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We have enough scientific evidence for this and we are not alone in our view—all other European countries also recognise this—that seat belts contribute to safety, as, indeed, do airbags. A feature of the past decade or so has been the improvement in accident rates because of better designed motor vehicles and particularly because of the introduction of airbags. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said that he could not deactivate his airbag. He is not alone in that—a large number cannot be deactivated. I think that mine can, but I have never done so. However, the point is that, if the airbag cannot be deactivated and therefore is in use, we must not use a rear-facing child restraint or seat because we know that that can create more danger to the child.
I
recognise the anxieties about these regulations. I frankly and
accurately reflected the anxieties of the Merits Committee. We have
difficulty in interpreting Brussels directives. The noble Lord, Lord
Monson,
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The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, mentioned Northern Ireland and the penalty points system. If he advocates that system, he will lay himself open to even more criticism from the noble Lords, Lord Cobbold and Lord Monson, because the penalties are even greater for infraction of the law under the Northern Ireland example that he gave. Northern Ireland has the right to make its judgments in this area. It makes them separately from the rest of Great Britain. This order relates only to Great Britain. I hope that I have assuaged some anxieties.
Lord Monson: My Lords, will the Minister answer my question about whether the use of lavatories on long-distance buses will be outlawed?
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, that is an interesting one. I do not have the answer immediately in my brief. However, perhaps it is safer to use the lavatory when the bus has stopped. I recognise that people move around in buses. We want to minimise that.
The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, said that this was an unfair obligation on the coach driver. We are not demanding that seat belts should be fitted in coaches, minibuses or anywhere else if they do not already exist. However, where they do exist, passengers should be told that the driver and the company operating the system expect those seat belts to be worn. There might be a little label on the back of the seat or an announcement by the driver. Increasingly, coaches have televisions and other forms of communication that could be used. The instruction to passengers should be that the driver expects that, because the bus is fitted with seat belts, they should be used. That is a basic requirement. The bus driver cannot be expected to enforce the law. He has done his duty when he has carried out the operation that I described.
Despite the criticisms this evening, I hope that noble Lords will recognise the good intentions behind these regulations. They are being subscribed to by other member states in the European Community. They are an advance in terms of road safety and I hope that noble Lords will give them a fair wind.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Education and Inspections Bill
8.38 pm
House again in Committee on Clause 6.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Lord Adonis) moved Amendment No. 46:
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The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 46, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 47 and 48. Amendment No. 48 ensures that the opportunities to participate in positive activities secured for young people under Clause 6 include sufficient youth work activities. That was a particular concern raised at Second Reading, and we entirely share it, because youth work has never been more important. It is met by the new duty on local authorities, which I hope is agreeable to the House.
Amendments Nos. 46 and 47 are minor amendments that improve the clarity of the drafting of the new duty to avoid the unhelpful interpretation that the duty could be fulfilled by securing access to any amount, however small, of educational leisure time activities, so long as it resulted in some improvement in well-being. I beg to move.
Lord Northbourne: I strongly support Amendment No. 48, and with it the amendment tabled from the Liberal Benches, Amendment No. 49. Personal and social development is crucially important for young people today. Personal development is about how to relate to yourself, while social development is about how to relate to other people. These are key life skills—they are particularly key in employment and wealth creation and in family formation and child rearing. The latest Ofsted report from 2005—although there is another one cooking at the moment—suggests that the majority of schools are not satisfactorily delivering personal and social education today. The report suggests that about two in five schools are giving an entirely satisfactory delivery of this subject. I accept that it is not an easy subject to develop in a classroom.
What has happened is that the Government’s enthusiasm for citizenship and the general enthusiasm for sex education has led to citizenship and sex education almost taking over from the rather more general subject of PSHE.
Lord Adonis: Now that the noble Lord has developed his remarks, I understand what he is talking about—which is personal, social and health education in schools. That is not the subject of this amendment, which is about youth work being promoted—
Lord Northbourne: I am talking about this now because I may not be able to be in the Chamber when we come to talk about it, and it seems to me that the two subjects are very closely linked. The Government are inserting personal, social and health education here for out-of-school activities and then, under Amendment No. 67 they are removing personal, social and health education from the curriculum of key stage 4. That subject will arise under Amendment No. 67 and the amendments tabled by the Liberal Benches.
Personal and social education are hugely important. Can the Minister explain why the Government are putting it in here and taking it out in the later clause? I am not unsympathetic to the idea that it may be the better place to have it. Since we are in Committee, I shall not say more now but shall wait to listen to what the Minister has to say. If necessary, I shall come in again with all guns blazing, if we do not get a satisfactory answer.
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Lord Judd: As someone who was concerned about these matters at Second Reading, I welcome greatly the moves that the Government have made. It is a very good illustration of how my noble friend listens to argument and responds to it. I express appreciation in that regard.
Baroness Walmsley: From these Benches we too welcome these amendments, but I think I see what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is getting at. The position of personal, social and health education in the curriculum is an issue we will be coming to somewhat later. Many of us feel it should be mandatory. The noble Lord is right, however, that the personal and social development of a young person does not just happen in a classroom; it happens through leisure, sports, social and interactive activities outside the classroom as well. That is why I particularly welcome the Minister’s commitment to resourcing activities of this sort.
Baroness Buscombe: I rise to support these amendments. There is no question that youth work benefits the community and would be a welcome addition to leisure-time activities. I am hopeful that the Minister can reassure us that no burdensome spending requirement will be imposed on local authorities in order to meet this requirement. While the inclusion of youth work is to be welcomed, we hope it can support inner city sports initiatives such as Inner Cities Cricket, where young people are taught cricket by volunteers, and the National Cricket Council, which has provided cricket bats and red balls.
Lord Adonis: I am grateful for the welcome my amendment has received. We regard it as an entirely appropriate response to the concerns that have been raised, and it was always our intention that youth work should be a key priority in the extension of leisure-time, recreational and positive activities for young people. Having it in the Bill in this way will ensure that it receives that priority.
Now that I understand the noble Lord’s point, I completely accept the connection between youth work and personal, social and health education. I have been fishing around in my papers, but I cannot find the text of Amendment No. 67—someone else must be moving it. I assure the noble Lord, however, that there is nothing the Government are doing in the Bill that in any way lessens the focus of schools on PSHE. On the contrary, we are seeking to promote it steadily in the classroom with a set of measures that I will explain when we come to debate PSHE, including significant additional resources and priority for this area of the curriculum.
With regard
to the requirements for key stage 4, PSHE is not yet a statutory
subject at any key stage, so the Bill would not make any change that
would affect it in that respect. I will look at Amendment No. 67,
however, and perhaps the noble Lord and I might speak further about
this outside the Chamber. I assure him that there is nothing we are
doing in the
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On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Adonis moved Amendments Nos. 47 to 48:
(a) “sufficient educational leisure-time activities” which are for the improvement of the well-being of qualifying young persons in the authority's area must include sufficient educational leisure-time activities which are for the improvement of their personal and social development, and (b) “sufficient facilities for such activities” must include sufficient facilities for educational leisure-time activities which are for the improvement of the personal and social development of qualifying young persons in the authority's area.”On Question, amendments agreed to.
Baroness Walmsley moved Amendment No. 50:
“( ) a local authority must have regard to the access requirements of qualifying young persons with a disability”The noble Baroness said: In speaking to Amendment No. 50 I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 51 and 53 in this group. Amendment No. 50 is intended to ensure that positive leisure-time activities are accessible to disabled young people. Mencap has done some research, and the sad fact is that eight out of 10 young people with a learning disability do not attend any after-school club. Seven out of 10 children and young people with a disability were made to feel uncomfortable at their local leisure centre, and only one in five after-school clubs have any young person with a disability attending.
The amendment is therefore not simply about ensuring that there is adequate wheelchair access; it is not just about physical accessibility. It is also about ensuring that there is appropriate signage or symbols so that disabled people know where everything is. It is to ensure that young people with a learning or physical disability feel there is a safe environment for them.
Such young people are particularly vulnerable to bullying. That often also prevents them from taking part in after-school activities, so they need to feel safe or they will not have the confidence to take part. We might also need to look at the special school transport that often has to be provided for disabled children, to ensure the arrangements made for school transport do not preclude their attendance at after-school clubs or leisure activities during non-school time at leisure centres.
We have a concern that, if this is not clearly stated in the Bill, local education authorities might provide or commission leisure activities that are perfectly suitable for the majority of young people in their area, but not quite good enough for the young people who are most vulnerable and who need access to them—not just physical access, but every other kind of access as well.
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I heard recently from Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the Children’s Commissioner for England, what a scandal it is that in this country we do not ensure that children with disabilities have full access to all the facilities that add so much to the quality of life of able-bodied children. He believes that we lag behind other developed countries in that respect. For that reason we have tabled this amendment again—it was tabled in another place at an earlier stage of the Bill—because it is only when you put a legal duty on a local authority that it feels obliged to direct some of its budget at the problem. The Minister in another place said that he felt it was for local authorities to decide how the budget should be spent and which young people would be prioritised, but we feel that for these most vulnerable young people the duty should be explicitly laid out in the Bill.
Amendments Nos. 51 and 53 are probing amendments to seek clarification of the power in the Bill for local authorities to charge for services but also to allow them to provide financial assistance to enable free access for certain deprived young people to facilities and activities in the local area. The amendments also provide us with an opportunity to clarify how these provisions are intended to work with the Youth Opportunity Card and the Youth Opportunity Fund, about which I shall be asking the Minister in a moment.
The amendment was suggested by Barnardo’s, which believes that young people from low-income households and those leaving care should be able to access these facilities and activities free of charge. No child should miss out on these educational and leisure-time facilities to improve their well-being. All these issues come under the five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda.
We are probing to clarify the guidance to be given to local authorities on the level of charges for leisure services under this clause, and how these new provisions will interact with the Youth Opportunity Card. Very little detail was given on this issue in another place. The Minister, Phil Hope, said:
- “it is up
to local authorities to ensure that financial barriers do not prevent
young people from accessing the sort of facilities and recreational
opportunities listed in the clause”.—[Official
Report, Commons Standing Committee E, 18/4/06; col.
238.]
The Youth
Opportunity Card and the Youth Capital Fund were announced as part of
the proposals in the Green Paper, Youth Matters, in July 2005.
We very much welcome this additional money
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Lord Adonis: I am broadly with the noble Baroness in all the objectives she is seeking to achieve. I hope I can assure her that they are included in the Bill and in the intentions of the guidance under the Bill.
On Amendment No. 50, it is vital that young people with disabilities are able to access positive activities in their leisure time. It is also true, as the noble Baroness said, that young people with disabilities often face additional barriers in accessing such provision, and it is essential that those barriers are reduced. However, young people with disabilities are already included under the duty in the Bill, which clearly states that local authorities must secure access to sufficient positive leisure time activities and facilities for all young people in the authority’s area so far as reasonably practicable. “All” includes young people with disabilities.
Furthermore, in securing access to sufficient positive leisure time activities, local authorities will also have to take into account their new responsibilities under the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people, including young disabled people. In that Act, positive steps that they must take to see that the duties under the Act are met, such as disability equality plans, are set out. Guidance will also make clear that the consultation required in new Section 507B(8) should include the views of disabled young people, as well as those of any other group of young people who might legitimately claim to face greater barriers to participation in the local area, whether physical, cultural, social or economic.
We also know from research among young people that a lack of information on provision creates major barriers to them participating in positive activities. This is particularly important for young people with disabilities, who may have difficulty accessing information or who may need to know about the accessibility of facilities or the availability of trained coaching staff. Guidance will therefore make clear the need for authorities to consider and address the information needs of disabled young people in their response to subsection (9).
On
Amendments Nos. 51 and 53, there can be no doubt that for some young
people costs are a barrier to participation in positive leisure time
activities, although not all providers of positive activities make
charges. For example, local authority youth work provision is often
entirely free. Under subsection (5), local authorities may provide
financial assistance to facilitate access for qualifying young persons
to positive leisure time activities.
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The same argument applies to Amendment No. 53. The local authority should retain the discretion to determine when to exercise its charging powers and who will be subject to charging. I stress that should a local authority, by charging for services and provision, prevent young people securing access to sufficient positive activities, it will have failed in its duty set out in new Section 507B, which contains an inbuilt safeguard against charging becoming a barrier to participation.
In response to the other questions posed by the noble Baroness, I assure her that guidance on the circumstances in which local authorities can give financial assistance will include young people from low income families. Guidance will also make clear how local authorities should give priority and assistance to children in care and care leavers.
The youth opportunity card, which the noble Baroness mentioned, is a potential vehicle through which young people could pay for leisure time services and products. If the pilots that we are undertaking prove successful and the card is made available nationally, it would not preclude or change the way that a local authority uses the power to charge, but it would offer an alternative method of payment for chargeable services. It could, for example, enable payments to be made invisibly, thereby reducing the risk of stigma that is commonly associated with financial support for disadvantaged young people. It could also enable local authorities to top up the provision that is available for such young people up front, which would encourage them to take part in local activities in the first place. I hope that deals with the issues raised by the noble Baroness.
9 pm
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: Perhaps I may press the Minister on one point. I think that I am reassured that such matters should be in the hands of the local authority, but can we be assured that there will not be a postcode lottery, whereby some local authorities will charge more or less than others? A club that I know is opening its facilities specifically for disabled young people, rather than ordinary able-bodied young people, and that is that club’s contribution to this problem. Presumably, that should be encouraged.
Lord
Adonis: It is by the very nature of allowing
local discretion that there may be some local variations, but we intend
that guidance will make clear the circumstances in which local
authorities can give financial
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Baroness Walmsley: I am most grateful to the Minister for his reply and I am much reassured by it. I thank him for his confirmation that if it can be shown that the charging regime disadvantages young people who do not have the money or the ability physically to access those facilities, authorities would not be fulfilling their duty. It would be a pity if one had to rely on monitoring such an organisation and then have to prove that it was preventing those young people from having access before something could be done about it. I hope that the guidance will make it very clear to local authorities that they need to focus their attention on the most vulnerable young people in the first place to prevent the need for that monitoring—and then looking for redress.
I have a local authority in mind which made all its swimming pools freely available to all under-16s. The ability of young people to learn to swim—a very important skill, particularly in areas with rivers or that are next to the sea—went up and up. Making those facilities freely available really does make a difference to the way in which young people access such facilities and that can be very important. I am most reassured by most of what the noble Lord said. For the rest, we just have to hope for the best. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 51 to 54 not moved.]
Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.
Baroness Buscombe moved Amendment No. 55:
The noble Baroness said: In moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 63, 69, 70, 71, 72, 76 and 89.
These amendments, if accepted, would represent a substantial step towards achieving the new strategic role for local authorities that the Government have set out, not just in the Higher Standards, Better Schools for All White Paper, but in the Department for Education and Skills’ Five-year Strategy for Children and Learners and the 2005 Labour Party manifesto. Amendment No. 55 would prevent local authorities in England establishing new community schools. This is an important amendment that goes to the heart of what the Bill sets out to achieve.
Key to that vision was removal of the power to establish new community schools. Yet, since the White Paper was published, the Government have retreated from their bold aims, and for no clear purpose. Indeed, the ability to establish new community schools completely undermines the very basis of the new commissioning role. The Government perhaps recognised that fact when, in the regulatory impact assessment, they stated:
12 July 2006 : Column 793
- “At present, some authorities have
tended to regard schools as “their” schools and to regard
other categories of schools as being outside the local family of
schools”.
- “The
Government is aiming for a clear division between schools as
independent providers of education and local authorities as
commissioners, enablers and strategic
planners”.
Following that report, the Government retreated. Community schools could be proposed but only with the consent of the Secretary of State. As the Bill stands now, several local authorities will be given the right to establish new community schools although a similar number will be forbidden from proposing such schools. The remainder will need to seek the Secretary of State’s permission.
By removing the right to establish new community schools we would return the Bill to the vision set out in the White Paper. The Government should not fear accepting this amendment because they should realise that they will have our support. I should add that notice of my intention to oppose the question that Clause 8 stand part of the Bill is consequential on the amendment. If the Government were to accept this amendment, Clause 8 would fall.
Amendment No. 63 tackles the issue in a less explicit way by removing the rights of local authorities to establish a new community school through a competition. Amendment No. 76 to Clause 10 would prevent local authorities establishing community schools outside competitions. I invite the Minister to accept at the very least Amendment No. 76. It will ensure that all new community school proposals would have to be decided on through a competition. I would like clarification of the grounds that the Secretary of State will use when granting consent under Clause 10. I would appreciate it if the Minister could confirm that the procedure under Clause 10 is, indeed, for use only in exceptional circumstances. Will he guarantee that local authorities that are forbidden from proposing community schools under Clauses 7 and 8 will not be granted permission to proceed under Clause 10?
Clause 8 deals with the circumstances under which schools will be permitted to propose new community schools. The Government have helpfully provided draft regulations: the School Organisation (Community and Community Special Schools in Competitions) (England) Regulations 2006. Those set out that a local authority will be prevented from establishing new community schools where it has an APA of one or where it has an APA of one and more than 15 per cent of schools are eligible for intervention or less than 15 per cent of schools are foundation schools, voluntary schools, academies, city technology colleges or city colleges for the technology of the arts. Schools with an APA rating of four will automatically be permitted to propose new community schools. All the others will need to seek the permission of the Secretary of State.
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A consequence of the Government accepting our amendments forbidding the establishment of community schools is that Clause 8 should not stand part of the Bill. Our amendments to Clause 8 seek to place greater limitations on the circumstances under which a local authority can propose a new community school.
Amendment No. 69 would prevent a local authority proposing a community school if such provision would result in less than one third of places in schools in the authority being provided through self-governing schools. It is very important that local authorities ensure diversity and choice by promoting the development of self-governing schools. Out of 150 local authorities, 86 local authorities have no foundation primary schools and 73 have no foundation secondary schools.
That approach differs from that of the Government in that our amendment refers to the number of places in schools while the Government’s draft regulation refers to the absolute number of schools. We would be interested in probing that a little. Why refer to the absolute number of schools when, ultimately, it is, in the words of the White Paper, increasing the number of places available at good state schools. That is the priority.
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