Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with all noble Lords this morning—except the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty—that there is overwhelming evidence of the benefits of school uniforms for both children and schools, so I support the intention of the Bill. However, I do not support the department failing to produce the draft guidance for us to see. Nor do I support legally enforceable obligations being imposed in the form of guidance which bypasses parliamentary scrutiny. These are serious deficiencies which ought to be remedied.

Way back last September when this Bill was in Committee in another place, the Minister there—my right honourable friend the very able Nick Gibb—said that the guidance would be published as soon as possible. On Report, he said that it was “progressing well” when asked by Chris Chope MP to produce a draft before the Bill concluded in this House. So where is it? It is not rocket science to convert voluntary guidance into statutory guidance and show us a draft.

We are being asked to buy a pig in a poke here and are being fobbed off. The department has had ample time to tweak the guidance into statutory guidance, but it does not want to show it to us until the Bill is passed and then, hey presto, the guidance will miraculously appear. There is only one valid solution for that ploy, which is to lay the guidance before Parliament for scrutiny in the form of a statutory instrument.

In new Section 551A(2) inserted by Clause 1, the Secretary of State is given exceptionally wide-ranging powers to make laws on anything he thinks “relevant” with regard to uniforms—not even the normal parliamentary test of anything he thinks “necessary” or “appropriate”, but simply “relevant”.

I am the chair of the Delegated Powers Committee, but I am speaking in a personal capacity this morning since my committee has not yet looked at the Bill or reported on it. I can say with three years of experience that this ploy of designating something which has statutory effect as mere guidance and not laying it before Parliament has been an unacceptable and growing phenomenon in recent years. Measures which are in effect regulations are rebranded as “guidance” or “protocols” instead. This guidance will be interpreted by thousands of schools, and some parents or groups of parents and uniform suppliers will disagree with the decisions, and those disagreements will ultimately end up in court. How ironic that judges will decide on the guidance and Parliament will never have had a chance to look at it.

This so-called guidance should be a statutory instrument, with the negative procedure only so that it can become law immediately but could be prayed against if necessary. It is not acceptable for the department to boast that it will consult widely with everyone—everyone except Parliament. I therefore propose to table in Committee a little amendment that the guidance be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. I do not want to hear excuses that this will delay the Bill. No doubt the department will say that it cannot accept any amendments because then the Commons will have to approve them. There is no problem there; the Commons has ample time to do that if it accepts the amendment. In any case, that should have been thought of before trying to bounce this Bill through without producing the draft statutory guidance or seeking to avoid parliamentary scrutiny.

If something is important enough to be made statutory, it is important enough for Parliament to scrutinise it, no matter how little.