Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Laura Trott Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House, while welcoming measures to improve child protection and safeguarding, declines to give a Second Reading to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill because it undermines the long-standing combination of school freedom and accountability that has led to educational standards rising in England, effectively abolishes academy freedoms which have been integral to that success and is regressive in approach, leading to worse outcomes for pupils; because it ends freedom over teacher pay and conditions, making it harder to attract and retain good teachers; because it ends freedom over Qualified Teacher Status, making teacher recruitment harder; because it removes school freedoms over the curriculum, leading to less innovation; because repealing the requirements for failing schools to become academies and for all new schools to be academies will undermine school improvement and remove the competition which has led to rising standards; because the Bill will make it harder for good schools to expand, reducing parental choice and access to a good education; and calls upon the Government to develop new legislative proposals for children’s wellbeing including establishing a national statutory inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation, focused on grooming gangs.”

The Bill in front of us today is a Bill of two halves, one of which seeks to protect children and improve safeguarding and support for children in care. While the Opposition will seek to amend various aspects of what is being put forward in Committee, we do see value in it. But the other half of the Bill is the policy equivalent of a wrecking ball. It is an all-out assault on teachers, the education system and standards. It is nothing less than education vandalism and we will oppose it with every fibre of our beings.

The House must be in no doubt that the Bill really matters. It destroys the consensus built over two decades in England on how to improve schools—a consensus that has led to English children being the best in the western world at reading and maths. I cannot understand why the Government would seek to reverse that progress. What are they hoping to achieve? It seems to be policy built purely on ideology. More than that, it is wrong. I desperately hope that Government Members will come to see that.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you would think that a Labour Government would feel proud of the record they had on education under Blair. It was that Labour Government who innovated and made way for academies. When Blair talks about academies, he says that an academy

“belongs not to some remote bureaucracy, not to the rulers of government, local or national, but to itself, for itself. The school is in charge of its own destiny.”

That Blairite principle—a school in charge of its own destiny—was built on and expanded by subsequent Conservative Governments. What has been the result of this largely cross-party consensus? A thriving education system in which English children have soared up the programme for international student assessment rankings.

I see before me a move away from all the things that have enabled that success. The Bill seeks to turn its back on Labour’s history and take back those academy freedoms on curriculum, on pay and on behaviour. You name it, they are reversing it—all the things that have done so much to improve our education system. Step by step, the very policies that saw our schools rise up the international league tables are being reversed. I guarantee that just as we went up, as a result of the Bill we will come down those very same rankings. And who will suffer? The poorest pupils in society.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I have lived the dream of the academy programme from the very beginning under London Challenge, and I have seen Hackney children go to university—they did not when I was first elected. But the last Government brought in a wrecking ball. They made a smorgasbord of free schools, and offered an open chequebook to pay over the odds for inadequate sites that children were condemned to for years, with no accountability in the system as each bit fractured away. The reason why standards have notionally gone up is that some schools went 11 years without an inspection after they were rated were outstanding, but they were far from outstanding when they were next inspected. The right hon. Lady needs to take responsibility and accountability for what her Government did, and applaud the Secretary of State for what she is trying to do to put it right.

[Laura Trott]

I have a huge amount of respect for the hon. Lady, but she will know that the academy programme was expanded more than 50 times under the last Government, and we went up the education rankings, not down, under the previous Government.

The Bill would abolish academies in all but name, and for what? Because Education Ministers think that they know better than Katharine Birbalsingh and Sir Jon Coles. Blair said in 2005 that

“command public services today are no more acceptable than a command economy.”

Well, someone needs to tell the Education Secretary, because that is exactly what she is proposing in the Bill. It is anti-rigour, anti-choice and anti-accountability.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

One of the most impressive aspects of the previous Government was the work instituted by Michael Gove to build on the reforms of Tony Blair, and carried on by successive Secretaries of State, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). Will my right hon. Friend commit the next Conservative Government to reversing these changes and ensuring that we have more choice for headteachers on curriculum, hiring and firing and expulsions so that we bring competition to the schools sector, not the dead hand of a Whitehall bureaucrat?

[Laura Trott]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. To be clear, the Bill proposes a pay cut for nearly 20,000 teachers in future years, because it imposes national terms and conditions on teachers in academies. I have to ask: what problem are the Government trying to solve? Teachers outside of national pay scales are paid more, not less. What have they got against highly paid teachers? Why on earth are the Government coming here today and telling tens of thousands of teachers that their pay is too high? It is absurd. Levelling down seems to be this Government’s priority. The flexibilities given on terms and conditions allow academies to offer things such as a longer school day. Are the Labour Government proposing to ban that?

The explanatory notes to the Bill set a new standard in double speak when they praise the

“positive innovation and good practice in teachers’ pay and conditions in some academies”

and say that the Government want to

“ensure that local authority-maintained schools also have the opportunity to implement this”.

So what are they doing? Are they giving these same pay flexibilities to local authority schools? They are doing opposite. They are taking pay flexibilities away from academies. Do not try and make any sense of this, because it is impossible. It is entirely contradictory.

The Government are also removing the requirement for failing schools to be taken over by an academy, despite recognising the

“strong track record of multi academy trusts…turning around failing schools”.

What are they replacing it with? They mention

“regional improvement for standards and excellence (‘RISE’) teams”—

officials sitting in the Department for Education—but in another breath they said that those teams will not be involved in failing schools.

The Government have clearly totally failed; they do not understand that the reason that failing schools became academies by default is that it is the most effective intervention. If it is not mandatory, there will be lots of massive rows about what will happen to failing schools, and inevitable delays and legal challenges. What is the upshot? More time with children in failing schools not being dealt with. What is their plan for failing schools? What is their plan to protect those children from falling behind? What is the evidence that this approach is better? Have they trialled it anywhere? Why on earth are they putting this into a Bill without a clear alternative failure regime in place that evidence shows is at least as good?

The Bill is totally unacceptable and misunderstands why the academy order has been so important. I cannot say this strongly enough to the Government Benches: it needs to change.

[Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Lady concede that the academisation process has meant that the off-rolling that we have seen up and down this country has led to the crisis in SEND? That is the whole point of how the academy system has, apparently, improved standards. It has not—it has decreased inclusion. Will she please show us how the academy system has helped our children who are now stuck at home because they have been off-rolled?

[Laura Trott]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has confirmed that the Labour party is, indeed, anti-academy.

The Bill goes on and on—rampant centralisation in search of a cause. Why are the Government making all schools follow the national curriculum? Where is the evidence that there is a problem? Why are they putting in place sweeping powers to direct academies on unspecified things? What possible justification do they have for that? The notes say that it is to prevent “unreasonable use of power”. I say, look in the mirror.

[Graham Stuart]

My right hon. Friend has mentioned pay and power. I think they lie behind the Bill, because the education unions opposed at every step under the last Labour Government and under the last Conservative Government. The dinosaur tendency, which we just heard from the hon. Member for Gravesham (Dr Sullivan), shows that the Government viscerally dislike the freedom of academies, and they turn their face against the transformation of educational outcomes—not least for the poorest—because of ideology rather than a genuine commitment to the child.

[Laura Trott]

Sadly, I think my right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I see no other reason for the academy provisions to be in the Bill. It actually says in the explanatory notes that the primary aim of this legislation is to make the education system “more consistent”. That is at the heart of the problem today, because more consistency does not a better education system make. It is a classic Labour argument: one size must fit all, lopping the tops off the tallest poppies.

God forbid that schools might be able to innovate and learn from each other, and teachers might have freedoms in the classroom to try new things, backed up by a regulator that rigorously inspects and identifies failure. That is an excellent education system, but one that aims solely for consistency is not—a system of command and control, stifling teachers, supressing innovation, with everything decided in an office in Whitehall, far away from the classrooms. It is same old Labour: consistency for all, excellence for none.

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady has referred repeatedly to command, control and consistency, as if the latter were a problem. Presumably, she was part of the Government that sought to use academies as a mechanism by which to control individual schools from Whitehall, rather than having the individual involvement of local authorities.

[Laura Trott]

The whole point of academies is to drive up standards by freeing them from state control. The Bill undermines all that, which is why it would abolish academies in all but name. I urge Government Members to look at what the education part of the Bill would do. Look at the Labour history under Education Secretaries such Lord Adonis. Do not destroy something that the Labour party helped to build.

The Government must get rid of the academy elements of the Bill. They will not improve the school system; they will make it worse. Do not destroy the work and policy of two decades at the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen. We must ask ourselves: who this is all about? Are we on the side of ideology, unions and bureaucrats, or are we on side of the children and teachers, and making sure that the most disadvantaged get the best possible education? If it is the latter, the education section of the Bill must go.

Let me come to the final part of our amendment, on a national grooming gang inquiry. This debate has been taken too far away from the victims and what is right for them. There are legitimate arguments to be had in this area, but the one I will not accept is that to call for an inquiry is to be far right. The Labour Government have to understand that they must explain their actions, not just call the Opposition names. Local inquiries, which the Labour Government say are the answer, do not have legal powers to summon witnesses, take evidence under oath, or requisition evidence. Some of the leaders of the Manchester inquiry resigned after they said that they were blocked from accessing information.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

First, I commend the shadow Minister for this amendment, and for the last part in particular. As everybody in this Chamber probably knows, my politics are very much left of centre, but I fully support what the Conservative party is doing with this amendment, and my party will also be supporting the Conservatives on it. The reason is quite simple: the women and children who have faced injustice over the decades deserve to see the grossly perverted perpetrators who carried out unbelievable things against children over the years face justice. We seek justice for them. The Conservative party seeks justice for them. The amendment the Conservatives have put forward today encapsulates the feeling of not just this House, but this nation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Trott]

I am enormously grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support, and I agree completely. This is an enormous scandal, and yet we do not fully know the number of victims or perpetrators, or where it has taken place.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

I hope that the right hon. Lady and Opposition Members will reflect that what we have seen recently is a case study in disinformation turbocharged by social media, including personal smears. Today is the latest example of how those who flirt with populism misuse sensitive and important issues. It is exemplified by how the shadow Minister and other Conservative Members are willing to wreck a Bill that is actually about improving children’s wellbeing. She should reflect on how they chase headlines and jump on bandwagons, while my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench take action after years of inertia.

[Laura Trott]

I have been very clear today that the Bill will destroy the education system in this country and reverse the progress that we have made, and that is why we oppose it.

On the hon. Gentleman’s broader point, I condemn the language that has been used against hon. Members in this House. However, he will recall that the Labour party put out a social media graphic that greyed out the then Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), and claimed that he said that paedophiles should not go to prison. It is incumbent on all of us in this House to be moderate in our language.

This is an enormous scandal, and yet we do not fully know the number of victims or perpetrators, or where it has taken place. The previous Conservative Government set up the grooming gangs taskforce, which made more than 500 arrests in the first year. With 1,400 victims in Rotherham alone, this will potentially encompass tens of thousands of children. We therefore need a comprehensive national inquiry into grooming gangs to tell the truth.

[Esther McVey]

Just for clarification, should Government Members do the right thing tonight and vote for our amendment, there would be no wrecking of any Bill—they just need to vote the right way.

[Laura Trott]

As ever, my right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. There is no reason that action cannot be taken at the same time as a national inquiry—it is not an either/or. If the Government want to disagree with that, they will have to argue their case on the facts, and not simply smear any opposition to them as far right or say that parliamentary procedure means it cannot happen.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Laura Trott]

No, I am going to finish. This is an opportunity for MPs across the House to give victims the justice they deserve. Hon. Members have heard our arguments on the inquiry and on schools. I hope that today, when we vote on our reasoned amendment, the Government see sense on both.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.