Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, while I share the concerns of the noble Baroness—particularly as I have an 11 year-old daughter—I do not think that her amendment achieves anything. It asks ISPs to do something that is impossible. How can they provide subscribers with an internet access service that excludes adult content? People can use proxy servers; they can link across to their parents’ computers if they have set their parents’ computers up right; they can use sites that are newly created every day and whose URLs are spread by e-mail; they can indulge in these things through chat programmes, where there is nothing about the site that tells you what it is being used for. There are so many ways in which the nasty side of the internet can spread. It is utterly impossible for ISPs to block; there is no technology that would enable them to perform the functions set out here. How does a little ISP know which sites in this swiftly moving internet are offering the content which offends this amendment that were not doing so yesterday and may not do so tomorrow? They get passed around by kids and are designed to be fast moving. I cannot see how there is anything in this approach of requiring individual ISPs to do things that has any hope of success or of producing a law that is feasible and possible for individual companies to do.

If we were to approach this, perhaps, on a national level by asking our friends in Cheltenham—who, presumably, already read most of this stuff—to put a stopper on the stuff that would offend, perhaps we would have some hope of keeping up with the pace of the avoidance mechanisms that are out there. Unless we do it in a co-ordinated way like that, we really have no hope of achieving exclusion. I therefore beg the noble Baroness to think again and to look rather at enabling parents to exercise proper jurisdiction over what their children are doing. It is really quite hard to find good programmes that you can put on your children’s machines that will tell you what they have been doing and enable you to share with them what they have been seeing and experiencing on the internet and to educate and guide them. By and large, those programmes are not available on ISPs’ websites. Individual parental responsibility has a much better hope of looking after our children than pretending that we can block something when we cannot.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)]

My Lords, the previous speaker has made very plain that the ingenuity of young people is very considerable. I admire greatly his technical knowledge and understanding of the issues before us now. However, I draw attention to a very important point made by the noble Baroness: that it seems appropriate in the non-internet sphere to have regulations to do what we can; yet the ingenuity of young people is huge there as well. Big brothers buy cigarettes or alcohol for small brothers. There are ways of pretending that you are 16 when you are only 14 and a half; huge ingenuity can be shown. If regulation is important, as we accept in the law in the non-internet sphere, then surely there is a case for considering it in the sphere of the internet. The benefits of it are huge, but the downsides are massive as well, and I look for consistency between law dealing with non-internet activity and with the internet.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, before I speak to my amendment in this group, may I first say that I hope my noble friend will treat the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, and my noble friend Lady Brinton with seriousness? It is clear that in an internationally competitive environment it is very important that people have confidence in the proper protection of research databases.

I disagree with both amendments. The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, would blow a hole below the waterline of this clause and would certainly destroy all my attempts to get other information out of universities. The amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, misses important points on the other side. It is terribly important that data become available once results have been published. Many of these programmes go on for a long time. Because we intend to use the data in a whole series of publications over the next 20 years, we will never let them go. However, it must be possible for people outside a research group to criticise the results as they are being produced or false conclusions will be dropped into science and never properly got at. To pick one example, given by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, the inspiration of Crick and Watson had to be combined with the meticulous work of Franklin. Without that combination and the data being made public, the discovery would not have been made.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

On a point of order, it was information shared between research colleagues in two different institutions. In an atmosphere that is perhaps not quite as common today, it was willingly shared.

[Lord Lucas]

I understand and I remember from reading biographies that that was the case. None the less, the data were shared. To take an example from my time on the Front Bench as spokesman for agriculture during the problem of BSE, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had been meticulously researching what was happening with this plague and had years of data. We had good people internally who were researching it. We did not know what was happening and we kept the data to ourselves. Three weeks after we released the data, we were told what was happening, which was transmission by food. That was right. Making data public, beyond a research group, is a very important thing to do at the right time. I should not like to see something in legislation that prevents that and allows people to hog data that should be public so that they can be properly criticised and understood.

My amendment is not on the same subject; it concerns technical bits of drafting in the same clause. I very much welcome the determination to provide greater access to data sets. It is something that I have struggled with, particularly with universities. All the universities that send me data stick copyright notices on them, which I studiously ignore. They have yet to sue me for it, probably because they have better things to do. Alternatively, I proposed as a remedy to one university that, if it insisted on its copyright notice, I would automatically generate an FOI exemption for every one of my users who wanted to access the data. The university thought that a number of 10,000 users a day was getting a bit large.

It is important that we understand that, when information is released under FOI, it can be passed on and made public; and that the generating institution does not retain some sort of control over it merely on a whim. I can understand why that might be the case if the material comprises something done under a publication scheme and is paid for, but otherwise it is very important that the information can be circulated whether in news media or in publications such as mine —the Good Schools Guide—or in many other applications.

I do not see why the proposals in the Bill do not go further and why they are restricted to data sets. It is common for all kinds of information released under FOI to be accompanied by a copyright. However, it is often obvious from the information that it has no conceivable commercial value to the public authority. A requester may have obtained a policy that he or she wants to publish on a website which demonstrates alleged shortcomings in an institution; for example, it may show that a decision has been taken without proper consideration of the consequences. The requester may want to write to Members of this House about the information that has been disclosed. Why should they be prevented from doing so by a copyright notice? It seems to me that the principles we are setting out in this clause should go further.

My second concern is about the definition of “data set”, which I believe is unjustifiably narrow. The Cabinet Office carried out an open data consultation which sets out admirably ambitious objectives for the greater use of data sets. Many collections of data currently gathered by public bodies which may be essential to revealing the inner workings of government do not seem to fall within the legal definition of a data set as set out in Clause 102(2). Any electronic collection of data which is the result of analysis or interpretation cannot be a data set because of new subsection (5)(b)(i) of the definition. The obligation to release it in reusable form will not apply to it, nor will the requirements to release it subject to the minimal restrictions embodied in a specific licence. The Information Commissioner will not be able to require that this collection of data must be published under an authority’s publication scheme. It seems that only raw data untouched by human hand are to be affected by this clause. That may suit people like me who spend their day with programs interpreting data, but most people want access to something which has been prepared for human consumption and has been set out in a way that members of a local authority are intended to understand rather than the geeks in their data department. I do not understand why the Government are seeking to exclude from this clause data which have been made human readable, as it were.

Paragraph (c) of the definition states that a data set remains one only so long as all or most of the information in it,

“remains presented in a way that (except for the purpose of forming part of the collection) has not been organised, adapted or otherwise materially altered since it was obtained”.

I am puzzled by that definition. A publication of data from a database may start off in the form of a spreadsheet consisting of three columns but is reorganised to consist of seven columns. Has enough been done to prevent the data set being published? How is anyone to know that? How is anyone to interpret that? How is any user to know that something is publishable? It seems to me that we are setting ourselves up for endless arguments. I am particularly concerned that authorities may find that, by reorganising data, they are able to conceal it from publication. It does not seem to me that that is the Government’s intention. I very much hope that they will explain to me their understanding of how this subsection may not be used in that way.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I take a more radical view than my noble friend, although if her amendment was accepted a lot of my worries would be dealt with. The Government are making a great mistake in going down this route. It is not that I like Ofsted—I do not like the old-style Ofsted; a lot needs to be improved about it. But going in this direction is going to cause considerable problems down the road.

Schools that are rated outstanding often do not stay outstanding. Quite a high proportion of them drift downwards. This is entirely natural, with changes in the staff and in tempo and other changes that mean that a school loses its grip on the excellence that it once had. Perhaps it was lucky to get a grade 1 in the first place and has just slipped back to its natural place in grade 2. Unless you have some contact with the school, you absolutely do not know that that is happening.

One of the main grouses that I have with Ofsted at the moment is that it is very late to pick up changes. Ofsted will pile into a school and put it in special measures when, if it had caught it a couple of years earlier, it would have meant a minor change of course. I can think of an excellent secondary school in Manchester that was dumped into special measures when it got a head who was being experimental and trying all sorts of things and forgetting to look after the basic management of the school. It was a very easy thing for an experienced head to pick up; if someone had just come in, as my noble friend Lady Perry suggests, and had a look at the school, they would have sensed that immediately.

I do not share the confidence of my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches that these things get picked up by parents, since parents are by and large terribly loyal to their schools. They do not talk to outside people or to Ofsted. There may be a flow of information round the local circuit, but it does not get out of that; no one complains. Often, there will be a flow of propaganda from the school that what it is doing is right and that the course it is taking is the best one. Even if it is experimental and there are some worries about it at the moment, it will all work out. Parents are inclined to accept that and an outside expert eye can make all the difference. At the moment, Ofsted is deficient in that it does not look at schools often enough and this causes much greater problems than there ought to be. If we get to a position where Ofsted does not see schools at all, we will start to have serious problems going unchecked, to the point where the rot is so bad that the fruit falls off the tree and the educational lives of a great many pupils are seriously damaged.

Beyond that, we are considering opening up the curriculum so that a great deal of what a secondary school, in particular, does will be down to that school. So we will start not to know what a school is doing and whether it is doing well unless someone tells us what is going on. How will we know that PSHE in a school is being done properly, or what is being done, or what is being taught? We will rely entirely on what the school chooses to tell us. If it is a good school doing the right thing, fine—that will be all right—but how will we know if that is the case?

The proposals in this clause, as they are now, will fail schools, fail children and fail parents and the information they should have. We should seriously look to do something about this.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, the clause is very radical in its consequences. Amendments 113D, 114 and 114A are all firefighting amendments and I support them as such, particularly with regard to the importance of safeguarding. However, I agree with my colleague and friend, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that, if we move away from requiring inspection of a whole range of schools, danger lies down the road and that we may be in a different position when debating this issue in five or 10 years’ time.

I was involved when Ofsted was established—I am sorry to be historical but this is relevant—and one of the earliest things I did was to go to a meeting with private school head teachers. I was wise to go to girls’ schools where they were mostly lady head teachers, who were much more reasonable. I challenged them and said, “If the state system can put up with this, what about you”? Much to their credit, they began to create an inspection system of their own and compared notes with Ofsted all the way down the line and found it beneficial.

On another bit of relevant history, five years ago during debates on the Education and Inspections Bill, a major issue about faith schools arose. Indeed, after re-reading Hansard and as I look around, it is like being back there—the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Sharpe, Lady Perry and Lady Howarth, were all there when we debated it at some length. They may recall—I certainly do, as I tabled one or two crucial amendments—that there was an immense degree of what I can only call aggression. Except for the issue of assisted dying, I have not seen the House of Lords quite as split right down the middle as on the question of the future of faith schools.

We have had a sensation of that in this Committee but we have held back, I am happy to say. However, that could be recreated because the exemptions proposed include a number of faith schools that cause severe worries for Members of the House. This may reopen the whole issue of whether there should be any at all, let alone, as the question was, any new ones. I see, for example, Amendment 114 as a step towards this. There could be other ways in which one might take a step towards obviating the possibility of a certain kind of curriculum, the way in which it is taught and a lack of attention to community cohesion—which I believe were the words on which the amendments at that time focused.

The crucial issue was that there would be a backstop, and Ofsted would inspect all schools on the basis of their capacity to create cohesion in the community. That provided a net within which many of the worries of Members of the House were resolved sufficiently for them not to move down the much more radical secular path. I put it to the Minister that a number of us would be minded to introduce further amendment at the next stage if Clause 39 stands in its current form without these issues being dealt with.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I support the idea that schools should have discretion in relation to admissions policy but it should be a clear, publicly stated admissions policy. Out of that, however, come two difficulties, one of which is the possibility of anarchy. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, indicated how that was the case. As a young, innocent parent who came to joust within the Inner London Education Authority, longer ago than I care to remember, there was an element of anarchy in the system. As a parent, if you were not savvy or did not know x, y and z, you could not crack it. There is an issue of anarchy here. If every school has its own admissions policy and there is no co-ordination, parents will find themselves in an anarchic situation but will not quite know it. The knowing and the well attached will do well. The second danger is fairness and unfairness. The point has been made and we need someone to take responsibility for saying whether or not cumulatively these admissions policies add up either to anarchy or unfairness. There may be better ways of doing it. The best way is having many excellent schools, but we are where we are.

I draw quick comparisons with universities. There was a risk of anarchy in admissions systems a number of years ago as a number of universities expanded in the 1960s and thereafter. That anarchy was dealt with in part through creating UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. For example, there was an agreement that you could not apply to both Oxford and Cambridge, and that if you wanted to apply to one of them, you had to apply earlier. Rules were worked out so that people knew where they were.

On the question of fairness, and here I put a direct question to the Government, in universities there is a sudden interest in fairness and access and OFFA may well have its powers increased to deal with a set of financial regulations about how universities are funded. It is interesting that in one educational context regulation and the imposition of fairness and unfairness is taking place, and yet in schools the same question of fairness is going in the other direction. We need consistency here.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I look forward to what my noble friend has to say because I share some of the concerns of other Members of the Committee. I think it is important that we should continue to move schools admissions towards fairness. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has pointed out, this is not the history of schools. They have always been interested in finding ways of covert selection. The history of the last 10 years or so has been a gradual winding back from that. We even have Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, that great Catholic school in west London, removing some of the most objectionable means of social selection which were in its admissions criteria. There are other examples of progress throughout the UK.

The Anglican church has been very helpful in what it has done to make schools fairer. However, it is a process that goes against the natural inclination of schools and governors. Once parents capture a school, they tend to want to keep it captured. I find it hard to understand how the proposals in the Bill will improve fairness. At this point, I shall sit down and listen to my noble friend.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

I have been mentioned. I have not resiled from the position I took on Monday and I continue to have concerns about the overcrowding of the required curriculum, as I am bound to say in talking about these amendments. None the less, I accept that PSHE is a very important part of education for many young people and that it will continue in schools, and rightly so. However, it seems that we are trying to impose the shape of education through legislation, whereas the shape of education is a matter of balance and balance is never formulated in a set of clauses in a Bill. The real issue is how well this is done and whether a balance of attitude is preserved. This applies to PSHE and to the teaching of religion and about other faiths in faith schools.

I have reservations. First, I do not think that we do PSHE very well. We have already had mention of the fact that teenage pregnancy numbers may be falling but we are still the worst in Europe. STD admissions are rising among young people. Whatever we are doing, and we have done a lot more of it the last two years, we are not doing it well. I am not sure that legislating in this way will change that. Secondly, it is very much a delicate balance. Thirdly, one of the ways in which you try to deal with delicate balances in schools is by having an adequate inspection system. I am not saying that the one we have is good enough yet, but if there were an adequate inspection system one of the things it would ask is, “Is the balance of sex education in this school, in this community and in this culture right?”. That is what you would expect from a good school inspection. It looks as if, in this Bill, many schools will be exempted from that kind of inspection and that is where I see the gap. I would be reassured about all this being written down in an Act if there were some way of ensuring that it were well done in schools. It is a delicate issue. How this is taught varies from one school and one community to the next and that can only be properly assessed by trained and qualified inspectors.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I entirely agree what with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, just said. I would have said it myself if I could have said it as well. It is crucial that children learn these things at school. It is daffy to prescribe that individual items should be learnt. One should look at the outcome. The only sensible way of looking at the outcome is inspection. This Bill is setting out to destroy that aspect of inspection rather than building on it, so I am entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, in my concerns. The only other thing I would like to say is that this is a great subject to be debating in this room, under a picture of a PSHE lesson.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, before the Minister sits down, would he accept that there is a difference between a system in which, by and large, those who make the assessment—that is, the referees—are either coaches or mentors or colleagues and a system in which the independent referee is not also a coach? The difficulty in that relationship is, I think, the point of the amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

Yes, it would be rather like driving tests being administered by the driving instructor.