Academies Bill [Lords]

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

The main mechanism by which academies could take more of the money would be by their being extremely popular and attracting more pupils, because most of the money follows the pupils. That is a thoroughly benign pressure. If these academies are going to take off and develop extremely good standards and reputations, they will attract more pupils and get more money, which they will need because they are teaching more pupils, and the other schools will need to pull their socks up. If the outcome is not as successful as that, the hon. Lady’s worries should fall away. Surely she must accept, however, that we need some challenge and improvement in the system, and that there is nothing wrong with choice.

Why is it that someone like the hon. Lady does not trust anybody other than the state and is never prepared to give anybody any freedom to initiate, innovate, change and improve? Cannot she see that we desperately need to raise school standards, and that we need to do something to try to make that happen? Her system was tried for 13 years, and it did not work.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman’s point about trust is unfortunate, to say the least. Governing bodies do not always get these things right, and that is why some kind of mechanism needs to be in place. The amendments are trying to achieve that and to remedy some of the problems caused by our not having enough time to do the job properly in Committee.

[Mr Redwood]

I have said that I love democracy, and it is often a good idea to give more people more votes. However, let me deal directly with the issue. Parents are not without powers or influence in this situation; if they were, I would immediately sign up to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Southport. I suspect, however, that Ministers will argue, like me, that it would be a nice addition but is unnecessary because there are other checks and balances in the system.

Let us consider those elements. First, there is an elected local authority that will have a lot of influence and control over these schools. Its voice will be heard because it has considerable influence over the appointments of the very people who will be making this proposal or decision for each school. The local authority often has members on the governing body, and the governing body has parent representatives. If the parents became alarmed by the way in which the head teacher and the senior governors were moving, they would presumably make their voice heard through the parent governors or use their ability to change those governors to make the point.

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[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I have some experience of consulting on an academy—albeit not the sort of the academy proposed by the Bill—and I can assure him that pupils find it very easy to grasp what the change of their school to academy status would mean. However, his point is valid in that there must be a given length of time for a consultation to take place, so that the arguments for and against an academy in an area can be properly explained to everyone concerned. However, the Bill completely overrides any meaningful consultation process.

[Bill Esterson]

There are many professionals with good experience of how to consult effectively with children. Exactly the same point that the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) has just raised—the point about why children should not be consulted—was raised with me when I was dealing with the establishment of academies in Medway a couple of years ago. However, it is a completely spurious point, as I think my hon. Friend would agree, because even much younger children have good insights. The question is how we go about consulting them, not whether we should consult them.

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[Vernon Coaker]

Some local authorities have been a problem, but not just Labour authorities—Conservative local authorities have also stood in the way of academy development. One pays a price for local democracy and involving local authorities: sometimes it means that people pursue educational options in their area that one does not agree with. That is the point I was making when I asked the Minister whether localism is fine only as long as it goes along with the Government’s policy objectives.

There are all sorts of unanswered questions about consultation, many of which the hon. Member for Portsmouth South has laid out. What happens to local authorities? What happens to the money? What happens regarding special needs? Who is vetting the consultation that takes place? Who knows what is going on? How will the school funding proposals that have been published today affect what is going on? There are all sorts of issues to be discussed.

[Bill Esterson]

May I take my hon. Friend back to the primary capital programme and the democracy in that process, which the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) asked about? In the Tory-run authority in which I was the opposition spokesman on children’s services, there was a lot of opposition to some proposals and only a thorough consultation process brought up that opposition and showed the flaws in the plan. The council rejected them and the adjudicator, whose role my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) has mentioned, had to get involved. The checks and balances were in place in that process as they were in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998.

[Vernon Coaker]

My hon. Friend makes a self-evident and good point, and identifies some of the problems regarding the difference between what happened before and what will happen under the Bill’s measures. There are a huge number of questions that the Minister needs to answer.

On consultation, it would help if the Government and the Minister answered named day written questions, including a large number that are specifically relevant to this whole process and our discussions on consultation. I have 11 named-day questions for last Monday that have not yet been answered by the Department. Not all of them are relevant to this debate—[Interruption.] The Front Benchers are now debating who is responsible; I am afraid that it involves both Conservative and Liberal Democrat Ministers. Some of those questions are specific to today’s debate on consultation, so for the Department to talk about consultation, procedure and correct processes when I still have not received the answers to questions for which the named day was last Monday—[Interruption.] The Minister says that I have had a holding response: on Monday 19 July, for 11 of my questions, I received the reply, “I will reply as soon as possible,” from him and his colleagues. I do not know whether anyone else has experienced this problem, but given that the measures are being pushed through Parliament at significant speed, all hon. Members need the answers to their named day questions so that information that might inform our discussions is available.

With that, I shall simply say that we will support amendment 8 if the hon. Member for Southport pushes it to a vote, and I give notice that we would like to put amendment 78 to a vote.

[Bill Esterson]

I want to talk about consultation in relation to my experience as an opposition spokesman for children’s services, particularly in relation to pre and post-decision consultation and three academies that the council pushed through. The Tory-run council in Medway decided not to consult until decisions had been taken, which caused consternation and all sorts of problems with the wider community, not just parents. I think that was a precursor to what is happening with this legislation. It was only the involvement of the then Ministers with responsibility for schools standards, including my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), that enabled us to have proper consultation before decisions were finally taken and to ensure that the assurances that the local community sought were addressed. My concern is that the proposed measures will cause what happened in Medway to be repeated across the country.

[Dan Rogerson]

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the situation he describes happened under legislation that was pushed through by a Labour Government and that the Bill does say—thanks to amendments that were passed in another place—that consultation must take place?

[Bill Esterson]

I confirm that it happened under the legislation—that was why the checks and balances were eventually put in place. The point I was making is that the Tory-run council in Medway tried to push things through using the same procedure that will be introduced by the Bill. The hon. Gentleman mentions the amendments that were made in the other place, but, like many hon. Members, I have grave concerns that leaving it to the governing body to decide not just who to consult but whether to consult is a fundamental problem that will not be overcome by any checks and balances further down the line.

My experience and that of many people in Medway shows that allowing consultation at any time up to the signing of an academy agreement will not work and will make the process completely inadequate. That is why the amendments are so important. If they are not accepted, not only Members, but schools, children, staff and parents across the country will regret the lack of a requirement for the sort of proper consultation that is detailed in many of the amendments and that was in the 1998 Act. That guidance on how to consult different groups is extremely thorough and works extremely well when it is followed.

[Andrew Percy]

I am failing to get my head round the arguments of Opposition Members. There was plenty of consultation—admittedly under the previous Government—on Building Schools for the Future and on transforming our primary school agenda, and it threw up thousands of names on petitions from parents who did not want their schools closed, yet their schools were still closed. Where was the consultation? The failings the hon. Gentleman is outlining are exactly those that took place under the last Government.

[Bill Esterson]

Consultation is not a referendum; it will not necessarily produce the answer that the majority are pushing for, but there is a fundamental difference between holding a consultation and not holding one at all. The problem with the Bill is that unless the governing body agrees, there will be no consultation at all.

[Andrew Percy]

I think I heard the hon. Gentleman correctly and that he was saying that the Opposition are arguing that they want consultation simply so that they can say they have had it, but they are not all that bothered about the outcome.

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[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman is trying to put words into the mouths of many Members. I think he is talking a load of nonsense on that point, but it was a nice try.

One of my concerns about leaving it to governing bodies to decide about consultation is that they, understandably, feel that it is their duty to support head teachers. Sometimes, however, the head teacher gets their own way through strength of personality and the governing body may not apply the degree of scrutiny and challenge that it should, although I am not saying that is always true because many governing bodies work extremely well in genuine partnership with their head teacher. The reason I support the amendments proposed by the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) is that the situation I described, together with the potential for financial benefit for head teachers, could create the possibility for conflict of financial interest, which would be wholly undesirable. There is concern about the potential for financial gain for head teachers and the lack of scrutiny in some governing bodies, although by no means all—I stress that point. It is important that we get the legislation right at this point, before things go wrong, rather than rushing it through with the danger that such problems might arise.

The hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) and the former Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), made important points about schools being a key part of their community. Although governing bodies are representative of certain parts of the community, they do not represent the wider community, which is why the provisions of the School Standards and Framework Act are a good guide. The fundamental problem with the Bill is that if consultation is not held until after the initial decision, it will be apparent to the local community that there has been a fait accompli. The danger is that once the train has left the station, it will be very difficult to put the brakes on.

[Mr Gibb]

This group of amendments deals with consultation. We have always made it clear that we expect schools to consult on their proposals for conversion to academy status, which is why we were happy to amend the Bill in the other place to put that provision on the face of the legislation. As Lord Adonis said, during the passage of the Bill in the other place,

“it is very unlikely that an academy proposal will be a success if it does not have a very wide measure of support from the parental body, the staff body and the wider community.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 1230.]

As a result of persuasive arguments put in the other place, principally by Liberal Democrat peers, the Government tabled the amendment that led to clauses 5 and 10. I pay particular tribute to Baroness Walmsley for her determination to put consultation on the face of the Bill.

Amendment 8 would require that if any member of a school’s governing body objects to the school’s application for academy status, the parents of children at the school must be balloted. The purpose of the Bill is to allow schools that wish to do so to apply for academy status. The Bill is permissive rather than coercive. The arrangements for governing body decisions are set out in the School Governance (Procedures) (England) Regulations 2003, which state that every question to be decided at a governing body meeting must be determined by a majority of votes of those governors present and voting, and no decision can be taken without due discussion. Furthermore, at least a third of the membership of the governing bodies of all maintained schools is made up of parents. That means that the views of parents will clearly be considered during the governing body’s discussions. In addition, clause 5 requires a school’s governing body to consult on its proposals to convert to an academy. In practice, we believe that means that parents will be consulted and will have the chance to make representations about the proposals.