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The Chairman: Order. May I clarify that the hon. Member who is in charge of this group of amendments is a Liberal Democrat?
Mr. Ainsworth: I am not asking the hon. Gentleman to vote down or withdraw amendment No. 51. It is acceptable. The Committee should accept it, although it will need to be clarified by Government amendments. I apologise for causing confusion and I hope that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole will move amendment No. 51.
Mr. Hawkins: Amendment No. 51 is a Conservative amendment and the Liberal Democrats did not add their name to it, although they did to another one. However, the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole quite rightly expressed support for amendment No. 51. In the light of the Minister's response, I will move amendment No. 51 formally. The Government have said that they will accept it and we are obviously delighted—that is how Committees ought to work. The Opposition have come up with an amendment; in this case the other Opposition party have supported us; and the Government will accept it and will add other measures. That is tremendous and will lead to an improvement to the Bill. That is a good example of how a Committee stage ought to work.
When the media talk about the proceedings in Parliament, it is sad that they pay so little attention to the hours that we spend doing line-by-line, word-by-word scrutiny. People outside this place get confused about the difference between Select Committees, interest group committees and Standing Committees, which are the most important of all. It is sad that too little attention is paid to the hours of work that are
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done here. Perhaps the Opposition and the Government can use the present case as an example of how Committee work can improve a Bill.
I am sure that by introducing a residential element the Government amendments will improve matters still further. There is complete agreement between Opposition Members and the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) about the need to provide the resources for residential components. When he intervened on the Minister to ask about the residential aspect, my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire said to me that it would be a good idea to have a residential element.
The Minister might have slightly misunderstood what I said about the case in my constituency. That case was of a mother who, because of her son's dominant nature, needed a huge amount of help to show her how she could cope with him. The head of the special school said that there should be a provision whereby that mother could be taught how to do that. The mother would certainly have needed more than one session a week, so perhaps I did not explain very well. The Minister suggested that the mother might volunteer, but I do not think that she would have done. That example sprang to my mind as a case in which the Bill might help.
Having promised to move formally amendment No. 51, which the Minister has said he will accept, I am happy not to press our other amendments. However, as you rightly pointed out, Mr. O'Brien, the Liberal Democrat amendment is the lead amendment, so the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole is in charge of the group. I am sure that the Clerk will have advised you how the Committee proceeds formally in relation that.
Mrs. Brooke: I shall withdraw amendment No. 150, but first I want to comment briefly on it and on amendment No. 52. Now that the Minister has explained the regulations, we all understand—although we might not be very happy about the fact that there will be a lot of work, including a lot of consultation, to do after the Bill has gone through, the results of which we might have appreciated had they been available at an earlier stage. None the less, I ask him to consider the possibility that the position would be clearer if we put in brackets what the regulations covered, or if the headings on the list of regulations narrowed their scope. In that way, we could be reassured during the later stages of the Bill's passage that the regulations would not be a catch-all. I quite accept what the Minister said, but as things stand, regulations could mean a wide range of changes.
Mr. Ainsworth: What has been said has been very constructive. If I can go further and provide drafts, I shall do so. If I cannot go that far but am in a position to provide some headlines, I can at least do that. We will look into doing that.
Mrs. Brooke: I thank the Minister, and I echo his comments: we have had a very constructive discussion. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment made: No. 51, in
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Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Vernon Coaker: I want to make two brief points. First, the Minister has announced a very radical policy, which represents a welcome development in policy terms. A residential component will be one of the options available under the orders, although we need to know a little more about what we mean by a residential option, and I hope that the Minister will tell us when he is able to. For the reasons given by many members of the Committee, it is important that such an option is available to help parents and families who are in desperate need of support to deal with some of their problems. I shall raise the issue again when we reach the housing part of the Bill. Part of the problem with housing is that local authorities will not evict families who cause mayhem—indeed, the courts will not give the orders—because they are worried about putting families on the streets. The residential option is therefore hugely important.
We shall have to give serious consideration to how we support schools in pushing for parenting contracts or parenting orders, given that some parents are capable of intimidating teachers. Some teachers, schools and authorities simply will not pursue a parenting order or penalty notice for some families, because they are intimidated by them. The Minister and his colleagues have been considering how to deal with the problem, but unless we give teachers and other professionals the confidence to go down that route, the orders will be available but they will not be used because teachers and other professionals will be intimidated. We must reverse that trend and rebalance the situation so that it is parents who do not conform to society's generally accepted rules, not those who abide by them, who are intimidated.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 20 and 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Penalty notices for parents
in cases of truancy
Mr. Hawkins: I beg to move amendment No. 54, in
clause 22, page 18, line 23, leave out 'or a head teacher'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment No. 154, in
clause 22, page 18, line 25, leave out 'of a prescribed description'.
Amendment No. 55, in
clause 22, page 19, leave out line 13.
Amendment No. 56, in
clause 22, page 19, leave out lines 14 to 18.
Mr. Hawkins: We now come to another important group of amendments. Our amendments Nos. 54, 55
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and 56 are grouped with the Liberal Democrat amendment No. 154. They deal with the Bill's changes to the Education Act 1996. Amendment No. 55 is crucial, and Opposition Members feel most strongly about it, as do many of those who represent the teaching profession. The Minister will be aware of that, as will his colleagues in the Department for Education and Skills.
Classroom teachers do not want the power that the Government propose to give ''authorised staff members'' to start issuing penalty notices. I understand that. I have explained my links with the education world and the fact that members of my family have been heavily involved in teaching and education. Almost all the teachers in my constituency to whom I have spoken are aware of the proposals—much has been said about them in the various professional and trade union publications—and they say, ''You have simply got to stop this.''
Most schools have one or two parents from hell, the kind of intimidatory parents who may live in traveller encampments, some of whom might come to the school armed. The teachers feel genuinely under threat. We have seen some tragic cases of teachers being threatened. The teaching unions often speak of the number of violent incidents. Sometimes the teachers are the victim of violence from the children; disruptive teenagers can be extremely threatening and sometimes attack teachers with weapons.
It is even more frightening for those who are sometimes referred to as NQTs—newly qualified teachers. They come straight out of teacher training college to schools in rough inner-city areas and suddenly find parents bursting into the school. If the Government get their way, such parents will burst through the security measures, wielding weapons and demanding, ''Why have you issued a penalty notice?'' As a result, fewer people will volunteer to go into teaching, and an even greater shortage of teachers is the last thing that the Government want.
It is not the Minister's fault, but the Government are under huge pressure because schools throughout the country are laying off staff. The Education Secretary has tried to blame the LEAs for hanging on to what he called the missing millions, but the vast majority of schools—including all the schools in my constituency—say that whatever money the Government claim to have given them has more than been wiped out by the increase in national insurance. The salary bills have increased because of the rise in national insurance, and all the teachers and heads in my constituency are asking what the Government are up to.
The Government may be giving with one hand, but they are taking away more with the other through the national insurance increase and the costs of bureaucracy. It is not surprising that every secondary head in my constituency and a number of primary heads have written to me in extremely strong terms, saying that they are losing teachers. Then, just as that is happening, the Government come along with something that the teaching profession does not want. It all very well saying that head teachers, with the backing of the governing body and the LEA,
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should have responsibility for some of those powers, but it will not work for ordinary classroom teachers. I cannot stress too strongly that we must have amendment No. 55. I hope that the Minister will accept it, as he did the previous amendment.
10.45 am
I turn to the wider issue of truancy. Since the Government came to power, there has been a big increase in the absolute number of children playing truant at least once from primary and secondary school. Truancy increased by 17.16 per cent. between 1996–97 and 2001–02—the last year for which figures are available. These are Government figures. There has been an increase of 14.75 per cent. in the rate of pupils playing truant. That is a huge problem. I recognise that the Government are trying to tackle it in the Bill, and we are not critical of that at all. Indeed, the concept of parenting contracts originally appeared in a Conservative consultation document in 1996. This Government took it up in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and now we have this Bill. There is no difference between the two main parties on the principle of what we are trying to achieve.
The concern is not only that truancy is increasing. We believe from discussions with head teachers throughout the country that schools under-report the number of half-days lost through unauthorised absence. We think that there is under-reporting because schools have to declare the figures publicly and they might reflect badly on them. Given the increasing number of children playing truant at least once and the disincentive to report truancy, we conclude that the problems of truancy are getting worse. We hope that some of the measures in the Bill on which we agree with the Government will cause those trends to be reversed. However, the wrong way to tackle the problem would be to put the teaching profession, particularly ordinary classroom teachers, under huge pressures, so I do not believe that the Government have thought this measure through correctly.
Liberal Democrat amendment No. 154 is designed to deal with a Henry VIII-type clause, and we have no problem with it. In amendment No. 54, Conservative Members suggest that we should take out the words ''or a head teacher'' in new section 444B of the Education Act 1996. The provision would then refer to persons who may be authorised by an LEA to give penalty notices. That goes with amendment No. 55, which would take out the reference to other staff members authorised by the head teacher. Most crucial is amendment No. 56, which would take out the part of new section 444B(4) that states that
'' 'authorised staff member' means—
(a) a head teacher of a relevant school in England, or
(b) a member of the staff of a relevant school in England who is authorised by the head teacher''.
We would prefer penalty notices to be given only by constables or LEA officers, because they are distanced from the sharp end of the school. It would be more difficult for aggressive parents to try to get into a police station to threaten a constable, or to go the LEA headquarters, which may be miles away from the
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school. It is the teachers—ordinary classroom teachers and, to some extent, head teachers—who are under threat.
The Minister must concede that there is an increase in violence inflicted on or threatened against teachers, including head teachers. All the evidence shows that, and there is huge concern about it in the profession. I sincerely hope that the Government will think again. I cannot put it any more strongly. I will listen with interest to what the Minister has to say, and I hope that he will reconsider this measure. I rather suspect that, if the Government do not drop it now, they will have to do so in another place, because I cannot believe that it will get through there. This is one of the most crucial aspects of this part of the Bill.
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