| Anti-social Behaviour Bill
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Mr. Ainsworth: Ah! Mr. Hawkins: I am prompted to rise by the Minister saying ''Ah!'' in a significant way. He was obviously anticipating that he would be able to say that the definition will not cover newly qualified teachers. Does the hon. Member for Ludlow agree that in many schools that have massive problems, particularly in some of the difficult inner-city areas, the vast majority of staff have qualified as teachers only in the past one, two or three years? The legislation contains no restriction to stop an authorised member of staff being a newly qualified teacher. Matthew Green: That is precisely my point, and the Government should examine it. There is a potential problem, as the hon. Gentleman said, especially in Column Number: 114 some London schools, where it is rare to find a teacher who has been there for more than three years, such is the turnover of staff. Many teachers move from inner-London schools after their first two years to seek employment elsewhere. That is unfortunate because we need the most experienced in the more difficult schools, but there is a move away from that.Highly experienced teachers seem to like to move to beautiful Shropshire when they reach their 40s. That is great for us, as we have wonderful schools and wonderful teachers, but it does not help the staff salaries bill, because they are the more expensive teachers. That is another related problem. Overall, the Government must clarify the definition if they want to push the power through. They will have problems in another place on the provision in general, so they will have to make it clear that only senior members of staff may issue fixed penalty notices. I would prefer it if the provision were not passed at all, but leaving it as wide as it is could cause unwanted side effects. More experienced members of staff are more likely to be able to issue penalty notices without it leading to violence. The rising incidence of violence against teachers by parents is a growing and concerning trend, and the more experienced a teacher is in dealing with both parents and pupils, the more likely they are to avoid such dangerous situations. Mr. Ainsworth: Clause 22 does not require anybody to issue a fixed penalty notice; it simply introduces a power to do so. Head teachers and senior school staff will be able to make professional judgments about whether to use the new power. Mr. Hawkins: Will the Minister give way? Mr. Ainsworth: Hold on a second. I will give way once I have got into my stride and said one or two things to which the hon. Gentleman may want to respond. Amendments Nos. 54, 55 and 56 appear to suggest that teachers are not to be trusted with the new power, and that they are incapable of deciding who is able to use the power and in what circumstances. A lot of silly stuff has been said, if not in the Committee, then before it started, about every class teacher and all NQTs being obliged to use the power. I reject that. Before discussing the amendments, we had a debate—I believe that the Liberal Democrats were on one side and the Conservatives on the other—about whether it was a good idea for certain organisations to see themselves as being apart from all those important issues. We need light rather than heat on this important issue. Some of the comments that were made by the hon. Member for Uxbridge were depressing. It worries me to have to say it, but we need to remember why we are here and why we were elected. Were we elected to accept the world as it is? Are we happy with it and with the levels of violence that occur? Do we believe that all such circumstances should be dealt with by the police and the police alone? The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman on policing, the hon. Member for South-East Column Number: 115 Cambridgeshire, is present and will know, as I do, that the Conservative party is desperately trying to convince the country that, despite the record police numbers that we have achieved, the Conservatives would be able to provide many thousands more, although they have not identified where the money will come from. I also heard a spokesperson for the Opposition on the radio today or yesterday saying that the police should be concentrating on rural crime, but in the Committee the Opposition say that the only people who should be allowed to use fixed penalty notices to deal with truancy are the police—Mr. Hawkins: Will the Minister give way? We did not say that. Mr. Ainsworth: The police and the LEA, but not in any circumstances— Mr. Hawkins: On a point of order, Mr. O'Brien. Mr. Ainsworth: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a minute, to avoid his point of order. The head teachers and governing bodies of some, if not all, schools have the managerial skills to decide which individuals are capable of using the powers, and who should be authorised to use them. We cannot just accept that because violence is used against staff in such circumstances they should not be allowed to do so. Violence is used against staff in other circumstances. When detention and other sanctions are taken against children, a minority of parents sometimes exhibit incredible behaviour. Would it be said that that also was an issue for the police or the LEA, and that the school had no responsibility to provide enforcement in those circumstances? Mr. Hawkins: The Minister must not overstate his case. I can respond to some of his more high-flown rhetoric and his points about the police later. However, my point was that when he began his remarks he said that we must give power to the heads or to senior staff. As he knows, the Bill does not specify senior staff—it is unrestricted. He must understand that, while we in the Opposition are not accepting the world as it is, we have to communicate to him that the organisations that represent head teachers and teachers do not want those powers, because they will put teachers in a vulnerable position. His own Back Benchers will have received the same representations from those organisations as we have. The teachers do not want those powers because they are there to teach, not to take on extra risks. He is failing to address that concern. Mr. Ainsworth: It is wonderful when Conservative spokesmen become the lobby for the teaching organisations and teaching unions. Half the education reforms that have been pushed through would never have been passed if we had listened to what teachers wanted and what they were prepared to put up with at the time. Pain is often associated with change, and we must look at the reality of what we are trying to achieve and whether or not it is achievable. I accept that we are operating in a difficult area. However, we should not just accept it if the lobby Column Number: 116 says, ''No, we do not want it''. That is not a good argument for anyone to advance.Why do we want to restrict the provision to senior staff? I am the father of an NQT—I have never called her that before, not being into education jargon, but I thought that I should do it now, so that I can take Hansard home and show our Nicola what I have just done to her. It is not appropriate to delegate the powers to certain people. What if the NQT were an ex-police officer? In order to chill out, I sometimes watch films such as ''Kindergarten Cop'', in which Schwarzenegger plays what we would call an NQT. Why must we specify in every circumstance a head teacher or a single member of staff? Have we no trust in the school establishment's ability to take sensible decisions about who should use the powers?
11.15 amMatthew Green: The Minister said that all of us are here to change things; we do not necessarily accept things as they are. However, we are also here to ensure that we do not create open-ended powers that somebody somewhere might abuse. One of the aims of this Committee is to ensure that the law is tight enough that it cannot be abused later. Our concern is that this is not tight enough. The Minister's words are reassuring, but the Bill, as drafted, leaves it entirely to people's judgment. By and large we trust people's judgment, but the law should not rest on the judgment of teachers, staff or anybody else. Mr. Ainsworth: We clearly disagree. Let me put on record the Government's view, so that others can comment on what we are actually proposing. We expect most penalty notices to be issued by local education welfare officers, who also organise prosecutions for truancy. We believe that it is also right to give head teachers and senior school staff authorised by them the power to do that. We intend to use the regulation-making powers in the Bill to limit to senior staff those who may be authorised by head teachers to issue fixed penalty notices; that is not in the Bill. By senior school staff, we mean deputy heads, assistant head teachers and staff at the level of heads of department. At present, prosecution is the only sanction available to promote and to enforce school attendance. Penalty notices will provide a quicker, cheaper alternative for use in cases in which parents need a sharp reminder of their responsibilities. Prosecution can be expensive, time consuming and heavy handed for parents who are not hard-core offenders. Our overriding objective is to get the pupil who is truanting back into school. Education professionals will be able to choose the most appropriate method to do that. Mr. Hawkins: I am glad that the Minister is now on to the serious point and not on his rather fanciful comparison of the Secretary of State for Education and Skills to Arnold Schwarzenegger. The situation that the Minister describes, whereby guidance is to be given, is surely nothing like as good as being specific in the Bill. If he were to propose some Government amendments to restrict the responsibility, we would Column Number: 117 have a different debate. However, he must understand the point that the hon. Member for Ludlow and I have made: many schools—some in inner-city areas and others elsewhere—have few experienced staff other than the head. Even the Minister's guidance will not deal with that.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 8 May 2003 |
