Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Pinnock (LD)
First, I apologise to the Committee for not being able to attend the Second Reading of the Bill because of diary clashes.
My noble friends Lord Storey, Lady Sharp of Guildford and I have tabled this amendment to improve the local and democratic accountability of schools in a local community for a number of reasons. The first reason is that school funding accounts for around 50% of local authority spending for councils that have responsibility for education. The second reason is that, by their very nature, schools reflect the communities they serve and parents expect there to be a local process of oversight and a local means of expressing any concerns. The third reason is that there have been a number of high-profile failures of financial governance in the academy sector. For example, there have been allegations relating to fraud in a number of schools in Bradford and County Durham. The Education Funding Agency has issued financial notices to improve to several academy chains, including the Academies Enterprise Trust in 2014. The fourth reason for tabling this amendment is that multi-academy trusts currently seem to be the favoured way forward, but they are accountable for their strategic and financial performance only to the Education Funding Agency and the Secretary of State. The fifth reason is that governance models in multi-academy trusts ensure that the sponsor or sponsoring body controls the trust. I am sure the Minister will have seen the publication by the New Schools Network.
Multi-academy trusts are governed by a trust body and by so-called directors of the trust who take the strategic and financial decisions for the schools under their control. On the whole, multi-academy trusts set up local governing bodies to do the day-to-day running and there is no parental or staff involvement until this lower level of governance. The document recommends that there should be one member of staff and two parents on those bodies and that they should not have any oversight of the financial controls of the trust and therefore of the school in which they serve. The crucial thing in this model is that decisions on school budgets are in the hands of the directors of the trust and that the trust members are self-appointed and accountable for their actions only via agreements signed with the Department for Education and the Education Funding Agency.
In this model there is no accountability to the local community and to parents. This amendment seeks to address those serious concerns. There is currently a vacuum of democratic accountability regarding the attainment and achievement of schools and, even more importantly, for the attainment and achievement of the children in those schools. Those matters are no longer within the remit of the local authority. As a serving local councillor I can say that when parents approach me with concerns about their children’s academy school’s ability to achieve realistic opportunities for them, it is difficult to address those concerns other than by going through the very processes that created them in the first place—that is, the school’s governing body or trust.
In this amendment we propose to put matters right. In 2006 the Government established local authority health scrutiny committees. The government guidance for those committees, which is on the GOV.UK website, is very clear about their purpose. I think that the purposes for which health scrutiny committees were established could serve in establishing parallel scrutiny committees for schools within the local authority area. The government guidance for local authority health scrutiny committees, available on the GOV.UK website, states:
“The primary aim of health scrutiny is to act as a lever to improve the health of local people, ensuring their needs are considered as an integral part of the commissioning, delivery and development of health services … Health scrutiny is a fundamental way by which democratically elected local councillors are able to voice the views of their constituents, and hold relevant NHS bodies and relevant health service providers to account”.
It seems to me that by substituting “schools and education” within that guidance we have a prime way of letting local communities call to account all schools, particularly academies because there is a big vacuum in accountability for local academies. In the nearly 10 years since the committees were introduced they have been extraordinarily effective in bringing together local democratically elected representatives, health commissioners and CCGs, representatives of the acute trusts in the district and the public health people to scrutinise health issues. Together they have been able to resolve some of the difficult challenges of providing health services in the community. I would attest that this same model could work really well for local education.
The guidance goes on very helpfully to demonstrate how scrutiny committees can add value by bringing together partners providing, in this case, health services. I suggest that it could also be done for education in a district. It says:
“A greater emphasis on involving patients”,
and for education that could be parents,
“and the public from an early stage in proposals to improve services”.
Engaging people has got to be a positive. It continues:
“The work of health and wellbeing boards”,
in this case we could bring in the education scrutiny committee,
“bringing together representatives of the whole … system”.
This will therefore add value to the decisions made. It will provide an opportunity for a public, open, transparent and democratic hearing of a local community’s concerns about local schools.
One key to success in a school is harnessing the support of the local community that it serves. Anyone who has ever been involved in education, as I have, knows that good schools are supported very well by their local community. One indicator that a school is beginning to fail is when the local community starts taking support away from it.
The risk with the multi-academy trust model is that schools will become more remote from the communities they serve. I suggest that a successful multi-academy trust would welcome the opportunity of a public platform where it could demonstrate transparency in its decision-making and respond to questions about its performance from local people. With that in mind, I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to this proposal. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I am not sure whether her suggestion is exactly right but the principles that she raises are very important. They concern local democratic accountability and they also concern what she described as flaws in the governance structure of academies, particularly multi-academies. I share her view on both points.
The noble Baroness suggested that we look at the health model and I think that she is right. One thing that puzzles me about academy trusts is that they do not seem to allow for a direct relationship between the governance and the parents, except in the circumstances that she has described. I suggest that we look at NHS foundation trusts, which after all were developed at around the same time.
I know that the education department is very isolated in Whitehall and this is yet another example of that, but the ownership of an NHS foundation trust is rooted in patients, staff and members of the public, because they become members without paying any cost and it is the members who elect the governing council. The governing council, in turn, appoints the non-executives and the chairman to the board and approves the appointment of the chief executive. The board of directors is a statutory body. It is the board that you sue and harangue if things go wrong, but it is accountable locally through a very well-ordered structure and it carries with it a much better sense of accountability. There is a clear line of responsibility with a proper board of directors. There is no problem about its legal responsibilities and it is accountable. When I chaired a foundation trust, the fact that I had to appear before the governors’ council every month or so to explain the trust’s problems and what we were doing about them was a very good discipline. It was not a very easy discipline—I confess that I did not enjoy doing it—but it was an immeasurably strengthening exercise, and I think that the noble Baroness is trying to get at that in part of her amendment.
The noble Baroness also raises the whole question of the local authority’s role in the education policy that the Government are developing. I refer back to a point raised by my noble friend Lord Knight during our first day in Committee. He basically said that if the Government want all schools to be academies, why do they not just say so and bring in legislation? Why do we have to have this rather obscure, backwards way of academising all schools? That is basically dishonest. I hope that the Minister might just praise a maintained school—he has four hours in which to do so but I have yet to hear him ever praise a maintained school. Clearly, he has an ideological problem with maintained schools. That is why we remain suspicious of the Bill and some of the motivations behind it.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
As well as the fact that, on this particular point, the Education Department seems wholly out of step with the general direction of government policy—which, as my noble friend said, is transferring power from central government to the local combined authorities—the department’s stance undermines the very policy itself. The overarching remit of the combined authorities is to develop the economies of their city or region and translate that growth into opportunities for all their citizens, particularly the most disadvantaged. Surely education has to be part of that agenda of economic growth. Does my noble friend agree?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
This is another puzzle because the terms of the agreement with Greater Manchester focus on growth in the economy and specifically mention the skills agenda. I have listened to the Government talk about the issue of skills—albeit at the same time as destroying further education, which of course is where most of these skills are taught; but we will leave that aside for the moment—and I am absolutely amazed because the argument they put forward is that while skills are crucially important, the role of schools is to make sure that, when they come out, young people are ready to go into the workplace; that is, those who do not go into higher or further education, if any is left when they reach the age when they move on from school.
Why on earth is education being taken out of this really exciting development? I am enthusiastic about what is happening in Greater Manchester, and potentially it is hugely exciting, but I just do not understand why education is being left out of it. This is but one example of how, when the Department for Education says that it is consistent with the localism agenda, it is, frankly, completely unbelievable.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I am sorry that I was not able to be present in Grand Committee last week, but I have read with interest the Committee report. Two things come to mind in relation to this debate. The first is that I am most grateful to the Minister for organising an extremely helpful meeting with head teachers and regional schools commissioners. At the meeting I raised a question about local accountability which followed from our debate at Second Reading. On the question of regional accountability, I put to a regional schools commissioner the case that while it is important to improve academic outcomes for young people, there may be a reason to override the local interest of parents in their schools. I hope that I am paraphrasing him correctly, but he said that it is really important to bring the local community with one, which seems to support the notion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others that if one is to have a successful school, one needs to bring the local community on board as far as possible.
The second point I want to raise is that, having read the Hansard report of the previous sitting, I am concerned by the Government’s focus on a very narrow assessment of education; that is, on academic attainment. Of course it is extremely important that our children should do well academically so that they leave school being able to read and write and are ready in terms of employment, and that is important to their parents as well, but as was made clear in that debate, children need a rounded education. Some children in particular benefit from an education which perhaps does not emphasise academic attainment so much but allows them to excel in sport and vocational attainment in other areas. My sense is that we need to allow some young people to fail and fail and fail again. Young people in care in particular may do poorly in terms of their academic attainment while they are at school, but many of them will do well in their early 20s or even their late 20s. If one puts great pressure on schools to ensure that all children do well academically, the risk is that those children who do not have so much academic capacity may be excluded, be given less attention, or to some degree will be seen as an inconvenience.
Perhaps that is an argument for giving local authorities and local bodies more influence over and supervision of what goes on in academies and elsewhere. The people in Manchester may think, “Well, in this area we have a particular interest in vocational success and we would like to see our schools equipping our children to enter apprenticeships”. I am probably not expressing myself well. I think that my chief concern arose when I read about the new pressures being put on head teachers to ensure that children do well academically because of the emphasis that the Government are placing on this. I worry about those children who may not have so much academic potential but do have potential in other ways. Perhaps the amendment that has been put forward will allay some of those concerns.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That is because a number of state-maintained schools have now converted to become academies; so they have shifted into being academies.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Is the noble Baroness seriously saying that the only failing academies are ones that have just transferred?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
No, we are not saying that.
Lord Nash
The answer to the noble Lord’s question is that we are not saying that, obviously; but as we made clear ad nauseam the last time we were here, there have been 1,500 failing maintained schools converted to academies, many of them very recently, all of which have been performing badly, many of them for years, under local authority-maintained status.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 16, 17, 21 and 26 to 29, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Addington, Lord Watson, Lord Hunt and the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Bakewell. I will try to keep my remarks to the point but, before doing so, I will respond to a couple of accusations made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The first, that we are being dishonest, is quite an accusation and I would take great objection to it if I thought he really meant it. He said that it is dishonest that we should just pass a law turning every school into an academy. Maybe if he feels that is something we should do, he would like to bring an amendment to that effect. I made it clear last week in response to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and again in a letter this morning which I hope he has now received, that the default position for a coasting school is not to become an academy. I suspect that in many cases they may well be able to improve sufficiently on their own or with limited support. I hope I have made that absolutely clear.
Secondly, there was a suggestion that I never mention maintained schools. That is partly because the Bill is about academies and I am trying to keep to the point. Of course there are many successful maintained schools and I pay tribute to them. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, took me on a most enjoyable trip to Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets, which I was particularly impressed with. I was struck by its approach to CPD.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way and for his comments. This comes back to the points raised by my noble friends Lady Hughes and Lady Morris. From the tone of the Bill, and the fact that schools will be forced to become academies because the Secretary of State has no choice, it is clear that in the end that is the option which the Government want. The point raised by my noble friend Lord Knight is that the Government really believe that academisation is the only route. They do not understand why any maintained school does not want to be an academy, despite the fact that many of us are involved in very successful maintained schools which do not. None the less, the Government have decided that they all ought to be academies. This is quite clearly the policy. Why on earth do they not just do that? What I do not understand is why we have to go through the charade that we are debating today? With respect to the Minister, he has to be forced into saying something positive about non-academy schools because his whole tenor throughout this, is to quote examples from academies. I must challenge him by asking why the Government will not come clean on what their policy really is. I just do not understand it.
Lord Nash
I will try and make it clear again. Our approach to failing and inadequate schools, category 4 schools, is that they must become a sponsored academy. That is not our approach to coasting schools, as I hope I have made absolutely clear.
The amendment seeks to address noble Lords’ concerns on a number of points. First, that academies as well as maintained schools should become eligible for intervention when they fail or meet the coasting definition. Secondly, that the Bill proposes to remove consultation on academy conversion when a maintained school is judged inadequate. Thirdly, that a duty is placed on the governing body and local authority to progress academy conversion in such circumstances, and finally that, if necessary, the Bill provides for the Secretary of State to revoke an academy order. I shall deal with these points in turn.
First, on failing and coasting academies, I agree entirely with noble Lords that failure and wider underperformance must be tackled wherever it occurs, whether in a maintained school or in an academy. As I set out when we debated the coasting definition last week, academies are governed by a different legal regime from maintained schools. They are run by charitable companies known as academy trusts which enter into a contractual relationship with the Secretary of State through the signing of a funding agreement. It is this agreement that governs how an academy will operate and how the Secretary of State will hold it to account for its performance.
The vast majority of the more than 5,300 open academies and free schools are performing well. In the small number of cases where we have concerns, I can assure the House that regional schools commissioners are already taking swift and effective action to drive improvements and, subject to the passage of this Bill, RSCs will hold all academies to account against the coasting definition just as rigorously as they will maintained schools. To demonstrate our commitment to continually reviewing our approach and ensuring that poorly performing academies are robustly challenged, we have already added a new coasting clause to the model funding agreement showing explicitly that we intend to tackle all schools which are coasting. This gives the Secretary of State formal powers to terminate a funding agreement where an academy is coasting. Even where academies do not have this specific clause in their agreement, I can assure noble Lords that RSCs will still hold them to account against the coasting definition.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I cannot resist intervening on that. The whole point is that when we have a failing NHS foundation trust, there are a number of options available to the regulators, whether it is the NHS Trust Development Authority or Monitor; it is not just one-size-fits-all. That really is all that noble Lords are saying here. When it comes down it, if you substitute “may” for “must” in the crucial clause, it is still quite clear where the thrust of the policy is going, but at least that would give some discretion to Ministers. There might be some circumstances where they might want to look at a different option.
I am glad that the Minister has raised the issue of what happens in relation to NHS bodies because I am absolutely clear that both in law and in practice there is a range of options. Something happened to a trust that I was involved in, and the chairman and chief executive of a neighbouring trust have basically become the chairman and chief executive of that one. As I say, there are options. What the Government are saying is that there will be absolutely no option whatever. Actually, I find it quite extraordinary that Ministers do not want to give themselves a little discretion and headroom.
Lord Nash
I note the noble Lord’s intervention. He has not disappointed me; we discussed this morning where comparisons might be made with the NHS, so I knew that he would jump up because he has vast experience in the matter of the health service. My point is that action in the NHS is immediate and swift. I shall come on to explain the “must” and “may” point. There are circumstances in which the Secretary of State may be able to revoke her academy order, so it would not always be “must”.
As to the point I made about NHS trusts, I fundamentally agree with those who say, “Should we not have a similarly urgent and clear response to tackling school failure?”. On too many occasions we have seen local authorities and governing bodies putting up barriers and delaying processes in order to prevent the school becoming a sponsored academy. A case in point is Uplands, which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned earlier, which has been in special measures for 22 months. The IEB was appointed by the local authority in December 2013. It considered a number of proposed sponsors, a missed opportunity for much-needed change. I first wrote to the local authority confirming that I was minded to intervene in February of this year and, after much debate and challenge, the Secretary of State was finally able to reconfirm her decision to appoint her own IEB in September of this year. This was especially needed in the light of Ofsted’s most recent inspection in June confirming that the school was not making enough progress to remove special measures under the local authority’s IEB. A sponsor match has now finally been able to be made.
Education and Adoption Bill
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I have grouped Amendment 3 with Amendment 8, both of which concern parliamentary scrutiny in relation to the regulations concerning definition of schools to be dealt with under the coasting provisions. We have had a very interesting first debate, and the Minister has been helpful in clarifying that the coasting provisions apply to selective grammar schools and high-performing comprehensive schools. That is welcome. It is also welcome that he has clarified, as I understand it, that RSCs, albeit using the funding agreements, will take the same approach to academies as they will to maintained schools.
My noble friend Lord Knight has now had to depart, but he raised a very interesting point, which relates to parliamentary scrutiny. We are all agreed about the need to tackle coasting schools—there is no doubt whatever about that. However, part of the resistance there has been to it has been due to a feeling that the Government are partly motivated by trying to create academies by the back door. My noble friend Lord Knight put the point to the Minister that, if in the end the Government want all schools to be academies, which it seems that they do, why on earth do they not say that they are going to do that and then deal with the democratic deficit that undoubtedly exists within academies?
I was involved in the thinking behind the establishment of the NHS foundation trusts, and you could argue, very loosely, that they were a parallel movement. However, with the foundation trusts we were absolutely determined to strengthen local accountability by setting up a governance structure that involved patients and members of the public in appointing the boards of directors. In some of the debates we are having around academies, the department is missing a very big trick; my noble friend will come back to this when later in the Bill we come to the issue of parental involvement in decisions about whether a school is an academy or not. That is why parliamentary scrutiny here is so important.
The Minister will have seen the report of the Delegated Powers Committee on the provisions in the Bill. Obviously, Governments normally respond by agreeing to the recommendations made, and it would be interesting to hear from the noble Lord what the Government’s response is. Essentially, the committee thinks that there should have been a definition of “coasting” in the Bill. It says in the report that it thinks it is too “wide and open-ended” and that the delegation is,
“inappropriate given the fundamental importance of the … operation of the new section, and the significant powers which become exercisable in relation to a school once it becomes eligible for intervention”.
The committee obviously received evidence from the Minister’s department, but it says that it finds,
“unconvincing the Department’s explanation for putting the definition of ‘coasting’ in regulations … based on the practical difficulties associated with setting out in primary legislation the data sets and measures required to assess whether a school is a coasting school”.
The committee goes on to say that the explanation given by his department,
“fails to distinguish between two entirely different matters: the criteria and other factors which should apply in determining whether or not a school is a coasting school, and the detailed measures and data which are to be used to decide whether or not those criteria or other factors are met”.
In other words, it argues that the latter quite rightly could be put into regulations, but the former could be in the Bill. What is the Government’s intention in relation to that?
Lord Nash
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 3 and 8 tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. As I promised earlier, I will also cover the similar element of Amendment 5 relating to the coasting regulations from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. Amendment 3 seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out the definition of coasting. This goes beyond the current power in Clause 1, which provides that the Secretary of State may by regulations define what coasting means in relation to a school.
We have been very clear that we intend to make such regulations. In June, we provided an indicative set of regulations to Parliament for scrutiny. Last month we launched a public consultation on our overall approach to coasting and the detail of the definition set out in the draft regulations. I can reassure the House that our intention has always been that regulations will be made but I appreciate that, with this amendment being laid in this House as well as in the other place, there continues to be concern that regulations will not always be made. I have reiterated the Government’s commitment to making regulations today but will also reflect before Report on whether the primary legislation should be more explicit on this point.
Amendments 5 and 8 seek to ensure that the regulations defining coasting are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure each time the regulations are changed. As I have said, we published comprehensive draft regulations in June so that Parliament could understand and scrutinise our proposed approach. From these draft regulations, the House will be aware that the proposed approach relies heavily on references to the department’s performance tables which capture schools’ performance data, as well as defining the specific coasting bar which applies in each year.
Results for primary and secondary schools are published at two different points each year, which might necessitate changes to the regulations as national performance standards change. The performance tables are also technical in nature and so, if minor changes are made to their layout or content, this may also necessitate minor, consequential amendments to regulations. A change as small as a revision to a column heading in the performance tables would require a change to the regulations. Similarly, if the department were to change or merely update the published guidance regarding the calculation of Progress 8, for example, the regulations would again need to be updated. Requiring the consent of both Houses each time such changes were needed would seem an excessive use of Parliament’s time. We already publicly consult, however, when significant changes are made to accountability systems—for instance, as we did on the new measures coming in in 2016. I reassure noble Lords that, if major changes to the accountability system underpinning the coasting definition were proposed, such public consultation would therefore happen again.
I hope that, having seen the detailed illustrative regulations, as well as hearing my explanations today, Peers will understand why it would be very difficult to subject the regulations to the affirmative procedure each time a change is needed. I do, however, appreciate the concern of noble Lords who have tabled these amendments, as well as the concern of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that due process should be followed. I will therefore reflect if there are any further reassurances that I can make on this point at Report. I hope that I have been able to assure noble Lords that we take their concerns very seriously, and I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I am grateful to the Minister for that response; he said that he would consider this between Committee and Report. My reading is that if he is not in the end prepared to accept the amendment, regulations will still have to go through both Houses. The difference is that if they are negative, in the Commons, you need a large number of MPs to say that they want a debate on it; in this House, only one Member can lay down a Prayer, and then there has to be a debate. So I do not really get that argument at all; one way or another, it has to go through both Houses. The issue here is that, by being affirmative, there has to be a debate and it is flagged up, because it appears on the Order Paper.
This is important stuff, and I doubt that the department will want to change the criteria all the time, for the very reason the Minister mentioned, about giving certainty to heads, which I understand fully. It is clearly so important that the affirmative procedure should apply. The Delegated Powers Committee does not say that lightly; it only says so if it thinks it needs to be sure that it is properly debated every time. However, I am grateful to the Minister for his response, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord was right when he noticed that I would be responding to this amendment. I shall allow him and the Minister to continue their debate next week, when no doubt we will cover these issues in more detail, and I will focus on the amendment.
Amendment 4 proposes that a governing body must inform parents that a school has been notified that it is coasting. We firmly believe that, once a school has been notified that it is coasting, we should trust the governing body to engage parents as they see fit, exactly as the noble Baroness said. That is what we would expect of a school. In practice, we envisage that where a school meets the coasting definition, the governing body will voluntarily inform parents. Issuing a communication to parents is already the normal approach taken by schools following the publication of exam results or Ofsted inspections. In fact, schools are not required to notify parents of Ofsted judgments but they do, and we would expect schools to adopt a similar approach in this situation. We would certainly expect governing bodies to be as open as possible with parents.
In the modern day and age, with social media and the availability of lots of websites, we would also—
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I note what the noble Baroness said about schools and Ofsted inspections but I have certainly come across cases where schools and governing bodies have been very reluctant to release this information because they do not like what it says. I agree with the noble Baroness about parents and children, but there ought to be a guarantee or requirement that parents will receive information, whether it relates to Ofsted or is about coasting. I am afraid the fact is that some schools do not do the right thing when they get an adverse Ofsted judgment.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I hope that the noble Lord will be pleased to know that I was going to go on to say that, in view of the concerns that have been expressed, we will consider how we can ensure, through the Schools Causing Concern guidance, that parents are sufficiently aware that their child’s school has been identified as coasting. We absolutely agree that that is important. Of course parents need to know. Our feeling is that governing bodies will provide such information but, in the light of the concerns raised, we are happy to consider being a bit more explicit. I hope on that basis that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I do not understand why the Government do not want to deal with the issue of maintained schools feeling that there is not a level playing field in the approach that the Government take to academies and take to them. The Minister is always quoting achievements in academies, but very rarely says anything about maintained schools. He knows there is a huge variation in the performances of both academies and maintained schools. I do not understand why the Bill has not been used to issue a proclamation, in a sense, that academies will be covered in the same way. He has clearly said, twice now, that there is a level playing field and that he expects the RSCs to intervene in coasting academies—at least I think he is saying there should be no difference. Why then are the Government so frightened to put that in the Bill? They could find a way to do it by relating the principle to the funding agreement. That would be very easy to draft—parliamentary counsel could do it in five minutes—and I do not understand why the Government do not want to do it. It would reassure the whole education system that there is a level playing field. At the moment, it does not think there is.
Lord Addington
My Lords, this is an attempt to try to gain a little more clarity about the role of the regional schools commissioners. The aim of this amendment is to provide them with uniform criteria. I could expand at considerable length but this issue has been raised in the Commons Select Committee. We just want to know what criteria these individuals will follow. They undoubtedly have extreme merit and are doing a tremendously good job. I am afraid that I was not able to meet them on Monday. What criteria will they follow? Will the same standards apply across the country? It would be absurd if commissioners worked to different standards literally just across a line. So could we have some idea about what they are doing and can we hear that now? It will go into Hansard and we will have a little more guidance. If there is no way of applying uniform criteria, we have a real problem. I am assuming that the Government know how this is to be achieved—because, if not, there will be a big hole. I hope that there is no big hole. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, my Amendment 12 is in this group. The point the noble Lord has raised is highly appropriate. We want assurances about a consistency of approach throughout the country.
My own amendment is probing and I would like to have it confirmed that the function of the RSC can be carried out by a combined authority, as defined in Clause 8 of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill as it left your Lordships’ House a few months ago. If my reading of the Bill is right, can the Minister say whether it is intended in any circumstances that the RSC function would indeed be given to a combined authority? If not, perhaps he could say why not.
The Minister will be aware that the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill gives a combined authority extremely wide powers; for example, the function of the police and crime commissioner and the entire commissioning and provision of health and social care can be devolved to the combined authority. Indeed, any function of a public authority in the area of the combined authority can be devolved to the combined authority. The definition of a public authority is very wide and includes a Minister of the Crown or government department. My reading therefore is that the functions of the RSC could very easily be given to the combined authority.
I find it interesting that in Greater Manchester—which, with Cornwall, is a pioneer of the combined authority concept—it has already been established in a memorandum of understanding between the Government and the combined authorities that health and social care will be devolved in their entirety to the combined authority. Obviously, I know more about health than education but there are great similarities. They are two essentially national services, locally delivered. Ministers are accountable to Parliament for their overall performance. Money is voted by Parliament for their funding.
If you look at the Explanatory Notes of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill as it left your Lordships’ House, it is interesting that clearly the core purpose of a combined authority is to boost growth and the local economy. If health and social care are considered to be part of that, why on earth is education not, given the Government’s own concerns that young people are leaving our schools system without sufficient skills to go into employment? I cannot think of a more closely related service than education to the economic prospects of a locality. The Explanatory Notes mention skills but are silent on education. I am assuming that the Department for Education has opted out of this. I would be fascinated to know why.
I would have thought that in some circumstances the combined authority or the mayor could easily perform the role of the RSC. As we have such a democratic deficit in education now, it would be one way of taking that—and I have listened to what noble Lords have said about the quality of RSCs and the work that they do—but putting it back into some form of local accountability. In the end this accountability issue will have to be addressed. But overall, in trying to ensure consistency of approach and linking RSCs back into some kind of democratic process at local level, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I are at one on this.
Lord Nash
My Lords, the two new clauses proposed concern the role and remit of regional schools commissioners, and would be placed after Clause 3.
We introduced eight regional schools commissioners last year to take decisions and provide advice regarding academies and free schools in their regions on behalf of the Secretary of State. These regional schools commissioners will also exercise the new and strengthened powers which the Bill introduces, to intervene in failing, underperforming and coasting maintained schools.
Amendment 11 was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. It proposes to require regional schools commissioners to use uniform performance standards and criteria when fulfilling the duties and exercising the powers described in the Bill, thus seeking to ensure consistent decision-making across all RSCs.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
But, my Lords, that is exactly what is happening in health and social care. Clearly, in government as a whole, everyone is behind combined authorities. Why is the Minister’s department opting out of it? If he looks at the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill, he will see that not only is there provision for any function of a Minister of the Crown to be devolved to a combined authority but there is a particular provision, because the Lords passed an amendment, to specify that the national characteristics of health and social care should be preserved within devolved health and social care. I do not understand why the education department, of all departments, is not playing in this area when the Government are putting so many eggs into it—I am talking about the northern powerhouse, obviously, with Greater Manchester at the core of it. I do not understand why his department is not involved or interested. If you take the skills agenda, you see that the whole point of combined authorities is economic growth; it must embrace the skills agenda. The Minister and I must share the desire that our schools play their part in making sure that young people are employable. I just do not get it; I do not understand why his department is opting out.
Lord Nash
If I may finish, I am interested in a practical system which actually works. We believe that we have devised one which is working extremely well. As I made clear in response to the Constitution Committee, this is maximum devolution to the front line. We trust teachers and head teachers to be responsible for their own system, and that is exactly the system that we have designed.
As I said, I am interested in a system that works, rather than one in the cause of some political theory. If combined authorities or elected mayors were able to appoint RSCs, as the amendment proposes, we would lose that robust accountability to Parliament and would have a system which is, frankly, totally incoherent, mixed and unworkable. I would rather have a system that works. Even those small MATs which operate across the regions that this would create would be working with multiple RSCs, which would add the complication of operating under multiple accountability structures. That would be confusing and chaotic.
Having additional RSCs appointed for combined authorities, further to the existing eight RSCs, would lead to significant additional costs. Overall, such a system would be confusing to schools, inconsistent, highly expensive and be adding unnecessary bureaucracy without bringing any tangible benefit to children’s education, which is what we on this side of the House are concerned with. Our current system of eight regional schools commissioners supported by a head teacher board is all about bringing decisions about schools closer to the front line. It ensures that experienced school leaders are the ones making and implementing decisions in their areas. They know what works best in their schools, how to address local needs and what the local priorities should be. This is therefore completely in keeping with the Government’s devolution agenda, and I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, that was a quite remarkable speech by the noble Lord. He accuses me of political theory. His department has written a speech which essentially undermines the core purpose of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill. I do not think his department has read the Bill. He is saying that what the Government are doing with the setting up of combined authorities will lead to a completely incoherent approach. His answer is complete nonsense.
Clearly, I am not going to get an answer on this. I still do not understand why, when this will have massive implications for the devolution of central government powers, the education department seems to have completely opted out. I am absolutely speechless.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to respond on behalf on the Opposition. I start by declaring my interest as president of the Healthcare Supplies Association and of GS1. As we are discussing culture, I should say that I am also a patron of the CBSO and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
We have once again heard from the Minister the extravagant claims made by the Government for this year’s Queen’s Speech. We are told that they will adopt a one-nation approach, support aspiration and give new opportunities to the most disadvantaged. I have to say that, listening to the Minister, I hear scant evidence of that in the subjects that we debate this afternoon.
Although economic growth is returning, its benefits are not being shared, the economy remains fragile, Britain’s productivity lags behind, tax revenues have fallen and the trade deficit is growing. The Government’s claim to bring the public finances under control is surely inconsistent with the many uncosted pledges in their manifesto. Who can doubt that the price to be paid for that irresponsibility will fall heaviest on the very disadvantaged people that the Government claim to want to help? That certainly characterises the Government’s welfare policies. We of course will back measures to help people get into work. However, it is now even more important that there are decent jobs for people to move into, that childcare is affordable and available, and that there are adequate funds for discretionary house payments; otherwise, the Government’s reduction in the cap will, tragically, put children into poverty, increase homelessness and end up costing more than it saves.
On welfare, the overriding question is where the promised £12 billion of welfare cuts will fall. The Government have been silent on this; not surprisingly, since they are clearly in disarray about what to do. Wherever the axe eventually falls, inevitably it will be on the independence of disabled people and on working-age families, who will face an even tighter squeeze in the years ahead. It is hardly inspirational to further penalise working people who are in receipt of welfare subsidies because their pay is so poor. I ask the Minister to listen to Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron’s former adviser. He said recently:
“It is outrageous that people should work all hours of the week and still have to live on benefits because they don’t get paid enough”.
He said that it is,
“a really big problem both economically, socially and morally”.
Quite, my Lords—quite.
On education, we will hold the Prime Minister to account for his latest promises on free childcare for 3 and 4 year-olds. The rhetoric might be promising, but the reality is that children’s centres have closed and the cost of childcare has soared. The average family now pays £1,500 more per year for nursery fees than it would have done in 2010. The National Day Nurseries Association says that fees will rise to subsidise the cost of free places because the Government have miscalculated the costs. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, was hardly reassuring on this in his Answer to an Oral Question earlier.
Talking of value for money, it is surely a scandal that, with a severe school place shortage in many areas, the Government are ploughing hundreds of millions of pounds into building new free schools in other parts of the country where there is already a surplus of places. As Simon Jenkins put it, it is all on a par with their,
“covert project to nationalise all schools”.
New primary and secondary schools, together with those schools defined by Whitehall as failing or coasting, are to be brought under regional tsars. It seems to me that that is all on the basis of the rather selective evidence that we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, this afternoon. The latest centralising absurdity is the intention to remove the duty to hold a public consultation before a school converts to an academy. So much for parental involvement, of which the noble Lord’s party made so much in the years behind.
The noble Lord, Lord Nash, did mention culture this afternoon, and I am grateful for that. However, he will have noted that the Queen’s Speech was absolutely silent about the brilliance of the cultural heritage of this country. I wonder whether that silence reflects the way that support for the arts has been decimated by this Government, both directly through Arts Council funding and indirectly through the impact of reduced local authority support.
Perhaps, too, that silence reflects the threats made by the noble Lord’s party to the BBC. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, will say in winding up that the long-term future of the BBC as an independent and vibrant organisation is assured. Already, it has suffered a budget cut of about 25% since 2010. The rush to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee and cut funding further is bound to impact on the quality and range of programmes.
There can be no doubt that many arts organisations face huge pressures. I will take as an example the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which I know best. In very difficult circumstances, the city council has done its best to protect funding, but, inevitably, there has been a loss of grant. With all the imaginative fundraising in the world, an orchestra such as the CBSO is now very vulnerable, as are many of the best arts organisations in our country. I would like the Government to encourage the Arts Council to do more to redress the imbalance in funding between London and the rest of the country. I remind the Minister that the 2013 report, Rebalancing our Cultural Capital, showed that per capita spend in London was 15 times that of the rest of the country, and I ask him what the Government are going to do about it.
So there is silence on the arts in the Queen’s Speech, and I rather thought that the Government might have liked to keep silent on the NHS. The Minister has no doubt read, as I have, the recent King’s Fund independent analysis of the wretched 2012 health Act. It concluded that it had produced an unwieldy structure, with leadership fractured between several national bodies, a complex regulatory system and a strategic vacuum in leadership. It is on that rocky ground that the Government now promise the integration of health and social care, implementation of the five-year forward plan, seven-day working, more resources for mental health and more funding generally—at least until the Secretary of State said yesterday that no more was needed.
How is integration of health and social care to be achieved when social care continues to take such a heavy burden in local authority cuts? Does anyone believe that the hapless clinical commissioning groups will take any notice of pleas to spend more on mental health? They certainly have not done so far.
No one could argue with the desire to reduce higher mortality rates at weekends, but is a true, seven-day working model deliverable given the scale of the financial challenge in the NHS, which is formidable? Already, we have seen performance deteriorating. The four-hour waiting time target for major A&E departments has been missed every week for nigh on two years. Cancer waiting time targets have been missed for five consecutive quarters. Ambulance waiting times have deteriorated. Lack of access to GPs is a source of considerable public concern. It was reported that 160,000 patients in the last two years have had to find new doctors because their practice has closed. Seven-day working in hospitals needs seven-day working in the community. How is that to happen when primary care is under so much pressure at the moment?
We know that employment agencies are taking the NHS to the cleaners, and the Government have belatedly acted by placing a cap on payments—I think that they found that the free market does not seem to work—but is not the real cause of agency overspend the lamentable decision that the noble Lord’s Government took to cut nurse training places? What are they going to do about it?
Seven-day working is hardly credible without recognition of the financial consequences. We had a provider deficit of nearly £1 billion in the last financial year; it is now estimated to double in the current financial year. The Minister mentioned the mystical £8 billion, but that is promised for 2020. It is clear that the NHS needs resources now, and it is clear that the £8 billion is credible only if the NHS drives up its efficiency to a level never achieved before. I would like to hear in the Minister’s winding-up speech exactly how he thinks that is going to be done without impacting on safety and quality of patient outcomes, remembering that clinical staffing costs are the biggest spend in the NHS budget.
The Government have such little confidence in their stewardship of the NHS that they are refusing to bring any NHS legislation to Parliament. Because of that, the professional accountability Bill, which is a Law Commission measure to enhance public protection through professional regulation, has been killed off. The Royal College of Surgeons has warned that one consequence will be that doctors will continue to perform cosmetic surgery without the necessary additional training or qualifications. Why is that going to be allowed to happen?
The Queen’s Speech certainly does not want for rhetoric. However, we shall judge the Government on their ability to deliver so that the benefits of economic growth are enjoyed by all rather than just the wealthy; that welfare policies will support rather than penalise working-age families; that schools and teachers will be encouraged to do their best for young people; that the huge contribution of the arts is recognised and appreciated; and that the NHS will be properly funded to respond to the extraordinary pressure it is under.
From these Benches we will be rigorous in our scrutiny of the legislative programme. We have made clear that, within the bounds of the convention, we will not hesitate to seek to defeat the Government when the occasion demands.