Water Framework Directive
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Lord Benyon (Con)
It is indeed. We are constantly looking at the whole landscape of how we deliver government through our agencies. Maybe there is room for changing certain parts of what we do in the wider Defra family. Windermere is a really interesting case: the Environment Agency monitors occurrences of algal blooms. We think that the largest reason for that is private sewage treatment, such as septic tanks and missed connections. There is of course an ongoing issue on a great many waterways where we have to look at it in the round. People like to find one villain when in fact there are many people at fault, sometimes ourselves. There will be people in this Chamber who have a badly connected or defunct system of sewage treatment which will be polluting a waterway. I might be one of them.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Brexit campaign promised us that leaving the EU would lead to a bonfire of regulations and massive deregulation, getting rid of unnecessary red tape. Does the Minister’s answer to my noble friend Lady Parminter mean that Defra has no intention of following through that promise any longer, but intends to maintain at least as high a level of regulation as the EU provided?
Lord Benyon (Con)
Yes, I absolutely say that, because we have commitments in the 25-year environment plan and the Environment Act and we have commitments to reverse the decline of species by 2030. We will not be able to achieve those commitments by just getting rid of regulations. What we want is better ones. We want ones that are not designed for an environment that goes from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. We want ones that are suitable for these islands. That is what we are seeking to do. We want at least the same levels of protection. We think that in many cases they can be better for both the user and the environment.
Fishing: France
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Lord Benyon (Con)
The Commission has a duty to abide by the trade and co-operation agreement and discussions are now taking place on that. I hope that all sides of the House have been disappointed by some of the rhetoric that has been coming our way. I am pleased that the Prime Minister had a thorough and open conversation with President Macron in Rome, and those conversations will no doubt continue in Glasgow.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Minister referred to the triangular relationship between Great Britain, the Channel Islands and France. Can he explain that relationship to us? Do the Channel Islands issue their licences entirely autonomously? Can they be overridden by the UK? How is the process co-ordinated between the Crown dependencies and Her Majesty’s Government?
Lord Benyon (Con)
Your Lordships will grumble if I go on too long and into too much detail but, broadly speaking, to give the noble Lord an example, Jersey has issued licences to 113 French vessels for access to Jersey waters, with 166 applications for non-vessel monitoring system vessels—the smaller ones—and further applications are being considered. That is done directly with them and the Marine Management Organisation is very much part of that conversation. There are other Channel Islands which also issue licences to French vessels.
Brexit: Access to EU Systems
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I think we are all subject to 75 words, which is rather a problem.
This is why we have taken the steps to scale up our work with INFOSAN, which is 180 countries strong. New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States all participate in it. The FSA is scaling up with new expert scientific committees—as well as others—so that we can be assured that, with that expanded access to scientific expertise, the right advice can be given. New work is being undertaken to ensure that the risk assessment is finely tuned so that we are on top of things beforehand.
I am very happy to write to the noble Baroness with a response detailing why I believe that we have done everything we possibly can for all scenarios. Although I accept that RASFF is an excellent system, it will be in the next phase—to answer that question—as a requirement of the EU. A deal takes two parties, and the European Commission has said—the noble Baroness has got to hear me on this—that the discussion on RASFF and our access to it will be part of the next phase of negotiations. We are not in a position to insist.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will be well aware the Prime Minister keeps telling us that the important thing is to “Get Brexit done”. As he talks about the next phase of negotiations, is he confirming that we will start a whole series of complex, messy and very long negotiations if we leave on 31 October, which will mean that Brexit will in no sense be done for some years to come?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I have no doubt that, as we have seen for the last three years, negotiations will not be straightforward. However, I have spent a lot of time in rural affairs and in rural locations talking to people and I think that, whether they voted to remain or leave, they want to get this done and move on to a domestic agenda. I cannot crystal ball gaze as to the length and time of further negotiations. Getting back to the Question, we think that RASFF has a lot of merit, clearly we would like a deal, and we think that we have a part to play in RASFF outside the European Union.
Deregulation Bill
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Earl of Lindsay (Con)
My Lords, I should declare an interest as being the chairman of the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, because it is from that perspective that I want to speak to the noble Lord’s amendment. It is by virtue of that role that I am familiar with the intentions of Professor Löfstedt when he compiled his report and with the concerns that lie behind the amendment. Equally, I am familiar also with the thinking that has gone into the way in which the Bill, and particularly this clause, are drafted.
I firmly believe that accredited certification of occupational health and safety management systems could support almost every scenario. It could certainly support and benefit the status quo; it could certainly support and benefit the approach that Professor Löfstedt has proposed, which is one of positive exclusions. Equally, and probably importantly in terms of the House’s consideration of this amendment, it could also support and benefit the clause in terms of positive inclusions.
Accredited certification can provide the regulator with an authoritative assurance that the businesses concerned have good health and safety policies, procedures and controls in place. It allows organisations to earn recognition for their efforts to manage their own health and safety obligations. Accredited certification could act as a safety net for those industries, businesses and professions which may be excluded from the Act. In other words, if in doubt whether a business, profession or an industry should be within the ambit of the Act, one can safely err on the side of deregulation by putting in place a system of voluntary or mandatory accredited certification to underpin safety standards.
The accredited certification would be carried out against the recognised standard for occupational health and safety management—that is, BS OHSAS 18001—which is soon to become more formally recognised by the international standards organisation through its adoption as ISO 45001. The certification bodies would need to be accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, ensuring their competence to carry out the certification.
There may be concerns that a management system approach may not be suitable for very small businesses. However, the standard is flexible enough to be adopted by all sizes of organisation. Alternatively, size limits could be introduced whereby all businesses in a sector above a certain threshold would be required to comply.
Certification to BS OHSAS 18001 is now widely available in the United Kingdom. Some 40 certification bodies are accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service to offer certification to the standard. It is estimated that more than 10,000 businesses are now certified as complying with the standard, and that figure is growing.
BS OHSAS 18001 was developed by a range of organisations specialising in health and safety management, certification and end-user businesses. It was co-ordinated by the British Standards Institution, the national standards body for the UK. The standard would bring immediate benefit in workplace safety to the status quo. It would bring benefit to the approach that Professor Löfstedt proposed. Most importantly, it would certainly benefit and support Clause 1.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, this clause has emerged out of a series of consultations during the past four years. As the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, remarked in his very detailed and constructive speech, the first consultation took place in 2012 on the principle that there should be a list of undertakings prescribed in regulations that are excluded from health and safety law. That did not find large favour in the consultation. The most recent consultation has not found very large favour for the Government’s current proposals. We are finding it difficult to satisfy all those concerned. I note that the noble Lord did not quote the Federation of Small Businesses’ response to the current consultation, which is a good deal more favourable that those that he did quote. On the question of the current consultation, it took a certain amount of time; we had a lot of responses to the consultation and we had to put them all together. It has now been published and the Government will, of course, consult and consider what their response should be. We very much hope that we will have time to consult further and return to this issue before we get to Third Reading.
The Health and Safety Executive has, of course, been actively engaged in this entire process over the last four years; I stress that it is very much part of the process of policy-making. We all share the underlying purpose, which is as it should be, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, suggested in his speech, a lessening of health and safety burdens on those self-employed who are not at risk and are highly unlikely to put others at risk from their activities. That is what Professor Löfstedt suggested in his earlier report; it is part of the German system. To the noble Lord, Lord Lea, I say in passing that there are many parts of the German system of employment, training and employment protection that we would very much like to take on board. I am happy that this Government have indeed taken us a good deal further down the road towards apprenticeship training than their predecessors. There are other aspects—including some aspects of the Meister system, now that I have begun to understand that—which are clearly restrictions on trade and which we do not wish to follow. However, one cannot ever take an entire model from one country and put it into another.
There are other areas over which I have spent some time arguing with German policymakers over the years; the idea that, just because a system has worked since the 14th century, one should maintain it at all costs, is not always an idea that one wishes to promote. I was one of those involved in the British side of the argument over the Reinheitsgebot, which the noble Lord might remember. It was to do with the purity of beer and was passed in about 1351. However, we will leave the German dimension aside and return to the current issue. We apologise that the consultation document has only just appeared. The Government will respond as soon as we are ready and we hope that we will have more to say on this before we reach Third Reading.
The issue at stake is which side one takes in reducing the burden, and whether to make a list of those, as this proposal suggests, whose activities are at greater risk of putting others in harm’s way from the way they are conducted—those involved in construction or a range of other activities that involve interaction with others. Professor Löfstedt prefers a system in which there is only a prescribed list of those activities that are exempted from the current health and safety regulations. The argument that we have been having through two series of consultation has been about how one defines “low risk” and “high risk”. This is an area, after all, on which one can spend a great deal of time, having a large number of consultations without meeting consensus. I regret that we have not yet reached an entire consensus.
The noble Lord’s first proposed amendment reverses the effect of Clause 1, so that all self-employed persons continue to owe a duty under Section 3(2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act unless regulations are made to exempt them from that law, whereas the Government’s proposals exempt them unless they are on another prescribed list. This approach, we argue, would increase confusion for the self-employed because there are a plethora of low-risk activities that would need to be captured to ensure that the regulations were as extensive as possible. Furthermore, each of these activities would need to be appropriately and carefully defined. This could create further uncertainty in the law and make it unwieldy for the self-employed to comply with. This is part of what the Federation of Small Business was saying in its response to the current consultation.
The noble Lord’s second amendment seeks to impose various conditions upon the making of regulations before self-employed persons can be exempt from Section 3(2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The amendment would require an independent review to be conducted and considered by both Houses before the regulations can be brought into force. We do not consider this necessary. The Government amended Clause 1 in Committee so that regulations made under the power that it creates are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure before they come into force. This provides Parliament with an adequate opportunity to scrutinise and debate the list of prescribed activities to ensure they are fit for purpose.
The conditions which the noble Lord seeks to impose on the regulations can already be considered by both Houses as part of the affirmative resolution procedure if, indeed, Parliament considers those factors to be relevant. Additionally, the proposed prescribing regulations contain a commitment for their review and for a report to be published after five years of making them. That report will seek to assess the extent to which the intended objectives of the proposed change have been met. Given the safeguards already in place, the Government do not consider that a further independent review of this alternative proposal would be of any benefit.
It is imperative that self-employed persons, especially those involved in conducting high-risk activities, understand when health and safety law will continue to apply to them after this legislative amendment is made. For the reasons I have already given, we do not consider the noble Lord’s amendments to be the best way of achieving that. They are unnecessary and overly burdensome. After all, the purpose of the Bill is to reduce unnecessary burdens. The clearest and simplest way to achieve this change is by having a list of prescribed high-risk undertakings together with guidance produced by the Health and Safety Executive which will make it clear and unambiguous to those who continue to owe a duty under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act.
I repeat: the Government are currently considering the comments just received following the 2014 consultation on the draft regulations already produced. These raise a number of important issues which the Government will consider further before Third Reading. In that context, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who contributed to this short debate. My noble friend Lady Donaghy put the matter straight about Professor Löfstedt’s views. My noble friend Lord Lea spoke about the danger of building proposals on perceptions rather than proper evidence. I thank my noble friend Lord Jordan for providing the historical context of health and safety, and the cost when it goes wrong. The noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, broadened the debate a bit around the accreditation processes. I am sure we would have scope for a fuller debate around that issue. As I understand it, he argued that its application could be to an inclusive, exclusive or status quo proposition.
I understand that the Government are finding it difficult to get this right. That is why two rounds of consultation have not succeeded in doing that. We argue, given the complexities and difficulties in trying to get it right, that leaving it as it is would be the far better option.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I should point out that the first consultation did not provide much support for the noble Lord’s amendment. The second consultation criticised the Government. I merely remark that we are struggling in this area. That is, of course, why we are considering it further.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am not sure that the noble Lord’s assertion about the first consultation not supporting our position is right. It does not necessarily depend upon a prescribed list of any sort. The key point about our amendments is that they are linked to clear criteria that have to be satisfied before any change could be introduced. There are criteria around not increasing burdens and bureaucracy, representing demonstrable improvement on existing legislative requirements, and clarity and precision as to whom they apply. The two amendments sit together. The consultation that has just been gone through proves how difficult it is to have a list of high-risk activities. I struggle to understand what changes the Government could make to that process or outcome to make it fit for purpose. That is not just my view; it is the view of a raft of people who know health and safety and business far better than I do, the CBI included.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I only had a chance to read the consultation document on Friday and we are at a very early stage on that so it is very difficult to say precisely what we will conclude. I merely wish to say in the most constructive way possible that we are considering our response. We have three weeks before Third Reading and that gives us some time to consider further.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am grateful for that—and I meant Third Reading, of course, not Report. Is the noble Lord saying that we will have a chance possibly for some discussions in the interim and, if not, a chance to consider this further when we get to Third Reading? It is quite important that we have that commitment from the Government on the record, whichever stage it reaches.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, of course I am very happy to discuss this between now and Third Reading. I am not in a position to say what the Government will conclude from their consideration of the current consultation document because we are at a very early stage, but I am very happy to promise to consult further.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I am not quite sure why the Government are so pressed on this matter because that consultation finished some five months ago. I note that the Minister has been less than clear on whether, if we are not satisfied with what happens in the interim, we would be able to return with amendments at Third Reading. It would be helpful if the Minister could give me an assurance that he would facilitate that; if he cannot, we have another decision to make.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I recognise what the noble Lord is asking me to do. At this stage, I am afraid I cannot give him the absolute assurance he requires, but I am certainly willing to have further consultations, and the Government will be very happy to carry on on that basis.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
The Minister is not making it easy. I know it is not his job to make it easy. We are trying to see a way forward to avoid voting prematurely, in a sense, if the issue has not been completed. If the Minister is saying that he would be happy for us to come back at Third Reading with a proposition, if we need it, depending on what the Government do in the mean time, that would be helpful. If he is saying that he thinks that the processes in the Companion would preclude that, then we have another decision to make.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the clerks are nodding. That suggests it would entirely open after consultation for the Opposition to come back again on this issue.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am grateful to the Minister and to the clerks for nodding, in which case I beg leave to withdraw the amendment—but with notice that we look to return to it at Third Reading.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Minister is not going to take this amendment away and come back. It is a very kind offer to make. We had an extensive discussion on this clause in Committee. The Committee voted by quite a substantial majority to retain it. What we have here is an amendment that is offered as a compromise but which seems to the Government to make the situation a good deal more complicated.
What we have in Clause 2 at the moment is a straightforward repeal of the requirement on tribunals to offer non-enforceable recommendations on wider issues. It does not reduce or abolish the right of tribunals to offer comments on particular cases and it certainly does not lower what they can do in this overall area. It does, however, simplify the position. By contrast, the amendment offered by the noble Lords, Lord Lester and Lord Hunt, would lead, we argue, to a more complicated system for tribunal recommendations. It would reduce the protection for claimants and set up more complex arrangements for tribunals. It would allow a tribunal to make a recommendation if it thought that it would completely obviate—not just reduce—the adverse effects evident from the case. That is a much higher standard of proof for the complainant than we require under the present system or that would be required following the repeal.
I will comment briefly on the general issue from the Equality Act. This was intended by the Government to be a light-touch element in the very large number of tribunal cases. I understand that there have been around 1 million employment tribunal cases in total, of which around 10%—100,000—were discrimination cases. Some 3,000 of these discrimination cases were successful and in 40 of them there were recommendations. Therefore, we are talking about a very small number. The range of recommendations includes the question of equal pay where there is a requirement for equal pay audits, which is enforceable. An equal pay audit ordered by an employment tribunal is a precise and mandatory requirement with sanctions for non-compliance to advance equal pay in the small number of organisations where a breach of equal pay law has been found and it is also a direct transparency measure as it has to be published.
By contrast, wider recommendations in discrimination cases are effectively discretionary for employers and do not have to be made where an employer loses a discrimination case. Wider recommendations are generally broad-brush proposals; for example, a recommendation that human resources staff undergo equalities awareness training. These are non-enforceable recommendations about training, company culture or a range of other areas that are made by tribunals that may not themselves be very closely aware of the culture of the companies concerned. They are recommendations from the outside.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested that, although the amendment is in some ways defective, he would like the Government to take it away and improve it. The amendment, even if modified as the noble Lord proposes, would, in our opinion, result in a quite complex and heavy set of requirements. These could mean, for example, that tribunals might be required to consider wider recommendations in a very large number of cases while quite minor omissions by employers, such as failing to train a manager or to update a diversity statement, could become unlawful acts under equality law. I regret, therefore, that the Government have to decline the invitation to take this away and improve the quality of the amendment.
Our repeal will not prevent tribunals from making non-binding observations on employers’ practices. These could reasonably include the type of points mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Low, in specific cases. For all employers, losing a tribunal case and having to pay compensation, which our repeal will not affect, itself concentrates employers’ minds and persuades them to learn from their mistakes. The lack of enforcement already there means that they have to take them into account.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, also talked about introducing the word “proportionate” into the legislation. As someone who struggled in the EU balance of competences review to define “proportionate”, I am conscious that it opens a large door to lawyers and that it is very difficult to discover precisely what proportionality means.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, raised the question of the introduction of fees and I recognise that that is of course a serious point. He will in turn recognise that the Government are struggling to contain public expenditure. It is important to emphasise that the Government have been careful to ensure that fee waivers are available for people of limited means in order that they are not excluded from seeking redress in tribunals. The Government have committed to reviewing the introduction of fees, although of course it will be for the Government after the next election to take on that review. We are considering the scope and timing of the review and will bring forward our plans in due course.
I hope that that provides sufficient information to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Low, to withdraw the amendment. The House did support the Government’s repeal proposal at Committee stage last autumn and I stress that we proposed a straightforward repeal of an unenforceable power that creates a perception of burden and unfairness.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply and I am grateful to all those who have spoken, especially to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, who I thought went out of his way to suggest ways in which there might be a meeting of minds between the proposers of the amendment and the Government. I am sorry that the Minister is not prepared to respond more flexibly to the invitation from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to be flexible, which I am afraid does not give us a lot of room for flexibility on our part, although we might well have shown it had the Minister agreed to accede to the suggestion made by the noble Lord to make time for a further look at the amendment.
The Minister said that this is intended to be only a light-touch measure. I cannot see how more light touch it could possibly be. He gave us the statistics showing that there were 1 million tribunal cases over the period he referred to, of which 100,000 were discrimination cases. Some 3,000 of those cases were successful, and in only 40 cases were wider recommendations made. It is hard to see how this could be more light touch than that. You cannot say that the tribunals have been abusing this power.
The Minister went on to suggest that there is no need for such a power by dismissing as immaterial or unimportant the sort of cases in which it has been used. He said that it had been used in minor cases such as the failure of a company to train a manager. Well, I am not sure how much less minor it is possible to be than failing to train your managers properly. He also suggested that our amendment would make the situation worse. I cannot see that because it seeks simply to reinstate the position as arrived at in the Equality Act. It does not seek to be more draconian than that or more burdensome on employers. I think I showed in moving the amendment that it is hard to argue how the use of this power, as it has been used, constitutes a burden on business and employers.
No one in the House or even in the country is more expert on these matters than the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and I am sure that we are all extremely sorry that he is not able to be present today to give us the benefit of his wisdom. However, I am perfectly sure that he would not be moving an amendment of this kind if he did not think that it was a useful component of discrimination law and the light-touch enforcement thereof. In crafting it, the noble Lord sought to be compromising and to move a less drastic amendment than the complete removal of the clause as was attempted in Committee. This is a different approach. It is perfectly open to the House to support the amendment. It is not constrained in that matter by the discussions that took place in Committee. For all these reasons, I want to test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, as we know, with this Bill we move from waste to education to farms to taxis and now to schools and nurseries. Amendment 20 would enable nursery schools to become full members of trusts and Amendment 21 would ensure that co-operative schools could establish an industrial provident society, should it be desirable, so bringing co-operative schools into line with other kinds of co-operative organisations.
By way of background, I should say that the first co-operative trust school was established just over five years ago. Few would have anticipated the extent of their growth: there are now around 700 co-operative trust schools and that figure is expected to rise to 1,000 by the end of 2015. In other words, more than 250,000 pupils in England now attend co-operative schools. The values of co-operative schools are drawn from the global statement on co-operative identity, which is recognised by the United Nations and forms the basis of co-operative law throughout the world. The co-operative values of self-help, self-responsibility, equality, equity and solidarity, together with the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others, have been seen by governing bodies to resonate powerfully with their schools.
Moving to a co-operative model provides a framework in which everybody with a stake in the school’s success—parents, teachers, support staff, local community organisations and pupils—have the opportunity to be involved in running it. There is a growing recognition that working co-operatively helps to avoid duplication and distraction, allows school leaders better to focus on the effective leadership of teaching and learning and raises standards. The value of this kind of collaboration and partnership working between schools was recently examined by the Education Select Committee, whose report highlighted the benefits that collaboration between schools brings, in particular where it is on the basis of mutual benefit.
Examples of these trusts can be seen in Cornwall, where over 100 schools have become co-operatives and are part of 13 trusts. Most of these are geographically based clusters, enabling small village primary schools to be part of a learning community with a secondary school that most of their young people will move to. In Leeds, a significant proportion of the city’s schools are already in co-operative trusts and others are in the consultation process.
The remarkable growth in co-operative schools has happened despite, not as a result of, current government policy. This demonstrates that the models developed under the pathfinder scheme programme following the 2006 Act under the last Labour Administration are enormously attractive to schools.
The reason why these amendments have been put down and I proposed them in Committee is that there is scope within the Bill’s intention—to,
“Make provision for the reduction of burdens resulting from legislation for businesses or other organisations or for individuals”—
to correct two specific burdens on the development of co-operative schools and co-operative school trusts. The first amendment concerns nursery schools. Many co-operative networks and co-operative trusts are based on strong geographically based clusters. They have an all-through vision of education, raising achievement by supporting young people throughout their journey through the education system. Yet the 2006 Act excludes nursery schools from becoming parts of trusts. The amendment would correct this and, in effect, amend the 2006 Act.
Nursery schools are in many ways the most co-operative part of the sector, in relation to both their engagement with parents and carers and their pedagogy, as is reflected in the early years foundation stage. Enabling nursery schools to become full members of trusts or, indeed, academies would provide a vehicle for that parental and family engagement in early years to enthuse the trust to further develop the all-through vision of education essential for sustainable changes in achievement.
The second amendment seeks to amend the School Organisation (Requirements as to Foundations) (England) Regulations 2007 to ensure that schools are able to establish themselves as an industrial provident society, should it be desirable. Despite an all-party commitment to co-operatives and mutuals in the public sector, co-operative schools have had to work around existing legislation, as no provision is made in the relevant education Acts for schools to be established formally as co-operative societies as defined in the 2014 consolidation Act. The new clause seeks to amend this, ensuring that any future legislation provides a level playing field and a more understandable legal framework for co-operative schools—in other words, using the co-operative legislation that exists.
There is a question of the Government’s commitment to co-operatives, mutuals and social enterprises in this area. In a real way, they are disadvantaged because they cannot use the legal form that exists for co-operatives. This issue was first raised in the Commons during the first part of the discussion about the Bill. The amendments were withdrawn then on the basis that there would be discussions with the Department for Education. While Michael Gove was the Secretary of State, he was personally supportive of the proposals but said that the department lacked the expertise and resources to adopt the changes. Since his departure, there has been what you might call a decided lack of enthusiasm about the issue in the department. We are told that the department would like to work with co-operative schools to help with these proposals, but that has yet to happen. I am not hopeful that the Government will accept the amendments now, but I would like to see some sign that progress can be made in this important matter. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government have been, and continue to be, supportive of the broad aims of partnership, collaboration and co-operation in education, as in other fields. I have been a long-standing supporter of the Co-operative movement and I was sorry to see its decline in the north of England over the last 30 or 40 years, just as I am glad to see that in many ways it is now reviving. I am a member and a regular user of the excellent Co-op shop in Saltaire and I was on the point of considering moving to the Co-operative Bank before its recent sad problems.
We all recognise that mutuals are model forms of enterprise that we need to extend across a whole range of fields. As I deal with elderly relatives, I think that we all need to work much more actively to develop mutual models for care homes. As far as schools are concerned, we know that partnerships between schools can be a powerful tool in raising standards and improving educational achievements for all pupils and we place great value on that.
The academies programme continues to deliver examples of schools working together in multi-academy trusts, which help to ensure success for everybody in those partnerships. These trusts pull together schools across both phases of education to work effectively as a family of schools. There are currently 260 multi-academy trusts which have both primary and secondary provision, so it is not simply primary schools working with primary schools and secondary schools working with secondary schools. We are promoting collaboration across the sector and we see the benefits across the educational landscape.
Baroness Thornton
Why does adding provident societies to the sort of business forms that schools can have in legislation make anything more complex? It is not a complex question. It is a simple question; it is straightforward. We are just asking that co-operative schools can have the legal form that co-operatives have. That is all.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have been open to discussion and we are still open to continuing discussion on what precise forms are needed, but we want to be persuaded of the educational advantages of the changes that have been proposed and we would want to be assured of the advantages for schools before we were to support these very specific amendments. In line with the Government’s undertaking given in the other House to investigate the proposals—
Baroness Thornton
Would the Minister like to tell me exactly where in the legislation creating academies it says that companies limited by guarantee bring better educational results?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I take the point that the legislation does not specifically say that. I was in the process of saying that we are open to discussion. We offered to investigate the proposals further and my noble friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools met interested parties to discuss their concerns last year. He also wrote to the noble Baroness in November last year, inviting her to provide evidence about the problems that these amendments would address and to meet to discuss the issue further. We regret that that meeting has not been held and we are still open to further discussions, but, in consequence, the position has not changed and he remains unconvinced of the educational benefits of the noble Baroness’s case.
The Government are determined to continue to remove the barriers and obstacles that prevent schools delivering the best education possible for their pupils and to promote flexible and collaborative ways of working such as the amendments are intended to promote. So far, more than 700 co-operative schools have been established and, as the noble Baroness said, there will be 1,000 by the end of 2015. We firmly believe that there are sufficient alternative options already available without needing to introduce these additional legislative changes, but we are open to continuing discussions about the obstacles that the noble Baroness and others clearly think still exist. In the mean time, and in openness to further discussions, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Thornton
I thank the Minister. I know that he is sympathetic. Indeed, we shop at the same Co-operative store in Saltaire—and a very good shop it is, too. I have been a member of the Co-operative society in Bradford since I was 16 years old. I am grateful for the offer of further discussions and my Co-operative colleagues from the Commons and this House will certainly take the noble Lord up on that offer, because there are issues to do with equity, a fair playing field and recognition of different business types. I think that we would all agree that plurality in those issues is important. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.