Schools Bill [HL]

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

We are saying that joining a multi-academy trust is a good idea and that we would like everyone to do it. We are encouraging everyone to do it, but there are no powers within the Bill to compel people. The reason we think it is a good idea is that we have seen that schools in multi-academy trusts are stronger together. Of course, it would be open for such specialist schools to, for example, perhaps form a multi-academy trust with each other. We know that there are many high-performing, stand-alone schools that have the capacity to support other schools within the combined accountability of a MAT model.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

I may be wrong, but is there not a route to making it enforceable, or close to enforceable, by way of secondary legislation, given the way in which the Bill is drafted?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I sought to confirm the point that was directly raised by the noble Duke about the powers within the Bill, and I have been given the reassurance that there are no powers within the Bill to force an existing academy to join a multi-academy trust. I will seek further, triple reassurance on that point, but I sought clarity on it before addressing this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I take the noble Lord’s point. I absolutely reassure him that that is not the intention. I will also go away and double check that there is not the ability to do that under those powers. Given the discussions we have had on those parts of the Bill and our commitment to reflect on them, our discussion on this issue and the reassurance that is being sought will also form part of the discussions.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

May I just articulate another problem I have? The noble Baroness used the word “intention”. When I think about the summing up and read the summings up in Hansard, we have been presented a stream of good intentions. The problem is that I do not think Parliament is at all wise or sensible to live on good intentions; we all know where they can take you. I reiterate that it seems that the scheme of this Bill, broadly speaking, allows the Secretary of State to find a way of imposing the policy that every school should be in a multi-academy trust one way or another. At the moment, that is the position. I am afraid that both the right reverend Prelate and the noble Duke must view the future rather pessimistically.

Schools Bill [HL]

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I shall now speak to the group of amendments relating to Clause 3, ahead of the question being put on whether Clause 3 stands part of the Bill.

First, I shall speak to Amendment 31. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I begin by reassuring the Committee again that I have fully heard the concerns that have been expressed about the Henry VIII power conferred on the Secretary of State by Clause 3, including those, importantly, from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. We are carefully reflecting on what noble Lords have said today on the matter, as well as on the report from the committee. Any use of the power in Clause 3 would be exercised by the affirmative procedure and, as we will cover in relation to Amendment 34, the Government will consult on any new regulations.

Academy trusts are already subject to many of the same requirements as maintained schools, set out in numerous pieces of primary legislation. We want to consolidate these requirements on trusts as much as possible into the academy standards regulations. This will be a gradual process, and we want to work with trusts on the implementation of the standards at a pace which is right for them. As we move towards a school system in which all schools are academies within strong trusts, we want to ensure that the legal framework is fit for purpose, including by removing requirements should they prove excessively onerous or unnecessary. Clause 3 enables the Secretary of State to make these adjustments, subject to the affirmative procedure, and to be responsive to the changing needs of the system.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

I do not know whether it is the Committee’s problem, but it is my problem, as I do not understand how this enormous tidying-up process, if it should be called that, has any connection with improving the education of our children. We need some fundamental explanation as to what is perhaps marginally wrong, if I have heard right, and of why this has any real prospect of making any real improvement.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend is right—the thing we should principally be concerned about is improving the education of our children. I will be more than happy to meet my noble friend or any other noble Lord who wants to go through some more of the work that we are doing in relation to that, as was set out initially in the schools White Paper. As I said in the introduction to one of the groups on day one of Committee, this Bill needs to be seen in the context of the wider work that the department is doing and that Ministers are leading in relation to a commitment to improving outcomes for our children, which my noble friend absolutely rightly says should be pre-eminent.

Schools Bill [HL]

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, may not be in the slightest bit surprised by this Bill. The argument can go rather wider. It has been said that the Bill has not been carefully thought out. I am not so sure. I think it has been thought out. We know that we have an Administration who wish to take more power, as has just been said, and wish to be free to do things whenever they want to do them without very much scrutiny.

It has also been said that the Bill lacks any educational philosophy. I am sure that is right. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, made that point. We are up against the fact that you believe that education is either some sort of mechanical means to an end, which can be controlled by a Secretary of State assuming some sort of godlike position, or an end in itself. None of us knows how to get it completely right; hardly any of us knows how to get it even partially right. Therefore, the best thing is to decentralise it and, as many noble Lords have said, to recruit the best people you can into the teaching profession and the governance of schools and let them get on with it.

My father was Secretary of State twice. He used to come home and say, “My problem is that I can’t recruit enough good people to be teachers.” Therefore, maybe the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is also right: we should put more resources into education.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a specific question about Clause 1(6). It is odd to say that a standard may not be set about determining whether academy grammar schools should retain selective admission arrangements. When I first read that, I understood it as an assurance to grammar schools with selective admission arrangements that this was not an intention to change them, in the same way that there is an assurance to faith schools in the same clause. However, I want reassurance that this would not prevent any future Government changing the law if they wished to abolish selective education.

Schools Bill [HL]

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part one
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, I shall try to follow with some thoughts on the speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lords, Lord Baker and Lord Knight—but first a short excursion into history. My father was Secretary of State for Education twice, the first time as a result of having provided Harold Macmillan with the materials to build 300,000 houses in a year. The second time, he went to see Harold, who was of course by then Prime Minister, and said that his department was suggesting that he should put forward a Bill to do certain things. Harold Macmillan said, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that, particularly not if it’s an education Bill, because there’s absolutely no chance that anybody will agree with anybody else.” We need to recognise that there is some wisdom in that comment.

Historically, over many years, there has been a stand-off between those who see education as a means to an end and those who see it as an end in itself. I have to admit to being more in the second than in the first camp, and therefore I am in a minority—but we must carry on with whatever we are trying to do. In this Bill, for me the most important thing that is being done is the transfer of academies from contracts to a statutory system. There are many reasons for looking at that very carefully. It may or may not be the right thing to do—I am not at all certain—but there are some things about it which worry me.

The first is that the Government claim they will achieve more consistency. Well, I am not sure that consistency is a good idea if you are indulging in education. The variability of what the pupils going through their education may want to do and how they may want to come out is such a muddle and so deeply variable that I doubt very much whether consistency is a good ambition. You have to be prepared to deal with great variability and, in dealing with great variability, you will of course trouble the Civil Service, which is always in favour of tidying up and never in favour of too much exceptionalism or variability.

The second thing that bothers me is about the people who are—as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said—the trustees and indeed, I would say, the heads of schools? It is all very well having a very tidy and consistent system, but the people who do these jobs—for reasons of public service, let us hope—like a bit of independence. They think they can contribute something by using their own judgment; they see themselves as doing things which do not imply that the divide between policy and day-to-day management will be eroded to the point where they are not in charge of anything. Ultimately, I think, if one puts too much pressure for political correctness or conformity or consistency on to the sort of people who are willing to do these jobs, it will become—as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said—quite difficult to find them. There are quite a lot of examples in areas of our political life other than the Department for Education where we can see that that has happened.

So my plea to my noble friend on the Front Benches is that when this system—this long progression, as the right reverend Prelate said—from contracts to a statutory system gets under way, it is not too prescriptive. Yet, with 20 subjects in Clause 1 and a promise that there will be more because they are only examples, it is quite difficult to be optimistic that the system will not be too prescriptive. But I do urge that it is not and that, as it goes forward, people are listened to very carefully and we go ahead with a light touch and without any conviction that we have exactly the right answer.

Education and Society

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure I can follow the noble Lord, Lord Addington, down his road. However, I refer to the debt felt by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, to the Bible. I share that debt, particularly to the Old Testament. I would add to that Shakespeare, Wagner and a dash of Freud, and then probably one knows as much about human nature as one is likely to learn.

The most reverend Primate encouraged us to find foundations—to look for the basis on which we make our enduring progress and to find it. While doing that, we must make sure that we carry our values along with us. That is a deep search in order that people shall achieve the fullest life that is available to them. He urged us to reject utilitarianism. I am rereading Dickens and I have just read Hard Times. Mr Gradgrind was completely pinned down by utilitarianism. The mess that was made of his two older children, one a girl and the other a boy, takes a bit of reading. I thoroughly recommend it if noble Lords want to study the failure of education.

When we are troubled by what is happening now, we should remember that things are a lot better than they were in the 1850s and 1860s. It was a muddle and remains a muddle, but the question is: how are we coping? The conclusion of this debate so far is that too many people are not coping. So, again, I look for a foundation. One is that everyone is on a journey of their own. When we think about what is happening to them, we need to remember their individuality—not to take it too far, but to remember it.

We must remember that the word “education” comes from a Latin word which means “to draw out”. On this journey, with parents, teachers, friends and colleagues, we are asking at the beginning: who is this individual? The individual comes, after quite a short period, to ask: who am I? Then we continue the dialogue, with the debate, “That is who you think you are, but who are you?”. So people discover themselves. While schools play an important part in this process, it is only a part and we should remember that very strongly. The society that we get will result from this dialogue as individuals find their way on their journeys. It is a preparation for them to be able to recognise opportunities and threats and to come to see who we are, and what we can and cannot do, so that we are able to make the judgments and choices that face us.

The second foundation, which has been much referred to, is lifelong education. At my time, I would describe it as getting through a long life. In doing that, we can only do our best to cope, particularly with change. We should continue to find what we know and what we do not know, and we should recognise that there are many things we do not know that we do not know, and that the last big circle of the unknown is constantly increasing.

My final illustration of change is to mention a lad in Harvard, aged 19, who started writing programs. Some 13 years later, those programs are Facebook and all its subsidiaries. For someone with great-grandchildren, it is a fairly shattering thought that that could be done and that it could have the effect it is having with 2 billion users. The company was established 13 years ago, which is not much more than half a generation. I also reflect that on the agenda for discussion in my village in north Yorkshire is an item headed “drones”. They are of great importance around the village of Moulton. If ever there was a time to look for and find foundations, it must be now. We should continue our search.

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Mendelsohn]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 35R. I will be mercifully brief on this group. In trying to express our support for the Government, saying less may be more.

The Bill says that the Minister,

“may issue guidance relating to regulations under this section”.

Proposing a change from “may” to “shall” enables us to debate the wider issue of guidance relating to small businesses and public procurement, and what should be included in the guidance.

Amendment 35R is in keeping with the recommendation from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that regulations about procurement be subject to the affirmative procedure. We agree that in these matters delegation is appropriate as the powers are so wide and there is great potential for significant consequences, both negatively and positively. We also agree that on procurement matters in general it is entirely sensible to make regulations under Clause 38 subject to the affirmative procedure. The approach of not just this Committee and this House but the other place suggests that there is a great deal to be gained through the positive engagement of both Houses. I beg to move.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, it is the very width of the potential of these two enabling clauses that worries me. In a way, bringing in “shall” in the amendment and accepting the recommendation that the resolution procedure should be affirmative gives Parliament a certain leverage to debate whatever the Government are intending to do. However, I am reminded that sometimes when people put up very sensible amendments Ministers do very well in arguing that they are not necessary. They say that things are all right as they are and that the matter is already being dealt with. We have heard a certain amount of that this afternoon.

I have been listening to this debate—I hope, carefully—thinking about the comments on existing legislation, thinking about all that is going on in this area in a period of financial stringency, when you would expect a lot to be going on, listening to my noble friend Lord Young, for example, and thinking about my noble friend on the Front Bench and the impending transposition of European directives on the subject. We have had a very interesting debate but I ask whether the case for these two enabling clauses has really been made. Is it not perhaps true that there is not an impelling need for them? Many good things are going on.

Therefore, my challenge to my noble friend is the question: what is the reality of the added value that will accrue from these enabling clauses, always remembering that enabling legislation is inherently not very satisfactory? I think that I revert to the position adopted very early in the afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who is no longer in his place. He said that he was not entirely sure that these two clauses were necessary. However, I will read the draft regulations with great care. I am sorry that I did not realise that they were already available a few days before this debate. That is remiss of me. I will read them very carefully, and it may well be that before Report I will conclude that there is some added value, although at the moment I have my doubts.

Children and Families Bill

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for listening to concerns raised in Grand Committee and for the many meetings with all interested parties over the past few weeks to find ways to move forward in dealing with adoption issues.

With regard to Clause 2, I acknowledge the Government’s argument for removing the requirement in primary legislation to have particular regard to,

“religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”,

as it has become evident that in some cases the current legislation of due consideration has been interpreted too bluntly, with some social workers giving undue regard to racial characteristics and seeking perfect ethnic matches. There is a need to find ways to avoid that happening—to find a balance. Statutory guidance could be the answer if it is fully thought through and applied. However, as we have already heard, there are concerns that the removal of the express requirement to give,

“due consideration to the child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”,

when matching a child with prospective adopters might increase the risk that a child’s racial origin will be completely ignored in matching decisions.

I would appreciate it if the Minister could tell the House what the Government propose should happen when a child is adopted by a family of different race, heritage or religion. How will the guidance ensure that those families are given help to understand, appreciate and engage with the background and culture of the children placed with them? How will the statutory guidance address identity, background and heritage issues that will almost certainly need to be dealt with at different times in a child’s life as, getting older, they grapple to understand their identity? As we have heard, some find it very difficult if they are not exposed to those issues. In short, how will adopters of a different background and ethnicity access additional training and support to help them understand issues their child might have to face, such as racism and identity crisis as well as religious and cultural differences?

I have spoken to both the NSPCC and CCS Adoption based in Bristol. I declare an interest as I am a patron of the latter. Both believe that a stronger case needs to be made before the removal of due consideration of race and ethnicity when a child is adopted. Some people have asked why we cannot simply amend the welfare checklist specifically to include ethnicity. Can the Minister explain the Government’s reasoning behind the decision not to do this?

One of CCS Adoption’s concerns is that guidance might be considered discretionary and is more likely not to be adhered to or might even be ignored. Just last week it was advised by its local authority that it was not the authority’s policy to undertake life story work with children or to produce a life story book for a child. In the local authority’s view, these tasks should be done by the adopters. Would statutory guidance make this clearly the responsibility of the local authority, as it holds the child’s key information? The life story workbook is key to any child coming through the care system in helping to preserve and develop their identity. To try to delegate these responsibilities to adopters when all the key information is held by the local authority is unacceptable as it does not ensure that the best interests of a child are met. Will this practice be addressed and enshrined in statutory guidance?

As we have heard, the NSPCC welcomes the updating of statutory guidance in relation to this issue and is keen to work with the department to input into this. However, it feels that this is work in progress and that at this stage it cannot commit wholeheartedly to endorsing the guidance. It and others have asked a number of questions to seek reassurance. What impact will the statutory guidance have and how will it be implemented? Aside from whether the guidance is statutory, as the Government are proposing to remove “due consideration” from primary legislation, do they think that stating this in guidance is contradictory and could lead to confusion among social workers as to whether it is a priority issue for consideration? How will the guidance ensure that all families are given help to understand, appreciate and engage with the background and culture of children placed with them? How will the Government ensure that local authorities actively recruit more adoptive parents from a range of ethnic backgrounds?

I believe that when a child is adopted by a family of different race, heritage or religion, that family must fully understand the child’s background and help the child to cherish their birth heritage. Adopters do not have to share the same ethnicity, but they must be able to respect the child’s background. They must be able to help the child to identify with their birth heritage and to be well prepared for issues that may arise as the child develops into a teenager and beyond. These adopters therefore need to be supported and helped by appropriate training to strengthen their skills together with their knowledge and understanding of the child's birth heritage, so that they can meet these needs.

This will undoubtedly avoid situations like the one I was made aware of recently by a young mixed race girl. She wrote:

“Growing up in a completely white family meant I didn’t get a taste of my heritage and not knowing my father meant that I wasn’t introduced to my black heritage until my teens. I feel strongly about this topic as I used to be picked on when I was younger and called an ‘Oreo’ (black on the outside, white on the inside) purely because I didn’t know or understand my black heritage”.

Over the years I have heard many similar stories.

Every child needs a loving and stable home, but they also need to be confident about their identity in order to face the world. We all agree that children must not suffer as a consequence of our decisions. So if we end up with statutory guidance, we must all work diligently to ensure that it is clear and understandable to all and not open to misinterpretation. As I always say, childhood lasts a lifetime and a child’s experiences shape their adulthood. So let us get this one right. I am happy to work with the Minister to do just that. In the mean time, I look forward to hearing how the Minister believes the Government can achieve this.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, these are complicated matters. We need to come down on one side of the fence. Can primary legislation cope with these matters, or are there so many variables that we have to rely on guidance? Guidance would allow more judgment than could be exercised if faced with a section in an Act of Parliament. My perception is that we would be better advised to rely on statutory guidance. If we do not like it or do not think it deals adequately with all the variations that have been talked about today, we can debate it in Parliament and ask the Government to think again. However, trying to cover what has been talked about today in a clause in a Bill which becomes an Act of Parliament will not work. Therefore we have to rely to a much greater extent on the development of confidence and judgment within the system operated by the courts, local authorities, social services and voluntary agencies. That is the way we should go.

Children and Families Bill

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, I particularly support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in relation to Amendments 26 and 27. These amendments are important because, as she said, the statistics show us that the system is not working well for children who return home. While going home is the most common outcome for children in care, around half of them have to go back into care—sometimes more than once in this revolving-door pattern that can emerge—simply because there is not the good social work practice in relation to children returning home that we associate with other forms of childcare.

As the amendments address, there is not good assessment, good identification of need or provision of the necessary support services. There is also, very often, no continued monitoring of how that child is faring when they go home. That is the first point which the Government need to address: the statistics show us that it is not working when half the children who go home have to come back into care. That obviously not only damages them; as the research has shown, the costs of the consequence of coming back into care escalate because as children return from successive attempted reunifications, they are more damaged. The cost of caring for them in other placements then becomes that much greater. As the University of Loughborough has shown, as well as the social and moral imperative to try to reduce these failed reunifications there is, potentially, a financial benefit. If you can prevent the escalating cost of failed reunification, it makes financial sense as well and may in fact reduce costs to the local authority.

These amendments are about preventing further breakdown and damage to children. They are really about the good social work practice that should be going on but which we actually know is not, because reunification practice varies so widely across local authorities. The amendments would at least set a standard as to what should be required.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

I wonder whether the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, will tackle the question that she has just referred to. Is there anything in existing legislation—I do not know how many Acts there are but there are those of 1989, 2002 and 2004, and probably quite a few more—which prevents the favourable outcomes described so well by herself and by other Members of the Committee?

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, no doubt the Minister will enlighten us but what I am saying is that where local authorities have discretion around the quality of the social work practice that they will deliver to different groups of children, as they do, it means that some of those groups lose out. Demonstrably, by the statistics, it appears that children who are sent home from care are sometimes sent too early or without thorough assessment, do not necessarily get the ongoing support and are not monitored sufficiently. Those kinds of things happen with other cases—with child abuse cases, perhaps. However, it seems as if in many local authorities a decision is made that the child can go home but the focus of attention does not continue on to that child, which is more likely to result in breakdown.

Children and Families Bill

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, much of Clause 3 is perfectly reasonable. It would allow the Secretary of State to take action against local authorities that were failing in their duties to recruit adopters by removing those powers from them—quite rightly, too, as long as that is done in a fair way and takes account of steps that local authorities might be taking to improve. There is, after all, an adoption crisis in the country, which the Minister has pointed out, and some local authorities are not stepping up to the plate.

However, children’s charities such as Barnardo’s—I declare an interest as one of its vice-presidents—as well as the Local Government Association have concerns about the fact that the Bill as it stands would allow the Secretary of State to remove responsibility for adopter recruiting from all local authorities. This proposal has caused alarm, which could lead to chaos in the adoption system. There is no guarantee that external providers would be able or willing to take on these services immediately, and any delays across the system will severely damage the chances of some of the country’s most vulnerable children of being adopted. Of course local authorities should be held to account; it is right that the Government can intervene if they are not doing their job properly. However, Clause 3 as it stands effectively allows the collective punishment of local authorities, and this punishment, as Barnardo’s and others have pointed out, would not even solve the problem but would make it worse. I urge the Government to consider Clause 3 very carefully and remove it from these provisions.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, there are fundamental problems with this clause. As has been said, there is no appeal against directions; the recipient must comply, and promptly. There is no parliamentary scrutiny of directions, and for these reasons directions are usually confined to failures in administration, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes. I think we all understand that the Treasury is very good at setting out directions about how you should write your accounts. There is not much point in arguing with the Treasury about that matter of administration, but in my view directions are not suitable to implement a change in policy of this type. That is exactly what this clause empowers the Executive to do—change policy. The point has already been made that there is therefore a point of principle here, and I would be grateful for the Minister’s response. Given everything that has gone on, the dissatisfactions or doubts that might emerge between central government and local government could and should perfectly well be settled in the normal course of business. As has been said, Clause 3 goes one step too far, and I could not support it.

[Lord Nash]

I begin with the proposal to remove the clause, but most of what I will say is also relevant to all the amendments. I think that we would all agree that we have an undoubted problem in the narrow but important function of recruiting, assessing and approving a sufficient number of prospective adopters. The statistics are stark. As I have already said, the average length of time that it takes for a child to be adopted from entering the care system is two years and seven months, and of course this conceals many children who do not get adopted.

My noble friend Lord Storey said that there is poor performance by local authorities in only a minority of cases, but I respectfully suggest that the figure of two years and seven months denies that. However, I agree with him that there is good practice: in West Berkshire, for instance, the figure is a year and a month. I question why many if not all local authorities cannot do the same.

At the end of March this year, there were 6,000 children with placement orders waiting to move in with a permanent family. This is 15% higher than a year previously. When compared with the 3,980 children adopted from care last year, one can see that this is a very significant backlog. Indeed, one cannot conclude from this backlog anything other than that the system is broken and we are facing a real crisis.

In order to find families for all the children waiting to be adopted, we have estimated that we would need around 2,000 more adopters than are currently approved and waiting to be matched. We would then need at least a further 700 additional adopters each year to meet the growing demand from children waiting. Ofsted data tell us that in the year ending March 2012 just over 25,000 enquiries about becoming an adopter were received, but these resulted in only around 4,000 applications to become an adopter—a 16% conversion rate, which I suggest is very low.

The size of the recruitment gap requires us to take radical and immediate action to resolve the underlying problems within the system. These were set out in our January publication, Further Action on Adoption. We currently have around 175 adoption agencies, many operating at too small a scale to be efficient, yet they have no incentive to expand and meet the needs of children outside their local area. Even worse, some local authorities turn away prospective adopters because they do not need them themselves.

A further problem is that, while some local authorities work in constructive partnerships with voluntary adoption agencies, too many commission from them only as a last resort. In large part, this is a consequence of local authorities acting as both a provider and commissioner of adoption services. By this, I mean that they are trying to find or commission adoptive parents on behalf of the child while simultaneously trying to recruit or provide those same parents. There are also issues around the level of fees that are paid to voluntary adoption agencies.

These underlying problems have resulted in a system that fails us in national terms; a system that is unable to make best use of the national supply of potential adopters or respond effectively to the needs of vulnerable children waiting for a loving home and a system that provides no incentives to individual organisations to address a national shortage of adopters. These problems are not the fault of the individual adoption agencies concerned. Indeed, many are doing their best to rise to the challenge and we know that there are some good examples of partnership working between different agencies:

Harrow, Kent and Cambridgeshire, for example, have all contracted elements of their adoption service to the voluntary adoption agency Coram. Oxfordshire has brought in the Core Assets Group to run its adopter assessment process. Three boroughs in London—Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham—and three unitary authorities in the north-west, Warrington, Wigan and St Helens, have merged their adoption services in order to save money while improving quality.

The problems result from the flawed way in which the current system is structured and operates. We therefore require a structural solution that tackles these systemic problems; a solution that incentivises and enables the recruitment of a far greater number of adoptive parents. Clause 3 provides for such a solution.

Employment: Young People

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend, but I am afraid that I am going to come rather closer to ground level than he was. I have one reflection on Germany: if it was not in the euro and went back to the deutschmark, a Volkswagen would cost 25% more than it does today.

I have one other reflection. My noble friend Lady Shephard mentioned that people get where they get by random processes. I am in that club: I got here twice, both times by a random process. We should not discount the ways in which people arrive at some destinations by random processes. Of course, we are all to a greater or lesser extent creatures of our own experience—a point I shall come back to in a number of ways.

Different people take different lengths of time to grow up. When we refer to young people, we need to remember that education does not stop at 18 or 21. Higher degrees can be gained by people who are much older than that, having found out on the journey who they are, what they are capable of doing and what they are not capable of doing. We have, quite correctly, mentioned aspirations in this debate. At some point, of course, it is always possible to have too many aspirations while, at another point, it is possible to have too few. What we are really seeking is reality. We are trying to find out, as we go through the journey, where we really want to be and where we are capable of being.

To illustrate that, I would like to talk about the foundry industry and will do so in some detail. My noble friend will be pleased to hear that I was introduced to the foundry industry by work experience. When I was 18, I worked for a number of weeks in Ford’s cylinder block foundry in Dagenham. Most of the people who lived in that part of east London and worked in the cylinder block foundry were of Irish extraction. They were able to make sure that nearly everybody in the foundry shop was of Irish extraction as they had their own methods of creating a community. It was a fantastic experience—I shall not go into it in any detail—but I finally hung up my steel-tipped foundry boots 54 years later, having been continuously involved in the foundry industry in one way or another throughout that time.

The foundry industry is a very old industry—one thinks of bronzes from China or Benin in west Africa—and it is never going to go away. It is a method of making complicated shapes in different metals which cannot yet be superseded—there may be this 3D, building-up-in-layers process, but not yet. It is not a big industry in this country: there are 20,000 people involved in it, in 400 foundries, which make half a million tonnes of castings a year. In this latest recession, not one single foundry of any note has had to close down, which is in contrast to the way that things were happening in the middle of my foundry career. This is an industry which is quite small, quite specialist and absolutely necessary. Every single motor car has castings in it. There are many other things that have to have castings in them, but every single motor car does. That demonstrates the necessity of the industry.

The question is how anybody arrives in the industry and how they can be prepared for a career in it. I shall briefly tell your Lordships about a foundry with 250 people in it making steel castings. The shifts were days, not days and nights. The first person got to the foundry at 6 am to get the furnaces going; the last person would leave between 6 pm and 7 pm. Once the hot metal came down, there was no stopping for tea breaks; it was a continuous process. Despite that, they all had tea and were very ingenious at keeping it hot. There are plenty of places in a foundry where you can keep your tea hot.

The work was relatively dangerous. It could not have been done without a workforce who really knew what they needed to do and did not have to be told anything. I do not exaggerate. Only when something went wrong were the managers, who were all foremen and charge hands in those days, involved. The interdependence of that workforce, the discipline and the willingness to be sure that they were looking after each other were absolutely vital. Who would prepare a young person for that sort of disciplined existence? Clearly, if you are on a small team and somebody does not turn out, it is pretty difficult.

There has been a lot of talk about schools, and I shall talk about them, but I do not see how you get round the idea that some sort of self-discipline and a willingness to be interdependent has to start in the home. If it does not, I do not know that you are doing too well. Anything else is a substitute, because, however you look at the way in which people grow up, the home is more important than the school. Okay, sometimes, the school becomes a substitute in some sense but in the foundry industry—it may be different today—the schools were not much help. They did not like foundries. Good Lord, if you invited school teachers into foundries, they would go out saying, “For goodness sake, don’t go in there. It’s hot and it’s dirty, and the men look pretty rough to me”. The lads in the foundry did but, of course, they arrived in one set of clothes and then changed into their foundry clothes. When they went home again, having had a shower in the foundry showers, they were very different and could do well in the pub more or less straightaway. There is a thing about conformism and expectations among the academic community, and I do not think we have got that right yet. We need a much broader acceptance of difference and diversity, and of people getting careers and satisfaction in places which school teachers, on the whole, do not know about and do not like.

If the careers system is not working in favour of foundries, another way is that of community and shared experience. I remember well the office manager, George Warner, coming to me and saying, “There’s a woman and a boy in your office and they want to talk to you”. She said to me, “This is William and he’s useless. He’s 16 and he doesn’t know what he wants to do. He won’t make up his mind about anything, but as you know my uncle”—she had family in the foundry—“will you give him a job?”. We had a bit of a conversation and we gave him a job.

Again, there is a whole raft of things about having too few aspirations. Who is going to solve them? It is not going to be central government nor, in my view, is it going to be academic institutions on their own. There has to be some willingness within a community and a society to look and see how we solve this and give people opportunities and back-to-work experience again.

The other thing that has happened in the foundry industry, alongside discipline, is the amazing sophistication of the technology. The materials technology during the time that I have been involved—I am now only an observer—has been quite amazing. The equipment technology has also been quite amazing. For example, in automotive casting foundries, you will find a machine called a Disamatic, which is made in Denmark. The guys on that machine are individually responsible for about £200,000 of capital equipment. It is very unlikely that they are graduates; I do not know that we would actually find it very satisfactory to employ graduates on a Disamatic.

As you increase the sophistication of a foundry, the cost of capital is no higher in the United Kingdom than it is in China—arguably, it can in fact be lower. Therefore, the greater the extent to which you can make the mix of your assets more capital and less labour, the more competitive you are. This operates in two directions: it means that western economies can remain competitive but also that the number of jobs available will not increase and is quite likely to go down. It also means that the people in that foundry have to be, on average, better educated and more willing to accept the disciplines of a continuous process. That is a big challenge.

One must not forget that the guys on the Disamatic also need manual skills. This is not something that central government can solve in any way. I am happy to say that another college has been set up just to look at foundries. My final message is that we should be much more open-minded, reject conformism and stereotypes, and actually go and look at the details of what people can do and how they can get a very satisfactory career out of it if they find their way into the foundry industry.