Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I repeat to my noble friend that this is not a decision that I can make; it is a decision for the Chief Whip and the usual channels.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, the specific question my noble friend Lady Chapman asked was about a quite common procedure in this House: if very substantial changes are proposed between Committee and Report, involving large numbers of new clauses et cetera, it is common that a Committee stage should be resumed to consider those precise additions so that the conversation can take place under Committee rules rather than Report rules. I know that the Minister cannot decide on the procedures of the House, but she is—I hope my saying so does not ruin her career—a very accommodating Minister, as far as she is able to be, who does listen to the House. Having listened to most of the Committee so far myself, it is quite clear that many issues need to be discussed if and when there is some clarification about the content of the Bill. That needs to be discussed in Committee.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am unable to give any more clarification on that point at this stage. I am sorry that I cannot say anymore to your Lordships.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend’s contribution falls within the remit of the undertaking that I have already given to the Committee.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, to my mind, the various assurances the Minister has given present a further complication. If she is able to give reassurance to the noble Duke about a particular type of school, which is pretty well defined, being able to guarantee its continued independence away from a multi-academy trust, as it were, what does that say to other schools which may have particular characteristics? What is the defining characteristic that distinguishes schools which can remain if they want to from those that cannot?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

To be clear, the undertaking I gave was around the Bill’s powers being used to compel an existing stand-alone academy—the noble Duke gave the example of a specialist maths school but it is not restricted to that—to join a multi-academy trust, not based on any further characteristics of the school. I hope that reassures the noble Lord.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 75, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, and I agree with pretty well everything that he said. I shall build on it with a practical example.

Amendment 75 says that consultation with parents and staff has to happen before the application to join a MAT. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord just said about the problems with the government amendment. Across many fields of government, not just the health service, the term “consultation” now has an extremely bad odour. That is something that really needs to change, or we need to find a new word or a different process that genuinely addresses the collection and exploration of views before a decision is made. That is not what people think of when you say “consultation” now, but that is the word in the amendment because that is the word we currently have.

I draw the Committee’s attention to the sad and traumatic case study of Moulsecoomb Primary School in Brighton, which is of course of particular interest to my noble friend Lady Jones. We have just seen first-choice applications to the school fall to their lowest level ever after the school was forced to become an academy despite considerable local community, family and parent resistance. Of course I wish the school all the best and very much hope that things work out for it, but we have to focus on what kind of disruption happens both to pupils and to a community if a decision is made that parents and the community are unhappy with. We have seen a number of pupils leave that school and a huge amount of time, energy and attention that might have gone into doing the best possible for the education of pupils going instead into resistance to an ideological decision being made. It is important that this whole set of amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would make this a co-creation and co-production process, not an imposition.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot resist making one general observation about the whole debate on these amendments. In winding up the previous debate, the Minister said that the strength of multi-academy trusts is that schools are stronger together. Talk about rediscovering the wheel; the whole argument of those of us who have been unhappy about so many aspects of academisation is precisely that we could see the strength of schools together in a community with local democratic control. I suppose that if you wait long enough these things come around again.