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Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her answer. Our main objection to Clause 39 is the involvement of the schools forum—an unelected and unaccountable body—in decision making. Our objection to Clause 40 is the matter of the reserved power of the Secretary of State. We believe in devolving decision making down to the most appropriate level and when one has democracy one has to trust it. The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, mentioned that there are few local authorities that do not pass all of the school's budget on to schools—even of those there are very few that have had a poor Ofsted.
Therefore, there is little case and necessity for the measure. However, it is clearly one that we shall be returning to at the next stage of the Bill. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 69 to 71 not moved.]
Clause 40 [Power of Secretary of State to set minimum school budgets]:
[Amendment No. 72A not moved.]
Baroness Walmsley moved Amendment No. 73:
- Page 26, line 35, leave out "a" and insert "an advisory"
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I rise to move Amendment No. 73 and to speak to Amendments Nos. 74, 75 and 77. Those amendments refer to Clause 41 which sets up the schools forums. My contention on the first three of those four amendments is that if Clause 41 should eventually find its way into the Act, at the very least schools forums should only be advisory.
The arguments that I have already made for the principle that such decisions should be made by the legitimately elected local education authority are also relevant here. The forums would be both unelected and unnecessary. Local authorities already consult widely with stakeholders when setting their budgets. Many do it well and there are many examples of best practice. If the Department for Education and Skills is unhappy about the way a few of them do it, in order to rectify the situation it would be far better to find ways of persuading them to emulate best practice rather than take away the democratic rights of LEAs all over the country.
I have already made the arguments for Amendment No. 77 to delete Clause 41 which sets up schools forums themselves. I stand by those arguments. However, in addition, here we have a small group of amendments that would give this part of the Bill the virtue of not overriding the principle that elected and accountable people should decide on the deployment of public money, but that stakeholders have a right to be consulted and to advise. I beg to move.
6.45 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn: My Lords, I speak to Amendment No. 76 which is included in this grouping. I must say that, the matter of faith schools apart, I have had more correspondence and lobbying on the matter of schools forums than on almost any other part of this long Bill.
I do not have strong feelings one way or the other about the matter though I believe that I can see a role for them. Perhaps I may suggest a general point. There are clearly some issues about transparency and funding between what the local education authority receives and what the school receives. There are some issues there that need to be addressed. There is perhaps the question of the extension of good practice to all areas and not just to those areas who want to adopt it. Therefore, there may be a need for legislation to deal with that.
Amendment No. 76 assumes—rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—that schools forums may remain on the face of the Bill and may come into existence. Therefore, this deals with the specific point which we debated and I withdrew in Committee stage.
The original amendment asked for head teachers and governors of the various categories of schools within a local education authority to be represented on the forum. We are concerned to protect the interests and rights of voluntary schools as well as other schools in those particular forums. We have modified the
amendment in the light of conversations with the Minister and we are now asking for a wider group—namely, persons representing each of the categories. As far as the voluntary Church of England and Roman Catholic schools are concerned, that would allow diocesan appointees to represent a group of schools.We take the point that it is not possible for people directly engaged in the schools within that particular forum to be there. However, we believe that it is essential if forums come into existence—and I really have no great desire for or against them—that there should be a way in which the decisions which have to be taken affecting budgeting in voluntary schools should be represented.
I understand that the Minister has offered regulation to provide for that, but we believe that it should be on the face of the Bill. Therefore, I tabled Amendment No. 76
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I withdrew my amendment because on reading it I believed it did something that I did not want done. The difficulty I have with Clause 41 is that in many cases it will replace something that is working well in good local authorities with something that is less satisfactory. It is more prescriptive and less flexible. If Clause 41 remains in the Bill I should like to see it as a reserve power that could be invoked by the local education authority when necessary, which is what my amendment would have done. Alternatively—or what my amendment did not do—it could be invoked by a group or sufficient number of schools if they wanted something of that sort to be in place.
In other words it could be there as a reserve arrangement, but if the local education authority and the school community could come to arrangements which were better and would work better in their own particular circumstances, then they should be allowed to do that. I agree that under those circumstances the schools forum cannot be given power to make certain decisions. However, I do not believe that it should have those powers anyway.
I apologise if I nip out for a moment to look after my ducklings, but I shall return quickly.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the mind boggles—ducklings outside the door!
I have sympathy with what my noble friend has just said. If I thought his amendment actually achieved that objective I would be supportive of it. I was disappointed that the Government do not believe that it would be appropriate for a majority of schools in an area to say that they would like a forum and to set one up. It seemed to be right. If schools are crying out for the power to enable them to understand what local authorities are doing with the money, the schools would simply say that that is what they want and would set it up.
I remember saying at the previous stage of the Bill that the better run local authorities have the equivalent of a schools forum. They do what is right and tailor make it to their own area. Anything that comes
through regulations is not tailor made; it is a one size fits all. I have yet to see a regulation that allows for the kind of flexibility that says, "Set up a forum and do it in your own way. Have the number of people on it you want". The size of the forum is prescribed—up to and no more than 50. The people who cannot sit on it are prescribed by the Government, and so forth. It becomes a very rigid framework. If I thought my noble friend's amendment achieved what he would like it to achieve, I should certainly want to support it.In the previous debate the noble Baroness said—it is pertinent to this debate—that we should not worry about the powers to be given to the forums because they are extremely minor; they concern only libraries and museums; they concern only insignificant matters. But in this Bill a regulation power is being taken under the negative instrument procedures to add anything in the future. This is the thin end of a wedge where, in order to get the power through Parliament, the noble Baroness talks about libraries and museums. But, once it is through, serious items of budget-making could be added to the list and we could do nothing to stop that, other than praying against an instrument which we could not modify; we could only vote against it. The Minister is making light of a serious point.
The right reverend Prelate mentioned the lobbying that has taken place in relation to this amendment. It is extraordinary that of all the provisions in this Bill, many of which I regard as extremely serious, this specific one has excited two camps. One camp says, "We must have these forums. It is about time we got to know what local authorities are doing. We want the power." The people who argue in that way, with great feeling, believe that if they have a schools forum, they will get a great deal more money into their schools. That is the simplistic understanding of the matter.
On the other side of the argument, people are saying, "For goodness sake get schools forums out of this Bill. We will support any effort to do that". I want to take the provision out of the Bill. That is the purpose of my amendment. I believe that we should go down the road of saying to local authorities that they should be more clear about what they are doing; there should be a great deal more transparency. The Government could do more to make the system transparent. They could do more about putting their own house in order before invoking local authorities to put order in theirs .
I believe also that where a local authority has the equivalent of a forum which is working well, tailor-made to their own ways of doing things, and where the schools, the head teachers and the governors are entirely happy, they should be allowed to continue. Indeed, in many local authorities, and mine is one, they take the whole budgetary process out on to the road; they have a road show. They discuss it with local communities, with parish councils and with district councils as well as with their primary and secondary schools forums. That is the road to go down. If, as my noble friend who is outside looking after his ducklings suggests, we could achieve the same end by his amendment, gaining flexibility where the schools themselves wished to have such a set-up, then we
should go down that road. But, like my noble friend too, I am concerned about the power. It is genuinely the thin end of the wedge.
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