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The noble Baroness said: This proposed new clause is simple. The Bill establishes various interweaving duties and responsibilities between young people and local authorities and between local authorities and parents. The proposed new clause seeks to establish duties and responsibilities between schools and parents.
If we are to place a duty on parents to ensure the participation of their children in continued training or education, I suggest we recognise that the parents’ involvement should ideally be an ongoing process. I have spoken before about how the building blocks for continued education should have been laid long before a child reaches 16, and how it is up to the education system to engage children and young people so that they do not become disaffected. I do not apologise for making that point again because it is crucial to the long-term success of broadening participation in education. This amendment recognises that everyone has a part to play in this. When children are still their legal responsibility, parents should play as full a role as possible in helping them with their schooling. It should not be left to teachers alone to deal with unruly or ill-disciplined children; parents also have an obligation in that regard.
Last year, 13,278 parenting contracts were issued following poor school attendance, while 2,535 contracts were issued following exclusions from school. The amendment would allow schools to make it a condition of admission that parents ensure compliance with the rules. If parents and schools are engaged with each other from the start, and everybody knows what is expected of them, I hope that it will not be necessary to wait until pupils are excluded or play truant before their parents are brought on board through a contract. The amendment should be seen as a preventive measure. I hope that the Minister will see its merits. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: Home-school contracts have a long history, which we do not need to go through now. I support the principle that my noble friend advances. However, in light of what the noble Lord said in replying to the previous amendment, I suggest that the
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Lord Lucas: As the parent of an unruly five year-old, I support the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Elton.
Lord Adonis: We very much like parenting contracts because we want parents to be as engaged as possible in their children’s education. I am sorry, I should have referred to home-school agreements. I am always an amendment behind. I shall start again. We very much like home-school agreements—we like parenting contracts as well—because we want parents to be as engaged as possible in the education of their children, and for this to be a partnership activity with the school.
We have brought in measures designed to strengthen the relationship between parents and schools, including parent support advisers and transition information sessions. The evidence is that a significant proportion of parents have signed home-school agreements, although we would like that proportion to be higher. The 2007 parental involvement in children’s education report found that two in five parents had not heard of home-school agreements. Overall, 39 per cent of parents said that they had signed a home-school agreement. We would like that proportion to be higher, although it is not clear that all parents understand that what they have agreed to is a home-school agreement. Often parents go through the process of making undertakings to a school to abide by its discipline policy, to see that their children attend on time, and so on, but they are not always aware that that is a home-school agreement. The evidence is that a significant proportion currently signs those agreements, but we would like it to be higher.
However, though home-school agreements have a statutory basis, and we would like to see them being more widely adopted, we do not think that it is right to say that they can be conditions of admission to a school, which is what the amendment would do. That would be discriminatory and unreasonable. Home-school agreements are specifically prohibited from being linked to the school admissions process by Section 111(4) of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, precisely for the reason that we fear that otherwise that could be an unfair source of admissions selection by schools.
The school admissions code restates that section of the 1998 Act. It prohibits admission to a school being conditional on parents signing a home-school agreement. The code also provides in paragraph 1.49 that schools must not ask parents to sign agreements before they have been offered a place at the school. All local authorities’ admission authorities, admission forums, schools adjudicators, and admission appeal panels are required to act in accordance with the school admissions code.
Whether a child gets a place at a school should not be determined by the willingness of their parents to sign a home-school agreement, although it is entirely appropriate and strongly to be encouraged that parents may be invited to sign one after their child has been
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Baroness Morris of Bolton: I thank the Minister for his reply. If he would like the uptake of home-school agreements to be higher, he has only to accept our amendment. I am not surprised by what he said, and I rather think that he will not accept the amendment. There is a slight irony, that here is something that the Government could compel parents to do, which might make an enormous difference, so that we do not have to have compulsion when children get to age 17 and 18—
Lord Elton: Before my noble friend withdraws the amendment, given the objection to home-school contracts, or agreements, being a requisite for admission to a school, is there also an objection to their being a requirement for the continuance of an unruly child at school? I thought that was an entirely different proposition.
Lord Adonis: I am not sure that I understand the noble Lord’s point. It is not a requirement, if a school reaches a judgment that a child’s behaviour is inconsistent with them being at the school, that they maintain them at the school. The whole exclusion process is precisely to enable schools, in proper circumstances, to exclude a pupil from school.
Lord Elton: I meant that, before resorting to exclusion, surely it would be reasonable to resort to getting the parents to agree to a contract or agreement that they will support the school’s discipline policy. That might adjust the behaviour of the child. I wanted reassurance that it is accepted, and that the bar on making it a requirement of attendance at the school applies only at admission stage, and not during the course of the child’s education at the school, if the child becomes unmanageable without the support of the parents.
Lord Adonis: A parenting contract might well be appropriate to meet precisely the objectives set out by the noble Lord. However, as I set out in response to a previous group of amendments, there are proper processes that need to be gone through in respect of a parenting contract. Provided those processes are gone through, a parenting contract can be enforced.
However, a parenting contract cannot be tied to the provision of a place at a school. A parenting contract will have its own sanctions if the conditions are not fulfilled. The place at a school could not be removed purely because a parenting contract was not being fulfilled. However, if the behaviour of a child continued to be incompatible with their continuance at the school, which may have given rise to the parenting contract in the first place, it would be open to the school, acting by proper processes, to exclude the child. That would give an element of conditionality because the fact that that ultimate sanction was there would be well known to the young person and to their parents.
Baroness Morris of Bolton: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 39 [Failure to fulfil duty under section 2: initial steps]:
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Baroness Morris of Bolton moved Amendment No. 122:
Clause 39, page 21, line 7, leave out “fulfil the duty imposed” and insert “participate in education or training as required”
The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to the other amendments in my name in this group. Amendments Nos. 122 and 123 are designed, like previous amendments, to remove the compulsion element from the Bill and to insert the right to participate. I am sure that the Minister will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to repeat that argument, because our views are already well known.
This group of amendments is an attempt to deal with the corollary of compulsion: the sanctions for failing to comply. Once again, I raise my fear of criminalising young people for failing to participate in education or training. The Minister said in our earlier debates that this was a somewhat emotive term, but that is what will happen if a young person does not comply. He has also told us that it is envisaged that sanctions will be used, if at all, only in a small minority of cases. Even if that is so, the deleterious effect that a conviction would have should give the Government—indeed all of us here—pause for thought.
Amendments Nos. 143 and 144 would delete the criminal element in the Bill and translate it into civil penalties. The amendments specify that non-compliance would be a civil matter rather than a matter for the criminal law. There is a risk, however small, that young people may be criminalised by the Bill as it stands. That is of great concern to the organisations with the most experience of dealing with challenging young people and those young people who are most typically disengaged from the system. I have had meetings with Edge, the Prince’s Trust and the Z2K Trust, organisations that have to work with the aftermath of young people becoming involved in the criminal justice system. I worry that we are not helping these young people by threatening them with criminalisation.
It is a sad irony that the young people in greatest need are the least likely to benefit from the Bill, particularly if it threatens them. We need an approach that is founded on the principle of encouragement and support, and which is sensitive to the fact that such young people might not be in a position to abide by the terms of the Bill. I cannot restate often or firmly enough the Conservatives’ enthusiasm for increasing participation. We simply do not think that the system that the Government wish to put in place will work.
Amendments Nos. 147, 148 and 149 reflect our anxiety that young people may also be regarded as having committed a recordable offence that might figure on national police records. I hope that the Government can provide reassurance on that point. Would that not be a barrier to participation in the workplace, one of the goals of the Bill? There may be no automatic checks with the CRB, but some jobs require such checks to be made. The Children’s Rights Alliance worries that a conviction could show up in advanced criminal record checks and hang over young
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Amendments Nos. 152 and 154 would place a limit in the Bill on the amount payable in fines. How do the Government expect young people who are not in education, employment or training to pay? The purpose of Amendment No. 155 is to put in the Bill an explicit prohibition on taking legal action in any court other than the youth court against a young person who does not pay the penalty notice. It would help if the Minister could clearly spell out the mechanism that he foresees being used to prosecute any failures to comply. Is it not the case that a young person who does not participate will be liable to a fine? If he does not pay the fine, he will be pursued for non-payment. What happens if the process is strung out so that he turns 18 before the issue is resolved? Is it not the case that he can then no longer be dealt with in the youth court?
The Government have tried to reassure us that the matter drops once a young person reaches 18, as the Section 2 duty of this Bill no longer applies. If that is so, a defaulting young person simply needs to draw the process out to avoid his criminal punishment. Is that a satisfactory or fair conclusion to proceedings? If a defaulting young person is being pursued through the courts for non-payment of a fine, which is a different offence from the original failure to participate, what is the young person’s legal position? I hope that the Minister can respond on this point. I hope that the Government recognise from the opposition to these clauses standing part that there is considerable unease on this matter. I beg to move.
6.45 pm
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I support all the amendments in this group. As we explained on the first day in Committee, we support the concept of an entitlement and we support the Government in wanting to raise the participation rate, but we are unhappy about the compulsion element. We also share the noble Baroness’s worries about criminal offences and about imposing fines on young people, particularly since many of the young people concerned are likely to be on unemployment benefit and not to have any resources of their own, in which case fines could cause great poverty. We have tabled a series of amendments relating to that issue on behalf of the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust. They are due to be debated in the next group, so I shall not say anything at length now. I am slightly surprised that no one from these Benches put their name to the noble Baroness’s amendments, because we are very much with them in spirit.
Lord Elton: The clock does not permit the weight of support that these amendments deserve to be fully deployed. My noble friend’s Amendments Nos. 143 to 145 seek to remove the most objectionable aspect of the Bill—the criminalisation of young people—and Amendments Nos. 147 to 150 seek to mitigate the consequences if that attempt fails. After addressing those amendments, my noble friend raised other important considerations, particularly what happens when the
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Lord Lucas: I support what my noble friend on the Front Bench said. I do not intend to rehearse my lengthy objections to the idea of criminalising young people, the consequences of which were nicely—although that is entirely the wrong word—illustrated this week by the young man who was refused admission to UCL to study medicine, although he had superb qualifications, because of some misdemeanour when he was much younger.
In general, we do not forgive criminal convictions until much later than we should. I challenge the Minister to get his department to publish its policy on employing ex-offenders. As I have said to him before, I have had trouble with his department on that. As it intends to criminalise young jobseekers, it would set an excellent example if it declared what its policy will be towards young people who emerge to ask it for a job with such a conviction or another conviction. The Minister should set an example to his colleagues in Whitehall on that.
We also seem intent on starting young people off in life with a history with a credit reference agency as a result of non-payment of fines, as the result of having no money because they are entitled to only £40-odd a week from which to pay the fine. That does not seem to be especially helpful. Perhaps in his heart of hearts the Minister sees that we have ended up in the wrong position for the right reasons and that the Government ought to look again to find another way to do this. I very much hope that my noble friends on the Front Bench and those on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench will concur sufficiently that we shall have a joint effort to put into the Bill on Report.
On my objection to these clauses standing part, I can reassure the Minister that I do not want him to go through every clause justifying them, although that was immensely helpful last time. I would like him to tell me something about Clauses 40 and 41. If a young person refuses to go into education, how can someone else choose the course of education and then compel that young person to go through it? How does that work? In my school career, no one ever succeeded in punishing me by making me do any constructive work. I had to write out lines often enough, but the idea that I should learn how to do long division better as a punishment did not work and I do not know anyone who has successfully tried it. How is a course to be chosen for a young person who does not want to do anything? How is he to be made to do it successfully? I would very much like to know the Minister’s thinking on that.
To return to a subject that I raised earlier, to which I do not remember getting an answer, how does that process deal with the young Alan Sugar, who wants to get out there to start selling car aerials from the back of a van? Those people often turn out to run real
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote: I support the group of amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton. They have underlined all the discussion that we have had on the Bill from day one. We have gone into enormous detail because we are all worried about the compulsion aspect and potential criminalisation. For that reason alone, if this group of amendments and the following group fail and we still have the potential criminalisation, we must look at every method to entitle the young person not to end up as a criminal.
I referred earlier, as did the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, to the young man to whom Imperial College extended an offer and then removed it. He is an absolute example of someone whom we should support, but the rules as they exist do not allow it. Yet here we are busily en route to making criminals and giving records to a lot of young people who would not otherwise get them.
We are moving towards the last day of debate in Committee, which is in about a week. I very much hope that the Minister will give serious attention to what lies behind all this discussion. Above all, I should like to emphasise one thing, on which I suspect that there will be further amendments: if we are getting into a position where a young person has to justify himself, there must be a right of appeal and advocates to speak on his behalf.
Lord Adonis: Such rights of appeal are set out in the clauses we are debating. If the enforcement action went to a youth court, there is no question of a young person not having the rights to contest any action at every stage. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, began by asking a specific question on what would happen when a young person reached 18 and whether any action would stop at that age, thereby giving someone an incentive to spin the whole thing out. If a prosecution has started in the youth court, it stays in the youth court, even if a young person turns 18. The court used depends on the age of the person at the time proceedings commence. If a young person is about to turn 18, prosecution would not be appropriate. The only point of enforcement is deterrent action to get the young person to re-engage. An action would not automatically be terminated in a youth court simply because a person had reached 18.
Baroness Morris of Bolton: We made this point at Second Reading and I think that it has been answered. There are people who just refuse to pay fines. If that carries on, is it still dealt with by the youth court or does there come a stage when the non-payment of fines is not dealt with in such a court? Could a person effectively go to prison for simply not participating in education or training?
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Lord Adonis: No, these cases would always stay in the youth court and there is no question of any action leading to imprisonment. I need to make that absolutely clear. No process could be followed that could lead to a young person being imprisoned.
We do not believe that Amendments Nos. 122 and 123, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, would change the Bill in any meaningful way. Failing to,
would mean that the young person was failing to fulfil his or her duty under Clause 2. Therefore, the clause would still have the same meaning.
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