Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Elton

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th February 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas]

I would be grateful if my noble friend could share that.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister remind us of the youngest age to which these provisions apply? I remind her that it is the effect of the legislation, not the intention, that matters.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Elton

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I very much hope that my noble friend will pay attention to the speeches he has heard on Amendment 78. I well remember the debates that led up to and followed the inspired amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, which got us out of some emotional difficulties. It expressed all our intentions well. This Government realise that measuring schools and setting them objectives has an effect on schools, which is why they introduced the EBacc, which is having an effect. Ofsted looks at community cohesion not because we expect Ofsted to go galumphing all over this territory but so that schools know that attention is being paid to whether they do it or not, and that, therefore, it will come within the list of things that they have to do. The noble Lord, Lord Quirk, made some pretty good fun of the provisions in the Bill about social, moral and cultural development, as if there was a way of measuring these things or a tape measure that could be run over them. But having that in the Bill means schools know that this is something they have to do and that, therefore, they have to give time to it and spend money on it. If schools are not given any mind in these sorts of areas, they will start not doing it in the way that they have been not doing foreign languages. Hence, the need to row back on that with some vigour, which I am delighted my right honourable friend is doing. These things matter and these particular words matter. The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, has my total support. I very much hope that in the Minister’s consideration of what might be done to improve this Bill, she will focus on those two words.

On the other amendments in the group, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is aiming at. It seems to me that we are moving children between two regimes—that of the social services and that of the school, or the family and the school, whichever may apply. In terms of understanding what is going right and what is going wrong, it is important to make a measurement at the point when a child moves from one to the other so that we know whether the problems of literacy are being generated in the community or though a lack of attention in the school. I am not saying that this is the right place to put it but if we are doing value-added in a school, we should take an initial measure at the beginning and not two years in. A lot of value-added goes on in those two years in a good school. We should be doing that. I very much support the spirit of the amendment.

I also support my noble friend Lady Walmsley in her wish to see well-being included. The Prime Minister has been right to support that as a concept of wide application and it really should find its way into something as central as education. I look forward to the speech of my noble friend the Minister.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I had hoped to speak in support of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, but I cannot do so because the debate has taken place in my absence. So I rise only to say in a very plaintive way that I left with a list of groupings which made it clear that I had time to attend to other business but having attended to the other business, I find that the business I wished to be here for had already been dispatched. I hope that is not going to become a regular feature of our proceedings because it is exceedingly inconvenient.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Elton

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, surely those who regard religion as an infectious and dangerous condition should, in the modern idiom, wish to immunise their children with the mildest possible form of the disease.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I will intervene briefly. I, too, apologise for arriving late. I was bending my energies to limit and eventually, I hope, rub out the use of cluster munitions—of which by far the greatest number of victims are children of the age we are talking about, so it was very germane. I understand that the amendment is not designed to stop the teaching of religion but to stop the demonstration of religion as part of the organisation of an institution; namely, the school in which the children are. That is a very valuable practice. The development of habit in early life can be enormously important in later life. I was carried through the most difficult patch of my life by the habit of going to church every Sunday. The impetus of that was enormously valuable. The institution of regular corporate worship, properly conducted, is enormously beneficial to the young. I deplore any attempt either to discontinue it or, as some of these amendments would do, make it impractical.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Elton

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very encouraged by what my noble friend said in response to the amendments. Perhaps I may pick him up on a couple of points. He said some good things about the integration of the independent and state school sectors. Will he confirm that there is no longer any consideration of the idea of excluding teachers in independent schools from the main state teachers’ pension fund, which would make migration between the two sectors extremely difficult?

Secondly, there has been a history of initiatives, of which teaching schools is the latest, intended to develop and spread good practice. In my view such initiatives have always foundered on the lack of information flow between good schools and schools that need good advice. I will not detain the Committee with ideas on how that might be improved, but when the Minister is no longer under so much pressure, perhaps I might try to persuade him that the Government have a role in helping to set up structures to enable information to flow better than it does.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, before my noble friend responds to that—

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Lord Elton]

Another class of people who deserve a second chance is those who fall over their shoelaces in the first term and lose the respect of children. They are never going to get that back in that school and will never get a fair trial. They need to go to another school and start again, where you may get a very good teacher out of the experience.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Elton

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I would be very grateful if my noble friend would include me in that correspondence. I do not yet understand why, under any circumstances, a teacher should be able to delete something from a mobile phone. Surely, the point of finding something is that it then becomes evidence that can be used. In fact, it may be important to show it to the child's parents so that the parents become aware of what is going on. I do not understand the need to delete.

I am also concerned that while one might want and need under some circumstances to explore what is happening on a child's mobile phone, any teacher doing so will discover a lot of stuff that is personal and irrelevant. There is a problem over how that is dealt with. Perhaps it should be done by somebody not involved in teaching the child who can therefore keep separate any knowledge gained from looking at the mobile phone. I agree that there has to be this power in the Bill, but it has to be carefully used.

[Lord Elton]

We need to consider not only the privacy of the child, but the privacy of the person at the other end of the call who may be a parent. The exposure of the inside workings of a family could be quite damaging to the family if it were discovered or discussed. You cannot have a Chinese wall inside a telephone so far as I know, so I agree with my noble friend and I should like to be included on the round-robin list.

House of Lords: Working Practices

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Elton

Monday 12th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I do not always agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, but I certainly side with the last point that she made. It seems to me that the Commons has shown us the way and that we ought to follow it. However, I do not side with my noble friend Lord Tyler and others when they seem to suggest that in some way the Commons will pal up to us and agree that we should do some things and it will do the others. As was shown demonstrably in the previous Session, the Commons wants to do all the nice things itself, and so it should. Our job is to decide what else needs doing and then to find ways of doing it well or, if we are already doing it, ways of doing it better. If we approach that task in a self-critical frame of mind rather than a self-satisfied one—that is not something we always find easy—take up the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Norton that this should be a continuous operation and pick up what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, says about using pilots rather than getting too stuck up on what the consequences might be of a change that was not quite right, we shall make good progress. The whole process ought to be one of continuous improvement. It is the way the world outside runs. Frankly, there is plenty of opportunity for it.

To go back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, was saying, this is something we must do as a whole House. We cannot leave this to the usual channels to do at their pace because, to take an obvious example, the whole argument over our expenses was delayed and delayed by the usual channels and tackled only when it became impossible to ignore. The wisdom of the House is on many occasions greater than the wisdom of the usual channels and ought to be employed in these important areas.

I want to concentrate on two areas, the public and Back-Benchers. I know that we are old but, if we are to be a legislature, we must keep up with the way the world is moving. The world is moving in an extremely technological way and the technology is changing every year. We have not been well served by our Information Committee. This piece of junk I have in my pocket that passes for a PDA cannot get the internet properly, twitter or communicate in social media properly. What are we trying to do to ourselves, loading ourselves with that inadequate technology? We are merely cutting ourselves off from the sort of communication that people out there want us to have. Yes, we should get much more involved in those aspects of being a legislature that involve the public. Pre-legislative scrutiny and public evidence-hearing should be what we are really aiming at because it gives the public a chance to participate. We should certainly go for post-legislative scrutiny; I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that the Digital Economy Act should be a prime candidate for that. It was only half discussed before it was passed into law and is full of controversial stuff. This time next year we shall have a much clearer view of what is happening and the way it should go.

When we have proper scrutiny of a Bill, we should put it up on Wikiversity. We should let people have a real look at the clauses, comment on them, propose changes and work with those Members of the House who are interested to see how individual clauses and aspects of the Bill could be changed. “Wikiversity” may not be a word that many Members know but we should know it. These techniques are out there and are being used to develop ideas between a number of diverse people rather than within a little conclave. That ought to be the direction in which we are heading. For the first time last week I saw an iPad used in the Chamber. That may startle some noble Lords. However, I live my life electronically. Why do I have to print things out every time I come into this Chamber? I want the Bill and all the comments that I have received in front of me. I use an inadequate laptop at the moment but there is plenty of technology out there which would make it much easier to handle the volume of information we ought to be handling in Committee. Overall, we can make this House much more open to the public, particularly to those members of the public who really understand what is going on in a Bill. Our functions would benefit greatly if we did that.

The second thing I want to cover is the role of the Back-Bencher. I say to noble Lords who were not here when we had hereditary Peers in number that we are in the unusual position of having a Government who are in control of the House, as we saw in the two votes last week. Some of us, at least, got used to the idea that the Liberals were the swing voters and that if you had the Libs with you, you won; if you did not, you lost. We had this rather strange business of effectively talking to the Government but actually trying to persuade my noble friends to come with us in order to defeat the Government. Now we have a position where the Government are in control. We on these Benches will have to learn the virtues of rebellion, which those of us who were here when the hereditary Peers were in the majority knew well because that was the only way the House functioned and had respect. We are going to have to find ways of taking back some of the all embracing power that the usual channels have taken to themselves over the past 20 years.

I must say that my noble friend disappointed me when, almost in his first sentence, he talked about a Leader’s Group which, “I will appoint”. That has too many echoes of what we have seen in committees appointed to consider Lords reform—that is, hand-picked committees, chosen specifically so that they will produce reports which agree with the conclusions that the usual channels have already arrived at. We must be much more open on this, particularly when we are talking about the rules which govern this House. Those who are on the committee, or at least a proportion of them, should be on it with the consent of the whole House, having been openly chosen by the whole House. I side with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, on that. It would make these committees much more powerful. That should also be a characteristic of the House Committee, the Liaison Committee and other aspects of this House.

There is also scope for a greater Back-Bench voice in the selection of Motions. How do they suddenly appear for dinner-break debate and so on? Mine have been chosen an inordinate number of times, and I am very grateful, but whether or not my Motion has been chosen does not seem to have reflected the will of the House.

How should we choose noble Lords to ask Starred Questions? At the moment, there is a sort of queue at 10 o’clock. This inordinate scramble is like some arrangement from the junior common room whereby only those who are prepared to stay up until two hours past midnight actually get any business done. There was a good suggestion in one of the newspapers—I forget which—that we should hold a ballot two weeks ahead and Members whose names are drawn out of the hat can then put down a Question. That would produce a much more even relationship between us.

We have extensively discussed today the selection of speakers during Questions. I very much side with those noble Lords who think that the chair should be allowed to choose. My noble friend, a self-confessed member of the Heinz 57 group, has a well perfected technique of sitting on that Bench—when he rises he cannot see half the House behind him and therefore cannot give way to other noble Lords because he is unaware of their presence. I am not asking for the Lord Speaker or whoever is in the chair to rule on matters of procedure—which clearly they cannot do, given that they are such a long way from the Clerks—but they can choose who is to speak next. That would mean that, rather than quarrelling among ourselves, we would just rise and not have to compete with ourselves to be heard, and it would not be the noisiest or even the grandest who were chosen. We would presumably have to agree to rules on how we expected the Speaker to operate, but if we were to go down that route, we would have a much more presentable system.

We have talked a lot about what else we can do. I agree with some of the suggestions put forward on how we can improve the way that we operate this House from the point of view of the Government. Taking Statements into Grand Committee would be an excellent idea. They take up a chunk of prime House time. Noble Lords who are interested in a Statement are almost never those who are interested in whatever business they are interrupting. If we put them in the Moses Room, we could give them more time and we could make the timing of Statements more flexible, as it is in the Commons, and reach a point where the Back Benches have exhausted themselves—or at least we could experiment with that.

As a keen participant in Committee stages, we could take a lot of them off the Floor of the House. That would give the Government a lot more time.

[Lord Elton]

Why does my noble friend think that we ought to give the Government a lot more time if what we are trying to do is restrain them?

[Lord Lucas]

That is because I want a lot of government time to be taken up by things such as pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny, and other good activities on which other noble Lords have commented. We ought to be trying to find the most effective role for ourselves and we cannot take on new things without giving up something else. Anyway, a Committee stage—which is essentially a conversation—taken off the Floor of the House would be a better environment and would mean that the House was working better and more effectively.

In addition, we should look at changing Report stage. Report is a pretty sterile activity at the moment whereby everyone talks, the Minister replies and then you do not have a chance to pick up anything that the Minister said. It would work better if Ministers automatically rose immediately after the proposers of amendments and had a first go. That might bring everything to a close and save a lot of time. On other occasions, it would allow those who were to speak later to do so in a much more informed way, and the Minister’s final reply would be much more fruitful.

Lastly, I wish to pick up a point on intervals between the stages of Bills. Intervals are important if you are a Back-Bencher because it takes time to put amendments together when you do not have staff. You cannot do your job if everything is run together. I welcome this initiative by my noble friend and I am delighted that we are discussing procedures. I very much hope that what will come out of this is a committee which is open to all our views, open in its processes and results in our making real progress on the way that we conduct our business.