Academies Bill [Lords]

John Pugh Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

The amendment not only ignores the nuances of the situation, but takes a blunderbuss approach. I appreciate that Labour opposes the Bill in principle and I understand why—the reasons have been well elucidated by the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues both on Second Reading and today. Putting that to one side, however, surely the function of tabling amendments is to try to make legislation better. I am afraid that the amendment fails that test spectacularly: its crude and generalist approach ignores all the points that I know the hon. Gentleman understands about the infinitesimal differences involved and the variety that exists in the provision of special education. It would exclude special schools from going down the academy route if they so wished.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an extremely thoughtful contribution and I am certainly impressed by it, but it is unfair to suggest that the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) provided no argument for keeping special schools out of the equation. One such argument was that the elimination of special schools from the local authority network would have a more disruptive effect than the elimination of an ordinary primary or secondary school because special schools are well integrated into the overall local authority provision and mission regarding special education.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. We have dealt, in interventions, with low-incidence needs and I agree with the points that the hon. Gentleman made about that. The key point is about funding and we all felt that the Bill’s original draft did not deal with that properly, but it is now clearly set out.

A second concern of mine, which I expressed on Second Reading, is not so much about the process by which statements appear but about their enforcement. I made some observations in that debate about the need for more detail as to how that will be dealt with. How would a parent who was concerned that a statement was not being carried out or enforced by a school take their complaint further? I understand that complaints to the Secretary of State about the lack of enforcement of a statement in a special school will be dealt with by the Young People’s Learning Agency. I welcome that, but I would want to be satisfied that the YPLA personnel who dealt with those complaints would have adequate training to understand the sometimes labyrinthine process involved in enforcing SEN statements. I would also want the processes to be very clear and to be spelt out to the parents of children with SEN at the outset. I am not going to stray off the point, Mr Chope, but I want briefly to mention amendment 72, which was proposed by the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass)—

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[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friends have just made the point from a sedentary position that that is not the case. It is not only outstanding schools that are being invited to acquire academy status; it is all schools. We are also continuing to address the problems at the other end of the scale, to ensure that schools that are in special measures and that are struggling can acquire academy status and have a sponsor that can raise standards in those schools. Those projects, and that approach to policy, will continue.

I am surprised at the opposition to these proposals, given that they build on the legislation of the previous Government. They do not represent a major departure from the previous approach. The Bill has only 20 clauses, and the reason for that is that it builds on the legislation introduced by the previous Government.

[Dr Pugh]

I want to test my understanding of what the Minister is saying. In response to the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), he said that he would be perfectly happy for a governing body to spend a fair amount of money on behalf of local children, even though there might not be anyone on that governing body who had any connection to local children. Surely there is an issue of accountability there—

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. This is not a wide-ranging debate on academies in general. We are debating the amendment, so perhaps the Minister could now direct his comments to that.

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I hope that the Government will give serious consideration to what we propose. Amendment 49 is a minor amendment that simply retains for grammar schools the safeguard of balloting parents if a school is to make the change from grammar school to academy. I hope that we will robustly oppose amendment 14, as it represents a retrograde step.

[Dr Pugh]

Speaking for the non-secular wing of the Liberal Democrats, I should like to say a few words about amendment 42. It appears to narrow the range of schools that can become academies. I think that the Roman Catholic Church has cautioned governors against the Bill, which would have a big impact in areas in Merseyside and Lancashire such as the one that I represent. I tire of hearing people in this place make generalisations about faith schools that are based purely on the north London experience. A person does not need to struggle to get into a faith school round where I live.

People may recognise that I have a somewhat diminished enthusiasm for this legislation. The academy project, whether in its Labour or coalition form, does not fill me with any great glee. I regard it as something of a sideshow, as an extravagance—possibly expensive—and as a distraction from improving standards across the board.

It is interesting to note that in his amendment, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) wants to put into law what the archdiocese commands; I do not know whether that will please him, but that is, in effect, what he is doing. Looking at that amendment, a priori, there is no good argument for not having a faith academy that would not equally apply to not having a faith school. It would therefore seem rather mean to discriminate against faith schools at this time, albeit that I regard it as a boon to faith schools not to be academies.

The real argument against faith schools becoming academies seems to me to be as follows. Contrary to what people say, faith schools are often deeply rooted in their communities, and they should not disregard the disruptive effects on wider local authority provision. They should be mindful always of the community effect. That being said, if a religious community both educated and enhanced specifically religious objectives, it is right, as under the Butler Act, that that should be reflected in some way in the funding agreement. It is not obvious that that is done in the Bill, or that the Blair academy project did that. Equally, having settled for academy status and funding, it would be wrong for a school to adopt faith school status retrospectively; I think that we can agree on that. That, I think, is what amendments 43 and 44 seek to prevent, so compared with amendment 42, they are relatively innocuous.

Another consideration that swings me against amendment 42 is my own experience. Eleven of the best years of my life were spent teaching in a faith comprehensive school in Bootle, in an extraordinarily challenging environment. It was a school with a Salesian foundation, run by the Salesian order. The headmaster was a priest, the ethos was fantastic, the dedication considerable, in a very, very difficult environment. Staff never stinted on their time and the head timetabled himself to teach remedial maths to the fifth year and the upper school. When he stepped down as head, before he finished his career—this was a man who was a very distinguished scientist and writer—he continued to teach remedial maths to children whom many teachers would not give much time to in the first place. I have never seen the like, but it ought not to surprise one when one recognises that that order was founded by someone called St John Bosco, who started his schools in industrial Milan, with the vocation of schooling the deprived and transforming their lives.

I could almost be reconciled—the Minister might be delighted to hear—to the anarchy of free schools if I thought that a lot of St John Boscos and Salesians were ready in the wings, waiting to deal with children in environments where people had given up or were terminally demoralised. Sadly, my overall view is that that is not the case. But the free school project would be almost bearable if there were such people and what they were doing could be aligned with the overall social good of the community, if education could be provided that was not just a cloak for indoctrination and if there was a capacity to manage the full curriculum. Then the free school project would have a really noble basis in reality. Sadly, the people queuing up to start free schools are not in that category and do not, in many cases, turn out to be saints.

[Mr Ward]

We are all fashioned on the anvil of experience, and I bring to this debate my own experience. On Second Reading I mentioned the crucial situation of schools being judged or assessed on their attainment, which is then reflected in league tables. A little earlier the Minister attacked the former Labour Government’s record, saying what a shame it was that all the successful schools were in affluent areas, and was not that an indictment? Of course they are mainly in affluent areas because of the crucial importance of intake and the link, to which I have drawn attention in other speeches elsewhere, between attainment and levels of deprivation. The issue of admissions is at the heart of the Bill for me, more than anything else. Freedoms of the curriculum, freedoms in staffing and control of staffing budgets, I am okay with. I opposed the academies of Labour, and I oppose these academies for the same reasons. There are other ways of bringing about improvements in schools.

What concerns me is my experience over nearly 30 years of what schools actually do. Amendments have been tabled saying that schools must comply with the provisions of the schools admissions code. I know what schools that are already subject to that code do now, and we can understand why. I have mentioned the league tables. Schools want to succeed and to be seen to succeed, and parents want the very best for their children, so wherever possible they go to whatever lengths are needed, legally—moving home—or in some cases, illegally, to get their children into the schools that are doing well in the league tables.

I have often heard of the importance and ethos of faith schools. Frankly, to hear people talk about the special ethos of faith schools makes me quite angry, because it is a slap in the face for all those other non-faith schools that have a fabulous ethos, are loving and caring, and provide a good education for children. It is an indication of the importance of league tables, even to faith schools, that although a faith school might say that it will totally disregard school league tables, that it does not care if it is bottom of the league, that it will open its doors to absolutely everyone and take the children that other schools do not want, it does not do that, because it knows that at the end of the day it will be assessed upon the performance of the school in the league tables, and that is so heavily dependent upon the intake. I have chaired admissions forums. It is very difficult when the area includes faith schools, foundation schools, city technology colleges and so on. In effect, there were six different admission authorities, all appearing at the admissions forum, and it was very difficult to achieve co-ordination on admissions with those schools.

The pressure on schools means that good people do bad things—it is only human nature—and I have countless examples of that. When I chaired the admissions forum, a foundation school applied to change its admissions criteria—we could not stop it doing so—to use stanines and banding. I respected the head teacher, but we argued about it. I was the only one to vote against the change and, as it transpired, we could not really have done anything to stop it. I understand why the head teacher was seeking to overcome the problem of having a catchment area of only 10 or so streets. The Minister talked about successful schools, but this school was in the top 20 for its contextual value-added score of 1,040. That was a remarkable result, but the school was also in the national challenge. That head teacher knew that whatever the school did in raising achievement, it would still have a stubbornly resistant attainment record until it changed its intake, and it therefore went ahead and did so.

I am desperately seeking not just assurances, but guarantees of the fairness of the admissions of these new schools. I am very concerned that the Bill describes the characteristics of schools that may become academies as providing

“education for pupils who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated.”

My understanding of “wholly or mainly” is that it means more than 50%, so 49% could come from outside the area. Another characteristic is that

“the school provides education for pupils of different abilities”.

That may have been changed, but I thought that we were talking about all abilities.

There are some good aspects of academies, but if they are so good and important why do we not make the freedoms they will have available to all schools? I seek guarantees of fair and open admissions policies and an undertaking that this Bill does not represent the opening of the door to more selection.

Academies Bill [Lords]

John Pugh Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

Exactly, and that is why I am fearful. The money is not there and there is no evidence that the Government’s proposals will contribute to raising standards. My fear is that we will see, as Sweden did, a rise in social segregation, with children in high-income areas doing better and children in lower-income areas doing worse. That would be deeply socially divisive, and that is not the only social division we may see as a result.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

If Members really believe that parents know best, is it not our duty to include the need for a parent vote as a precondition of any move to academy status and thereby give parents the choice as well, as happened under the old grant-maintained legislation?

[Ed Balls]

That is a very interesting suggestion, and if an amendment to that effect is tabled, we will look at it. I am all in favour of parent power. What the Secretary of State is doing, however, is cutting parents out of the equation entirely; he is leaving it entirely to the head teacher, the chair of governors and himself. There is no parent voice at all in this Bill. That is why I am very fearful, and that is why I believe that this Bill is the biggest threat to our comprehensive state education system in the post-war period.

We will table amendments to ensure that local authorities maintain their role in education as guarantors of fairness and of the public interest—as set out in the very Education and Inspections Act 2006 that the Secretary of State likes to quote from.

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[Mr Sheerman]

I am afraid that I must disagree with the hon. Lady. I go into many schools, and one head will say, “I can’t do my job; I can’t cope; I can’t do anything, because of the amount of bureaucracy, red tape and all that,” yet in an almost exactly similar school, with a good leadership, the head will say, “Bureaucracy, red tape. We skip over that. We run the school for the children. And that all comes later, and we deal with it.” I am always suspicious, because I guarantee that the House will spend time over the next years introducing all sort of things—health and safety, child protection and child safety measures, and so on—and that we will end up with more bureaucracy in schools. We will gladly do both things at the same time.

[Dr Pugh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Sheerman]

May I continue for the moment?

I worry about the speed at which the Bill is being considered and the fact that the debates in Committee will be constrained to three days. That makes the Bill look like a bit of panicky measure. A couple of interventions rather upset me. An hon. Gentleman—an old friend of mine—asked whether the policy was similar to that on grant-maintained status, as did another Back Bencher. I hope that the policy is not a reversion to that. If that is all that it is—a return to the old grant-maintained situation—I really believe that it is a backward step.

Let us put all this into perspective. Sometimes, even among colleagues in the Tea Room, I ask, “How many secondary schools do you think there are in England?” and they often get it wildly wrong. There are 3,500, and there are about 20,000 primary schools. Many people do not know that. How many academies did we aim for? Two hundred, rising to 400—between 5% and 6% of secondary schools have academy status. It was a pilot, which makes me wonder why it caused so much passion, even among Labour Members. Indeed, the shadow Secretary of State was very passionately against academies at one stage in his career, early in the days when I was Chairman of the Select Committee. Academies were an interesting and successful pilot. They have not been given enough time. On the freedoms that we gave academies, yes, schools should be able to have that status on licence if they meet the standard.

I want to pursue another point. I, too, believe that the most worrying part of the Bill is the bit about free schools. I can understand the argument for academies, and I know why the Government are doing this—I can understand all that—but the question of free schools worries me indeed, not because of the suggestion that, somehow, the private sector will insidiously come in and run our schools. The Labour Government used the private sector all the time in education. Of course, we have to do so, and it is a healthy relationship: the private sector is a very good partner. It delivers all sorts of things. We called it into a number of local authorities to sort things out when they failed. So let us view the private sector as part of the solution and the answer, rather than thinking that it will come in through the back door.

I am worried about a different feature of free schools. When Tony Blair was very keen on faith schools, those of us who looked at them were concerned about the way in which they were delivered too easily to people who just said, “I want a faith school,” because they happened to have a certain brand of religion or to be a certain kind of Muslim or Christian. Without great care, that way leads to a deal of disunity and the break-up of social cohesion in our towns and cities. I would hate free schools to lead to that break-up. Baroness Sharp put it very well in the other place when she said that every area has a community of schools and that, if the legislation breaks up that community, we will put ourselves in great danger of harming the unity of our communities.

Consultation with schools, pupils and parents is very important, but it is still very weak under the Bill. The more I look at the Bill, the more concerned I am. We take so much notice of the governors of a school at one moment in time, but the school will go on for another 50 or 100 years. The school that I went to is, I think, still going after 500 years. The fact is that asking the question of one small set of school governors today will bind in a whole community, and the school at the centre of the community. The community should have something to say about the future of education in that community.

All the work that I have done in education has led me to believe that we have to give schools a decent chance of teaching a representative bunch of kids from the community—not all the poorest, not all the richest, but a good blend. Sometimes one has to be brave in how one selects; sometimes one has to be very brave. People should read the Sutton Trust report on how to handle school admissions. The Committee that I chaired did some very good work on admissions, and the schools admissions scene has been transformed in the direction that we recommended. There will always be schools that are better than others, and envy about not being able to get into those better schools. The Sutton Trust is right: the only way to sort that out is to have a fair system of banding, and when there is high demand for school places, there should be admission by ballot.

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[Mr Brady]

If only the hon. Lady were right. I am sure she knows that I would very much like to go back to exactly that system, because we have it in my constituency, and that, I suspect, is why the schools in Trafford are better than those in her constituency. However, that is probably a debate for another day.

Today, we have the questions of consistency and of real belief in what was proposed by the previous Government and is now proposed by this Government. I was the shadow Schools Minister at the time of the legislation that became the Education Act 2002, and at that point I was pleased that we, the then Opposition, looked at the Government’s proposals in an entirely open-minded way, saw the benefits of the academies model being offered and welcomed it. In our critique and scrutiny of the then Government, we urged them to go further, to have the courage of their convictions and to ensure that more schools could benefit from the freedoms on offer. In that regard, the removal of the requirement for a sponsor is an important step forward.

[Dr Pugh]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting contribution, but he used the expression “educational apartheid”. Under his analysis, and the legislation before us, there will still be an educational apartheid: there will be schools with freedoms, and schools with lesser freedoms or no freedom at all.

[Mr Brady]

I should like more and more schools to attain the outstanding status that will allow them to move more rapidly on to academy status, but a policy of greater freedom for schools that can exercise it well, in the interests of their pupils, is clearly beneficial.

At the time of the 2002 Act, we urged the Government to go further, to accelerate their programme and to have the courage of their convictions. As I look at the reasoned amendment, I really wish that the current Opposition had taken a similarly generous approach and been prepared to accept not only that there is enormous common ground in the proposals before us, but that we had reached the point at which the previous Labour Government and the Conservative party had recognised the real value in giving greater freedom and flexibility to schools and more autonomy to good head teachers.

The previous Government were moving forward slowly but we want to move forward more quickly, and I really wish they would join us in that. Instead, in the discussions relating to the Bill, including by the shadow Secretary of State today, the Labour party has moved towards seeing the whole purpose of the academies programme that it pursued as being about funding. It sees the importance of academies as being the insertion of a sponsor, an outside partner, preferably investing a very large sum in sponsorship to help fund the school. Fundamentally, however, we see the central point of academies as being the freedom that they provide. We understand the importance of allowing good heads, governing bodies and teachers to get on with their jobs and teach.

I started by advising Members to be entirely consistent and I will finish entirely consistently. Having spent the Committee and Report stages of what became the 2002 Act criticising the previous Government for being too timid in their approach to academies and to giving good schools more freedom, I encourage my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to demonstrate with vigour the courage of our convictions and see this as just the beginning of what should be a truly radical, powerful revolution that will lead to much better state education in this country.

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[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Nobody in the Chamber has ever argued that good government benefits by legislating in a hurry—nobody sane at any rate—and nobody in education has ever believed that the best time to consult schools and parents is during the school holidays, so the puzzle is this: why is the Secretary of State making us stay in and, with some haste, pass this legislation, when pressing matters such as reviews of discipline, special needs and so on need to be undertaken? Why this sudden and seemingly unjustified imposition, when there appear, on the face of it, to be more pressing things to do?

The Secretary of State is, I believe, extraordinarily well intentioned, dedicated, polite and considerate, and he is keener to convince than to coerce, but on this issue he seems to be possessed by a messianic enthusiasm characteristic of Tony Blair—in fact, he admitted as much in the debate—who, let it be said, never let practical problems cloud pleasing prospects. I find it perfectly understandable that the new Secretary of State, not content with simply running his Department well, wants to make his mark. The way that is customarily done is by introducing legislation—legislating for change. The easiest thing that a Schools Minister can do is change the governance of schools. It is what Education Ministers most commonly do—although not necessarily what they do best—so we have had comprehensives, direct grant schools, city technology colleges, grant-maintained schools, specialist schools and academies. There are many variations.

Ministers argue at every twist and turn that each latest new governance proposal will eradicate bad schools, bad teaching and poor pupil performance. If only it were that easy. Addiction to academies is simply the latest manifestation of this tendency. The Blair/Adonis academies demonstrated the well-known truth that if a school has a fresh start, plenty of money, new staff and a lovely building, it will produce at least a temporary fillip in results. What those academies did not demonstrate —as hon. Members must know—is that academy governance and its freedoms made any difference whatever.

I recommend that Members study carefully the National Audit Office report on academies. It showed conclusively that academies in deprived areas produced no better results than the previous excellence in cities programme, and at much greater cost. I really do instruct Members to get hold of that report, read it carefully and see that what made the difference was the funding, not the governance. Tellingly too, that report leaves out the effect on neighbouring schools. It does not even take that into consideration as a problem.

The Bill suggests that simply calling schools academies without the dosh will work some special magic. I am personally intrigued by this relabelling exercise. There may be a day when simply calling an institution a “school” might be some sort of insult or an indication of failure. I do not know whether other hon. Members have read Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall” but in it the hapless Paul Pennyfeather seeks a teaching job through an agency having been expelled from Oxford. He is told by the man at the agency:

“We class schools…into…Leading School, First-rate School, Good School and School. Frankly…School is pretty bad”.

Interestingly enough, Waugh’s unfortunate character Paul Pennyfeather was expelled from Oxford for indecency, having been de-bagged by drunken members of what Waugh calls the Bollinger Club. There is a slight resonance in that.

There is no particularly persuasive evidence that a plethora of independent academies produces better outcomes than a network of schools organised by a good local authority. Studies of parallel arrangements in Sweden and the USA have been similarly inconclusive. They are not the ringing endorsement that the Secretary of State described, and those who are well informed know that only too well.

[Vernon Coaker]

Does the hon. Gentleman find it interesting that in the debates that have taken place so far on the Academies Bill there has been little reference to the evidence pointing to the opposite conclusion to that arrived at by Government on free schools or charter schools? Even more remarkably, there has been little reference to the equality impact assessment published alongside this Bill, which demonstrates some serious concerns about achievements in academies with respect to special needs pupils, girls and ethnic minorities. I am not against academies, but I would have thought that those conclusions would suggest to a Government who were not acting with such haste that they should proceed with some caution.

[Dr Pugh]

The shadow Minister has the advantage of me. I do know that there are a number of studies of charter schools in the United States, and that some are for and some against. The meta-analysis is inconclusive. It does not show that charter schools necessarily produce the wholesale educational improvement that the Secretary of State mentioned in his contribution.

There is no evidence that schools with all their current freedoms—and the ordinary council school has much more freedom than it ever used to have—feel oppressed rather than supported by local authorities. However, as has been said several times today, there is ample evidence that they are sick to death of the bureaucratic overload imposed by the Department and Ministers. It is downright shoddy and unfair to suggest that schools can be released from the bullying and bossiness of central Government only if they break their relationship with the local authority. It is dishonest to suggest that academy status is about addressing underperformance, when it is those who overperform who are to be fast-tracked and those in the leafy suburbs who are most likely to apply.

[Ian Mearns]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in regard to the other part of the coalition, the cat is out of the bag, in that some Conservative Members regard academy status as grant-maintained status reinvented, and as a sort of promised land towards which they have been working? Part of the underlying problem is that, with money for services such as special educational needs, and school improvements in particular, being dragged back from local education authorities, schools that are already regarded as outstanding and excellent will be taking from local authorities money that would otherwise be used to improve other schools, which there will no longer be the capacity to do.

[Dr Pugh]

To a certain extent, it seems to be a case of “to those that have, shall be given”. It is also highly unlikely that parents in the most deprived areas, where attainment is low, will have the skills, the capacity or the conviction to set up their own schools. Free schools will probably be created elsewhere, in areas that are already stocked with quite decent and reasonable schools.

Even if we can force ourselves to ignore the slim evidence and the implausibility of some of the arguments, we should not blind ourselves to the risks involved. Those risks have been mentioned here and in the other place. They include the risk of a two-tier education system—the word “apartheid” has been used—and the risk of knock-on consequences for other schools. A number of Members have also mentioned the risks to special educational needs and support services. I also invite Members to inspect the Bill’s treatment of charity law, which could create the risk of profiteering skewing schooling at some time in the future. There is also a risk of diminished public accountability for a public resource, and an enormous risk in the current circumstances, with the £150 billion deficit, that we might lose economies of scale and consequently spend more money to less effect. Furthermore, we might have to bear the huge capital cost of providing extra buildings while underusing the present buildings in an anarchic, unplanned education market.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

My hon. Friend seems to be constructing an argument that freedom is a bad thing. He has described a number of risks, and yes, there are risks, but surely life involves risk. Does he not agree that the word “liberal” is derived from “liberty”? I find it confusing and surprising that he is making such a strong case against liberty.

[Dr Pugh]

I have never thought that liberalism had anything to do with precipitate, foolish and unresearched activity. I am not in any way suggesting that that is what we have here, but I am saying that there are valid reasons for an essentially rational liberal to make fair and cautious points about where we might be going with this, and to want to be assured that what we are doing will have the consequences that we expect.

There are risks involved, many of which have been voiced in the other place as well as here. To be fair, Ministers have tried to forestall those risks, privately and publicly, and to placate people with their mellifluous tones. I welcome that and I accept it; it is a good thing, as it encourages rational discourse. But, however convinced or unconvinced we might be, what negates all those assurances and soothing words, and what gives the game away and convinces me that this is a semblance, and a rational coating perhaps disguising an unbending ideology—although I hope not—and a visceral dislike of local authorities, is not the words that Ministers have used but the haste with which they have moved.

[Annette Brooke]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, although the Bill now has an amendment on consultation, the desired aim to turn some schools into academies by September seems totally consistent with those words and with what might happen in real life?

[Dr Pugh]

Having worked in schools for a large part of my life, and knowing the degree of organisation required during the summer recess to prepare for the new term, I find it distinctly improbable that any such schools will be ready to run on a completely different footing in September. The Minister clearly disagrees, and I defer to his knowledge of how things might go. I have to rely on my own experience in these circumstances, however. I have to emphasise that there is a big difference between legislation for a pet project, which we have seen many times in this House, particularly in the Blair years, and mature and considered legislation, and it revolves around whether it is properly handled in this place.

[Bill Esterson]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that schools in his constituency and mine have made inquiries about academy status and that one head teacher in his constituency commented that the whole process was a shambles? Does not that underline his point about the haste with which this legislation is being carried out?

[Dr Pugh]

It is not yet a shambles, but I welcomed the intervention from the Chairman of the Select Committee, suggesting that there is a proper and appropriate way to proceed with an important piece of legislation like this. I do not think that we have yet hit on that way here. What is the best I can say of this legislation? It does not remind me of the new politics; it reminds me—though Opposition Members might not want to hear this—of new Labour. That should give us cause for concern in this corner of the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Pugh Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I know that the hon. Gentleman served with distinction as a Minister in Tony Blair’s Government, and was then defenestrated when the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) took over. He should be aware that Tony Blair made it clear, when he was Prime Minister, that academy freedoms should be extended to all schools. In that respect, we are simply carrying on the good work that was begun under the Prime Minister who was wise enough to have the hon. Gentleman on his Front Bench, rather than following the disastrous course that was taken by Gordon Brown and the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls).

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I have here a press cutting in which a local head teacher in my constituency complains about his school appearing on the Department’s database as “interested in academy status”, when all that he had actually done was to ask for details of a sketchy scheme. He now says that the chances of his school wanting academy status are minimal and that people are “playing politics” with this. How could such things happen? Could it be that the demand for academy status is being overstated? Also, will the Secretary of State correct the database?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. One question will probably suffice; one answer certainly will.

Building a High-Skilled Economy

John Pugh Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the British train industry and construction in this country, but does he think it was a good idea that the previous Labour Government placed so many orders for extra carriages in Japan?

[Chris Williamson]

Clearly, we live in a global economy, in which orders are placed with different companies around the world—Bombardier won some contracts, but some went abroad—but the fact is that the Transport Secretary said this morning that there is now no prospect of Bombardier getting the Thameslink contract.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Pugh Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his opening comments. I will certainly keep my nose clean and pull my socks up, if that is what he thinks is required. I know the job of opposition too well: the job of opposition is to scrabble around to make trivia newsworthy, and I congratulate him, on his debut on the Opposition Benches, on doing that. I am not going to comment on that trivia, but let me be clear when I say that we have many very talented teachers in schools today. We intend to build on that and ensure that organisations outside the reach of government, such as Teach First, are given the opportunity to expand and that we support them in doing so. I am sure we can all agree that we have great universities in this country. This Government are committed to supporting those universities, as we recognise the importance of all universities, courses and degrees, which, through their rigour, increase the intellectual capability of the nation and its skills base.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

2. If he will publish each representation his Department has received from (a) head teachers and (b) associations representing head teachers in favour of greater autonomy for schools.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

My Department has received more than 1,100 expressions of interest from schools in relation to my offer to open up the academies programme to all primary, secondary and special schools.

[Dr Pugh]

I am grateful for that brief answer, but perhaps the Secretary of State will acknowledge, in these days of evidence-led policy, that there is limited evidence of schools demanding freedom from local authorities, as opposed to freedom from central Government tinkering. Also, the majority of schools targeted to become the new academies became “outstanding” schools within the local authority family. Finally, it is rather hard to become better than outstanding.

[Michael Gove]

Evidence shows that academy freedoms have a key role to play in driving up standards, and that academy schools have improved their academic results at twice the rate of other schools as a result of using those freedoms. Moreover, the specific freedoms that an overwhelming number of head teachers wish to acquire will be used not only to improve the education of children in those schools, but to help other schools which desperately need freedom from local and central bureaucracy in order to drive up standards for all.