Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-16
Topic: Education
David Blunkett (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, when a balloon has the air let out of it, it appears to be merely a piece of useless rubber. I have a view about what I call the "Chope approach" to Private Members’ Bills—Christopher Chope, as Members will know, has familiarised himself with just about every piece of private Members’ legislation going through the House of Commons in order to filibuster or find a way of blocking it. I really hope that the mover of the amendment will respect the fact that this is a very small but important Bill in terms of what happens in real life, out in the school communities that our children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces attend I hope that this afternoon we will lay aside this amendment, which is designed to block the Bill if it is pressed; the mover acknowledged that himself, of course. He also talked about the Scottish long johns. My grandchildren’s school—Windmill Hill in the north of Sheffield—has a little scheme along similar lines. We were talking only this morning about how important that approach is in helping to ensure that nothing is wasted and that no one feels as though they are disqualified from being able to present themselves effectively because of their income. That is what, in essence, this Bill and the guidance are all about. It has taken 50 years to get to this point, it has to be said. So often, the issue of school uniforms was about class and the quality of the school you went to. It was about grammar schools versus secondary schools; the grammar schools took pride in their uniform and their distinguishing features, and others often felt resentful. Times have moved on—thank God—but I recall that, over 40 years ago, we should have learned in my party about how disastrous referenda can be when you hold them with the distinct intention of ensuring that, if you are defeated, you will carry on regardless In Sheffield at the end of the 1970s, just before I became the city council’s leader, it decided, because of the enormous cost of school uniforms, the class nature of what was taking place and the fact that poor people were struggling to keep up, that school uniforms should be abolished and put it to a referendum of all parents. The parents were in fact a couple of decades ahead of the city council and voted to keep school uniforms and to develop them in the schools that did not have them. The city council, in its arrogance at the time, decided that it would, on political grounds, do away with school uniforms whatever the vote. We learned a lot from that. I certainly learned that if you are going to ask people their opinion, you respect it This afternoon, we are respecting the desire of schools, whether they are local authority schools, multi-academy trust schools, or individual free-standing trust schools, to display the pride of parents and pupils in the school they go to and the quality of the education they receive, so that they can go forward in life not embarrassed at having been unable to afford the uniform, but proud to have been able to adopt it The Bill is very simple: in its small way, it allows that possibility by ensuring that the old-style disqualification of competition, availability and access is set aside. I cannot see how anyone, from any political party, could possibly oppose it.