity to make it clearer that the membership of all key agencies, boards and committees should reflect the full range of different types of higher education provider—in this case, the Quality Assessment Committee. Amendment 172 fulfils this purpose.

If there is no dedicated board member on the OfS to represent part-time students, how do the Government envisage those students being represented by the OfS? Secondly, how will the new system improve part-time student understanding compared with existing arrangements? Thirdly, what further measures will the Government introduce to prevent a decline in part-time numbers? I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 53. Much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has said applies to my amendment, too. There are clearly going to be opportunities to change how we deliver higher education; there already are some, such as two-year degrees. We really need to make sure that this body is not discriminating in favour of the current pattern—and some elements of the current set-up do, such as funding rates for accelerated degrees. We need to take a broad view of what higher education could be, which is why I tabled my amendment.

Education: English Baccalaureate Certificate

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

As the noble Baroness will be aware, we have a debate on this later today. The EBacc is designed to leave at least 20% to 30% of the curriculum for other subjects within it. We have had reviews from Darren Henley on music and culture in schools, and we are taking forward his recommendations on such things as art, design, music, dance and so on. We hope that there is every opportunity for young people to be able to take advantage of those sorts of activities within the school day.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, will the Government undertake that they will allow schools to continue to offer the IGCSE and will they continue to report the results of that examination in the annual performance tables?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, as far as I am aware, that is still under discussion, as is the key stage 4 curriculum. Perhaps I may come back to my noble friend if that is an incorrect answer.

Financial Services Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Monday 11th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening on my noble friend—

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, this is a Second Reading. We are a self-regulating House. Whips have no business telling us what to do. We are listening to my noble friend with great fascination and I hope that he takes another 10 minutes.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

Before my noble friend sits down, will she agree to write to me saying exactly where community cohesion is dealt with in the draft framework document or the evaluation schedule? I must be reading the words wrong, missing them or misunderstanding how they work.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I will certainly write to my noble friend.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

No, but they still need teachers. You are quite right: they do not need qualified teachers, but they need teachers who help to communicate and teach subjects to pupils.

In conclusion, we believe that much of what my noble friend intends is already possible and is already happening. To the extent that it is not, I would ask him to recognise the value that a good teacher can add to the educational experience of a pupil. We recognise that there is a growing place for technology, alternative teaching and learning provisions. Many of us will remember, with gratitude, the impact of inspirational teachers during our own education and the difference that that personal motivation and contact made to our enthusiasm about learning. On that basis, I hope that my noble friend has been reassured that those freedoms already exist and that we may not need to return to this on Report. Therefore, I urge him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

I am very encouraged by what the noble Baroness says about all this being possible. I am also very pleased about what she said on the role of the church. I entirely agree with her. I hope that she will have a chance to pass that news on to the prison education service which appears determined to eliminate teachers and do it all online. Doubtless, I will come back to her or, I suspect, to my noble friend, on the subject of funding, which has arisen from time to time. The complexity of the guidance offered by this otherwise excellent department confuses local authorities from time to time and certainly schools as to whether particular arrangements qualify for funding and, if so, on what basis. To take a particular example, if a home-educated child wishes to go to a further education college at the age of 14, they can get no funding for that. Perhaps that is something to be followed up by letter rather than in this forum. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, the difficulty is that the key stage 2 and key stage 1 data that are published are so coarse. The idea that you can effectively chuck children into one of three pots at the age of 11 and sensibly use that as a measure of anything is not something that I am comfortable with. If there were a better assessment, a teacher assessment, of where children were on a finer scale, you would have something that you could more reliably use to chart progress. Because of the coarseness of the base indicators, you can really only measure these things when large numbers of pupils are involved and the coarseness evens out. At the level of a primary school it is really pretty difficult, but at a big secondary you can get somewhere. Perhaps the Minister has something to add to that. I hope that the Government will consider releasing more and better data as part of what they are doing to improve the value-added indicator, which is a pretty important part of looking at how schools do.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Before my noble friend sits down, the Government are looking at progress reports for schools, which would give a more descriptive picture of where schools were moving.

[Lord Lucas]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I know that many in this House share my noble friend's view that public performance of music should not be licensable in schools. We agree that schools currently face unnecessary bureaucracy when they organise events such as school plays, concerts or swimming galas, and we are taking steps to address that. We heed the warnings of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but we have announced our intention to consult on Schedule 1 to the Licensing Act 2003, which currently regulates the public performance of live music and performance of other creative and community activities, such as dance, plays, film and indoor sport. Our intention, subject to the consultation, is to deregulate those activities as far as possible in schools. That is possible through secondary legislation.

The Government have also expressed clear support for the Live Music Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, which completed its Committee stage on Friday. I know that, because I was there. It seeks to deregulate in certain circumstances the provision of live, unamplified music in most locations and live, amplified music in workplaces such as schools, as well as licensed premises such as public houses, subject to restrictions on audience size. These planned changes will free schools from the unnecessary bureaucracy they currently face and allow them to use music in a sensible way to deliver the best possible education for their pupils. On the basis of that reassurance, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very content with that reply and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Yes.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Government. It is exactly the answer that I had hoped for and I look forward to it being applied in schools. I can think now of several that I shall be e-mailing when I get home to point out the URL of the new guidance. Perhaps I might say two things to the Minister. First, the brief advice given by my noble friend Lord Elton is absolutely crucial—parents should know what the school’s policy is. If my parents asked me what a week in school had been like, I can remember that I would say, “Well, I got slippered twice and my maths teacher hit me over the head with a slide rule and drew blood”, and that they would then ask, “Oh—what had you been doing wrong?”. In those days that was the policy. Parents will take what they have agreed to; it is if something happens by surprise that they get upset.

Secondly, when the Minister gets back to the department could she please give a long hug to whoever produced this guidance and say, “But you could have done even better if you had circulated this to the Committee when you published it”. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Yes, I understand that they certainly would.

[Lord Lucas]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Howells. This does not belong in legislation but this is the way in which we get a chance to talk about it. Secondary legislation and guidance can all flow past us without having a chance to stick a pin in it. I am delighted that my noble friend is thinking along the same lines as me. This is one of the difficulties in making schools good, which ought to be cleared out of the way. I am very cheered that something is being done about it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s first amendment. Making sure that British education around the world is of high quality does Britain a great deal of good one way or another. There are many countries where our education system comes under far less criticism than it does here and where our qualifications are very highly regarded. All the work that we put in here to make sure that they are even better is important. Now that the system of inspection here, with which we are happy, reaches out to some of those schools, we should acknowledge that by extending to those schools the abilities in terms of raising young teachers that we would accord to them if they were in the UK. They are schools following the British system, using British qualifications and mostly British teachers. I see no reason why we should cut them out of that.

I disagree with my noble friend on his second amendment from two points of view. First, if only 15 or 16 people are failing, why are there so few? What kind of rigorous examination has so few people failing? It really cannot be a mark of quality that so few people fail their induction year. I cannot believe that, as set up now, the processes that allow someone to begin an induction year are so perfect that only that small proportion should fail.

Secondly, I want to argue against the premise that people who fail should not be allowed to retry. I know one of those 15 people and I have had a long conversation with him as to why he failed. In my view, the basic reason is that he wanted to make maths fun and would not put up with the Gradgrind methods that he was told to use. It was silly of him to argue. He should have just knuckled down and gone through it for a year. Then he would have been free to teach and to explore his own way. But he did not because he is a headstrong young man and full of what strikes me to be very good ideas as to how to enliven a subject that I have always enjoyed but many people have not. Where such people have come up against what in my mind is the wrong verdict or have tackled things in the wrong way, they should be given another chance. I look at this in both ways: a lot more people should be failing and they should be given a second chance.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I thank my noble friend Lord Lexden for giving us this opportunity to talk about induction, which is an important part of ensuring we have good teachers in our schools. Induction is like a probationary period. It provides a statutory national framework for supporting new teachers to make the transition from initial teacher training to their career in teaching. It ensures that NQTs receive support, training and development. At the end of this time, new teachers have to pass an assessment and can then become full members of the teaching profession. Before I come on to the amendments in detail, let me set out briefly some of what the Government are doing to get excellent teachers into the profession, because induction is at the end of the process and needs to be viewed in that context.

Our initial teacher training strategy, which we recently launched, includes the following measures: we will attract the best graduates by offering one-off training bursaries of up to £20,000; we will double the size of Teach First, a scheme that has been highly successful in attracting graduates from some of our best universities into teaching; we will raise the bar for entry to teaching by funding training only for those with at least a second class degree, and by introducing literacy and numeracy entry tests; we will focus teacher training better on the skills that teachers need most, including managing behaviour and teaching early reading, items which we have already touched on in this Committee; and, we will give more schools a strong role in the recruitment and training of the trainees that they will go on to employ.

Alongside these reforms, we have been reviewing teacher standards, including those that trainee teachers must meet. We expect shortly to produce new, clear standards that raise the bar for newly qualified teachers who enter induction, so the Government are doing much—

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the schools will need to be judged outstanding by Ofsted, so there will be levels of academic attainment within that. However, we are in no way underrating the value of schools such as the one to which the noble Earl has referred. They may well be able, say, to work in partnership with a school that was rated outstanding, bringing the special skills they have developed in those very challenging schools to bear on the induction period.

Finally, let me turn to the issue of induction at British schools overseas, which was my noble friend’s other amendment. The British education sector overseas is growing rapidly. It appeals both to English-speaking expatriates and to local parents in many parts of the world, who want their children to have an education instilling British values and ethos. For those reasons, I agree with the noble Lord that British schools abroad should be able to offer induction.

In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, there will be no impact at all on current arrangements between England and Wales and between England and Scotland—those will not change.

The good news is that primary legislation does in fact already allow this. These schools are legally independent schools, and independent schools are able to offer induction to their NQTs if they choose to do so, providing the teacher has QTS and the school can provide a suitable post. However, there is currently a legal barrier to this happening, in secondary legislation. Following our review of induction arrangements, I have therefore asked officials to ensure that proposed amendments to the induction regulations will include changes that allow certain British schools abroad—those that have been inspected under the British schools overseas arrangements and accredited by COBIS or other reputable British schools overseas organisations—to offer statutory induction to their NQTs.

I hope that my remarks have provided some reassurance to my noble friend Lord Lexden, and that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, since the noble Baroness is in writing mood, will she enlarge slightly on the questions that I asked in regard to the second amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden? If we are focusing hard on trying to get high-quality teachers, we need to be careful to ensure that we have not built into the system disincentives to getting rid of teachers who are not up to the grade. It was always the problem with hanging someone for stealing a sheep that juries would never convict. It seems to me that we have a similar situation here, as the penalty for failing an induction year is so harsh—the person may never teach in a maintained school again. Most people strain to get these individuals through their induction year and to pass them just because the penalty is so harsh rather than because they have done well enough to be passed into the teaching profession with all flags flying. Therefore, I would like to understand the logic behind the Government’s decision to keep it as “once only” rather than allowing a second chance.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I very much regret the decision of the usual channels that this Bill should be committed to a Grand Committee. It is an important Bill with many crucial aspects. It has clearly commanded wide support in the House. Fitting 50 people into the Moses Room will be a considerable struggle. As I understand it, that arises from the failure of the Government to give us any major Bills to start with in the Lords so, as usual, they are all piling up at the end. We are therefore expected to leave the Chamber clear for whatever other business the Government have by making this a Grand Committee Bill, for which, to my mind, it is not suitable. I very much hope that this is a matter that we shall return to when we debate the procedures of this House.

Can my noble friend at least give me the assurance that we will not have Committee on this Bill on any day when, in this Chamber, there is Committee on the Localism Bill? Many of us take an interest in both matters, and it would seem to me quite unreasonable to try to run the two in parallel.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that the business planning of the House will try to take into account, as far as we possibly can, that there are no major clashes between Bills and discussions in that way.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Low, echoed the point that I made on Amendment 8 about how we keep academy agreements up to date. If I remember rightly, he said that for existing academies the only way to do this is to terminate the agreement and renegotiate it. Will my noble friend undertake to give notice of termination to all existing academies so that the arrangement that he has arrived at for special educational needs can be incorporated into their agreements? I imagine that most of them will choose to renegotiate ahead of time and not go through the catharsis of termination. That would seem to be the procedure that we ought to go through in order to bring all academies into line with what the Government now believe should be the line.

I also ask for his assurance that with this Bill it is the Government's intention that the model agreement should allow for the obligations on academies to update in line with those placed on maintained schools generally, and that we will not have to go through this procedure of issuing a notice of termination every time we change the SEN rules, the admissions rules or anything else that academies are supposed to follow.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11 in the name of the Minister and also flag up that we have complementary amendments coming up in the same group as Amendment 22. We have had a query from TreeHouse, which deals with autistic children, asking for assurances on the funding for non-maintained special schools. Under these arrangements, the funding will go directly to academies and not via local councils. Currently, local councils top-slice 7 to 10 per cent from the dedicated schools budget, which includes placements for children at non-maintained schools. Will the Minister reassure us about these arrangements?

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I shall speak to Amendments 138, 139, 176, 184 and 193 in this group. First, I thank the Minister for the considerable time and trouble that he has taken to talk through the many concerns about special educational needs that have been raised as a result of this Bill. We have received full and helpful replies to many issues, but raising them in Committee ensures that there can be no misunderstanding about the debate and the decisions.

Amendments 138 and 139 are intended to clarify what will change once a school becomes an academy. Under academy arrangements, considerable freedom is given to the governing body and head teacher to vary the operation and organisation of the school. Although there is a requirement that the academy should cater for pupils of differing abilities, we would welcome confirmation that that requirement will be enforced and monitored.

At Second Reading, we raised the matter of exclusion of children with behavioural difficulties. Can the Minister say whether there has been any risk assessment of increased exclusions from the new academies? That, in turn, could lead to the need for more referral or specialist units, which would have cost implications. We know that local authorities have responsibility for placement of pupils with statements. It is not entirely clear how the local authority is to be supported in placing pupils in an academy. If parents feel that the provision is not adequate, as the noble Lord, Lord Rix, mentioned, they have recourse to complain to the Secretary of State. That sounds like a measure of last resort. If there are local problems, would consideration be given to a more local route by which complaints could be channelled in the first instance?

In the annexe to his letter of 15 June, which has already been referred to today, the Minister clarified that academies do not receive local authority funding for SEN transport. Co-ordinating school transport is a responsibility that local authorities have carried out in the past and, presumably, will continue to do. Amendment 139 would confirm that responsibility but would leave open the question of how it would be done most effectively when some pupils need transport to academies and others to maintained schools. There is an additional need to ensure that any complexity in the system does not lead to any pupil who requires transport being overlooked.

Amendment 176 concerns SENCOs. It arises from the fact that academies are not covered by the 2008 regulations for special educational needs co-ordinators, which stipulate that SENCOs in maintained schools must have qualified teacher status. The spirit of the code of practice implies that SENCOs should hold qualified teacher status, but that is not explicitly stated.

SENCOs are key post-holders who co-ordinate provision across the school to secure high-quality teaching and learning for pupils with special educational needs and the effective use of resources to meet the educational needs of children and young people with SEN. The position involves obtaining resources, managing the work of learning support assistants, advising and supporting fellow teachers and liaising with statutory bodies and voluntary agencies, as well as with parents. SENCOs are also expected to contribute to the in-service training of other staff. Those varied duties suggest that SENCOs should themselves be qualified teachers, both to ensure that they have a full understanding of the professional skills of teachers and to give them appropriate standing within the schools in which they operate.

Amendment 184 follows from the previous amendments. It would bring the proprietors of academies into line with other schools as far as their duties relate to SEN pupils.

Amendment 193 is offered to help the Minister. The term “proprietor” is mentioned frequently in the Bill, but no definition is given. In practice with academies so far, the person in Clause 1 often establishes another body to be the proprietor, not least because the proprietor has to be a corporate body and a charity, yet the person in Clause 1 can be an individual. The definition offered in this amendment is:

“‘proprietor’ means the person with whom the Secretary of State enters into Academy arrangements once the Academy has been established”.

[Lord Lucas]

I had better address my amendment in this group, since it is the exact opposite of two of the amendments just spoken to by my noble friend. My noble friend Lady Walmsley and I will be in perfect time at eight o’clock tomorrow morning as we practise for the Lords versus Commons rowing race, but there seems to be some dissonance at the moment.

It has long been said that the only people capable of organising school transport effectively are local authorities. I have never seen any evidence produced for that. It seems to go with the assertion that local authorities organise everything best. If that is true, there is no danger in giving academies the right to organise school transport because they will always turn to the local authority, as it does it best. However, I suspect from the practices of local authorities that I have experienced that that will not be the case. Many local authorities, particularly in rural areas, will not offer transport outside the catchment area of the school, even if there are others a mile or so beyond it who might conveniently be reached by the bus going an extra mile.

Many local authorities are not responsive to the requirements of schools and parents in other ways. They just want to organise things efficiently for the network as a whole. The idea that what is efficient for the network as a whole is in some way best for schools and parents and is cheapest is extremely arguable and the best way to test it is to give academies freedom to organise school transport for themselves. When it is more efficient for them to do so, they will do so; when it is not, they will use local authorities. That way we will get the best of all worlds.