argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a very good question. I can tell the noble Lord candidly that when I arrived in that post in September 2017 it was more than 1%. In my first few weeks in office, I was probably getting three or four cases a month of maverick trusts on the brink of failure financially and basically, as my noble friend Lord Baker said, putting a gun to my head for a financial bailout. By the time I left, we had virtually eliminated that. I did it through what was then called the Academies Financial Handbook—it is now the Academy Trust Handbook—by absolutely binding the ESFA tightly together with the RSCs, so that whenever they met a MAT or a single-academy trust, the two people were in the room. I bang on about the money because if you get the money right, you have the resources to educate properly. That is how I have always managed the process, and we achieved it I accept that there are different views of Ofsted and that Ofsted is not perfect, but one thing about Ofsted is that the brand value across the sector is very strong. People respect it—they might resent it—but there is a mechanism to appeal if you get a report you do not agree with. Everyone in the sector largely accepts that it is the arbiter of good education When I left, the ESFA was an extremely effective organisation; it knew where the money was. I know that noble Lords opposite me do not all agree with academies, but the financial reporting and transparency of the academy programme is infinitely greater than those of local authority schools. An academy trust closes its books on 31 August. It has to file audited accounts in four months, by 31 December; ordinary companies have nine months to do that. That is not a requirement in the local authority schools and it provides huge scrutiny. You pick up the warning signals. If those accounts are not filed on 31 December, I used to get a weekly report on who was late and how late they were, and went after them. If they were late filing their accounts, you knew there were problems. By the time I left, we had got that down to a very small number I do not want to bang on about all this detail in this Chamber—it is not fair on noble Lords. I just want the Government to back off on this. There are some important things in this Bill—the homework and home schooling stuff—which are absolutely vital. I saw that agony when I was here, in my noble friend’s place, when we had a Private Member’s Bill and it was suffocated. This is a huge problem, getting worse all the time. Let us get that sorted out. This is a crucial problem, not to be sorted out in a rush. My noble friend has been bounced; the Bill Office has just said, "You’re the first cab in the rank in this new Session, get on with it," and she has not had the time to do the job properly I am going to stop here, but I want to thank my noble friend the Minister. I think that she has been given an impossible job; she is bending over backwards to listen to everybody here, and I want to extend my courtesy to her and say that I will do anything I can to help.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, in moving this amendment I will speak also to the other amendments in this group. We have been speaking of large and fundamental questions, and I find myself entirely in agreement with those who are concerned at what the Government have been saying. I therefore wish to take my noble friend Lord Agnew’s advice and try to avoid getting too deep into the weeds that we should be in. If the Bill were—as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, wished it to be—a real exposition of what the plans were, we should be debating whether, as Amendment 7 says, academies should still enjoy freedom over the curriculum, or to what extent and how that should be expressed. That is what our role should be, not just handing that power over to the Government I think these amendments were drafted before I had begun to focus on the constitutional enormities being attempted in the Bill. So, yes, academies should have some freedom of curriculum; yes, they should have control over the school day; yes, they should have freedom when it comes to staff remuneration and admissions numbers. We should also be really careful about preserving existing contracts Another Bill before this House asks that the Government be allowed to tear up the contracts that landowners have with the providers of telecom masts. Security of contract—the belief that a contract entered into cannot just be rolled over—is a very important part of a successful constitution in a free country. To have two Bills in front of us which both try to act as though that were not the case is deeply concerning. Therefore, my noble friend Lord Baker, in his offhand remarks about Darlington, should realise that there is a DfE office in Darlington; this is probably part of the plan. We must get back to where we should be. All the concerns I have raised in this group are valid, but not particularly in the context we find ourselves in now. I hope we will move on to other big questions. I beg to move Amendment 7.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend Lord Lucas on protecting these freedoms and to try to cross the bridge between the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I managed those interventions with the powers that already exist. The freedoms that my noble friend Lord Lucas proposes go to the heart of what academisation is about. I will give noble Lords one tiny example. In Norwich we have two primary schools four miles apart. In one school they speak 25 different languages and the other is in an old-fashioned 1950s council estate—a totally different dynamic where a totally different approach to education is needed. Is that to be decided here in an ivory tower in Whitehall?
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her response. I think that it merely illustrates how far apart we are on the appropriateness of the structure of this Bill that we cannot have a serious discussion about what the curriculum freedoms should be. It is entirely undefined, and the Government say, "We’ll just make it up as we go along in the next few months, and that is what you are allowing us to do if you pass this Bill". That is where the serious discussions lie; we ought to be having discussions about how the curriculum works. That is the level of responsibility we ought to be taking in this House, and this Bill seeks to take that away from us and place it with the Executive. I am delighted that we have had such unanimity around the Committee on what we think of that as a process So far as these individual amendments are concerned, yes, I applaud the diversity, innovation and freedom which the academy structure has had. It will be a problem to move that into a national system, but it will not be impossible. We ought to look at it, because this Bill gives the Government the power to introduce a totally prescriptive national curriculum. They could say what every school was going to do at every moment of every day, and we would have no more right to intervene on that—
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, my Lords, and I imagine that we will have it as a part of the process of deciding how to turn maintained schools into academies. There is a really important debate to be had on where we should be resting, and I look forward to it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Joanna Penn (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope to assure the noble Lord that those requirements will be written into the academy trust standards. If academy trusts do not meet those standards there will be enforcement mechanisms that they will need to comply with. If there is non-compliance on a specific standard where the trust is otherwise meeting requirements, it is likely that the Secretary of State would issue a compliance direction, which sounds like it might emulate some of the interventions the noble Lord took with my noble friend when he was previously Minister. If a trust failed to comply with a number of standards, or the Secretary of State was satisfied that non-compliance indicated a weakness in the governance or management of the trust, he might issue a notice to improve. The requirement on academies when it comes to special educational needs that is in place at the moment will be replicated in these standards. There will be a mechanism by which to enforce the meeting of those standards That takes me on to Amendment 22 on the inclusion of work experience. Again, we do not intend to use the regulations to place any significant new burdens on academies but we will replicate existing requirements in this area. For example, academy trusts must secure independent careers guidance for year 8 to year 13 pupils and have regard to the underpinning statutory guidance, which makes it clear that secondary schools and colleges should follow the Gatsby benchmarks of good career guidance and offer work experience placements as part of their careers strategy for all pupils. As the noble Lord will know, the Education (Careers Guidance in Schools) Act 2022, due to be commenced in September, will extend the duty to secure independent careers guidance to all academy schools and alternative provision academies, and bring year 7 pupils into scope for the first time. That will be replicated and, as I explained to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, there is also a mechanism to ensure that those standards are met and enforced Finally, I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on the importance of extracurricular activities. It is not our intention to go beyond the existing requirements on schools. For many of those activities, the school is best placed to design activities that meet the needs of its pupils and, to address the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, situate them in its community. On the noble Baroness’s Amendment 21A, there is already provision in the funding agreement that requires academy trusts to ensure that each of its academies is at the heart of its community, promoting community cohesion and sharing facilities with other schools, other educational institutions and the wider community. It is our intention to reflect that in the academy standards when they are developed.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Joanna Penn (Conservative, Centre-right): Again, I think that would be something that would not be set out in the academy standards but would be best developed by schools themselves. I think I have covered all the points raised in this group, and I hope the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw Amendment 8.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
John Nash (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about the benefits for an outstanding school of moving into a multi-academy trust, given that it is already outstanding. One of the biggest benefits for schools in multi-academy trusts is the career development opportunities for teachers. Lots of multi-academy trusts are now run by people who used to run one school and now run a group of schools. They consistently tell me that, although it did not necessarily occur to them when they got involved in MATs, the best benefit was career development opportunities for teachers. They used to lose all their best staff when they ran one school because they had no career pathway for them. Now they can give them career pathways. They can identify their rising stars and move them around. That is a major benefit.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
John Nash (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not doubt that, but it is unlikely that in a local authority you would have a person working in one organisation who could be developed thoroughly by that one organisation. You may have people in the local authority who know who their stars are, but they are all in different schools, so I would say that this method is even better. The other area where multi-academy trusts can greatly help teachers is in their workload, by developing curriculum and teaching resources that teachers can use in the workplace. I am sure that in schools that the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, was involved in there was not a question of everybody doing what they liked but, sadly, if we go back in the school system many years, that was exactly what did happen all too often when every school—if not every classroom—was a little island. There was too much freedom and too many teachers were, frankly, having to develop their curriculum resources from scratch. That is a real challenge for young teachers. One great advantage is teacher development. There are the other advantages, but I would say, therefore, that a school that is outstanding may well have a greater chance of staying outstanding working in a multi-academy trust The Marshalled List says that this group has been marshalled additionally in relation to Clauses 5, 6 and 7, so I will now briefly talk about those clauses. I said earlier that I would comment on why a number of individual clauses were unnecessary. Clause 5—
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I know that it is unusual to intervene this way round, but just to clarify for the noble Lord, in the schools White Paper we said that we will consult on the exceptional circumstances in which a good school could request that the regulator agrees that it moves to a stronger trust.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, this group of amendments seeks to apply additional procedural requirements to the use of the powers in Clause 1. I have heard again your Lordships’ concerns about the centralisation of power over academies with the Secretary of State but, again, we want to do this so that we have a regulatory system which is more transparent and accountable to Parliament than the one which we currently have The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, invites me to consider carefully the super-affirmative procedure. The spirit of the regulations is that they will be subject to the affirmative procedure each time they are laid, allowing Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise, debate, and vote on them. We recognise the importance of consulting representatives from the sector on regulations and, as I have said before, the Government will always undertake a consultation on the regulations prior to them being laid The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, referred to the report and impact assessment on the exercise of the powers. The Secretary of State will of course consider very carefully the likely and actual impact on academy trusts of any standards set out in the regulations Turning to Amendment 83, I say that Clause 1 is not designed to increase burdens on academy trusts, and that includes burdens associated with regulatory compliance. Clause 1(7) allows the conferral of the Secretary of State’s regulatory functions to another person. It is important that we ensure that the right accountability arrangements are in place. In some cases that will be ensured by Ofsted and Ofqual. It is already the case that the Secretary of State can delegate responsibility for some elements of regulatory compliance, such as in relation to the monitoring of exams and other assessments. The provisions in Clause 1(7) ensure that this can continue to happen under the academy standards framework. I therefore invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-09
Topic: Technology
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord, Lord Browne, in particular, and all noble Lords who participated in this brief debate. I do not think there is a huge disagreement between us on this. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, wanted us to be more specific; our point is that ARIA already has the power and ability to do all the things he mentioned, but we want it to retain its operational independence and flexibility I will address a number of the points the noble Lord raised. He will have carefully noted, and from his ministerial experience will know, that in the National Security and Investment Act we deliberately did not define what national security is, following the practice of all previous Governments, to give ourselves the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances The noble Lord also asked for further details on what the Science Minister said in the other place. We have published guidance to the sector on trusted research and supported it in publishing that guidance. We have broadened the scope of the academic technology access scheme and defined the rules on export controls as they apply to research activity. The terms and conditions for government research grants were also amended last September to require due diligence and checks for any overseas collaboration As expected, a number of noble Lords raised the framework document. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, is right: I have not seen a final version of the framework document precisely because it has not been finished yet. It will be negotiated between BEIS and ARIA’s leadership team, including the new chief executive and chairman when he or she is appointed, for which we are currently recruiting. I assure the House that as soon as it has been agreed, we will share it with the House as soon as possible My noble friend Lord Lansley asked a very good question about the retention of any possible revenues within ARIA. He will know from his government experience that the Treasury will wish to negotiate these matters directly with the agency, so I will not step on the Chancellor’s toes and get myself into trouble by overcommitting him on that. I am sure that ARIA and the Treasury will want to have a full and frank discussion on these matters On the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, I assure him that we expect ARIA to work with all partners across the research and development landscape, including on the commercialisation of products. He asked for a meeting with me. I suggest that I am not the right person to meet on that issue; it would be more appropriate for him to meet the Science Minister, who has responsibility for pursuing this support for the agency, and I will certainly put that question to him The ARIA team has met UKRI and its sponsors. We are learning lessons from this and other mindsets and models for how ARIA can ensure the successful translation and commercialisation of its technologies. I hope that that provides the appropriate assurances for the noble Lord, Lord Fox I think I have dealt with all the questions that were asked. With that, I beg to move.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-09
Topic: Government Operations
Michael Howard (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness and her friends cannot possibly give an assurance that a circumstance will not arise not precisely the same as that which occurred between 2017 and 2019 but in which a simple majority could not be obtained for an election, because a majority of the House of Commons was content to stymie and hobble the Government and keep them in place in that paralysed state, which was what we saw in that unhappy time.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-09
Topic: Government Operations
Michael Howard (Conservative, Centre-right): The answer to the noble Baroness is this: if legislation is put before the House of Commons and it fails because there is no simple majority for it, there is a simple answer—the legislation fails. You do not have a situation that could go on for years in which a Government remain in office in a state of paralysis because that is what a majority of the House of Commons wants. That is the mischief that would arise in relation to this Bill.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-09
Topic: Government Operations
Michael Howard (Conservative, Centre-right): Because our Government need decision. If you have a situation in which you have paralysis in the House of Commons, it is in the national interest that this should be resolved. The way in which it has traditionally been resolved and would now be resolved again if this Bill were passed would be by the Prime Minister asking Her Majesty, the monarch, to exercise the prerogative to provide a general election, which would resolve that paralysis I will say one more thing on Clause 3, because I do not want to trouble your Lordships again. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that the ouster clause was completely unnecessary because no court would ever challenge the decision of a majority of the House of Commons. Had the noble Lord been present on Monday, he would have heard your Lordships’ House debate a number of occasions in which the courts had challenged legislation passed by a majority of the House of Commons. I am afraid that the noble Lord’s reliance on the reticence of the courts in these matters is considerably misplaced, particularly having regard to their decision on Prorogation. For that reason, Clause 3 is absolutely essential.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-09
Topic: Government Operations
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the removal of Clause 3 would be the second-best option. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, knows that I was sympathetic when he raised this point at Second Reading. Like my noble friend Lord Howard, with whom I frequently agree but not today, I apologise for not being here in Committee. I was attending a farewell dinner for a friend who had given some 20 years’ service in his post and I felt that, as I had spoken at Second Reading, I could reserve what I wanted to say for Report. I strongly support what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, in his balanced, measured and eminently sensible speech To give unfettered power to any individual is a very serious thing indeed. I believe that it is important that this House today gives the other place an opportunity—an opportunity that it did not take when the Bill was with it. It is important because things have moved along quite a lot, not least with the intemperate, frankly bullying and certainly unconstitutional threat of Mr Rees- Mogg, which was one of the worst utterances that I have heard in my 50 years in Parliament from any leader or indeed any senior Minister of the Crown We know—I know from personal experience—that you do not need a general election if there is a change of Prime Minister. Harold Wilson resigned in 1976 and was replaced by Jim Callaghan. The election in which Mrs Thatcher had her triumph came three years later. Mrs Thatcher retired—or left—and was replaced by John Major without a general election. David Cameron, contrary to his promise to carry on, a few hours after the referendum result indicated that he was going and was replaced by Mrs May without either a general election or a party election for a leader. Those are historic facts. I believe that it is very important that the House of Commons should have a say in this I agree very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said about the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and I bid it farewell without any sadness. Although my noble friend Lord Howard is right in a theoretical sense that of course anything can happen—we can all think of extreme things happening—I honestly do not believe that it is at all likely that you would not get a majority in the House of Commons, perhaps a slender one, one way or the other.