Education (Pupil Information) (England) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2016

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Storey in his regret Motion. He talked about an anti-immigration rhetoric, and we have seen the increase in hate crime, for example, which has occurred post-Brexit. However, it goes further than that.

In addition to the Government’s attempt to require companies to report the number of foreign staff they employ, which my noble friend mentioned, under the Policing and Crime Bill currently going through this House the Government will require people who are detained by the police, where the police suspect the individual not to be a British citizen, to produce their passport. I cannot tell which group of people who are arrested will be required to produce their passport, but I suspect that it may largely be dictated by the colour of their skin. What happens if the individual is a British citizen who does not have a passport? I raise this issue because it paints the picture of where the Government are going as regards immigration.

Under a provision in the Immigration Act recently passed by this House, when the police stop somebody driving a car whom they suspect not to be a British citizen, the police can search that person’s home for their driving licence without a warrant. Again, the question has to be raised: which drivers will be stopped by the police and taken to their home address to search for their passport? The whole thing shows the direction of travel that this Government are going in, which unfortunately not only provides—to use the current term—a hostile environment for illegal immigrants but does so for people who are here legally, and indeed for those who are born here but who do not appear at first glance to be British. So the charge my noble friend Lord Storey makes that the provision in the regulations smacks of racism is supported by these other measures that the Government have passed and continue to put through.

The Government say that the details that are asked for will be only for Department for Education use. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, made reference to the website Schools Week, which reports:

“The government has refused to release a new agreement that prevents the Department for Education from passing pupil nationality and country of birth data to the Home Office”.

All that the Department for Education would say to Schools Week was that,

“an old agreement that allowed the Home Office to access certain information from the national pupil database had now been ‘superseded’”,

but it refused to release the wording of that new agreement without a Freedom of Information Act request. If the Government are absolutely sure that none of this information will be shared with the Home Office, can the Minister please explain to the House why they will not publish what the guidance is and why they require a Freedom of Information Act request to secure it?

In a letter to my noble friend, the Minister apparently said that this information is intended to enable schools to receive more support. Can the Minister say why in London—where not only is there a higher proportion of low-income pupils eligible for free lunches than in any other region in England but around 42% of the city’s students do not have English as a first language, compared with the national average of just over 15%, and the schools overwhelmingly have larger class sizes than the national average—the schools are doing far better than schools in other, comparable regions in the country? What extra support are these schools going to need because they have pupils who are foreign nationals?

Unfortunately, all the evidence points to this being an immigration tactic rather than having anything to do with trying to improve the education of young people or supporting our schools.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, there has been a historic tradition of separating school education from the state in the United Kingdom. Leaving aside the issues of selection by ability and admission arrangements, it has been accepted that, subject to a place being available, a child can attend a local school without any test of right of residence, nationality or language spoken at home. So the new requirement to collect information on nationality and country of birth could well be a tipping point, as these data could be used to assist the Government in pursuing their immigration policies.

It is safe to assume that, when the DfE decided last year to add these new components for the 2016-17 school census, it did not anticipate the furore that that would cause. After all, the DfE has collected data on pupils’ ethnicity for many years. Human rights groups would probably have raised questions, but the DfE might just have been able to fend them off with an appeal to “trust us”. However, that was last year and last year was, literally, another world, because in the intervening period we have had a referendum and now we are in the very messy process of extricating ourselves from the EU. The fact that the regulations appeared on the day before Parliament went into recess in July is probably an indication that the realisation had dawned within the DfE that this had become a politically sensitive issue.

Two effects have combined to cause the furore. One is that, despite the fact that schools are not allowed to ask to see children’s passports or birth certificates, there are reports that some have reacted to the new questions on birth and nationality by doing just that. The DfE has made it clear that parents are not obliged to comply, yet fears remain. What steps will the Government take to ensure that all schools make that information available to parents?

The fears emanate from the second effect—the fall-out from the referendum. The vote in favour of leaving the European Union has left the immigration status of EU nationals living in the UK much less clear than it was 12 months ago. Indeed, the International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox, has suggested—in my view, appallingly—that they could be,

“one of our main cards”,

in the negotiations on leaving.

Then came the Tory party conference, with the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, saying that companies could be forced to reveal how many foreign workers they have. Then the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced plans to train more British doctors to replace overseas medics already here. With the Prime Minister also using her party conference speech to focus on immigration, there is now an unambiguous government culture of making foreign nationals feel unwelcome.

It is within that context that the implications of the SI we are discussing today are viewed. That is why DfE denials of any ulterior motive do not sound convincing. In a letter to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, last week, the Minister stated that,

“given the sensitivity of the new information being collected we will not add this to the NPD, so no-one outside the department will be able to access it”.

That is a welcome development, and I am willing to accept it at face value on a personal basis. The problem for us on these Benches is that the Minister cannot speak for other government departments, nor can he control what might happen in terms of the Home Office gaining access to the information, should circumstances, or that department’s needs, change.

Given that a recent FoI request revealed that the NPD had been accessed by the Home Office on 18 occasions, will the Minister tell noble Lords what information about individual pupils will be provided by the DfE to the Home Office in future? And why has the DfE said that it will not make public the agreement with the Home Office that will prevent the passing of pupil nationality and country-of-birth data to UK Visas and Immigration? If the Minister wants noble Lords to have confidence that he can deliver what he says, why not produce the proof? Unless it has a statutory footing, any new agreement will have limited validity and lack clear oversight. Will the Government consider giving the new arrangement a statutory basis? That at least would prevent it being altered by a change of policy in the future.

Given that the department already collects information on the number of students with English as a second language, can the Minister explain in more detail how the addition of country-of-birth data will further assist the department in supporting schools with children who have English as a second language? Will holding country-of-birth data result in more resources being directed to schools with higher numbers of children with English as a second language?

Before announcing the new components of the census, what assessments did the DfE make of the additional burdens on teachers, school administrative staff and parents, and the additional costs involved?

The school census is clearly beneficial in assessing the impact of migration on schools, but academics and journalists conducting research also make extensive use of the database. The Government now intend to restrict such access to important statistics on schoolchildren. In future, those who use the database must not write anything about the data without first showing it to the Government, with 48 hours’ notice. With commendable candour, a government email admitted:

“This will reduce the risk that DfE are caught off guard by being asked to provide statements about research the appropriate people have not seen”.

Can the Minister say how many similar arrangements apply within the DfE or in other departments?

It is clear that the Government did not think through the political implications either of collecting data on pupils’ country of birth and nationality or of transmitting named pupil information, to be held by the DfE, which can be matched with data in other departments. Any difficulties they are now experiencing are entirely of their own making.

It is not too late for the Minister today to assuage the concerns of many noble Lords, and I hope that, by providing answers to the questions that I and other noble Lords have posed in this debate, he will be able to do that. My noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie attempted to give notice of our questions to the Minister last week through the Government Whips’ Office but I understand that that did not succeed. Fortunately, I was able to give the Minister a few hours’ notice of them this afternoon. If he cannot give the assurances we seek, he should be aware that my colleagues in the other place will be pursuing these issues with vigour.