(9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeMy Lords, I begin by referencing my entry on the Register of Lords’ Interests: I am the unpaid and independent adviser to government on anti-Semitism. I was warned on coming in by my advisory team—a small one—that I should attempt to persuade, not to berate. My independence may come through a little bit, but I want to reference one page only in this report of 104 pages, page 17. There is a current Office for Students consultation on draft regulatory advice arising from the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which is due to be enacted on 1 August. My suggestion to the Minister and the Committee is that the currently proposed guidelines appear to remove crucial and hard-won safeguards for Jewish students, potentially allowing anti-Semitism to grow on university campuses.
The OfS was directed to produce regulatory guidance on the free speech Bill. It released it at the end of March but, as of today, several questions remain unanswered about how the guidance will work in practice. It is my understanding that there are only two weeks left in the consultation process. If the proposed advice proceeds as it currently stands it will be acceptable to do and say the following things in our universities, leaving them with no power to intervene. I shall give three examples. The first is to have “intifada until victory” posters on approved university noticeboards. The second is to have a Holocaust denial society registering at a university freshers’ fair, having followed the correct registration processes. The third is to have “free Palestine” graffiti on a Jewish society poster on an official noticeboard.
All three are quite separate and distinct and are serious issues that are not conducive to the establishment of good relations on university campuses, which universities are, of course, legally bound to foster. I suspect that the Government and Parliament would both be horrified to discover that, in just over two months’ time, it might be possible to defend Hamas’s “inalienable right” to commit the 7 October attacks, or to argue that the Holocaust never happened, in one of our universities—not just to say such things but to do so by citing the Government’s own legislation on free speech, as passed by Parliament.
Over the past 30 years, we have driven Holocaust deniers out of any legitimate space for debate. The current flaw in the guidance that is circulating risks throwing away that agreed rejection of the falsification of the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children, and many more Nazi victims. When this legislation was going through, the Minister at the time stated that there would be an explicit—I repeat the word “explicit”—rejection of Holocaust denial, but that has not been forthcoming from the OfS. That is contrary to the promises made by the Government, in all good faith, to the House during the progress of the freedom of speech Bill.
It is not legitimate to intimidate and harass Jewish students in the name of free speech. The OfS’s director for freedom of speech and academic freedom, Professor Arif Ahmed, has been one of the leading critics of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which this Government were the first in the world to adopt in 2017, and which has been adopted by all political parties represented at Westminster to great impact and positive effect. The current proposals are likely to lead to some universities revoking their use of the IHRA definition as a reference point in looking at anti-Semitism. Jewish communal organisations in this country united in supporting the Government when they adopted the IHRA definition in 2017. It is a globally agreed definition, and there are no credible examples at all—not a single one—of its use in our universities prohibiting or restricting in any way any freedom of expression or of academic study, but it will fall foul of the guidance as it currently stands.
The advice as it stands will also stop the mandating of most forms of training on anti-Semitism, despite the fact that the Department for Education has tendered such work for contract in recent months. It will impede universities’ ability to take action against those who intimidate, ostracise and harass Jewish students and staff. The crux of the problem for universities will then be that this approach of purist free speech, to which the guidance currently works, will lead to aggressive legal actions against universities. This will distract universities from their core role and divert their attention away from safeguarding and strengthening intercommunity relations in the university population, which become more important and more prescient by the month. I put it to the Minister that the proposed regulatory advice is not fit for purpose and that the negatives that will impact will be detrimental to Jewish students.
I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Johnson. One of the purposes of the Office for Students was to be for students. Jewish students are entitled to that right alongside—no more than but no less than—any other group of students. The safeguards that universities are using at the moment are needed now more, not less, than ever before, and have generally been working. This current draft, on which consultation is about to end and which is to be enacted by 1 August, needs a fundamental rethink. Jewish students across the country have indicated in great detail their serious concerns about how the guidance will operate. I endorse their concerns. I suggest that the Government pause the enactment of the free speech Act until these issues have been resolved.
I offer my services, as well as those of others who have worked in this field in great detail over recent years, to try to ensure that government policy on the equitable treatment of Jewish students and the objectives of the OfS can be brought together in a way that has practical application and does not undermine the good work that has gone on in universities in challenging the scourge of anti-Semitism and protecting both Jewish students and Jewish staff.
(1 year, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberJust to be clear on the Building Schools for the Future programme, there are schools today where we have found RAAC that would have been in that programme and were among those cancelled. There are also schools that got funding through it where we found RAAC, so it is not fair to say that Building Schools for the Future would have solved this problem. We are dealing with a number of cases that had funding through that programme which did not remove the RAAC and where we are now dealing with that.
The noble Lord is right that the department argued, as every department does, for as large as possible a settlement from the Treasury. We are very proud of our school rebuilding programme, but I also draw the House’s attention to the amount of capital that has been spent over the last 10 years both on condition funding and on building new school places. During this Administration, there has obviously been a bulge in pupil numbers which has led to around £2 billion a year, on average, being spent on building new places for pupils by either extending existing schools or building new ones. In the last spending review, the budget for condition funding—maintaining our schools—was increased by 28%.
My Lords, are there many leisure centres used by schoolchildren as part of the school curriculum that are impacted by RAAC?
I am not aware whether there are leisure centres. The decision that we took in relation to schools reflected a number of factors. One was, obviously, the safety of pupils being paramount. Secondly, there was the speed with which we believed we could remediate most cases and, thirdly, the capacity and capability in estate management within the education sector. I am not an expert on leisure centres, but I assume that many will have dedicated expertise or have access to it.
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I rise to support the right reverend Prelate in everything he has said. He will recall that in Committee, I supported him in the change to the governance of academies in the context of faith schools. I am grateful to the Minister—although she is engaged in other matters at the moment—and the Government for agreeing to make this amendment. I think it is sensible and I am glad that the Government have agreed to it, but I have to say that I cannot support Amendment 30 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. Incidentally, I understand much of what she said, and I have a great deal of respect for her. She quite rightly referred to the fact that you do not have to be Christian in order to have Christian values and ensure that they form the basis of a moral education for young people. Of course, that is why there are very many faith schools in our country which are attended by people of other faiths and sometimes no faith at all: because they want that sort of moral education. That is one of the great values of our faith schools in this country.
This is not about faith schools; it is about academies —we do not have them in Wales, by the way, but we supported them as a Labour Government. We have talked much about Wales. As a former Secretary of State for Wales myself, I am very grateful to the Minister for saying how we lead the way in many respects, but I do not agree on this one, for two reasons.
First, the right reverent Prelate the Bishop of Durham referred to the fact that there is still more work to be done with regard to religious education, so let us await the result of that work. Secondly, I have studied the amendment very carefully, and it is about religious education—or is it? I assume that, in England, it is still a requirement for state schools to teach religious education, so that is what they must teach.
The nature of that teaching has changed dramatically since I was at school. When I was a young Catholic in a state school, I had to file out of assembly because I was not allowed to take part in what was regarded as a Protestant assembly in the school. I was not allowed to go to RE lessons because I was a Catholic and the lessons were Protestant. Happily, and thank the Lord, that has all changed. Under my own Church, after Vatican II, not only did I attend all those things but I read the lesson in the assembly.
The world has changed and there is no question but that, over the past 30, 40 or 50 years, the teaching of other faiths in religious education has increased—and rightly so. If you live in an area of England that is dominated by people of other faiths, of course you teach those faiths—it is about religion. If you have to teach non-religious things, call it something else—it is not religion.
If it comes to a vote, I will not support the amendment, but I understand the ideas behind it. I think the most significant thing is what the right reverend Prelate said: let us wait for the experts who teach RE to tell us what they think is best. But let us not do away with religious education, as we believe it is, at this important point in our history.
My Lords, I feel obliged to make a few comments on the question of what is and what is not religious education.
On Amendment 30 and the discussion of other religions, is the teaching of Judaism regarded as religious education or civics? I declare an interest as on the register as a trustee of a multi-academy trust. A major piece of work is already under way looking at how contemporary Jewish life could, in a very minimal but important way, be put into the curriculum of every school, and how contemporary anti-Semitism could be more than touched on and built into teaching in a timewise, modest way. That could be defined as a discussion of Judaism and classified as religious education.
From my perspective, in a sense, that does not matter. What matters is that somewhere within all secondary schools in the country, pupils get a glimpse of another community and its life, our history with the Jewish community—which has not been the proudest over the past 1,000 years—and some feeling and understanding of what it is like to be Jewish in this country.
I do not have a specific view on whether the amendment would work or not. The spirit of it is very interesting and useful. There is a challenge there and the more debate and discussion we have on the challenge of how other faiths, communities or both are fed into the school curriculum in this small but important way is vital to faith communities, education and the country.
My Lords, I ought to declare an interest as a former head teacher of a Church of England school. We live in a multicultural, multifaith community, and we make that successful by respecting each and every one of us. I shall come back to that in a moment.
We on these Benches support Amendment 30. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that you do not have to be a Christian to believe in Christian values, but the values of other faiths are also important. For example, my daughter went to a Jewish school, where she learned many values which were not, initially, her understanding. Because that Jewish school admitted children from different faiths, at 28 she still has lifelong friends from a whole range of different faiths: Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Hindu. She seems to constantly go to Hindu weddings for some reason.
I have a question for the Minister to which she might not know the answer, so perhaps she could respond in writing. I understood that we had SACREs, Standing Advisory Committees on Religious Education; each local authority had to establish a SACRE, which determined the religious syllabus for the schools in its district or city. I do not know how that works now. I was the chair of a SACRE for a couple of years, a long time ago. I do not know how that relates to the previous debate on academies, current religious education in schools or the amendment. If we agree to this amendment, which I hope we do, how does a SACRE get involved? Can it say that it is not in favour of doing this or that? If the Minister does not know or cannot get those in the Box to tell her, perhaps she could write to me. That would be very helpful.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said that RE must be safeguarded in all our schools, and here is the problem. The problem is not religious education; it is the quality of its teaching. I have been in non-faith schools and been appalled at how religious education is taught. Nobody is qualified—it can be the person who is least qualified who does it and, frankly, it would be better not to do it.
I was always a great believer in school assemblies. The law of the land said—I think it was under the Blair Government—that every school had to have a daily act of collective worship. I do not think that happens in most non-aided schools. At one stage, Ofsted used to report if it was not happening. A school assembly can be a wonderful way to celebrate people of faith or no faith—it can bring the school community together. But some schools just go through the motions and try to squeeze 500 pupils into a hall to tick the box that they have had an assembly. Frankly, I would rather that they did not do it than try to fulfil the letter of the law.
I hope the Minister will look kindly on this amendment, because it is very important. On the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, if we agree the amendment, it does not prevent those discussions taking place.