Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, given the speeches we heard at Second Reading, and the conversations which have been had subsequently, I would be very surprised if Clause 1 leaves this House intact or perhaps is even included in the Bill at all We feel that the Government have not explained the approach that they have been taking to this clause. On the one hand, the Government say that they want all schools to be academies by 2030, which I would have thought was about decentralisation, innovation, flexibility and freedom to respond to local circumstances—this is the essence of what an academy was originally designed to do. I accept that, over recent years, things have moved on, and that the Government may wish to rethink the way they manage their relationship with academies On the other hand, we see in Clause 1, line 1: "The Secretary of State may by regulations set standards in relation to Academies" We think this is the wildest imaginable power grab by the Secretary of State. Is this the end for academies as we have known them? If that is the intention, the Government need to be much clearer about that. So what are they doing, and what is the right balance between centralisation on the one hand and freedom for our schools on the other? That is what I hope we will be able to tease out this afternoon In the White Paper, the Secretary of State says that the Government do not have or claim to have all the answers, yet it seems that he wants to have all the powers all the same. If the Government want a fully trust-led system within a single regulatory approach, they need to set out what this approach should look like. In a government press release issued on 25 May, the department said: "The Schools Bill will bring the new regulatory standards developed through the review on to a statutory footing, provide a range of new powers to drive up standards, including the possibility for the Secretary of State to intervene in the very rare case of a failing academy trust, and support the 2030 goal, including allowing local authorities to request their schools move into strong trusts." But the Bill itself at the moment does not do this: it does not define new standards to be brought on to a statutory footing, because they have not been developed. So, we feel that, in a way, the Government are flying blind here—or asking us to The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, in its second report of this Session, makes exactly this point very powerfully: "Although clause 1 is entitled ‘academy standards’, the clause contains neither academy standards nor the principles on which the standards will be based." It says that this power "is excessively wide" and that the Government have not provided "draft regulations that would illustrate how the power might be exercised." We are concerned about this. The committee says that "the delegated power in clause 1 is excessively wide" and should be removed from the Bill. It says that the Government’s reasons for dealing with academy standards in regulations are both "predictable and formulaic", which I think is a polite way of telling the Government that they really should not be taking this approach Another Select Committee, the Constitution Committee, in its first report of this Session, is similarly concerned. It makes an important point about Clause 1 when it says: "Clause 1 is unclear on whether the power is designed to facilitate the making of regulations for all academies or may … be used to set distinct requirements for a specific academy"— or MAT. We do not think there is a need to rush this. We accept that there may be a desire, or even a need, to standardise the framework for schools, given the Government’s intention to fully academise by 2030, and we would not necessarily disagree with the Government in their desire to do that and have a standard framework for all schools, but there is absolutely no need to approach it in the way Ministers are at the moment. Clause 3, which we will discuss later, goes further still, as it gives Ministers unlimited power to amend legislation as they see fit We have had these debates many times in recent years, on various Bills, but I had hoped that the Government would not attempt to take this kind of approach to a Bill about schools, or any public service, because it really is not needed. I urge noble Lords on the Benches opposite to just think for a minute about what they would think about a Labour Government attempting to take such freedoms from scrutiny and accountability for ourselves. This Government’s "fill in the blanks later" approach means that Parliament just cannot fulfil its proper role, so the Government need to be much more upfront about what they are really seeking to do and, if they do not know what they want to do yet, they should withdraw these clauses and come back when they have decided how they intend to proceed. They may find that there is cross-Bench support for some of the things they want to do.