Multi-Academy Trusts: Salaries

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the justification is very simple: you take the number of pupils in that trust, divide the senior management team costs by that number and look at the extraordinary results being achieved. These schools were failing; they had been abandoned by local authorities for decades. These children are now getting extraordinary life chances.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I first declare that I have no connection with the Harris academies. What assessment have the Government made of the correlation between academy trusts and their senior management and the number of instances of fraud or serious misconduct in the presentation of statistics?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, as I said in my earlier answer to the noble Lord opposite, academy trusts are subject to a great deal of scrutiny and we continue to review this. For example, from April of this year, any academy trust requiring a related-party transaction in excess of £20,000 needs prior approval from the ESFA, the agency which manages them, and all have to be disclosed. Those are not requirements for local authority schools.