Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Knight of Weymouth and Lord Shipley

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I think I support everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, said. I am not a signatory to any of the amendments in this group, but I am fully supportive and have other, broadly similar, amendments in other places.

I agreed with the noble Baroness when she said that she expects that Clause 1 will not leave this House intact. She must be right. Clause 1 is very poorly drafted and requires amendments. It may be that it should be removed entirely from the Bill. I find it very strange to have primary legislation that gives such widespread and unnecessary powers to the Secretary of State. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, said, Clause 1 suggests examples of matters about which standards “may” be set. Those words are far too loose. What is to happen, for example, if the Secretary of State decides not to set any standards at all, given the use of the word “may”? Surely standards must be set. After all, independent schools have standards to meet, which are those set out in Section 94 of the Education and Skills Act 2008.

Unless the Minister can show good reason, it would seem wise for the Government to support the principles underlying the amendments in this group. Surely the Government should accept that intervention by a Secretary of State on everyday matters would be centralist, divisive and quite impossible to manage. Defining standards is one thing; permitting interference by the Secretary of State is quite another. The job of Ministers is to give the legislation that the Government are proposing clarity of intent. This clause fails on that count because it places in the Bill unnecessary powers, unnecessary doubt and unnecessary interference in day-to-day matters in schools right across the country by a single person.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I remind the Committee of my interests in respect of education in the register; in particular, I chair the trust board of the E-ACT multi-academy trust. This group is clearly about the open-ended powers that the Secretary of State is seeking to take in the Bill. I fully support what has already been said by both speakers, particularly from my Front Bench. In the end, this group goes to the heart of the conundrum of the Bill.

I have just come back from a glorious week in Orkney, basking in the glorious biodiversity of that part of our country. To go back to how we are to deal with this, if the Government’s policy, as set out in the White Paper, is for all schools to become part of a multi-academy trust—I think “strong multi-academy trust” is the phrase—first, do I agree with that? That is the direction of travel and I shall not argue with it. I then turn to how we will make that work. I also agree with what I think is the outcome that the Government are trying to achieve, which is a rationalisation away from a multiplicity of legal agreements with different academy proprietors, and something much easier than having to then have officials go around and try to renegotiate individual agreements one by one every time we want a change of policy. We therefore have to put something in statute that overrides those agreements; I think that is what Clause 2 is all about.

Incidentally, I would be interested if the Minister could circulate to us any advice she has had about why the Bill is not hybrid. Of course, the private interests of those academy proprietors are different from each other because of all those different sorts of legal agreements, and we are seeking through a public Bill to be able to interfere with various sorts of private interests. That might make the Bill hybrid and it would help the Committee if any advice that the Minister has had on hybridity was circulated for us.

However, when I think about those legal agreements, I then think about a culture of stable-horse regulation, which those of us who have been Ministers are all familiar with: there is an outcry about something that has gone wrong in an academy somewhere, or in some schools, so you then have quickly to try to fix it so that every subsequent legal agreement does not allow that thing to happen again. That is one reason why the legal agreements keep changing. However, I think that then means that the Government have said, “Okay, what are all the things covered in all the legal agreements that we currently have with all the various academy trusts? We’ll put them all into Clause 1(2) and that kind of covers everything.” They should, rather, have taken a breath and said, “Okay. What do we really need to regulate in the form of standards for these academies?” and not just to gold-plate all that stable-horse regulation. Any approach to good regulation and re-regulation would avoid repeating and gold-plating the mission creep that we have seen, which is now resulting in these highly draconian powers that the Secretary of State proposes to take in the Bill.

I come to my first recommendation to the Government, mindful of the letter that we have all had from the Chief Whips and Convenor to remind us that Committee is a conversation. We are having a conversation and this is also the closest thing we have to pre-legislative scrutiny, because the Bill is a Lords starter. In listening to the conversation, I suggest politely to the Minister and to the department that they listen to the debate that we have had and, in particular, listen to the noble Lords, Lord Nash, Lord Baker and Lord Agnew. We have not heard from them yet, but their amendments make it look as though they are saying, “Just scrap it all and start again.” My first choice would be for the Government to listen to this effective pre-legislative scrutiny—it is the closest thing we have to it—say, “Maybe we’ve got this kind of wrong”, take the summer, think about it and come back in the autumn on Report with a whole new set of clauses to achieve what the Government are trying to achieve, which I kind of agree with in terms of outcome. However, if they do not want to do that, we have all these other amendments with really good ideas that we can have a conversation about now.

When I think about what I want to say in the context of those amendments, I go back to what I was thinking about in Orkney and what I would do if we wanted every school to be an academy. I want to hang on to the independence that was there when my noble friend Lord Adonis first started the academies movement back in the day, particularly around curriculum. It is fair to say that we have not seen that much use of curriculum freedoms, but we have seen a bit. I would like to see more use of curriculum freedoms to get a better balance around the social, emotional and physical development of children, as well as their cognitive development, just as an example. However, I am happy to have a system where we build trust in school leaders and in teachers to make decisions about their local context and local community and the pupils and the parents they serve, to find the right curriculum mix for their own community.

There is independence and then a limited number of standards. I have put my name to Amendment 6 in the name of my noble friend, which repeats the standards set for independent schools. That is a logical and rational approach to setting standards that has a read-across to other independent schools. Those standards should then be inspected. We have an Office for Standards in Education—Ofsted—which should inspect against those standards at a MAT level. I am interested in ideas about whether we stop routine inspection at a school level and just inspect at a MAT level unless parents trigger an inspection at an individual school level. There is something interesting there to have a conversation about.

Then, of course, because we are spending a lot of public money, schools must be accountable. It is not just about the money but about setting children up to succeed in life. That accountability should be local to local authorities and parents, regional—I have tabled an amendment with some ideas about holding regional schools commissioners to account for the work that they are going to do under the Bill—and national. We have some systems here for the Secretary of State, but Parliament does not have a big enough role in the Bill as it is currently set up, which is why I support the use in some cases of the super-affirmative procedure that some of my noble friends are suggesting.

Fundamentally, we must build this on the basis of trust in teachers. That is why I have tabled amendments on teachers’ pay and conditions applying to teachers in academies, and on removing some of the academies’ independence in how they employ teachers. I do not expect anyone to agree with me on all of that, but that is my starter for 10 in trying to approach and think about this. In the end, this is my encouragement to the Government: take this opportunity to listen to what people around the House, with our expertise and experience, are saying. Do not come back on Report before the Summer Recess; take the time and grab that opportunity to get this right, because if the direction of travel is for every school to be in a multi-academy trust, we must get it right. At the moment, the Government have got it horribly wrong and I do not think they will get the agreement of this House.