Employment Rights Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Laurence Turner Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

Some are definitely more memorable than others.

Amendment 168, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches, would change the matters that are within the remit of the school support staff negotiating body in relation to academy staff, limiting it to the creation of a framework to which academy employers must have regard in all but “exceptional circumstances”. I am sure that Government Members will agree to a moderate amendment in the spirit of what they seek to do.

As I said in the debate on clause 28, which introduces schedule 3, in 2010 the then Conservative Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, rightly abolished the school support staff negotiating body. The Conservative Government had a clear and principled reason for that: employers should have the flexibility to set pay and conditions locally, rather than having a top-down, centralised framework imposed on them. Instead of giving employers the flexibility to do what works best for them, this Government are establishing a national terms and conditions handbook on training, career progression routes and fair pay rates for school support staff.

These things can sometimes get taken out of context, so I want to be clear: we are not advocating for a race to the bottom on pay and conditions for school support staff, but we believe that the current arrangements are working well and have allowed for innovation that is beneficial for pupils—real children up and down the land receiving their education. Our worries about the re-establishment of the school support staff negotiating body are principally that we believe that school employers must retain a degree of freedom and flexibility to recruit, develop, remunerate and deploy their staff for the benefit of the children in their community—their setting—to achieve their particular aims from a school improvement and inclusion perspective.

Children with special educational needs and disabilities rely on schools’ ability to deploy staff to meet their individual needs, and stifling innovation in staffing to meet those needs would be the greatest barrier to reforming the SEND system. In particular, ensuring that mainstream provision can meet the needs of SEND children requires, in its very essence, an innovative use of support staff resource.

As I have said in previous debates, I salute all support staff, whether they support children with SEND or other- wise. They are great assets to every school who do an enormous amount of good work for every child they work with on a daily basis—I am thinking of the example given earlier by the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield, and the way in which they interact with and support my own children in their schools in Buckinghamshire. They are hugely important, but this is about ensuring local decision making, local flexibility and the local ability to shape what is right for children’s education, development and future life prospects.

For those reasons, we believe that the statist approach created by the Bill is fundamentally misguided, and that children, particularly those with additional needs, could be worse off because of it. All school employers operate in a competitive market to attract and retain staff. I accept that in the education world it is currently particularly difficult to recruit teachers and support staff—there is no doubt that that has been a challenge for a considerable number of years—but, particularly in relation to support staff, schools compete with other local establishments, including in the private sector, and employers in local markets. Incentives to attract and retain staff are needed.

Our concerns with the re-establishment of the school support staff negotiating body do not end there. Academy trusts sign a funding agreement with the Secretary of State that gives them certain freedoms, among which is the ability to set pay and conditions for staff. What the Government are trying to do with the Bill is therefore to unpick a clear, established and positive freedom that academy trusts have. To take that away from them would be a retrograde step. The Bill explicitly overrides that contract. As for school support staff, it states:

“Where the person is employed by the proprietor of an Academy, any provision of the Academy arrangements relating to the Academy has no effect to the extent that it makes provision that is prohibited by, or is otherwise inconsistent with, the agreement.”

His Majesty’s loyal Opposition worry that this is just the start of the Government’s longer-term mission to unwind academy freedoms, and that it shows that they fail to understand how to support educational excellence.

The data on key stage 4 performance recently released by the Department for Education shows that academies and free schools tend to perform better than other types of school. We therefore believe that it would be counterproductive to unwind one of the key tenets that has led them to where they are today. There is always room for improvement, but when things are travelling in the right direction it is foolish to put barriers up. Our amendment would change the SSSNB’s remit so as to create a framework that academies must have regard to but are not compelled to follow. That seems a reasonable compromise, and I ask the Government to consider it carefully.

In this context—we are all creatures of our own experience—I think particularly of examples from my constituency of Mid Buckinghamshire and the county of Buckinghamshire more widely. I think I brought up this example in relation to other sectors in earlier Committee sittings. Because the county of Buckinghamshire borders London boroughs, rigid pay scales make recruitment an even greater challenge, because of the London weighting issue. Many teaching assistants, school support staff and, frankly, staff in any sector—we will come to adult social care later in the Bill, and care workers are equally affected—who live in Buckinghamshire and perhaps want to work there feel compelled to go and get the extra money that the London weighting would bring by applying for a job in, say, the London boroughs of Hillingdon or Harrow. Nobody can blame them for doing that, but it creates a recruitment challenge for Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey and other London-bordering counties.

The amendment seeks to correct for what the Government are trying to do with schedule 3, and so to maintain the freedom that allows academies in Buckinghamshire and those other counties to dynamically adapt their pay and offering for school support staff and counter those challenges. It would mean that schools in Buckinghamshire that want to employ people who want to work in Buckinghamshire can get them on board, rather than there being a false incentive that forces people to take jobs in one of the London boroughs and secure the London weighting that goes with them. That is one practical example of why I believe that academies, and free schools for that matter, should have that core freedom and flexibility to get it right for their children.

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz.

I think I am correct in saying that Buckinghamshire is one area that has opted out of the National Joint Council, so I recognise that the shadow Minister brings a particular perspective to the debate, but the final line of the amendment states that

“a prescribed matter is, or is not, to be treated as relating to 30 career progression”.

I assume that is just a typographical error, but it would be good to have that point clarified.

More widely, I do not think the amendment is necessary. In some ways, it is quite loosely worded. It seeks to put in the Bill a reference to a framework, but a framework is not defined and that would not be clarified through later regulations. Therefore, I am not sure that the wording before us would necessarily resolve the Opposition’s aim, and the meaning of “framework” is probably not something that we would want to have out in the courts.

On the wider issues, the shadow Minister said that the proposals in the Bill would overwrite the funding agreements, but part of those agreements is a requirement for academy employers to have regard to the academies handbook, which is altered as part of the normal course of public policy, so such variations are not especially new. As I say, I do not think that what is in front of us would achieve the Opposition’s aim. The reinstatement of the school support staff negotiating body was a manifesto commitment. It would be problematic to say that a manifesto commitment could not be implemented because funding agreements were already in place. It is quite proper for the Government of the day to pursue their public policy objectives in this manner.

I would like to correct the record. In the morning sitting I said that freedom of information requests had established that, where data was held, the vacancy rate for teaching assistants was 10%. The actual figure is 18%. I just wanted to put that higher number on the record.

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I should warn the Committee that I have a frog in my throat and a bit of a cough, but I think it is known that I used to work for the former Prime Minister, Baroness May, and I have seen how to get through a speech with a cough.

The amendment is important because it seeks to protect one of the academy freedoms that have made English schools the best in the west. I say English and not British schools advisedly, because education is devolved and, in Scotland and Wales, standards have gone not forward but backward. In Wales, the average pupil reaches about the same level of attainment as the average disadvantaged pupil in England, yet it is the Welsh model that the Government seem to be intent to follow. So the amendment is all about seeking to protect the academy freedoms behind the success of the school reforms of which the Conservatives are rightly proud.

According to the programme for international student assessment—or PISA—rankings, English primary school- children are the best readers in the west. On 15-year- olds, they say that schools in England are 11th in the world in maths, up from 27th in 2009; 13th in science, up from 16th; and 13th in reading, up from 25th. That is an unqualified success story. Yet I am afraid the Education Secretary and Ministers in the current Government repeatedly claimed that standards fell under the Conservatives.

--- Later in debate ---

I can see you raising an inquisitive eyebrow, Ms Vaz, but this is a really important point to make, because the principles of academisation, and why it has worked, are the context for this discussion. Academisation was part of a painstaking programme of school reform overseen by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary in the coalition Government. Although it seems that after years of consensus between the parties about principles such as academisation, which started under the Tony Blair Government, the Labour party may be reversing its support through measures such as this Bill, I hope that the Liberal Democrats might feel able to join us in supporting the amendment.

[Laurence Turner]

The hon. Member is making an interesting argument. I am keen to tease out the evidence for the assertion that there is a relationship between the decentralisation of pay and terms and conditions, and performance. Can he explain why, then, the overwhelming majority of academies subscribe to the National Joint Council green book terms and conditions? Is that not, in fact, an argument for collective bargaining as a handmaiden to academic success?

[The Chair]

Stay within scope please, Mr Timothy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Gibson]

I appreciate the point, and the shadow Minister is quite right: I was assuming that without support there might be such a situation. However, that does not detract from the fact that in most situations, having a body that someone can go to that is independent from their employer has to be a supporting situation. Nobody would go to that body for support if they were being paid above the average in their area.

[Laurence Turner]

Is it the case—perhaps this gets to the heart of the matter—that the proposed way that the SSSNB would work is that a matter would be referred to a body, an agreement would be reached, and it would be passed back to the Secretary of State to write it into regulations? Nowhere in the Bill does it say that that would be a ceiling. If it was something that was negotiated between the parties, it would be a floor that could be improved on. There is nothing in the Bill to stop that happening.

[Sarah Gibson]

I appreciate the clarification. That makes perfect sense—it would be unlikely that a body representing employees would create a ceiling, so I cannot help feeling that that issue is not likely to come up. With that in mind, I am unable to support the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith]

Amendment 123 requires the Secretary of State to undertake an impact assessment of the costs to the education sector before making or changing arrangements related to the school support staff negotiating body. I have already spoken, probably at greater length than anybody particularly wished me to, about our reservations over the re-establishment of the body—in particular the way that it will override the traditional academy freedoms that seem to trigger Government Members so much.

I am interested in what assessment the Secretary of State has undertaken about the current arrangements for pay and conditions for support staff, and in whether the Minister can provide concrete evidence about the shortcomings and how those would be rectified by re-establishing the school support staff negotiating body. In other words, is the policy driven by evidence or by ideology? The amendment asks for the Secretary of State to come clean about the costs of the proposed arrangements, not just to the schools budget but to pupils in schools.

We had some back-and-forth earlier about how, if they are to work, the changes made by the Bill need to marry up with the real-life pay settlements and budgets made available by the Treasury. Otherwise, the net result will be that schools will have to obey the rules as set out in the Bill without getting any additional money to pay for doing so. Who will suffer if the school is asked to do that? It will be the children and pupils, because of the number of textbooks, laptops, iPads or interactive screens and boards—all the things that are used in education—that the school can buy.

[Laurence Turner]

I am trying to understand what the shadow Minister means by cost to the education sector. Does he mean the running cost of the body itself or the cost of an agreement? If he means the latter, how could that possibly be accounted for when, as we have heard, any new pay scale is likely to be some years away and would be subject to negotiation?

[Greg Smith]

The answer is, of course, both. There will be a cost to the body and a cost to the individual education establishments—the academies, free schools and so on—that still fundamentally rely on a funding settlement. One pot of money can only go so far. I accept that the body itself will be separately funded, but the pay awards that individual schools would have to make will not. If schools are being asked to swallow the cost, they will have to find it within their budgets.

I am sure that I am not alone in having visited schools—other hon. and right hon. Members will have done so in their own constituencies—where headteachers say that they have to have this debate when setting their budget every year. Over the decades, Governments of all political persuasions have given them things to deliver and rules to follow but only one pot of money, so something has to give. If they are to follow the rules, the ones who suffer are children, through the equipment and books that the school is able to purchase.

The amendment is a reasonable one. It requires one of those impact assessments, so that we can all be absolutely clear. When we vote, in whichever way, on this Bill as it passes through Committee, Report and Third Reading, as well as ping-pong with the other place, we can be really clear about what these provisions mean on the ground for real schools and real children going through their education. As I think we all accept, that is so important to their future lives.

Amendment 124 requires the annual reports of the school support staff negotiating body to include the cost of pay and conditions agreements. We believe it is important that there is transparency over the additional costs and burdens that this new body will impose on school employers. What might those costs be? Will the Department for Education appropriately compensate school employers for them? I will not repeat the arguments that I made on amendment 123, but the point is fundamentally the same. The amendments are designed to probe the Government properly on what the measure will mean in the real world.

[Laurence Turner]

I want to come back on some of the points that the shadow Minister raised. I appreciate his clarification about exactly what information the Opposition are trying to tease out with amendment 124. I hope he does not mind me saying that the cost of any future settlement agreement is speculative in nature. We heard from the Minister earlier that part of the remit that Ministers will give the body will be about affordability and the funding available at the time. It will probably be several years in the future when that new pay scale comes into force, albeit that there is some good work that the SSSNB could be getting on with in the interim that would have very low costs for the sector.

We have some information about how much the body itself would cost. An answer to a written parliamentary question in 2011 put the estimated cost saving of abolishing the SSSNB at £1.4 million over the spending review period. That was about £350,000 a year. In today’s prices, we are looking at close to half a million. That is a very small fraction of a percentage of the Department’s budget, and it is probably an overestimate given that civil service wages have not kept pace with inflation over that time. The former education spokesperson for the Labour party, Andy Burnham, who was involved in the setting up of the original SSSNB, described it as a “low-cost panel”. That is exactly what we are talking about here. I hope that that provides some reassurance that amendment 124 is not necessary.

The SSSNB produced annual reports, which were published by the Government in the normal way. The Department for Education tracks the costs of school support staff pay increases. That information is made available, including to sector representatives, through the schools and academies funding group. I hear what the shadow Minister says, but I do not think these amendments are necessary because the information is unknowable or already available, or it will be made available in the normal course of business.

[Sarah Gibson]

For similar reasons as I was concerned about previous amendments, I feel that I cannot support this amendment. I think it is unnecessary to add more complications to the system on things that are probably already covered in other areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Gibson]

I support the schedule. Over the past 10 years, we have seen how difficult it has been to retain and employ support staff in our schools, partly because they do not see a career progression and do not see themselves valued. I hope that this body will help to support those staff and will allow them to feel that they are very much part of the education authority and so have that support.

[Laurence Turner]

We have covered a huge amount of ground in this debate, so I will restrict my remarks to a few matters that have been raised. I say to the shadow Minister that if he thought that the Minister’s summary was bureaucratic and difficult to follow, he should sit through some meetings of the National Joint Council for Local Government Services, which is the dominant mode through which pay and terms and conditions are set.

It is worth reflecting briefly on some of the practical issues in schools that can be remedied through this new approach. It is a well-known problem that schoolteachers’ and school support staff’s pay award dates are misaligned. For schoolteachers, it is September; for school support staff, it is April, with the financial year. That can be a nightmare for bursars, school business managers and large employers, who have to plan their budgets with that significant difference.

In a previous life, I sat through a working group convened by the Local Government Association through the NJC on a vexed issue: how can school support staff’s work out of term-time be calculated on a term-time-only contract, because they are accumulating annual leave but cannot take all of it during term? It was a bit like a version of this Committee that reached no conclusions and never ended. These are real problems that result from the ossification of the NJC system. It is not appropriate for school support staff workers. As we all know, when a pay and grading system becomes ossified, legal danger lurks for employers in the inconsistencies that emerge.

There is no justification for saying that TA level 2 means something completely different in neighbouring authorities. That can become a block on people’s progression and ambitions to relocate. Multi-academy trusts and other academy employers overwhelmingly remain subscribed to the NJC, because this system of pay and grading, which has grown up over decades, is labyrinthine and difficult to follow, and most academy trusts do not have the HR and payroll functions to put something new in place.

We can put some figures on this. The school workforce census carried out by the Department for Education collects data on NJC coverage compared with other pay gradings. For local authority maintained schools, 80% of school support staff are paid on NJC grades, when non-responses are excluded. For academies, the figure is 77%, so there is no huge difference between the two sectors. Even among the remainder, some staff are employed under separate agreements with Soulbury terms, so are quite separate, and a high proportion—possibly even the majority—are paid on NJC-like terms and conditions, although there might be some local improvements to those pay gradings. That is the issue that the Confederation of School Trusts raised in its written evidence, and I think it has been addressed through this Committee. We are seeking to establish a floor, not a ceiling, so local improvements can still be made where employers and trade unions agree them.

The clause takes a lot from the lessons that were learned from the previous iteration of the SSSNB, which is welcome. The clauses on the adult social care negotiating body contain a general provision that any specified matter relating to employment could be referred to that body. Proposed new section 148J is drafted a bit more tightly for the SSSNB—at least, that is my reading of it—so I wonder whether there is a case for aligning the wording for the two bodies.

Let me go back to why we are doing this. School support staff are the hidden professionals in the education system. I did not just represent school support staff; I was once a school governor in a specialist SEND setting, and there were school support staff and teaching assistants. It is important to remember that the term covers site staff, cleaners, caterers and all sorts of other workers, who often do not get talked about. Those workers make lifesaving interventions—they may have to administer medicine or perform a medical intervention that literally keeps a child alive—but they are paid about £14,000 a year. That represents a failure of central Government to account for the pay, conditions and wellbeing of all the people who work in schools. The measures we are discussing are hugely important and welcome, and it is very welcome that the Bill has been brought forward this early in the Parliament.

[Justin Madders]

I am grateful for Members’ contributions. The shadow Minister gently joshed me about the technical detail but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield pointed out, that is the nature of the beast: it is important that all eventualities are covered. We have not reinvented the wheel here; we have lifted much of what was already in place for the previous iteration of this body, and we have taken some further learnings from that.

On my hon. Friend’s points, we have not needed to take the broader powers of the adult social care body, which we will discuss shortly, because the clauses relating to the SSSNB give it a remit to negotiate terms and conditions, as well as advise on training and career progression. That is broader than its 2009 remit, and we think it covers the areas that are recognised as those that need to be included, in addition to the powers the body had in 2009. Of course, the Bill has to be detailed—it has to be right—because it will affect 800,000 people, and a lot of people in that workforce are on low pay, have poor career prospects and are frustrated at the lack of progression in their job. When setting up such a body, it is important to cover all eventualities.

This is not a novel concept, but it is an important step forward in our industrial relations in this country, and in tackling low pay and insecurity. I am proud that we are able to discuss it today.

Question put, That the schedule, as amended, be the Third schedule to the Bill.