Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Moynihan]

23A: After Clause 13, insert the following new Clause—
“Independent schools’ sports facilities: public benefit
In section 4 of the Charities Act 2011 (the public benefit requirement), after subsection (4) insert—“(5) Independent schools which are charities must engage fully with local communities and state schools with a view to sharing sports facilities and coaching expertise.
(6) The Charity Commission must publish guidance setting out the minimum that independent schools which are charities must do to comply with the duty in subsection (5).””

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Glentoran. The principles behind the amendment are reflected in the amendment with which it is coupled, standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, in the context of music, drama and the arts. I support that amendment as well, not least because best practice by independent schools involves both sport and the arts in terms of engaging with the local community.

I was delighted to hear the Minister state, in response to an earlier amendment, that the key issue with regard to the Bill is to give the Charity Commission the tools with which to do the job. That is precisely what we intend in tabling these amendments. The core reason behind them is that there is very good practice by many independent schools in terms of engaging on the use of sports facilities, exchange of coaches and engagement with pupils from the independent sector and the state sector in their catchment area to improve the opportunities for young people in the totality of the catchment area. The problem is that this is not consistently applied. There are pockets—islands—of good practice. The lack of consistency of good practice is the result of the current structure of support that we have in legislation to date. I shall address that in a little more detail.

I say that there are some good examples. I will not rehearse many of them, as I did at Second Reading, but I shall focus on some, not least because of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. Tonbridge School, for example, engages with the local community not only through sporting activities but in music, drama, dance, chess, art and design. Indeed, it brings them all together in true Olympian fashion—the vast majority of the history of the Olympic Games has been about engaging both through the arts and sport. It is good to see a school such as Tonbridge engaging so actively, not just once a year but throughout the year, to ensure that primary-age children in particular benefit from the facilities which the independent sector has and which primary schools and many secondary schools in the area do not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, I tread carefully in areas of disagreement with my noble friends Lord Lexden and Lord Hodgson and, indeed, my noble friend the Minister. However, I wish to make one or two observations in response to their comments. The Minister referred to Sir Michael Wilshaw’s Going the Extra Mile report. This was an indictment of sport in schools in this country. It was stated without any equivocal reticence:

“The survey reveals unacceptable discrepancies between the proportion of pupils attending state schools and their representation in elite sport”.

Clearly, that is not simply a function of the relationship between independent schools and state schools but raises a major question about how we support the development of both primary and secondary schoolchildren in sport and recreation and indeed, I would argue, in the wider context of the arts as well.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Lexden that best practice and the encouragement of voluntary local arrangements is ideally the best way forward. However, I have to say to him that I would not be standing in front of this Committee today if those voluntary arrangements were working. The reality is—he has the report in front of him, from which he quoted—that only one-quarter of the schools in partnership with state schools invite pupils to use their music facilities, only one-tenth invite pupils to use their drama facilities and only 6% second coaching staff. Regrettably, these figures strengthen my argument that if we consistently come back year after year and say, “Leave it to voluntary agreements because this is not an area for political involvement”, we are letting down a generation.

We sit in your Lordships’ House in part to look at legislation, balance wholly reasonable points about the non-politicisation of the Charity Commission’s objectives and ensure that guidance takes precedence. Indeed, the amendment before the Committee today, in terms of the arts and sport, emphasises the publication of guidance as the key criterion. It does not require or seek the Charity Commission to publish regulations that then are subject to either affirmative or negative resolution of this House. It seeks to continue through guidance. It seeks a very light-touch statement that, in publishing that guidance, it is wholly reasonable and, I would argue, non-political to ask independent schools—which through their own guidance have been directed in the area of engagement on sport and recreation activities between their schools and the public—to engage fully with those local communities and state schools. That is as far as we would wish to go in legislation, and then we would look to the Charity Commission to publish appropriate guidance.

Of course every school differs, but the statistics I have just quoted—I welcome that they will be published more widely on a website this autumn—are a sign. They are a clear example that the wholly voluntary approach towards best practice, which ideally we would all like to support, is not working.

We need look no further than local authorities. Parliament determined that there should be a voluntary approach by local authorities to support sport and recreation activities in this country and that it should be a discretionary spend item, not a mandatory spend item. What is the consequence of that? A lack of investment in local sport and recreation facilities, a lack of opportunity for girls and women to engage in those facilities because there simply are not the facilities for so many women to participate in sport at a local level, and, frankly, a collapse of opportunity around this country, all because we have left this to voluntary local arrangements—unlike, by the way, Scotland, which has taken a mandatory approach.

My argument with my noble friend Lord Lexden is that although the voluntary approach and the encouragement of voluntary local arrangements has, in part, been outstanding—I am not for a moment arguing that all schools have failed to deliver close working relationships with the local community over sport and recreation and the arts—the reality is that it is a patchwork quilt in this country. Wherever we do not deliver best practice, we let down local communities. We have a very light-touch opportunity in this legislation to rectify that. I simply say to my noble friend that if we take it, we might move from 6% of schools seconding coaching staff to the local communities and in the direction of the outstanding chief master of King Edward’s School in Birmingham, John Claughton, who shares the vision that I am talking about and has come up with some excellent ideas, but there will be no impetus behind that if we simply leave schools to current practice.

We have to change our approach to this if we are going to maximise the opportunities for young people in our society to engage and not walk past independent schools with which they have little to no relationship—I am not talking about best practice; I am, regrettably, talking about the 1,002 schools out of 1,073 that do not second coaching staff. That cannot be acceptable to your Lordships’ House and it cannot be acceptable, sadly, in the wake of the hugely inspirational Olympic Games in London in 2012. We should be engaging with all able-bodied and disabled kids in the locality on where independent schools can play a major role in achieving that objective, rather than, three years on, to have these statistics in front of me, which were published by the ISC and demonstrate, in my view, that the Charity Commission needs to have greater vision to drive forward change in the interests of all young people in this country.

I predict that the proportion of our medallists from the independent sector in Rio 2016 will be even higher than the proportion from London 2012. The proportion of the total team that we take will certainly be higher, not least because it looks highly unlikely that we will take a football team. Football is one sport in this country where you have a pretty perfect relationship between the numbers of independent and state school kids going to play at the national level, with the proportion from state schools being of the order of 93%. That is what you would hope for in every sport, but it exists only in football and not elsewhere. By the look of it we are not going to be sending a men’s or a women’s team from GB, so you can expect the percentages to fall back to closer to where they were in Beijing in 2008.

I conclude by wishing that I was in a position to agree with my noble friend Lord Lexden. I am sensitive to the arguments that my noble friend Lord Hodgson made about politicisation. We need to look at that carefully as we reconsider the amendments that we have tabled. I absolutely understand that there would appear to be a discrepancy between, on the one hand, publishing guidance setting out minimum standards and, on the other, taking into account engaging fully with local communities and state schools. I would argue that there should be a minimum standard, so I do not actually see the discrepancy myself, but I see that it is open to a different understanding. It is something that I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and I will review in the light of that excellent intervention when it comes to taking this idea forward to the next stage.

For the time being, I will of course withdraw the amendment standing in my name and could not be more grateful to your Lordships from both sides of the House. This debate has taken an hour—I thought we were going very swiftly until this point, so I apologise for the fact that we have had a full hour—but it has been a quality hour and has been very helpful in identifying key areas that we need to consider between now and Report. In light of the interest and support that exists for taking this further, at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 23A withdrawn.