Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have not yet heard anything I disagree with, so I shall try to make some different points. This is an odd, strange Bill. On the face of it, there is not a lot in it; however, the issues it addresses are of prime importance. There is nothing more important than the future structure of our school system. Otherwise, we keep revisiting it and do not do the things we really want to.

A lot of us here, especially those of us who have had the honour of having ministerial responsibility, would like to take this opportunity to put the structures behind us and get on with what really makes the difference: what happens in the classroom and outside the school, and the relationship with a whole range of children’s services. On one level, I welcome this opportunity and the Government’s intention to sort out the structures, because I do not like the fragmented, dual system: it is a waste and builds up bureaucracy. There is so much good will to sort it out that I am not quite sure how the Government have managed to mess it up as much as they have.

I find two things odd about the Bill. One is the broad range of powers the Government are taking—the way they are trying to solve this problem. The second is that it is really difficult to table amendments to it. I had a discussion with my Front-Bench colleagues yesterday about the detail of some of the amendments tabled. I asked, “Why have you put that down?” They explained very clearly that that was the only way we could get the debate going. The Bill is not written with a sensible structure—a clear vision, objectives and a means to achieve them: the Government’s clear thinking—which, as my noble friend Lord Knight said, we could amend. All it says is that the Government will take powers on anything they want. It is really tough to amend that, because it does not give the criteria against which they will judge whether to take powers, or what they will do with the powers they take. There is nothing to amend because it is all about the future. That is why the report from the Delegated Powers Committee is critical. There is nothing to discuss because the Government are not saying what they will do.

Therefore, I come to the conclusion—I do not often say this, and I say it in a very mellow tone—that they really ought to withdraw the Bill and think again. That is not to score a political point. The Government’s wish to make this coherent is laudable, and I should like to be with them on that and to have a really good debate on the things we disagree on and on which we agree, but we cannot, given the structure of the Bill.

There is a risk that we will miss the enormity of the changes because of the breadth of the Bill and because it does not spell out what it is doing. I am not saying that that is deliberate—it may be, but I am giving the Government the benefit of the doubt. It talks about academies, but in reality we are talking about every single school in our country. If the proposals in the White Paper are enacted and every school becomes an academy, the Bill will make changes not just to the 47% or 48% of schools that are academies; it is a blueprint for every school in our country.

If you look at the White Paper, there seems to be a wish to have every school as an academy by 2030. I want something better than that. I want to know whether the Government are going to do anything if that does not happen naturally by 2030, because it is important that we know whether that is what we are talking about. I do not want anyone to have to revisit this legal structure in five or six years’ time; that would be a waste of effort.

We are not really talking about academies because, if you look at some of the examples given, the powers that are going to go the Secretary of State are absolutely with academies currently, not the Secretary of State. Although the Bill talks about

“powers in relation to Academies”

and it is claimed that all the Government are doing is putting in law what is in the agreement, with respect, that is not the case. Looking down the list—I had only a quick look; I did not do any checking—I spotted five things. I would suggest that the curriculum, the length of the school day, the appointment of staff, the remuneration of staff and the admissions code are all freedoms that were given to academies but are not available to maintained schools. I am not saying whether I think that is right or wrong, but this clause takes all those freedoms away from academies and gives them to the Secretary of State. So this is no longer about academies. You can use that word but it will not mean an academy in the way we have known it if this Bill becomes law.

The Bill will also affect maintained schools, but they will not be maintained schools in the way we have understood them if it becomes law. At the moment, maintained schools have a relationship with the local authority. They will not have that relationship if the Bill becomes law, but it does not say anything about what the local authority’s relationship with any of these schools will be. That is what I find confusing because, essentially, the Bill sets up a structure for a school system that is neither an academy nor a maintained school in the way we understand them, but a new type of school that is part of a nationalised school system, with all direction, powers and control coming from the Secretary of State, with the local authority having some involvement in special needs and the interests of children, and with the freedoms that were formerly given to academies no longer there.

I am not saying whether that is good or bad—in my view, some of it is good and some of it bad, and I want a debate—but this is no way to change the school system. These changes are enormous. They overturn the work of Michael Gove and other previous Conservative Ministers, as well as that of my noble friend Lord Adonis and other previous Labour Ministers. One of them is sitting behind me; I suspect that others will join in. So I say to the Minister on this set of amendments —my noble friend Lord Knight put it very well—that we want the debate as well. It would be better for our country and the system if the Minister took this Bill back, as we need pre-legislative scrutiny of it, and came back in due course with a structure that will enable us to debate all these things.

If we were to set up a school structure that is neither an academy nor maintained, I would be very happy about that. I would like to put those old rows and debates behind me. If we have not learned something from both those things over the past 20 years, we need our heads examining. We could spend two years thinking up a name for it—I do not mind—but I cannot do that with this Bill. It is not written in a way that makes it possible to amend it in that form. Yet it is no more and no less than an attempt to set up a blueprint for a brand new structure of schools in this country. I really do hope that the Minister will volunteer to do this in a different way.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is with some trepidation that I follow two such experts in education on these Benches. However, I see an uncanny parallel with what has happened in the health service, which I know a little about, and education. At about the same time that my noble friend Lord Adonis was proposing academies, in the then Department of Health we were proposing the creation of foundation trusts. The idea of NHS foundation trusts was to get out of the kind of micromanagement that the report today on the NHS talks about, and to give much more control locally, making those foundation trusts which were going to be the best performers much more accountable to local membership and to the population.

However, after the initial enthusiasm of my good friend Alan Milburn and the team of Ministers then, the normal centralising powers of the Department of Heath took over. Gradually, it has assumed more and more control again over those individual trusts. Now there is virtually no difference between a foundation trust and a non-foundation trust. Listening to my noble friends, I think that there is an uncanny parallel where essentially the Secretary of State for Education is giving himself the tools to have direct responsibility for each school within the system.

My ministerial experience of trying to run the NHS, where we had 300 bodies accountable to us, is that this will not end happily. Do Ministers realise that they will have to answer here for the performance of each individual school? Do they realise the enormity of that task? It then brings us to the problem that we have: that this Bill is ill timed because the department have not thought it through. Whatever our view on academies—there is a somewhat mixed view, on these Benches at least—there is general agreement that it is right for the Secretary of State to set some standards for our school system, and that there must be much more coherence in the system.

I was very struck by the pretty dispassionate report by the Institute for Government three or four months ago on academies, in which it makes the point that, with academies now making up almost 50% of all schools, we have a very inefficient dual system. Local authorities must still support a diminishing number of schools with declining resources, and the regulatory system for academies is incoherent, with financial regulations split from performance management and no single person or office in the system able to hold multi-academy trusts accountable for poor educational performance. The institute then says it is no wonder that far too many multi-academy trusts do not add value to the schools within their control.

The Minister referred at Second Reading to the accountability system and the ability of her department and its officials to hold the system to account. She said that Ministers were launching a review to establish the appropriate model and options for how best to regulate the English school system. Why on earth does she not do the review, see what the outcomes are, then bring legislation to your Lordships’ House and let us properly debate and seek to amend it? I urge her to listen to my noble friends and take this Bill back, or at least to pause it to allow for more work to be done and for us to have proper scrutiny of this vital legislation.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I am not suggesting that we debate whether Clauses 2 and 4 stand part of the Bill at this moment; they are out of sync. We cannot discuss them until we discuss Clause 1 under the next group of amendments.

As has already been mentioned, I and my noble friends Lord Agnew and Lord Nash—both Ministers who have had direct responsibility for failing schools, my noble friend Lord Agnew for two years—have concluded that all the clauses from Clause 1 to Clause 18 should not stand part. We consider that this is a constitutional Bill and an enormous grab for power by Whitehall. It is quite amazing. Some people in the Department for Education have wanted this for years but have now given in to their worst voices. We think that the powers that they have are totally unacceptable in dealing with the problems.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord recall that the last time this House intervened on a statutory instrument was in relation to working families’ tax credits? We moved an amendment to delay its introduction, which was passed, and of course that led to the Government withdrawing their proposal, but this House was threatened with abolition by the Government of the time.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I do remember that, but as a hereditary Peer I am probably more familiar than the noble Lord with the threat of abolition. That whetted axe been swinging around my head for a good few years; I dodged it once.

There is this idea that Parliament should not interfere in this process because that is naughty and bad. I hope that the Government will at least allow us to have some process where this is discussed or to at least point out how this process of shining a little light—and indeed pouring a little water, if we may take a plant analogy—on these things will work. How will we know what we are getting?

On the other amendments in this group, I am learning not to prejudge the noble Lord, Lord Baker. The interesting thing about certain schools and establishments set up outside the system is why they are brought in. The noble Lord nods at me; I will take that as a win.

On the final clause stand part notice in this group and the reports of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Constitution Committee, I hope we can get a little further into those. I do not think I have ever been involved with a Bill which has had this type of reception. It is pretty appalling that the Government have done this. I therefore hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to tell us how the Government will make sure they know what is coming. If there is regulation and stuff that I have not seen where we can learn what is coming—it is not in the Bill—let us know where and point us in the right direction. Show us how it will be easily accessible and how we can have an informed debate that starts here and goes outside, and how it feeds in too. That, at the very least, is required if we continue to change the way the system works by regulation. I beg to move.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 27A. This speech will be very short. The amendment is defensive because, if Clause 1 continues to be part of the Bill when it comes back on Report, I will have to move it again, but of course if it disappears this amendment will fall. The Government realised half way through preparing the Bill that by giving such powers to the Secretary of State which have no checks or balances in them and no requirements for consultation, a maverick Secretary of State could abolish grammar schools and selection and could intervene with religious schools with regard to the amount of worship that they have. I am shocked by that. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, raised what would happen if we had Jacob Rees-Mogg as the Secretary of State for Education. I shudder at the prospect. Similarly, what would happen if you had a Corbynite Secretary of State? I shudder at that prospect as well, because the powers of direction are absolutely overwhelming.

Protections were introduced for grammar schools and faith schools because they were so different, and I think the schools I have been promoting are sufficiently different as well. University technical colleges are totally different from a normal school. Take, for example, their curriculum for 14 to 16. Our youngsters—the girls as well as the boys—will spend two days a week making things with their hands, designing things on computers, making projects which local employers bring in or visiting companies. That is totally different. A Secretary of State with these untrammelled powers could simply stop them doing that and therefore destroy the distinction of the school, so this is only a defensive amendment if the Government do not see sense.

I must congratulate the Minister on her reply. As she recognised, no one has spoken in full-hearted support of the Bill. The right reverend Prelate came close: he gave it a sort of half-blessing, but not a full one. Everyone else who has spoken was highly critical of it, so I hope this amendment will not be necessary when Clause 1 is withdrawn.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I have two clause stand part amendments, but also added my name to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. Fleetingly, when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Baker, suggest that a Minister could, at the stroke of a pen, abolish grammar schools, I warmed towards Clauses 1 and 3, but, as he suggested earlier, leaving aside the educational issues and the future governance and oversight of academies, some constitutional issues are involved.

As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, we cannot ignore the reports of our own Select Committees. The Delegated Powers Committee was clear that it issued new guidance to departments following its report where it said that it

“expected that bills introduced in the current session would reflect the principles set out in our report and revised guidance”.

This was a Select Committee of Parliament informing departments how legislation needed to be drafted in future. It was not a suggestion; it was a report of a distinguished Select Committee setting out how departments needed to legislate in future. It said that the principles were,

“first, that primary legislation, and the powers conferred by it, should be drafted on the basis of the principles of parliamentary democracy (namely parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law and the accountability of the executive to Parliament); and, second, that the threshold between primary and delegated legislation should be founded on the principle that the principal aspects of policy should be on the face of a bill and only its detailed implementation left to delegation”—

through secondary legislation. This appears to have been totally ignored by the Minister and her department. Why is that, and what factors did her department take into account when sending instructions to parliamentary counsel? Had it even looked at the new guidance set by your Lordships’ Select Committee? I very much doubt it.

In its recent report, the Delegated Powers Committee said that

“it would be possible for the Bill to set out the standards that apply to academies coupled with a power to amend them where speed and necessity really did require this to be done by regulations”.

In its note to the committee, the department essentially said, first, that it might need to act quickly and therefore Parliament could not adapt if standards needed to be changed and, secondly, that it was all too technical and detailed for Parliament to consider. Frankly, as the committee says, those are ridiculous arguments, because there are any number of ways in which Parliament can deal with urgent matters quickly. The idea that we cannot deal with technical matters in legislation is shown to be ludicrous given the technical details that we have in Bills day after day. I refer the Minister to the Procurement Bill, which is going through your Lordships’ House at the moment. It is extremely technical in detail, but I have great confidence that your Lordships’ House will be up to dealing with it.

The Minister said in relation to Clause 1 that the Government are not aiming to restrict freedoms, but they cannot speak for future Secretaries of State. The other thing she said was, “Don’t worry, this is all going to be sorted out through regulations, of which Parliament has oversight”. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked, what can we do when we have regulations? We can have a debate for a maximum of two hours. We can make our points. We can pass a regret Motion, which has absolutely no effect. So I am afraid that that offer does not amount to very much.

Clause 3, which we have not yet discussed—I realise that there are amendments to it—is in a sense the most extraordinary use of a Henry VIII power. It allows a Minister to disapply any educational legislation from any school or other educational institution. It is the most remarkable, open-ended Henry VIII clause I have ever seen. As the Delegated Powers Committee said:

“It is not good enough to say that ministers, rather than Parliament, should be able to make law because ministers can be responsive to the needs of the academy trust system. So can Parliament.”


That ought to be Parliament’s role.

As noble Lords said in the debate on the previous group, this is a major structural educational reform. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is right: it is displacement activity because clearly the Government have not thought out what standards they want. They certainly do not know what structure of accountability they require in relation to academy trusts. That work has got to be done. Presumably, the department pulled something out. Departments always have legislative requirements. Every department always has a Bill up its sleeve—in the case of the Department of Health, in my experience, it always has three or four Bills up its sleeve—but it really is not good enough to say, “Everything will be all right. A lot of the standards are already there, we can bring a regulation and we are doing a review on the structure of governance”. We really cannot let this go.

I see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, is here. He made a very telling intervention in the debate on the Queen’s Speech when he referred to the growing imbalance between Parliament and the Executive. He referred to the two Select Committees’ reports and concluded—I am at risk of quoting Judge to Judge—by asking

“what is the point of us being here if … we never do anything … except talk?”—[Official Report, 12/5/22; col. 130.]

He hinted that, the next time a Bill comes along with a Henry VIII clause, such as Clause 3, that has not been given careful explanation in advance, we should “chuck it out”. I do not think he expected such a Bill to come along three weeks after he made those remarks but, my goodness, the argument for chucking Clauses 1 and 3 out of the Bill is very persuasive.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her response. I think that it merely illustrates how far apart we are on the appropriateness of the structure of this Bill that we cannot have a serious discussion about what the curriculum freedoms should be. It is entirely undefined, and the Government say, “We’ll just make it up as we go along in the next few months, and that is what you are allowing us to do if you pass this Bill”. That is where the serious discussions lie; we ought to be having discussions about how the curriculum works. That is the level of responsibility we ought to be taking in this House, and this Bill seeks to take that away from us and place it with the Executive. I am delighted that we have had such unanimity around the Committee on what we think of that as a process.

So far as these individual amendments are concerned, yes, I applaud the diversity, innovation and freedom which the academy structure has had. It will be a problem to move that into a national system, but it will not be impossible. We ought to look at it, because this Bill gives the Government the power to introduce a totally prescriptive national curriculum. They could say what every school was going to do at every moment of every day, and we would have no more right to intervene on that—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He has really illustrated the puzzle I have: the handbook is clearly working at the moment—we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, that interventions can take place in the case of maverick trusts—so why on earth not let that continue, allow the consultation with the sector on the future governance and accountability arrangements, and then bring a Bill in a year’s time when we can actually go through it in detail and scrutinise it effectively? We could also have a statement at the front saying, “This Bill is about the academisation of all schools”. Why not be explicit and say this up front in the legislation, if that is what the Government want to do? Why does it have to be done in this sort of underhand way, and before they have properly worked out with the sector how it is best done? I just do not get it.

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I also want very briefly to comment on and offer support for Amendments 8 and 37, which address the issues of mental ill health. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has already covered the urgent need for this. I suspect that the Minister will say in response that of course “health” includes mental health, but we all know that we do not have parity of esteem. That is crucial. We have not yet heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, on Amendment 37, so I am slightly pre-empting her, but I think it is in the classic legal language of “to have due regard to”. Given the state of our young people’s mental health and the state of mental disorders—in a few years, the number of six to 16 year-olds thought to be suffering from a mental disorder has gone from one in nine to one in six—“have due regard to” really is not strong enough language. I do not know what the legal wording should be, but it should be at the heart of every school to care for and improve the mental well-being of all its pupils. That is the kind of language we should have.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I lend my support to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on Amendment 8 and to my noble friend on Amendment 37. This issue about the mental health of students and pupils is very important. I have no doubt that the Minister will argue that mental health is subsumed within “health”, and therefore that there is no need for this, but sometimes you do need to give absolute clarity to parts of society that mental health must be a greater priority than before, and this is a very useful way of doing it.

The Minister was involved in the passage of the Health and Care Act of blessed memory, which some of us were involved in. It struck me that when we were talking about the membership of ICPs and ICBs—integrated care partnerships and integrated care boards—I do not think we explicitly discussed whether the education sector would be around the table. Could the Minister look into whether there is some way of encouraging that the education sector is listened to? It seems rather like the police service in that it is being asked to pick up a lot of the issues that arise partly because our mental health services are so fragile at the moment, particularly for young people and adolescents, as we know. I do not wish to add more burden to heads and schools but this will bear thinking about. I hope there will be some collaboration between the Minister’s department and the Department of Health.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the two amendments in this group that have my name on them, Amendments 9 and 11. Both deal with smaller aspects of this, although we have a big report coming through on special educational needs, in which I know the noble Baroness is active.

I would like to know where and how, in this envisaged system—or perhaps let us call it a wished-for system; let us not give it that degree of solidity—special educational needs will fit in. At the moment, if there is a priority that comes above them, they tend to get squashed going down. For instance, there is an ongoing row about systematic synthetic phonics, which is the preferred way to teach English but does not work that well for many dyslexics. In addition, people with attention deficit disorder do not like it; it is a different way of working. You therefore have to work smarter, or in a different way, to get the best results out of those groups in a basic interaction. There will be other examples; for instance, mathematics is also covered by this, because you have to have different learning patterns. Dyslexics like me have different learning processes in our heads, which work slightly differently from those of the majority of people.

That is not insurmountable; there are ways around it and lots have been found, but you have to do it. If you have one way of doing this, there will be problems for those groups who do not have those learning patterns. I was speaking only about small numbers there but maybe half of those with identified special educational needs would probably be covered by these groups already. There are others with more complex patterns. The Government will need to work differently. How will the recommendations of the review work through and counter other considerations? If the noble Baroness can give us some idea of the Government’s thinking at the moment, I will be grateful.

On extracurricular activity—I would say this, would I not?—the fact of the matter is that sport is one of the best ways of improving mental health. It releases all the right chemicals in your body. Basically, it is a chemical treatment for mental health—end of. It reduces stress and tension, as does the correct use of special educational needs support. If you have less to worry about, you are less stressed and less likely to experience a trigger point for a mental health condition. How will these things be worked in? What safeguards do activities have in these areas—and others, if the noble Baroness wishes to expand on that? Is Committee a discussion? We need an idea of how, when you have to work differently to get the best out of the system, you will do it to get to the positions and the approach coming through in the rest of the Bill. How is it working and how will you make those small changes? Some will be big structural ones.

Talking about extracurricular activities such as sport, music and drama, one of the big things the Government should do to make sure that people carry on doing those things is to link the activities within the school with those who do them outside on an amateur basis. There are very well-established models, some of which have worked and some of which have been removed but which worked quite well. How is this all working and how is it going forward? If the Minister could give us a little idea of the Government’s thinking on that, that would be helpful, if not for this Bill then certainly for future debates.

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Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

23: Clause 1, page 2, line 18, at end insert—
“(2A) In setting standards in relation to Academies in respect of subsection (2)(k), the Secretary of State must require that each Academy Trust, and Multi Academy Trust, has at least two parent trustees.”Member’s explanatory statement
This is to make mandatory a requirement that all Academy trusts have a minimum of two parent trustees.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving my first amendment in this group, I must say that I agreed with the analysis of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, of some of the problems we are having in laying amendments to the Bill because of the lack of coherence. In a sense, we could sometimes be accused of being inconsistent, because we are concerned about the Secretary of State having these overweening powers but none the less there are areas in which we think there should be central direction. If only we had a structure that enabled us to put down proper amendments, we would know what the standards were and be able to see whether our ideas would be better in guidance or in a standard.

My series of amendments is about parental involvement; I argue that it ought to be one of the foundations on which all schools operate. I see it as part of a governance structure; you need requirements on all schools to operate in a certain way. I do not think this can just be left to multi-academy trusts to decide. I have no doubt whatever that the more parents who are involved in a school’s life, the better it is for the school and the outcomes for the children taught there.

The great organisation Parentkind, which is very much involved in encouraging parental involvement, feels that too often parents are left at the school gate and really not invited by schools to meaningfully participate in their children’s education. It has produced a wonderful blueprint for how parents can be more involved in their child’s school—attending consultation evenings, responding to surveys, volunteering their time and talents, including on the PTA, and helping in the classroom or becoming a governor or trustee. My amendments seek to introduce some of these elements to see whether I can get a positive response from the Government.

The first, Amendment 23, would ensure that in each academy trust and multi-academy trust there is a minimum of two parent trustees. They clearly play a vital role, and the governing body of every maintained school must be constituted with at least two parent governors. For academies—except those designated as religious—the position is more fluid. The department’s model articles of association give academy trusts almost complete flexibility to design the constitution of their board of trustees as they see fit. It has specified that the board must include at least two elected parent trustees. However, a MAT may alternatively include two elected parents on each local governing body. I fail to see why MATs should have that choice. Surely it should be a minimum requirement for parent trustees to be on the board of both the MAT and the local governing body, where there is one.

My Amendment 24 is more strategic. It aims to ensure that

“each Academy Trust, Multi Academy Trust, and each Academy within a Multi Academy Trust, prepares and revises a strategic policy on parental and community engagement at least once every three years.”

The importance of effective communication with parents and staff cannot be overestimated. Asking each trust and each academy within a MAT to prepare and revise

“a strategic policy on parental and community engagement at least once every three years”

would be very useful. As a starting point, Parentkind’s blueprint would be a very effective template.

My Amendment 25 puts forward the important principle that there should be a local governing body for every school within a MAT, on which at least two elected parents must sit, and with a clear scheme of delegation to ensure the local governing body is in the driving seat. At the moment, the MAT board can choose to delegate governance functions to LGBs or other committees that may relate to one or more than one academy.

Work published by the National Governance Association last September showed that only 87% of MAT trustees overall report having a local tier of governance for schools within the MAT. An LSE research paper points out that academies within MATs have no legal identity of their own. It is interesting to reflect on the situation that we now have with those academies within a MAT, when, in the original concept of academies, the stress was all on the freedom of that individual academy. It is almost as if we have moved the whole philosophy without there being any real parliamentary debate or scrutiny, and certainly no legislation.

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[Lord Nash (Con)]

I do not doubt that, but it is unlikely that in a local authority you would have a person working in one organisation who could be developed thoroughly by that one organisation. You may have people in the local authority who know who their stars are, but they are all in different schools, so I would say that this method is even better.

The other area where multi-academy trusts can greatly help teachers is in their workload, by developing curriculum and teaching resources that teachers can use in the workplace. I am sure that in schools that the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, was involved in there was not a question of everybody doing what they liked but, sadly, if we go back in the school system many years, that was exactly what did happen all too often when every school—if not every classroom—was a little island. There was too much freedom and too many teachers were, frankly, having to develop their curriculum resources from scratch. That is a real challenge for young teachers. One great advantage is teacher development. There are the other advantages, but I would say, therefore, that a school that is outstanding may well have a greater chance of staying outstanding working in a multi-academy trust.

The Marshalled List says that this group has been marshalled additionally in relation to Clauses 5, 6 and 7, so I will now briefly talk about those clauses. I said earlier that I would comment on why a number of individual clauses were unnecessary. Clause 5—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sorry to intervene, but is that right? I thought that the Questions that Clauses 5, 6 and 7 stand part were in a further group.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I believe that is currently group 9, which we would reach on a future day. Of course, future days’ groupings are finalised, before they take place, with those involved.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for their amendments relating to trust governance structures, parental representation and engagement, and the definition of “parent” in the Bill.

Amendments 23, 24 and 25, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, seek to secure the position of parental representation in the trust governance structures at both trust board and local level, and to have a strategic plan for parental and stakeholder engagement. Amendment 25, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, also seeks to mandate local governing bodies in all trusts. I would like to cover this point first by saying that the schools White Paper sets out the department’s view that all trusts should have local governance arrangements for their schools. To respond to the query from the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, about how I was going to deal with this point, we have committed in the White Paper to working with the sector over the summer as the best way to implement this.

Moving on to the amendments pertaining to parental involvement, I reassure the House that it is already our position that all trusts should have a minimum of two parents in their governance structure, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out. Amendment 26 continues with a focus on parental engagement in the form of mandating all trusts and academies to have a parent council and specifying the composition, role and support required. Parental and community engagement serves an extremely important role and can have a large and positive impact on children’s learning, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman. An effective scheme of delegation should explain the trust’s parental and community engagement arrangements and how these feed into and inform governance at both trust and local level. The department’s Governance Handbook contains guidance for academy trusts on parental and community engagement.

However, as I said earlier, we believe that trusts are best placed to decide what engagement methods work best in the local context and—to pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight—at different points in the evolution of an individual trust. In addition, the place of parents in the governance of trusts will fall within scope of the planned discussions with the sector about the local tier of governance announced in the schools White Paper, and I am sure that the House would not want to pre-empt the outcome of that discussion at this point.

Amendment 27, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, seeks to ensure that all trusts clearly set out the delegation of powers to their local governing bodies, and that delegation should include ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction of the school, holding executive leaders to account, financial performance and ensuring that local voices are heard.

Some of the responsibilities set out in the noble Lord’s amendment are core functions of the trust board as the accountable body of the trust, which the board may already choose to delegate to local governing bodies or choose to retain at board level. As such, there is a risk of duplication and some confusion.

Amendment 38, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Storey, introduces a clause similar, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, pointed out, to that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, to mandate local governing bodies, while also including membership and specific powers of the local governing body.

I would like to address both amendments by referring to my previous comments that we will be holding discussions with the sector on local governance arrangements and that we do not want to pre-empt those discussions by introducing requirements concerning local governance arrangements at this point.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, have introduced Amendment 39 to mandate the establishment of an independent scheme of arbitration to resolve disputes between a multi-academy trust and the local governing bodies of individual academies within the trust. It is far from clear that it would be a proportionate and good use of public funds to set up a formal scheme, and we would want to discuss with the sector how local governance arrangements could be effective.

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox, for their Amendment 52, which seeks to ensure that references to “parents” in the Bill also include different kinds of legal guardian. We agree that this is an important point, and I am pleased to say that this is already captured within the Bill. The majority of references to “parent” in the Bill are in Parts 1 and 2. Clauses 31 and 46 state:

“Other words and expressions used in this Part have the same meanings as in the Education Act 1996, unless the context otherwise requires.”


I am therefore pleased to say that all references to “parent” in the Bill already include different kinds of legal guardian.

For the reasons set out above, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a very useful debate. Clearly, I agree with my noble friend that, with parental involvement in school governing bodies, there has perhaps not been a nirvana or golden age where it has always worked perfectly. School governance can be quirky; sometimes heads have far too much control and basically appoint their own governing body, and we have seen the problems that arise from that. However, I think there is a general consensus that getting parents involved in schools is a good thing per se. There are various mechanisms under which you can do that. Parent councils is a very good idea, and I would like to see that further encouraged. However, it is important to have statutory representation, if you like, of elected parent governors on the board of a maintained school or of an academy trust.

When it comes to multi-academy trusts, I still fail to see why it should be optional, in that if you have two parent governors on the multi-academy trust board, you do not then have to have the same representation on local governing bodies, and vice versa. That should be changed. Where you have a multi-academy trust, both the multi-academy trust board and the local governing body ought to have parent governors. However, I am sure that we will find a consensus on that on Report.

When it comes to the relationship between multi-academy trusts and local governing bodies where they are the individual trusts within a MAT, that is obviously a much more difficult issue where we do not have complete consensus. Here, the absence of a way forward for MATs is a big problem for us in trying to decide what is the best way through. In her response the noble Baroness said that obviously this is work that is taking place and that we must not pre-empt the outcome of discussions. I could not help thinking that, unfortunately, the Bill pre-empts the outcome of the discussions, which is why we are having this difficulty at the moment.

However, in principle, it is right that every local school has some kind of governance body. My noble friend Lady Blower is absolutely right: the local school needs ownership of the core decisions. I accept what she says about the need for interventions but, harking back to my health experience, I would say that we have boards until the cows come home but quick interventions can be made. It is really important that, when a parent goes to the school, they know that the people in charge are there, and that includes governance, as much as possible.

Also, we have to sort out this problem of what an academy trust does if it wants to leave a MAT. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Nash, arguing that an outstanding academy trust can go into a MAT and gain great advantage from it, but what happens if it is not going well? Can that outstanding trust leave? At the moment the answer is no, because it has no legal entity of its own to make that decision.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I know that it is unusual to intervene this way round, but just to clarify for the noble Lord, in the schools White Paper we said that we will consult on the exceptional circumstances in which a good school could request that the regulator agrees that it moves to a stronger trust.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I know, but I worry about the “exceptional circumstances” because I do not see why an individual school could not simply opt out if it wanted to, giving due notice. Perhaps we will come back to that on one of our later amendments.

Having said that, this has been a really good debate. I welcome the Minister’s constructive response and look forward to further discussions. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 23 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, this group is another trying to put safeguards around the Secretary of State’s powers to set academy standards. In the absence of proper parliamentary scrutiny mechanisms, industrious noble Lords have sought to add their own. My amendment would require the DfE to consult parents, teachers and governors on how the regulations are implemented and then allow sight and scrutiny of the use of the new powers by way of reporting and assessing the impact that use has had.

For such a sweeping change to a crucial area of social policy, we believe that this amendment is proportionate and only right to allow meaningful public scrutiny. If the Secretary of State is overreaching or, equally, not doing enough to intervene in a specific case, it would allow that to become public knowledge and the public, expert stakeholders and parent groups to make the case for change.

My Amendment 83 would subject to the affirmative procedure the Secretary of State’s power to give any person they choose responsibility to judge an academy’s compliance with standards. Such a large empowerment, with the potential to place all-important judgments with anyone that the Secretary of State wills is surely worth giving Parliament sight of, and anyone involved in the process of proper scrutiny and democratic accountability should have little problem agreeing to the amendments. I thus beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly welcome my noble friend’s amendment. I, along with my noble friend Lady Blower, have a number of other amendments in this area.

I want to encourage the Minister to say something about this. Clearly, she has heard all our concerns about Clauses 1 and 3. I just want to suggest that one way through may be to consider the super-affirmative procedure for dealing with the issue of standards. We debated earlier the issue that even an affirmative instrument allows us only a debate. The advantage of the super-affirmative procedure is that it allows both Houses of Parliament opportunities to comment on proposals for secondary legislation and recommend amendments before orders for affirmative approval are brought forward in their final form. The idea of the super-affirmative procedure is that those orders are implemented in enactments where an exceptionally high degree of scrutiny is thought appropriate—for instance, for the scrutiny of certain items of delegated legislation made or proposed to be made under Henry VIII clauses.

Take my noble friend Lady Chapman’s earlier amendment, in which she sought to replicate the standards in relation to independent schools and said that, basically, this would give a much more explicit set of standards to work on. If you combine that with the super-affirmative procedure, you might achieve a greater and more effective way whereby Parliament could scrutinise what the Government seek to do. However, I really do not think that simply having regulations is the way to do it. I urge the Minister to consider this procedure as one way through, because it would give Parliament an opportunity to comment on the draft regulations and the department an opportunity to go away and consider it before coming back with the substantive order. In some ways, this would be a very good way to deal with some of the issues in this Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox, to which I have attached my name.

I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, just said. However, what particularly attracted me to this amendment was its reference to

“an annual report on the exercise of the powers … and … an annual impact assessment on the exercise of those powers.”

The Minister reassured us a number of times in our debates on earlier groups by saying that “it is not the intention of this Government” to do this or that. The annual review proposed by this amendment would ensure, whatever Government are in power, an assessment of how the law is being used. Given the current powers in that law, many Members who usually sit on the Benches opposite might think that this would be a good idea with a different Government in place.