Mike Hancock
Main Page: Mike Hancock (Independent - Portsmouth South)Department Debates - View all Mike Hancock's debates with the Department for Education
(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend accept the suggestion that there are to be no ballots because most of them might be lost if parents knew all the facts? That situation is being avoided simply by not making provision for a ballot in the first place.
Dr Pugh
My hon. Friend suggests a cynical intention on the part of Ministers and I hesitate to endorse that. People must reach their own conclusions as to whether such an intention is present.
Is anyone going to give hon. Members a good reason to vote against my amendment, which would not even give parents the same rights as the parents of children at grammar schools but would be conditional on a governor objecting to proposals? I cannot for the life of me see why anyone would vote against it, but I suspect that nearly 300 will.
Let me be clear that I have no prejudice against grammar schools. I went to three of them—expelled from none, I hasten to add—and I taught happily at an ex-direct grant, independent school for 15 years. I am agnostic about educational structure and this is just a matter of logical consistency. In our debates on this issue, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) has called on the Opposition to
“acknowledge that parents should be the people who have the greatest say in their children's education”.—[Official Report, 19 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 43.]
The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) has accused Labour of not trusting people
“with the education of their own children.”—[Official Report, 19 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 118.]
And the Minister has claimed that he wants to ensure that parents are “happy with the quality” of educational provision. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) has assured us that
“the Conservative Front-Bench team takes the view that parents should have more choice”.—[Official Report, 21 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 444.]
They are all wise and experienced politicians who must know, as we all do, that governing bodies can sometimes splinter, be out of touch or be monopolised or taken over by cliques, particularly given the current chronic shortage of governors nationally; it is quite difficult to get people to become governors. Governing bodies also can and might misread parental opinion.
There is a general concern, which I share, about people who are temporarily and contingently nominated as the governors of a state school being entitled unilaterally to change the status of an asset that is paid for and financed by the whole community without the consent of that community or its elected representatives. Setting that concern aside, however, changing the status of a school without allowing the parents of children at the school a decisive voice is extraordinarily hard to justify, especially given the discretionary and entirely unspecific nature of the consultation arrangements in the Bill. The only motive that I can see for opposing my amendment, other than the dishonourable motive that my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) has suggested, is a relative indifference to parental wishes.
Mr Hancock
Does my hon. Friend agree that if the possibility of a ballot taking place arose, it should not be just the parents of children at the existing school who were allowed to vote? It would have to be wider than that and take in the parents of children in feeder schools, as they would be the major beneficiaries, and if not them, the wider community as a whole. As we have argued time and again in our debates on this issue, secondary schools are a focal point in many communities and offer more than the teaching of children.
Dr Pugh
I am arguing simply that we should be at least as permissive as Baroness Thatcher was in 1988. My hon. Friend argues that we should be more permissive, but the Government are arguing, and anyone who votes against my amendment will clearly be convinced by that argument, that we should be less permissive.
Amendment 9 would delete the words “an Academy order, or”, the effect of which would be to ensure that consultation on academy status would have to occur prior to the order being made. It is good common sense and, in essence, it is supported by the Chair of the Education Committee. As he said on Second Reading:
“The Government’s concession in clause 5 at least makes governing bodies consult those whom they deem appropriate, but it is blunted by the fact that they do not have to do so prior to applying to the Secretary of State and because they can do so even after they have been issued with an academy order. Those consulted in such circumstances would have good grounds for feeling that they were participating in a charade.”—[Official Report, 19 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 49.]
I do not think that it is our business in this place to encourage charades.
I am aware that, from time to time, it suits Members to parody, simplify and stereotype their opponents. The last Government are characteristically portrayed by the current Government as an unmitigated disaster and, in return, Labour Members portray the Government as an unmitigated evil. If people want to live in a world of hyperbole, that is fine—if a little wearisome—but let us conduct a simple thought experiment. Let us imagine a Government—any Government—different from ours, who propose to allow a public institution to change its character. They agree that the institution must consult people about the change, but they allow consultation only after the irreversible change has happened. Would Members back such a Government? Would they applaud them? What would be the point of consultation? What would that process do for public cynicism about public service consultation—already significantly eroded by the pseudo and sham consultations organised by the previous Government? But on the coalition side of the Chamber, how many quotes—showing our previous attacks, time and again, on sham consultation—do we want dragged up and used against us? At least those consultations did not take place after the event. Why do we want to invite comparison with the twisted politics of a communist plebiscite?
Is the only reason why we support the provision that the Government are proposing it? I notice that no one has said that post-hoc consultation is a cracking idea. It cannot be a case of “my Government right or wrong”. That is not a good basis for a working democracy. It will not help the Government if we vote for indefensible nonsense. It will not help the Government if we vote, but compromise our beliefs in the process. Inconsistency and duff arguments will not help the coalition in the long or short term.
Amendment 10 is genuinely probing. It makes the obvious and, for me, slightly unkind point that the last time schools were given greater financial freedoms under local financial management, which I have always supported, nearly every governing body was presented with a paper from the headmaster showing that his salary should go up because the headmaster down the road would be getting a significant increase. We saw salary inflation across the headmaster class, so headmasters may have something to look forward to from new academy status. Of course, they may not think in those terms, and I am sure that the majority do not, but the point is pretty obvious to all of us—imagine asking MPs to consult on a change that might possibly result in improved salaries. The concept of declaration of interest has some relevance in these provisions, so it is important that consultation is led by those who have none.
I acknowledge that I have not shown a lot of enthusiasm for the Bill, but despite that and despite my doubts as to its cost and effects, I am not seeking to derail it. I do not wish to cause trouble. Free schools and academies are in the coalition agreement. All I hope I have done is to make a case for good sense, which I think most people are up for, the primacy of the Commons Chamber, which I think most of us support, and the right of parents to be taken seriously. I hope rational beings on both sides of the Committee will see their way to supporting the amendment.
Mr Redwood
That may well be the case generally, but not in this situation. Changing to an academy is a one-off event of some significance in a school’s life, so parents would be well aware of it and the school would communicate with them. If the parents were alarmed, I am sure they would make their views known. I know that parents of children in my local area are well attuned to what is happening in their local school, and if they are alarmed by something that is going on, they soon raise it. They can do so directly with their councillors, with their MP or with the school’s governors.
Mr Mike Hancock
I understand and accept entirely the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the checks and balances being in place once a school is created, but the amendment is about whether people should have a choice about such a school being set up. Is he saying that the parents of potential pupils at such a school should not have a say in whether it should change its status? He is perfectly right about what happens after the event, but this is about what happens before the change.
Mr Redwood
If an entirely new school is being set up, it is up to the people putting forward that proposition to make their own decisions and canvass the marketplace to see whether people are likely to go to it. If there is a proposal to change a school’s status, parental opinion is very important, but I suggest that under the system set out in the Bill, which develops the current system, there will be plenty of opportunity for parents to make their views known. They can do that directly by talking or writing to the head teacher or governors, or they can get different people on to the governing body if they are really worried.
My experience is that people care desperately about the education of their children, and if they thought that the head teacher and the small group in the governing body who were trying to steer a change through were getting it wrong, they would make their views known very strongly. I suspect that the head and the governing body would moderate their stance or back off if they felt they had lost the confidence of their pupils and parents.
Dan Rogerson
I should like to make a little progress, after which I will happily give way to the hon. Gentleman, who I hope will contribute to the debate on this group of amendments.
The key question is this: do we feel that there is enough consultation provision in the Bill? There is also an issue of timing, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Southport and others referred when speaking to amendment 9. Is it possible to have meaningful consultation after an application has been made to the Secretary of State? In the debate in the other place this issue was addressed, and, as I recall, it is the signing of the funding agreement that makes things final. Therefore, should consultation reveal that everyone in the wider community is horrified by the idea of the school becoming an academy, there would be the option not to proceed. In other words, before the final funding agreement is signed, the application could be withdrawn and the process stopped at that point. There is a misunderstanding about when the point of no return is reached. It is not when the application is approved, but when the funding agreement is signed.
Mr Mike Hancock
I hope that my hon. Friend does not find my intervention unhelpful, although he might—[Laughter.] Does he agree that the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) go to the heart of the old Liberal adage about giving people a choice and a chance to have their say? Anything short of support for that would fly in the face of many of the things that we have stood for over the years.
Lisa Nandy
I believe that we can always do better when it comes to consultation, but I also believe that the standard being set in the Committee today marks an extraordinarily low point in the history of consultation. I think that we should move on from what was done by the previous Government, and ensure that there is more consultation, not less.
Let me emphasise to the Minister that schools are at the heart of their local communities. If there is no consultation with the people who will be affected by the Bill, schools will drive a wedge between themselves and their communities, and I believe that we have an obligation to prevent that from happening. My amendment seeks to establish why the Government do not wish to ensure that the views of the community inform the decisions of schools. I should be grateful if the Minister could answer that question.
Mr Mike Hancock
You will be pleased to know, Ms Primarolo, that I spent most of the weekend trying to pronounce your name without embarrassing myself or you. That is as near to pronouncing it correctly as I can get. I apologise for my rudeness to you last week when I could not pronounce it.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy). Is it Wigan? It was on the annunciator screen, but I missed it. It moved so quickly. You know how unaccustomed this place is to things moving quickly, Ms Primarolo, except on the annunciator screen. Anyway, it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Lady, and I had more than a degree of sympathy for what she had to say.
I hope that Members will give serious consideration to some of the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) and others, including the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). She made a very good point. The only point on which I disagreed with her was the percentage business: I did not think that that was helpful to the debate.
I am disappointed that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) has left the Chamber. He seemed to be digging himself gradually into a deeper and deeper hole, and taking interventions to save himself from burying himself. He appeared to be saying that everyone else could be right, but parents would have to be wrong. Parents could not be trusted to make a decision as important as this, because they might simply get it wrong. Well, who is to say that anyone else is going to get it right?
I should be interested to know what is wrong with giving people an opportunity to discuss and to make a decision. I shall explain shortly why I think that is important, but let me deal first with the notion that the amendment, or something like it, cannot be accepted because there is not enough time. Nothing in the rules of the House suggests that the business cannot be changed. If the Government were minded to accept the amendment, a Report stage could, if necessary, be arranged for tomorrow afternoon. Nothing in the rules states that the summer Adjournment debates must take place at a particular time on the last day before the recess, as long as they do take place. The business could be changed so that both Report and Third Reading could take place tomorrow. There would be nothing to prevent that, if good will existed in relation to bringing parents into the debate about academy status.
Mr Hancock
I see that the hon. Gentleman is itching to intervene. At our age, I think I should allow him to do so, so that he need not struggle to rise too often.
Mr Sheerman
The hon. Gentleman is more deeply rooted in his community and his constituency than almost anyone I know, but I hope he will not mind my saying that he is slightly missing one point. Under the last Government, Building Schools for the Future and academies were not just about improving schools, but about transforming the communities in which they sat. That was at the heart of what the last Government were doing, and that is what the present Government seem to be missing. Transforming the community is what a great school does.
Mr Hancock
I agree. As I said in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Southport, it is not just about the parents of children attending a school; it is about the wider community having a say. Academies were supposed to be at the very heart of the community, and they were supposed to be seven-days-a-week establishments offering a range of activities that the whole community could embrace. If that is what we will have, we should share it with the population and encourage them to become involved; but to suggest that we can create academies from scratch by September is pushing against a door that has already been slammed in our faces. It might be possible in the case of schools that have partly completed the process, but I think it highly unlikely that any academy created from scratch could succeed. I do not even know whether the governors would meet between the passing of the Bill and the time at which it would be possible to begin the process of setting up an academy.
How quickly will the Government be able to agree on the financial basis? What will happen to the role of local authorities that have already budgeted for the coming year? What will happen to the existing budgets in schools? That brings me to a point at which I have to declare an interest yet again, Ms Primarolo—Primarolo—[Laughter.] It is difficult for a person who has had a speech impediment for 60 years and then mastered it when someone comes along with a name that contains a P and an R too close together, with an O at the end. I am trying to fight this as best I can. I hope you will bear with me, Ms Primarolo. Are you looking for inspiration from above?
I was thinking about a problem that local authorities face. I must declare an interest at this point: I am a member of a local authority that is a local education authority. This morning we were discussing what to do now. We already have one academy and, as I have said, it is a pleasure to see the transformation that is taking place particularly in the parents, who were heavily consulted, and the pupils. Everyone is optimistic and looking for an improvement in the school’s academic record in one year. So even though I am against this measure, I have seen how it can start such a process.
As I said, this morning we on the Portsmouth executive were discussing what to do now in respect of the legislation before us. How will we deal with the other schools? Will we try to talk to them about having a federation? Should we think about helping one school? We have a very good single-sex girls’ school but it is sometimes difficult to see where its future will lie. I would very much like for it be maintained, but we also have a single-sex boys’ school that is not in such a good state of health, and the question therefore arises of how we work with them. I do not want local authorities to be left with a rump of schools that are difficult to manage.
We asked other questions, too. How do we cope with staff? How do we cope with low achievement in schools? How do we maintain parents’ confidence that their children will get an equal share of the resources? The Government did not address that problem during our discussions last week but it is fundamental, because if parents are not going to be involved in the creation of an academy they really ought to be told what the effects will be on those children who will not be fortunate enough to get into an academy.
I ask the Minister to talk about the confidence that the Government have to be able to give to parents in order to be sure that all of them believe their children will get equal opportunities at school. Under the Bill in its current form, there is a degree of unfairness that could easily and very quickly be exposed in cities such as mine—densely populated urban areas with schools very close together where it is difficult to regulate catchment areas fairly and properly because people live so close by. Where schools are located is also an issue in this respect. Some of them came into existence as secondary schools somewhat late in the day. We had to build two new secondary schools in our city in the last 10 years to cope with the rising numbers of children, and we had to build them where we could, rather than in the right place, so to speak. We had to build them on the available sites which were not necessarily in the right areas. That also makes the catchment areas issue very difficult.
Parents therefore rightly have a number of fears, and teachers certainly do too. The amendments before us are about making sure that parents have the opportunity to know both a lot more than is currently available about what an academy can achieve and the downsides of academies. The Minister would be foolish in the extreme if he were to suggest that some parents would not want the downsides of an academy to be explained. That is particularly the case in respect of parents of children who are not fortunate enough to get into them. What will happen to the rest of the children?
I hope the Minister will also respond to the points raised by the hon. Member for Wigan and my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson). My hon. Friend asked two or three questions that are worthy of a specific on-the-record comment from the Minister, because this Committee needs and demands that. We cannot allow legislation to be passed so quickly without proper scrutiny and with questions left unanswered. The Government cannot have it both ways. If they are not prepared to give us the time to scrutinise the Bill properly, they should be able to put a sustainable and maintainable position on the record by saying, “This is the way it’s going to be.” Anything short of that should be seen by this House and the country as totally unacceptable.
Vernon Coaker
I am afraid that the Minister is just asserting things; there is no fact in what he just said. How many schools are going through this process? What are they actually doing to consult? Are they sending a letter to every parent? Are they holding parents’ meetings? Are they going out into the community? Are leaflets being sent round? Are other schools involved in this? Are other governing bodies involved? Is the local authority involved? What does what the Minister has just said mean? The reality is that none of us knows.
Mr Mike Hancock
In view of what the Minister has just said, is the hon. Gentleman not slightly mystified, as I am, why the Government cannot tell us the number of schools that have indicated since 30 June that they want to start this process? Surely the Department ought to be able to make that information available to the Committee.
Vernon Coaker
Absolutely. The point that the Minister missed was that the Secretary of State has made great play of the fact that some schools will become academies not by Christmas or through the autumn, when the consultation is going to be by, but by September 2010; the whole reason we are rushing this Bill through is that the Secretary of State was telling us that all these schools were queuing up to become academies by September 2010. The Minister may have been saying in his intervention that a lot of schools signed up by 30 June, because the process takes three months, and they have therefore started the consultation. We do not know what that involves, but it carries on in August and can go on “through the autumn”—those were the Minister’s own words. So why are we rushing this legislation if the consultation can go on for longer? We could have slowed down a bit and improved the Bill, accepting some amendments that hon. Members have proposed. The Government would have thus achieved their objective with a much-improved Bill that would have allayed some of the concerns that have been raised, notwithstanding the fact that Labour Members would have opposed it in any case.
I hope that the Minister will tell us the exact number of schools that have applied, not the number that have expressed an interest—I hope he will give the exact number for primary schools and secondary schools. I know that this is not going to happen in special schools until 2011 and I cannot remember whether that is also the case for primary schools, but it certainly will happen in secondary schools. How many schools are actually applying? How many of that number does the Minister expect to open in September 2010? I hope he will outline for us exactly what consultation process those schools will be expected to have gone through and that he will explain to the Committee how the Department is ensuring that that has taken place, so that when the Secretary of State decides whether to give an academy order he can say, “These are the criteria I used.” The Committee deserves to know that, but we have so far been given no answer..
Mr Gibb
The amendments would collectively have the effect of increasing the burden of regulation associated with the academy conversion process. They propose several sets of regulations as well as a requirement that academy orders be made by statutory instrument. Hon. Members will recognise that that would take the Government’s policy in the opposite direction from our proposals. We want to deregulate when regulatory burdens are not only stifling innovation, but costing time and therefore money to achieve compliance. We want to give schools freedoms to allow them to focus on raising standards. Adding bureaucracy to the process is the last thing that we want.
Amendments 81 and 82 would introduce regulations that prescribed the contents of applications for academy orders and the criteria that the Secretary of State applied when deciding whether to make them. We do not believe that it is appropriate to regulate the contents of applications for academy orders. The Department already provides clear guidance on its website about the conversion process and the various steps that a school needs to take. The website also includes an application pro forma, which covers all the necessary information to enable a decision to be made. The Government have made it clear that they will apply a rigorous fit and proper person test in approving any sponsors of an academy.
The Secretary of State will consider applications from schools that wish to become academies and, in each case, confirm whether he is content for the conversion proposal to proceed to the next stage. If he is, he will make an academy order. In doing that he will, of course, take account of the relevant information before him, but he expects to approve most applications from outstanding schools. Those schools will make up the first wave, and we will publish the criteria for other applicants—the next wave—on the Department’s website.
Before issuing an academy order, the Secretary of State will undertake checks to ensure that the school is in a position to become an academy. That is important because academies operate with greater autonomy than other schools and need to be in a secure position to do so. We will check whether there has been any significant change since the school’s last outstanding Ofsted rating.
Mr Mike Hancock
Does my hon. Friend anticipate the criteria being changed from those that are currently applied to the raft of academies that is going through the process and the academies that he expects to go through shortly? Will the basic criteria be changed for future academies? He suggested that they would be published, but how different will they be?
Mr Gibb
The criteria will be different because the fast-tracking is confined to schools that are graded outstanding. When they have gone through the process, we will relax the criteria to enable other schools to do so. My hon. Friend will recall that the Secretary of State sent letters to all schools in the country. The criteria that I just mentioned apply to fast-tracking. There will be different criteria for the process once the first wave has gone through.
Issues that the Secretary of State will check include whether the school has a substantial budget deficit, whether there are PFI arrangements relating to the school and whether the school is already part of reorganisation proposals. Depending on the outcome of discussions, that may have a bearing on whether and when the Secretary of State can approve an outstanding school’s progression to the next stage. When an academy order is made, the Secretary of State must give a copy to the governing body, the head teacher and the local authority. If the application is rejected, the Secretary of State is required to inform the governing body, the head teacher and the local authority of his decision and the reason for it. It will therefore be transparent and clear why and when a school will be permitted to convert and when it will not.
However, the first stage of the process—the academy order stage—is just that: it permits a school to convert, but does not require it to do so. We need to be clear that, for many proposals, the greater detail and the final stage of the process will come later, when the Secretary of State decides whether to enter into a funding agreement with a proposed academy. It is only on signing the funding agreement that the conversion becomes legally binding. We therefore believe that prescription of the form and content of academy orders in secondary legislation is unnecessary and too bureaucratic.
An academy order is the means whereby a school’s conversion into an academy is enabled. The intention behind amendment 83 is that an academy order be made by statutory instrument, which would have to be laid before Parliament. Academy orders are intended to be the legal means whereby an individual school converts to academy status. They will contain key pieces of information that are pertinent to the conversion, but are highly specific to the circumstances of each school. It would not be a good use of Parliament’s time to require each order for each and every school to be tabled. The use of the negative resolution procedure would also be highly disruptive to any school, since the period of 40 days during which the order could be prayed against in this House or the other place would leave the school with no certainty about whether the conversion could go ahead.
In any event, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) will be interested to know that the Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee issued a report on the Bill, dated 17 June. I am sure that he knows it well, given that he has been so assiduous in scrutinising the Bill and all the accompanying documents. As he predicted, it states about the provision:
“this seems to us to be reasonable. Each order affects only one school and there is provision for those affected to be provided with copies. We agree… that these Orders are not really legislative in character and we see no reason why Parliament would want to have any control over them.”
For those reasons, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 54, in page 3, line 34, at end insert—
‘(3A) An Academy order must include provisions which make available for community use some or all of the school’s facilities.
(3B) Such provisions shall not be fewer and on less advantageous terms than those which have been available prior to the application being made for an Academy order.
(3C) Such provisions may be made by means of a contract or contracts with a local authority or other non-profit making or commercial body.
(3D) “Local authority” in this section means a county, district, unitary or parish council.’.
I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Hoyle. I think that this is the first time I have served under your distinguished chairpersonship, to use a gender-neutral phrase. Notwithstanding the fact that you and I come from different sides of the Pennines, I am sure that you will exercise justice and mercy if I happen to cross the line from time to time—if that is possible between people from different sides of the Pennines.
Amendment 54 is a probing amendment, and a similar proposal was discussed, albeit briefly, in the House of Lords, where the Minister prompted more questions than he gave answers. I shall be brief because I know that we have other important matters to debate tonight.
We now know that the Government have effectively given the Secretary of State the power to change the status of schools by order—by fiat or administrative measures—notwithstanding the fact that we seek some form of accountability to local communities, which the Government have denied. Members of the House will know that I was against academies and that I voted against them when they were introduced by my own party. However, at least the previous Government had the merit of saying that schools should be accountable and responsible to local communities, and that their facilities should be as widely accessible as possible.
The concept of the extended school—a school that reaches out into the community, and a community that reaches into the school—was very much at the heart of Labour’s schools provisions. It occurred to me that I should like to know what will happen to schools’ assets that are associated with that community provision. The idea of the extended school is that the school is a facility for the whole community. After all, in the African phrase, it takes a whole village to educate a child—sometimes it takes a child to educate the village, too—so the interaction between the community and the school is important, and lies at the heart of modern educational thinking.
I am pleased that over the years of the Labour Government, many schools in my area developed a series of community activities, and I shall highlight two—I am sure that every hon. Member could talk about what happens in schools in their areas in the same way. At Minsthorpe community college, a gym provided by the Labour Government, the Labour council and the college is open to everybody. A brand new sports hall that was built at the cost of millions of pounds in 2009 is also open to the community at subsidised cost. The college might become part of the Olympic preparations, because it is an Olympic-recognised site, which is a very proud achievement for our whole community. The school also has AstroTurf, which is used by local football clubs, a training and conference centre, beauty training, adult education, and crèche facilities on site and in the local village of Upton. The youngest pupil at the college is three months old, and the oldest is 80 years old. That is the school’s range of provision.
Hemsworth arts and community college has also had millions of pounds spent on it, and it opens every single day in one form or another. Cherry Tree House, a multi-agency drop-in centre, is available to the whole community, the police, the health service and others, and an on-site sports centre is open all year. There is an Ofsted-registered day-care nursery, an adult education learning programme, and a programme of arts that works with all kinds of community groups, which use creative skills that were unimaginable even a few years ago in Hemsworth. There are outreach programmes with local Churches, the skills centre and so on and so forth. That is a description of two schools, but I am sure that every school in every community provides similar facilities.
By tabling amendment 54, I am asking the Government: what do they intend to happen to all that community outreach? I propose that there should effectively be two further aspects to the Bill. First, there should be no less provision to the community than there is on the day of transfer, and secondly, those provisions should be available on at least the same advantageous terms as they are now, meaning that there should be no increase in price or decrease in accessibility. It is a simple proposal.
Tens of thousands of people use community schools in my constituency and throughout the country. The question is: what will happen to those community facilities? After all, they were provided not by the school, but by the whole community, through council tax and central taxation. The Bill ought to make it clear that that community provision should continue—that should be the underlying philosophy of the nature of the relationship between educational institutions and the people who live in a community—and that the pricing should not change.
Paragraph 33(e) of the Government’s proposed model funding agreement allows the academy to
“charge persons who are not registered pupils at the Academy for education provided or for facilities used by them at the Academy”.
I guess that the Minister will say that that is simply a measure to give academies a legal power to charge. However, there are fears, including in the schools that I mentioned and among the people who use them, whom I represent, that fees will increase rapidly, and that the community will be seen as a cash cow. Like many other right hon. and hon. Members, I represent many deprived communities. They, too, are seriously worried about the intentions of some academies.
I mentioned that a similar proposal was debated in the Lords. Lord Wallace of Saltaire, speaking for the Government, said:
“We therefore entirely agree with my noble friend”—
who moved the amendment—
“that it is important for a school to be at the heart of its community and that it should, as far as possible, encourage the community to make use of school facilities in the evenings and at weekends. The place to impose obligations on an academy is through the academy arrangements—either the funding agreement or the terms and conditions of grant. We therefore resist the imposition of this in the Bill but entirely sympathise with the intentions of the amendment.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 1620.]
I guess that the Minister will say the same thing.
There are two ways to deal with this community access issue. One would be for the thousands and thousands of academies—if that is how many are eventually created—to each have their own funding agreement, which would have to be policed separately. If constituents come to my surgery and say that the fees that they used to pay to do French or learn IT, or to use the sports or beauty facilities, have suddenly tripled or quadrupled, where will I turn if the amendment is not accepted? I will have to turn to the Minister and his civil servants, who will have to look at the funding agreement and make a separate enforcement order. This is not releasing schools from red tape, as was suggested a few moments ago by the Minister. It is nationalising the education system and the schools because, instead of schools being accountable to the local authority, or regulated under an amendment of the type that I propose, the Minister will have to take separate enforcement orders for every academy. How can that be the case for a Government who claim to believe in freeing up institutions and the education system?
If the Government are determined to go ahead with the system proposed in the Bill and if they agree with the philosophy that schools should be part of their communities, it would be simpler, more direct and cheaper to put something in the Bill so that each principal and governing body of an academy will understand from the beginning that they have taken over community facilities that the council helped to build, that they have inherited pricing structures, and that they have to honour them. The amendment is not an earth-shattering one, but I want to test the Government’s commitment to their expressed desire to release people rather than bind them up in red tape. The Minister’s answer in the other place opened up a Pandora’s box of national control over an education system that we have always been proud of it being administered locally. The Bill is a reversal of that trend.
Mr Mike Hancock
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hoyle. This is the first time that I have had the honour of speaking when you are in the Chair.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) because he makes a very important point. We have had a helpful debate on all the issues over the three or four days of consideration of the Bill, and it has been remarkable how much common ground has been found, even by those who are diametrically opposed to the idea of academies. Several of us have seen the merits of some of the issues, and the debate as a whole has been fair and frank. I suspect that the Minister has also found some of the comments helpful in framing the final form of the legislation and the detail that is provided to future academies.
I support the amendment, because the effect of a large secondary school on the social fabric of a community—with possibly an increased role in the future—is important for social cohesion. I had hoped that we would consider new clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), because that talks specifically about the importance of social cohesion. If that obligation were in the Bill, there would be no going back on the school’s commitment to the community. I have been a governor of schools where the local authority put in money for community facilities—such as a nursery—and bit by bit those services, which were additional to the school, disappeared, because of the weight of numbers. First, we lost the community room, and then the nursery. Those community facilities are not paid for by the education budget, but by the general rate fund—and in large council estates by the housing revenue account—but the pressure of numbers at the school means that they are lost to the community.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)
He was talking to his wife.
Mr Hancock
Yes, I was a bit thrown by that. I do not know if there was a domestic going on—
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Hoyle)
Order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could stick to the amendment.
Mr Hancock
The amendment is very important because it places pressure on the Minister to spell out exactly what he believes social cohesion should mean, how schools can be best used and whether any concession will be made by the Government in this area. I hope that there is, and I expect that the hon. Member for Hemsworth feels the same.
If academies come into being, the chances of local authorities—which may have “bought into” new schools in the past—to buy facilities in schools will be remote and will not happen very often. It will be important for academies to start to sell themselves to the wider communities, saying what is on offer and inviting people to use it. We do not want to start with the idea that the use of facilities will be restricted. I would hope that Ministers will give us a concession tonight that would lead people to believe that schools will have a newly awakened sense of their responsibility to make a greater effort to bring the community in.
Ed Balls
I am not running free, or even scared. I support new schools where we need new schools, but I have been to the Brunel academy and seen the huge boost to the aspirations of the children in that part of Bristol from the first ever BSF programme. I also went to Knowsley last year and opened a new BSF school. I asked two year 9 pupils what they thought of the school. They said that they never thought that anybody would think that they were sufficiently important to have a school like that built for them. That boost to aspiration, hope and expectation has been taken away from 700 schools and from 700,000 children all around the country, and that is why I am critical of this Bill and that decision. This is paving legislation for the new free market schools.
I wish to remind the House of the amendments that have been rejected by the Government in the few hours that we have had to debate this Bill because of the no amendment rule—
Mr Mike Hancock
Like the shadow Education Secretary, I think that this Bill is a threat to comprehensive education. But I thought that his Government’s Bill on academies was also a threat to comprehensive education. What is the difference now?
Ed Balls
The only similarity between our policy on academies and the new policy on academies is that the Secretary of State has pinched the word “academy” and attached it to the new schools he wishes to establish. Our academies were set up in the most disadvantaged areas, not the most affluent areas. They were set up with the agreement of local authorities rather than to avoid any role for local authorities. They taught the core parts of the national curriculum, including sex and relationship education, rather than opting out entirely from the curriculum. They had an obligation not just on looked-after children, but to co-operate to stop competitive exclusions in an area, and that has been entirely removed by this Bill. There was a requirement for our academies to have a sponsor, and that has been removed. We had a requirement for proper consultation with the community, also removed. Our academies programme was about tackling disadvantage. The new policy is about encouraging elitism and enabling the affluent to do better. That is why it is so deeply unfair.