The objective outlined by the Minister—that all children should be able to reach their potential and that education should play a transformative role in that where possible—is one that unites us all. I am sure that we start from consensus on that position. The Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, identified that we all come here with our particular experiences as to why this is very important to us. For me it is because of my journey through life. I was born into a very large family living on a council estate. Were it not
for parents who, although denied education themselves, saw very clearly its importance for their children, I would not have had the opportunities I have through education. I want the same for every child, including those born into circumstances like mine and that of my noble friend. We are coming to this from different experiences, but we are united around that objective.
The question we need to address is how best to achieve that and whether the Government have got it right in the Bill. My other experiences over the years, in local government, in university management and as a government Minister, have led me to change the view I started with as a young person in positions of authority —that, if you get the structures and systems right, all will be well—to a much more complex understanding. If you are to get sustained change, it is not really about the structure, but about the people delivering and the importance of collaboration. Sustained change means that people have to own that change and feel part of it. That is the seat of some of my concerns about the Bill.
Implicit in the Bill are some key assumptions. First, to achieve their objective, the Government need to extend the powers and reach of the Secretary of State and central government to intervene in schools directly, and to extend that reach to an as yet relatively undefined category of “coasting” schools. Secondly, the Government need to take away the ability of local government, governing bodies and parents to be involved in and consulted about the future of schools that might be eligible for improvement. Thirdly, the only way to improvement is conversion to a sponsored academy. Taken together, those three elements lay bare the Government’s belief that the way forward is central government control and universal academies—an approach that is neither sustainable nor effective—as opposed the collaborative and supportive approach that I will refer to, and which has actually been shown to work.
I will touch on those three assumptions. First, the Bill proposes to extend the powers and reach of the Secretary of State way beyond the current position: they will be able directly to issue warning notices to schools, to prevent local authorities doing so, to stop local authorities from intervening, to determine how intervention will be implemented, and so on. Precisely what evidence is there that those powers are necessary? The Minister mentioned that local authorities already have the power to intervene. I know that many of them do not yet do so, and I agree with him that they should, but the Secretary of State can direct them to intervene. The Secretary of State can set up an improvement board across the whole of an authority and chair it herself, if she wants to, which I did as a Minister on a number of occasions. I therefore question why extra powers are needed to put the grit into the system that the Minister wants to achieve.
I reflect on the marked contrast between the approach taken by the Department for Education towards local authorities and that taken by some other parts of government. I live in Greater Manchester, where there is now an agreement on considerable devolution of powers, responsibility and accountability from the Government to the combined authority. Such discussions are going on with other city regions in other parts of
the country. Why is the opposite approach of cutting out local authorities and local communities being taken in education, when it seems that the flavour of the month in other parts of the Government is to recognise that the direction of travel now is in favour of devolution?
As I said, the second strand is to strip out the involvement of local authorities, governing bodies and parents in deciding the future of schools. Obviously, this is consequential on the powers being taken in the Bill for the Secretary of State to determine those issues. I reflect on the stark contrast between that approach and another that has been shown to work: the London Challenge, another innovation of my noble friend Lord Adonis, who is no longer in his place. The London Challenge was not a soft option in any shape or form. It was based on “stick” as well as “carrot”, but most importantly it was based on the evidence that for improvement to be sustained in the education system as a whole, not just in individual schools, the process has to be owned by all the protagonists—central government, local government, local authorities, governing bodies, schools and parents alike. It was based on the power of collaboration between families of schools. Schools were grouped in families according to common factors such as demographics and they worked together, and there was collaboration between central and local government. It set tough targets, provided the resource and support to meet them, showed absolutely remarkable improvements and transformed both the performance and reputation of London schools, so much so that we instituted similar challenges in the Black Country and Greater Manchester, but unfortunately these were axed in 2010 by the coalition Government.
On the third strand—that academisation is the only route to improvement—the Bill includes not only a power for the Secretary of State to make an academy order if a school is eligible for intervention; it imposes a duty on her to do so if a maintained school is eligible for intervention because it requires significant improvement or special measures. So it is clear that the Government believe that becoming an academy is the only route to improvement, and their goal is that every school should become an academy, as the Minister said. What evidence does he have from anywhere in the world that wholesale academisation throughout the whole of an education system produces the best possible outcomes for children? Although my Government established academies in underperforming schools in disadvantaged areas, we did so for two reasons: first, obviously, to improve the outcomes in those schools; but, secondly, to provide a beacon for schools throughout the system, whatever their type, showing how excellence could be achieved. It was always in our minds that diversity in the education system is as important as a mechanism for improving schools. I wonder how the Minister feels about this. He is taking this country into uncharted waters, for which there is no evidence, by making every single school an academy. It is one thing for central government to reach into 200, 300, 500 or 1,000 schools; but there is no evidence to suggest that making all schools—almost 15,000 schools—academies without any local connection or control from the centre will be effective, and it may cause other problems, particularly for parents.
If the Minister is so confident about the positive impact of universal academisation, including the involvement of academy chains, why are the powers of intervention for maintained schools as defined in the Bill not applied to academies? It is not good enough to say, as he and the Secretary of State have said, that they are governed by funding agreements, that the department intervene in relation to those agreements, and that the situation with academies is completely different. It should not be different. The process should be transparent and should be the same as the one for maintained schools. Post-conversion inspections show that 8% of primary sponsored academies and 14% of secondaries are currently rated inadequate. The lack of transparency regarding how those inadequate and failing academies are being dealt with within the confines of the Department for Education, where we cannot know what is being said and what the outcome of those discussions are, does not build confidence among teachers and parents.
I have not touched on adoption because I wanted to focus on education. I look forward to discussing that issue in Committee. The stated intentions of the Bill are laudable, and we all support them, but the Government’s one-track approach of centralisation of control and universal academisation causes me great concern. I look forward to discussing that further in Committee.
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Lord Addington (LD): My Lords, when I first looked at the Bill, my reaction was that there was not much to it. It is a very small Bill. When I first tried to read it, I asked, “What on earth are they trying to get at?”. It has become clear that it is effectively the vehicle for an article of faith—that is, that academies are good and other things are bad and that the Government want more academies and want everything to be an academy. If the Bill said that upfront, I would have slightly more respect for it because it would say, “This is where we think we should go. This is the process”.
Then we get this wonderful concept about things that are coasting, but the Bill does not say what “coasting” is. We now have more of an idea about that as we have heard more people talking about it. Coasting implies maintaining a standard level. If it is a good standard level, surely we should encourage a little bit more coasting occasionally. But, no, coasting is bad—although we still do not know what it is.
I am trying to resist the temptation to refer to a monarch who had lots of wives and is pictured on a nearby wall. However, if you are going to do something, you should know exactly what you are going to do and the criteria according to which you are going to do it. If we do not include those criteria in the Bill, or at least give a much better description of how that process will take place, we will be missing a huge opportunity, because people will have to know what they are dealing with to make this process work properly. Given the Minister’s great declaration of faith, I hope he will allow us to know what sacred text we are working from, how this intervention is to be carried out and against what criteria.
The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, talked about data. Can we make sure that things other than just exam results are included in those data? We have spoken
obsessively about the fact that obtaining five GCSEs—the great gold standard of a previous Government —was not good enough. We are all agreed on that. If a school is great at getting pupils into apprenticeships, will that be taken into account when considering whether that school is coasting? I do not think so.
I have spoken to noble Lords before about sport. How is the interaction between sporting activity and cultural activity at a school taken into account when considering whether it is coasting? Is this taken into account? Going slightly beyond local interaction, because we all tend to look at things in silos, how does that school reach out in these departments? We know that, in the case of sport, putting a pupil in a club outside school, and building a link with it, however you do it, is a much better guarantee of success than whatever may be the results gained by that school’s team. The same could probably be said of apprenticeships and other forms of further education. How do we establish these links? What are the criteria for looking back, in and out of this? We must have some guidance about this on the way through. If we do not, we will miss the fundamental point. It is about getting a good result for the person who is going through.
We can talk much more, as my noble friend did, about selection and what goes on there. I remind everyone here that although I have heard many a great clarion call about how wonderful grammar schools were, I have heard very few about secondary moderns. What do we leave behind? What are we carrying on? How are we reaching out and doing something? How are we touching those outside the immediate environment?
As the Bill goes through the House, we will need far greater clarification of the process and the criteria, and we need it somewhere we can refer back to it. That is essential to us being able to function properly. Without that, we have merely an idea—an article of faith—that we fire this silver bullet of academisation into a school and it is cured; the demons are driven out. Let us take this rather tortured metaphor slightly further: it seems that some people are becoming immune to the silver bullet and it is failing. This werewolf is going to bite you again. There has to be something else about this or we should just go back to saying everything is becoming an academy because at least we will know where we are.
If the Bill is going to have some meaning about the fact that you are going to make an intervention in something that has become stagnant—which would be a far better expression than “coasting”—at least we would know what we are talking about. I hope that throughout the passage of the Bill we make damn sure that that clarity is injected into it.
5.51 pm
Lord Northbourne (CB): My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships for long. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on many of the things he said, with which I agree. In so far as the Bill is going to provide for better education for many children, of course I must—and do—support it, but I have one concern: what is the definition of “coasting”? It raises the problem of what education is for—what are we trying to achieve?
For clever children, academic success is fairly easy, but what about the non-clever children and the disadvantaged children? It is those children whose education I happen to have had the luck and the honour to be concerned with during my life. I was a governor of Weavers Field School for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties; there was also the other school down at Eastbourne, Caldecott College, Toynbee Hall and a whole range of things. We were doing things for and with young people who really had very little academic potential.
I fear that the decision about what is and what is not a coasting school will be based entirely on academic performance. Many of the schools that are taking terrific care of and doing wonderful work with disadvantaged children do not produce academic results because those children do not have the potential to achieve academic results. I hope that in his summing up the Minister will be able to tell me what the criterion for a coasting school is.
5.53 pm
Lord Harris of Peckham (Con): My Lords, I am sure that everyone here wants to give every child in this country an outstanding education. Way back in 1988, when my noble friend Lord Baker asked me to start a CTC in an inner city, I thought about it hard. I realise now that it was one of the best decisions of my life to carry on and open the school. It took two years—not only to find the site but to get the local authority to sell the site, to get the parents to agree and to get the governors to agree—which was far too long.
What was the school like that they wanted to keep? It had a 9% pass rate. A school that was built for 1,200 students had only 400. Some 60 students a year were expelled. On average, teachers lasted less than six months. The discipline was awful. So we started from a new sheet of paper. We got a new principal in and a new board of governors. We bought all the school uniform, which 25 years ago was not really respected. But in four years this school changed and went from the 9% pass rate—which was different from GCSEs today—to 54%. It was the most improved school in the country. Five years later it went to 92% and for the second time was the most improved school in the country. This can happen. This can change the lives of many, many children. Today the school that had only 50 people apply for places has between 3,500 and 4,000 applicants for 180 places. We have 1,500 students in the school. In the past three years we have averaged nearly 90% five A to C results and it is one of the most popular schools in the country. So we know it can happen.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, helped with academy growth. Between 2002 and 2015 we opened 36 academies. Most of them were in special measures or inadequate. Now, of the secondary schools that we have had for more than two years, 12 are outstanding, four are good and five are yet to get Ofsted reports. It is a pretty good result. It is not down to me; it is down to our teachers and principals, motivating the children to do well, not only in work but in sport. All our schools take sport very seriously.
One of the schools we took over—in Battersea, just down the road—had a pass rate of 37% when we took it over last September. In one year we changed that to 67%—a 30% increase in just one year; these are the same students who the year before got only 37%—and 60% of that school we got to university. That is a fantastic result. One thing I would like the Minister to take note of is that when we did our report on the school in March 2014, it said it had £1.5 million in reserves. When we took over the school six months later, it had only £525,000. Where did that £1 million go? When we asked the question, we were told we did not need to know the answer. That is something that the Minister should take on board, and any academy that takes over from a secondary school should put two governors on the board immediately.
I will talk about a few of our other schools. Three years ago the local authority in Greenwich said, “We don’t want to run the school”. Before it became an academy, the council let us run it. In those three years —two years as an academy and one when we were running it for the local authority—it has gone from a 23% pass rate to a 70% pass rate, and within 18 months was outstanding. South Norwood had a pass rate of 20%. Over the past five years it has averaged 65%. The school is outstanding. This year we got four students from our Crystal Palace school to Oxford and Cambridge. Again, it is changing the lives of the children. In all our academies, 80% of our students get to university. It is down to the hard work of the principals, teachers and support staff and the chief executive Sir Dan Moynihan, motivating the children to do well—which is so important.
Three years ago we started primary schools because we had children come in year 7, aged 11, who could not read and write. It was awful. We took one to two years to get them up to a normal standard. So we decided to open primary schools. We have 17 primary schools now, which include six free schools. Three years ago, 10 of them were in special measures. We now have four outstanding primary schools, six good and seven still to be inspected. We have never had less than “good” after two years for any academy that we have taken over. With our good staff and good management, we hope that we keep that record up.
As for primary schools, we have a school called Coleraine in Tottenham, which had been in special measures for 10 years. Can noble Lords imagine a local authority leaving a school in special measures for 10 years? In 18 months, we changed that school and it became outstanding—from being in special measures for 10 years to outstanding in 18 months. The pass rate there moved up from the low 40s to 83%. In July this year, it was the most improved primary school in the country. What a fantastic achievement for a place like Tottenham.
Then there is Roke Primary School. The parents were so much against this school that they closed one of our shops one day and came out and protested at the Secretary of State’s office in London. What happened to that school? It was in special measures, but in just under one year and one term it became outstanding, with an improvement from 64% last year to 94%. It is a fantastic achievement. Academies with the right
management, of which we have quite a few in this country, can change the lives of many pupils. That is what we are all out to do. It is not about who runs the schools or who does the work but about making sure that we give all our children the best education possible. That is what many academy chains in this country are doing: they are improving the standard of education of the people in this country. I know you get figures from the past which say that an academy has not improved. That may be because they had an inspection within six months of taking over the school. That is too early. I am very pleased that the Government are now giving us three years to put a school right. That is very important.
Finally, I would like to mention our school at Westminster, Harris Westminster, which has joined up with Westminster School. We got the building last July and had to open it in September. We opened it in September with 142 students. The school is mostly for very bright children who come from poor families—44% of the children have to be on free meals. I am very proud to say that in the first year we expect to get at least 60% of those children to a Russell university and over 95% to university. In this year’s intake, we had 1,100 applicants for 250 places and we took in just short of 300 students. This is changing lives and putting these children, who come from poor families, into a school where we want to get them into Oxford, Cambridge or one of the other top universities. It will change their lives and I recommend noble Lords in this House go over and see this school. It is a fantastic school that is doing a fantastic job.
I am very pleased to say that the Minister, my noble friend Lord Nash, has given us permission to run a training school for teachers. We all know we are short of teachers in this country, but we are training teachers on our top two floors over there. We are currently training 92 teachers this year, and over the next three years we will extend that to more than 500 teachers, who we will be teaching to work in all schools—not only academies but state schools, grammar schools and schools all over the country. We look forward to producing many great teachers and principals for the future.
6.04 pm
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab): My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Blunkett on his maiden speech. It was a privilege to have been here. I have worked out that it is well over a decade since he and I spoke in the same education debate in one of the Chambers of these Houses of Parliament, so it is very good to have him by my side again. Speaking in front of your former boss is never easy—I know he will read Hansard—but I shall do my best.
I want to start on a note of agreement. Perhaps the main purpose of this Bill is to address what we call coasting schools, and I do not differ in my view that that needs to be done. I want to make sure that every child has a good chance and that every school succeeds, but there is a debate about how we define coasting. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said, and have huge respect for him, but part of the problem is that the notion of coasting has that idea of
lack of progress over time. He is right that the minute you start measuring between fixed points, you build in a delay in terms of actually doing something about it. I am sure that in Committee we will want to look at that definition. We all know the sort of school we are talking about, even though it might be difficult to define it. I have only one plea on this to the Minister. From what I have heard and read so far—he has mentioned this a number of times—this is partly about schools dropping below target. I remember, when I was in his job, that the coasting schools that worried me were those that were at 70% but that should have been at 90%. We need to be careful that we do not equate coasting with low attainment. That can certainly be true, but sometimes somewhere with 50% is not coasting and somewhere with 85% is coasting. The whole area of how we address that is quite critical.
I agree of course with the main objective of the Bill—to tackle coasting schools and ratchet up our wish to have every school improve. I also agree with the need to change. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, was right, although I am not sure he is right now. I remember the first school that went into Ofsted special measures, which I think was a primary in County Durham or somewhere up in the north of England. At that time teachers were very resistant to change, but I do not think that is the case now as much as it was. They were resistant, but when I go round schools now I can see that they faced up to the weaknesses in their own performance and that they want the best for children. They are just like us: they want every school to succeed and every child to have a decent chance. The problem now is working with them to work out what change is needed. Some resist, but not everyone.
That really takes us to the core of the Bill. My comments will be very much like those of a noble friend who spoke earlier because, when I look at what I think are the two core beliefs of the Bill, I do not think they deliver that objective, which we share. I accept the need for change, but I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, about whether the only change worth anything is a change to an academy. I want change and want to put pressure on schools. I am not satisfied with where we are, but I do not believe that moving to an academy is always the right way forward.
I follow the noble Lord, Lord Harris, in speaking. I love listening to him: it is like all my dreams coming true as somebody who cares about education and children. In the noble Lord, we have a man who has succeeded at running an academy chain, and I take my hat off to him for what he has achieved. We need to somehow replicate him. However, the truth is that not every academy chain is like the noble Lord’s. I do not want to go over the figures again, but the Minister has to face up to the fact that there is no evidence that academies are a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of failing schools. We hear too infrequently in this Chamber the stories about non-academies that have done the same thing as academies. I could pull heartstrings about kids who have gone to Oxbridge, whose lives have been turned around and whose families will be different generation after generation because of what a school has done, where that school was a maintained comprehensive school. It does not matter. We know what our predecessors did not know: what matters is
not the title on the door of the school but the quality of the teaching and the leadership that takes place in it, which can be found in maintained schools as well as in academies.
That is my problem with the Government’s approach. The importance of the Bill is that it takes us to that point of no return. This has been a long battle and a long debate but, when this Bill is passed, we really will be on the way to a fully academised system. That is dangerous, for all the reasons mentioned by my noble friend Lady Hughes. It is dangerous because we do not know what our world will look like under total academisation. I will not rehearse the figures, apart from one which, for me, is so important in making the Minister face up to the evidence which he seems to be ignoring and which his party is responsible for. The last big education Bill, which the Minister mentioned, introduced stand-alone academies. It was a very simple Bill: it was not about the tough end of the market or those schools that were failing kids or coasting, but about the easy end of the market. They were good or outstanding schools, and they were allowed to become stand-alone academies. Do you know what has happened in the five years since? One in seven of them has gone into the category of “requires improvement” or special measures.
When the Minister runs a department that has seen the consequences of his previous attempt to make every school an academy, how can he not face up to the fact that it does not work for everyone? That is my problem. It is not that I do not like academies—I will tell stories of academies. I want someone in government to tell the story of schools that are not academies but are doing well, because it matters. The fact that we have a Department for Education that is essentially a department for academies and a Minister for School Standards who is essentially a Minister for academies matters, because it creates the environment in which everyone else is trying to work. It focuses on structures, not standards, as we have heard. It is a false prospectus, because it seeks to guarantee magic success if you become an academy, and it is not relevant to or suitable for all people.
What really bothers me is that it drains the energy out of the school system. I go to a lot of schools, and they are focused on when the department is coming to get them to change to be an academy. You hear things like, “The department has phoned me. They are coming up to see me. Does it mean that they want us to become an academy?”. Schools see it as a field force for turning them into academies. That is not what the Department for Education is meant to be. It is meant to serve every child. It is meant to put as many resources and staff and as much money into maintained schools as academies. It is meant to go to maintained schools and say, “We will help you, and the solution may not be an academy”. That is not the sort of department that the Government are running, and it worries me stiff, because it is not the way to do things.
My worry with this area of policy is not that academies are wrong but that we have an Animal Farm situation where it is, “Academies good, everything else bad”. We know the end of the story in Animal Farm, and that worries me a great deal.
When the noble Lord introduced the Bill in the previous Parliament, he made it appear as though he could run all schools from Whitehall. He has realised that he cannot and that he was wrong, so he has introduced school commissioners. I register one point of concern about commissioners. They are run off their feet, their areas are too large, they are insufficiently resourced and they cannot do the job that is expected of them.
Let us understand what has happened. The Government have created a new tier of regional government: unelected, unaccountable, with no obligation to parents, answerable to nobody but the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the department, but essentially regional government. When one of the main thrusts of academisation is to get local government out of the picture, I do not understand why the answer must be to impose regional government on the education system in the form of the commissioners. It is not about the individuals. I think that the noble Lord has picked some really good men and women to do the job; I take my hat off to them. In the long term, it is not an answer to the problems that he has himself caused by deciding that he could run everything from Whitehall.
As my noble friend Lady Hughes said, that is a nonsensical approach to devolution to local authorities. I tried to make a list. What we have had from this Government is that a local council can be trusted with the public health budget but not to nominate the members of an interim executive board for a school. A local authority can be given the whole of the skills budget, which is several million pounds, but it cannot open an order to close a school. A local authority can be trusted with the transport infrastructure for the region but is not allowed to talk to an academy sponsor without the permission of the Minister. I do not know where that is going because, if those local authorities are good enough to be the powerhouses of our country, they are good enough to do those things with our schools.
That point must be answered, because it is the third central weakness at the core of the report: one size fits all, from now on it is academies or nothing; regional commissioners taking over from the Government, insufficiently resourced with no accountability to anyone; and a total lack of faith in local authorities.
I respect the Minister greatly, but this is a “Me, me, me” Bill—“Only I can do it, only I can decide what the school should be”. It is scraping the barrel—“Only I can decide who can be a member of an interim executive board in Wigan”. How that message will build partnerships with the other people in the school system with whom the Minister and his team have to work, I fail to realise.
Let me finish on a positive note, as we agree on so much. We are the lucky generation. When the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who is not in his place at the moment, started school improvement—as I always say that he did—the department did not have the evidence about what works. We do. Three decades of successive Governments working on school improvement in partnership with schools and others has showed us what works. It is the quality of leadership, what happens
in the classroom, high aspirations and good values. Nowhere in that evidence list does it say, “Every school needs to be an academy, and do not trust local authorities”.
6.15 pm
Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD): My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. I declare an interest as the governor of a primary school in Guildford which is part of the TKAT academy chain and was taken over by that chain because it was in need of significant improvement.
As my noble friend Lord Addington said, this is a short but very important Bill. It carries forward the Government’s manifesto commitment to increase very significantly the number of our primary and secondary schools which are sponsored academies during this Parliament. It does so by adding to the Secretary of State’s power to intervene a new category for intervention in so-called “coasting schools”, and by what the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, described as removing the bureaucratic legal hurdles to speed up the process. The basic purpose of the Bill, as we have discussed, is to ensure that all children benefit from the very best quality of education available, and therefore to minimise the degree to which they experience poor quality teaching and a poor quality environment in their schools.
We need to recognise that many—indeed, the majority—of our schools are not failing. The number of schools that are failing is roughly between 2% and 3%; 80% of our schools are judged by Ofsted to be “Good” or “Outstanding”. The remaining 17% between the two is probably the category of school that is most likely to be regarded as coasting: those that need some improvement but not necessarily the significant improvements needed by the failing category.
All of us are behind the purpose of the Bill, which is to improve the quality of our schools, but, like the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, I question the presumption that this can be achieved by academisation. We should recognise that, of the 25,000 schools in this country, 4,600 are now academies and, of the 20,000-plus remaining state schools, only 275, 1.8%, were judged inadequate by Ofsted as of April 2015, whereas, of the 730 sponsored academies—where, generally speaking, failing schools such as the one of which I am a governor had been taken over by an academy—81, or 12.1%, were judged inadequate. It is of course true, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said, that if you take over a failing school, it takes time to turn it around, and it is therefore not surprising to find that, among the sponsored academies, a higher proportion are judged to be failing.
There is a very useful briefing that the Commons Library produced before the Report stage of the Bill in the Commons which emphasises the ebb and flow of schools from one category to another. Schools judged inadequate, whether maintained or academies, are put in special measures, often with a new head and senior management team, and do improve while other schools drop down the league tables. As the noble Baroness noted, some of the conversion academies which were outstanding are now in special measures.
The briefing note follows through on the 559 schools judged inadequate in 2012; 239 of these became academies, but 294 remained as maintained schools, the large majority of which had seen their Ofsted rating improve. Of those, 159 were now rated good or outstanding. In other words—and, again, this has been stressed by a number of speakers—academisation is in itself no magic bullet. Maintained schools can turn things around just as well as academies, and it is arguable that, from the children’s point of view, not changing the structure and fiddling around with the structure and all the disturbance that this entails is better.
It does take time. Many experienced heads will tell you that it takes five years or more, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said, to move a school from inadequate to good or outstanding. We see this both in relation to the maintained schools and in relation to academies. There is, therefore, something of a question as to why the measures of intervention apply just to maintained schools. Why should maintained schools that are seen to be coasting be subject to intervention, whereas academies that are seen to be coasting are not? There is no intervention.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, mentioned, the really important issue is school leadership. We see time and again that a dynamic school leader can turn a school around and can lead the school to be outstanding over a very considerable period of time. Then they leave and sometimes the school falls down the league tables just because of that. It is, however, increasingly difficult to recruit head teachers. Many schools are having to re-advertise or use agency staff to fill gaps in their senior management team.
While it is acknowledged that some elements of leadership are innate, it is also well known that many techniques of leadership can be taught. Perhaps I should put it the other way round: they can be learned. I would like, therefore, to ask the Minister why—one of the key issues that really ought to have been addressed—the Government have withdrawn their support from the National College for Teaching and Leadership? It was doing a lot of extremely good work in producing a new cadre of leaders for our schools and training them extremely well. If we want to train a cadre of outstanding school leaders, this is precisely the sort of facility that we need to be nurturing.
Likewise, I think the need for well-qualified and experienced teachers is absolutely crucial to providing high-quality education. It is very distressing that something like 40% of our newly qualified teachers drop out within five years, even though some of them are very good teachers. Many people, talking about teachers, cite the stress as being a major obstacle. Again, one sees this particularly with the number of early retirements among teachers at the moment.
The Minister rightly says, as he said in answer to an Oral Question the other day, that the quality of our recruits is extremely good and that at present vacancy rates are very low. As everybody knows, however, the pressures on primary schools are immense at present, as a new baby boom works its way up the age groups. Have the Government got their head in the sand over this teacher recruitment crisis? Is enough being done to relieve the stress in the classroom? Is enough being
done to promote CPD among teachers, to give them time off so that they can recharge their batteries? All this is extremely important, but the Bill, with its threats of yet more intervention and change, more disruption, actually helps to make matters worse rather than better.
I want to end by talking about the issue of power in the hands of the Secretary of State. Is it really necessary for more power to be transferred to the Secretary of State? As Liberal Democrats, our belief has been firmly that schools should serve their communities. All along, we have had reservations about academies—and, as the noble Baroness will know, we were not very keen on academies in the first place—because they have broken the link between the school and its community and set the school apart from other schools.
We on these Benches, however, believe that schools collaborating and helping each other is the best way forward. There are hints of this in the Secretary of State’s powers of intervention under Clause 4, where the Secretary of State can intervene to issue a warning notice, whereas Clause 7, which is, I think, the more drastic one, makes it a duty of the Secretary of State to intervene when a school is judged inadequate and requires significant improvements or special measures.
As is made clear, the Department for Education now recognises that it cannot manage all 4,600 academies and more and has delegated its responsibilities to these eight regional school commissioners. The regions, however, are large. The south-east region, in which I live, stretches from Dover to Milton Keynes, running through Kent, the two Sussexes, Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire. The regional schools commissions, even with their advisory committees of top heads, cannot know how schools fit into their local communities. Are they really up to the job of being able to judge when schools are coasting schools? Surely you need something that is more local, because local heads know perfectly well which schools are achieving and which are not achieving and are very happy, or have been very happy to collaborate with their colleagues and to help schools that need help.
Finally, I would like to pick up this point about the sheer remoteness of these regional schools commissioners. I think it is very unfortunate that the Government have chosen to drop both the requirement for consultation with the local communities—I might say that was a concession which we Liberal Democrats managed to get into the Academies Bill when we were part of the coalition Government—and the right to appeal to Ofsted. I noted the comment by the National Governors’ Association about the democratic deficit. It said:
“This Bill represents a further centralisation of decision making regarding our schools; it does not sit well with the Government’s rhetoric about school autonomy as it not only removes the right for parents to be consulted, but it will give the Secretary of State power to overrule the decisions of local decision makers, whether these are the school governing body or the local authority”.
Henry Stewart, co-founder of the campaigning organisation the Local Schools Network criticised the proposals to require governing bodies and local authorities to facilitate academy conversion and co-operate with identified sponsors, saying that they mean that,
“governors no longer have a duty of care to their children and instead have a duty to implement government policy. … It’s an
extraordinary attack on basic freedom of speech, and I think governors across the country will be outraged by it”.
As a governor, I am not completely outraged, but I am a bit perplexed by the Bill. As I have indicated, I have some very grave reservations about it.
6.28 pm
The Earl of Listowel (CB): My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, in particular on what she says about the importance of supporting our newly qualified teachers, valuing them and ensuring that they become the experienced expert practitioners who, many years later, become superb teachers because they had a good start and they want to stick with it.
I was speaking last night with a father of 18 month-old twins. He was exhausted. I asked him, “Do they require much attention?” and he said, “All the time.” I say that is key. I was so pleased to hear what the Prime Minister said at the Conservative Party conference about the importance of doing better for children and young people in care and generally about improving social justice and social mobility; for young children and vulnerable children—all children—thrive on attention. We have to be crazy about these children if they are to do well. We have to be single-mindedly dedicated in our attention to them. So I was very pleased to hear what the Prime Minister said about his attention and intentions for them.
Jonathan Stanley, chief executive of the Independent Children’s Homes Association, wrote an article in the Huffington Post following the Prime Minister’s declaration, in which he said that, as a long-time expert in residential care for children, we have to be crazy about our children if we want them to do well and recover from their trauma. My sense was that the former Secretary of State, Michael Gove, was crazy about adopted children and children in the adopted system, and we have seen a lot of progress as a result. I pay tribute to his single-mindedness. In Scotland, a senior Minister decided that children’s homes was the most important issue that he was going to push forward, and we saw a great change there and an improvement in the setting up of the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care. These vulnerable children need a champion at the very top.
I pay tribute, too, to Edward Timpson MP, the Minister for Children. When he was chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers, he produced an excellent report on improving the educational outcomes for looked-after children, which called for the introduction of a virtual school head. As a Minister putting through the last education Bill, he put that on a statutory footing. All practitioners interested and concerned about these young people said what an important step forward that was.
I finish by expressing my gratitude for the work of the previous Labour Government in their recognition of this important issue of young people being neglected and looked-after children, and their investing the money and forming policy and legislation to make a difference. I particularly remember the Children (Leaving Care) Act. A little while ago, I spoke to a young man who,
at the age of 21, re-engaged with the care system after being lost to it and found a good personal adviser to help him to settle accommodation and turn his life around. We needed to give those young people better support past 18, and that Bill achieved that to some extent. So I pay tribute to the Labour Government for that.
On the discussion about academies, I was very moved by what the Minister said about his experience, and by what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, had to say. I am somewhat mystified when listening to the exchange across the Chamber, because it is difficult to judge what is working best and what is not. I live close to the Westminster Academy and I know that before it was a very unsatisfactory building, and it was troubling to hear that head teachers were in fear of their safety—so it must have been very difficult for children in that setting. It was an inappropriate building; the central corridors were too large; it was unsafe at break time, too hot in the summer time and too cold in winter because of how it was designed. We now have an excellent building, and I benefit from the use of the library, which is far better than the one that was there before. So my experience is that I see some positive things. Certainly, in terms of leadership, head teachers have complained to me that it is difficult to remove poor teachers, which is one thing that the academy process allows one to do more easily. I hope to visit an academy soon—one that has recently transformed—to hear from the heads and pupils what the difference has been in the process. I think that that will help me.
I hope that the Minister will not mind me challenging him on this, but I am concerned about the Government possibly losing sight of their White Paper of 2010, on The Importance of Teaching, which said:
“The first, and most important, lesson is that no education system can be better than the quality of its teachers. The most successful countries, from the Far East to Scandinavia, are those where teaching has the highest status as a profession; South Korea recruits from their top 5 per cent of graduates and Finland from the top 10 per cent”.
That must always be a top priority. I met over the weekend an 18 year-old woman whom I know well, the daughter of a friend, who has just started at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She is so enthusiastic that she is studying Chinese and will study in China next year—just like her mother, who is a primary school teacher. When I asked how her mother was, she said that she was still working 10 or 11 hours each day, but she loves it; she is prepared to make that sacrifice. I emailed a teaching professional over the weekend, on Saturday night; he turned it around for me on Sunday, at about one in the morning. I know him—he has two young children and is always exhausted when I see him, but he is so passionate about what he does. There are so many passionate, committed people in the education system, and we need to be better at supporting them.
I met the man responsible for supporting Teach First professionals in London some time ago, a graduate of Teach First. I welcome that policy and its further development very much indeed. He said that, although it was a wonderful opportunity, they could not always give teachers the support that they needed—that they needed to give newly qualified teachers, and Teach
First teachers, the support that they needed to work in the most challenging schools. Many of them wanted to work in the most challenging schools, but if they are not given the support to work there they cannot.
I am grateful to the chair of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology for writing to me about teacher numbers and distribution. The note says:
“The number of people entering initial teacher training is declining at secondary level in England, Scotland and Wales since 2005/06 … Teacher retention is also a concern in England (at primary and secondary level) … The distribution of teachers is a concern across the UK: the most highly qualified teachers tend to go to high performing schools in more affluent areas”.
We know that we need to put our best teachers with our most disadvantaged children, because they get the best advantage from that teaching.
I was at a meeting on teaching supply a month ago, looking particularly at maths teachers. It appalled me that we are training physical education teachers to become maths teachers. They may be very good, but we should be giving students maths graduates. It is vital—as a science nation, one cannot go ahead with physics and chemistry if one does not have a good, firm foundation in maths. So that was very troubling to see.
I hope that we can better equip our teachers to manage the pupil-teacher relationship. I was speaking to a Finnish man just before I entered here about the fact that in Finland they start at seven and go to 15 in the same school with the same classroom teacher, who is a master’s graduate. So that classroom teacher has a relationship with that child for seven years, although they may have different language teachers. With behaviour management, the relationship between the young person and the teacher is crucial. When we lose teachers, it is often because there is a poor relationship with the children; teachers get driven away—it is the main cause of teachers stopping teaching. So teachers need to understand the pupil-teacher relationship; they need a good understanding of child development and behaviour management. That has been a historical problem, and I am glad that the Minister is beginning to address it. I would appreciate a letter from him answering some of these questions and concerns about teaching supply and giving reassurance that there is a strategy for the future to address those questions. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said about teacher training schools, and that seems very positive.
I have little or no time, but I should like briefly to talk about the adoption part of this Bill. I welcome very much what is being introduced. I have a concern about the assessment of the mental health of children entering the care system. With adoption, it is important that when a child is taken into care they immediately have an assessment from a mental health professional to look at any issues, which then leads to action that addresses the mental health needs of that person. That does not happen currently. They may be assessed by a doctor or even by a nurse, but there is no concentration on mental health. The NSPCC is very concerned about this. I would appreciate it if the Minister and the relevant Health Minister would consider meeting the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, the chair of CAFCASS, and the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers to discuss
better meeting the mental health needs of young people entering care. This would benefit placement stability and adoption.
I have taken far too long. I apologise. I warmly welcome the Bill, particularly its aspects concerning improving the adoption process. I look forward to working with noble Lords on the Bill.
6.41 pm
Lord True (Con): My Lords, the noble Earl has certainly not taken too long. The House always listens with great interest to his humane and informed words. I declare an interest as leader of a London borough council. All our existing or pending secondary schools are academies or free schools with my authority’s encouragement and support. I am also a trustee of a charity that provides funding for faith schools, whose existence I equally support. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, had pertinent things to say on that point.
I will concentrate on some of the educational clauses of the Bill, which I support. Like most local authority leaders, I agree with my noble friend that it is intolerable that any child should suffer poor education for a term, let alone a year or years. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, is absolutely right on this too. Delay in effecting change is unacceptable. Delaying tactics damage pupils’ prospects. Whatever has been said by the other side, my noble friend is right to address the opportunities for delay in taking action in schools that are not performing. Young people get one chance. The Bill is born of that, and that is why it is so welcome.
We have heard a lot today about problems with the idea of coasting schools. We have all seen the Government’s draft regulations, and public consultation is promised. I have no doubt that noble Lords will want to look at this in Committee. There is common ground around the Chamber that the reality is that we all know that there are schools that are treading water, at best, and it is reasonable that pressure should be applied to them and that, where need be, their leadership should be changed. I support that philosophy in the Bill.
Much of the heat outside about this Bill at root surrounds the concept of academies. Those views are not particularly heavily represented in this House, at least not so fanatically. Some people think academies are an educational elixir, while others damn them as poison. I am always ill at ease with any absolutist position, and I am not comfortable with the view on either side. I do not accept the view that some put—not my noble friend—that local authorities are the origin of all the ills of education and that improvement will be found simply by moving schools out of local authorities’ control. That is not what my noble friend said, and I think it is not what he believes. Indeed, Clause 12 is interesting in that it allows the revocation of academy orders.
In many cases it is proven beyond doubt that conversion has helped. On the other hand, a generalised anti-local-authority mantra is unhelpful. It may be justified in some cases, but it is hurtful to high-performing local authorities and the dedicated people who work in
local education services. I do not say that because I have a dogmatic “local authority first” view. As many in the House know, my local authority was one of the first—perhaps the first—to change its local education authority into a social enterprise or community interest company, Achieving for Children. That company recently achieved an outstanding result in turning round the quality of services in Kingston under its new Conservative management. It is helping disadvantaged children in Sunderland, working with the department. Those results were achieved by highly skilled and motivated public servants from local government. Some people call them bureaucrats, but in my view they are outstanding public servants and we need to watch our language, as the Minister always carefully does. The House should know that he works very positively and creatively with local councils in seeking to secure educational improvement.
On the other hand, I am sure all of us have an equal distaste for dogmatic hostility to free schools and academies. I do not think we have heard that today. For one or two moments, I thought its spirit hovered a little uneasily near the head of the opening speaker from the Opposition Front Bench. The reality is that the signal towards academies was given by the Labour Government before 2010. That progress was continued under the coalition Government and will continue. Indeed, the new shadow Secretary of State for Education said the other day that she anticipates that almost all schools will be academies or free schools by 2020. That is the reality. Frankly, anyone who looks at the really bilious website of the Anti Academies Alliance would want to repudiate some of the things there. That organisation actually salutes a strike at a local school where both the Labour council and parents have supported conversion to an academy. There can be no meeting point between such people and real pupil-centred education. I am sure that the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench agrees that such opinions need to be repudiated. Incidentally, I would be very interested in an exposition from the noble Lord when he winds up on what Labour policy actually currently is, because we have all been following very closely Mr Corbyn’s remarks on these matters.
I strongly support this Bill because we need to deal with underperformance. If my cold will allow me, I shall add two personal comments which do not detract from my support of the Bill. Back in 2010, after the general election I went to see the then Secretary of State, Michael Gove, who I consider to be one of the great Secretaries of State for Education. I put to him my fears that an overswift expansion of academies might lead to some excessively large chains emerging without the vital sense, which is fundamental to good schooling, that a well-led secondary or, indeed, primary school grows out of and is at the very heart of its local community. We discussed the idea of families of community-led academies—secondary schools surrounded by and perhaps even led by primary schools, or garlands of primaries as I like to call them—or multi-academy trusts going for conversion. The world is now moving in that direction. It is what we have tried to achieve in Richmond with our academies and it is happening in many other areas. We heard from the right reverend Prelate about how it is happening in Ely. Schools which
are academies are not necessarily atomised. They are independent and have some elements of competition, but if they work together they can be balanced by local roots, cohesion and co-operation. At the time, I think Mr Gove saw the point, but he was understandably keen to make progress in the context of the law left behind by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. In some ways, my right honourable friend was right.
Of course, there are areas of weakness and on those the dogmatic opponents of academies gleefully pounce. Sometimes they may be slightly remote and complacent management, failure to grip poor leadership or teaching approaches or sometimes—I have experienced this at first hand—a sense that managers of academy chains do not adopt the deeply personal community-based approach that we heard about from my noble friend Lord Harris but are a little untouchable. I do not think that is the case. I know from experience that my noble friend the Minister has already taken firm action in relation to coasting academies, but I wonder whether it might be possible in the course of the Bill to reflect on whether it might be wise to make more explicit the Government’s power to intervene, in order to draw the sting of the idea that there is inequality between maintained schools and academies. I do not think that is the case; I do not think that the Government tolerate underperformance in any school, but I welcome the chance to talk to my noble friend about that.
I have some concerns about where regional commissioners might evolve. For now, it is a mechanism that we should support, adopt and use to make change. However, as pressure on them grows, the numbers of schools that they supervise increase. Questions will arise about accountability, as others have said. They are potentially, in effect, arms of a phantom regional government. Is it not inevitable that bureaucracies will grow? Who will recruit to those expanding offices? Who will judge their performance and how? Who can guarantee that such new bureaucracies will be responsive to local concerns, as local authorities must be? How will parents and the public hold them to account? I hope that, having used this necessary instrument now—which I support—we will not in a few years’ time find ourselves looking to rein in what we are now creating.
I do not want to encourage noble Lords opposite too much, but I always look at the political aspect. Regional commissioners could be morphed, by a stroke of the pen, into new appointments to the national education service—proposed by Mr Corbyn and controlled from the centre—with very different educational objectives from those of this Government. You cannot change local authority leadership except by the ballot box. You cannot break academies except by legislation but, for regional commissioners, a simple letter of dismissal from an incoming Secretary of State would suffice. I hope that, once he has used this necessary instrument in the years ahead, my noble friend and his colleagues will have a care that they are not creating new future bureaucracies. They might even be petri dishes in which the blob could replicate itself again.
These, however, are wider, long-term reflections, that are not for now; for now, we should address ourselves to the business of supporting the Bill, considering the
Bill and, I hope, passing the Bill, so that my noble friend and the Government can continue with the necessary work of bringing improvement to pupils in our schools.
6.52 pm
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab): My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this Bill and for emphasising his undoubted concern for children—one which we all, of course, share. I very much enjoyed the inspiring speech of my noble friend Lord Blunkett, and look forward to further contributions from him. I shall focus on the education section of the Bill, and shall first make some comments on education in general, as I see it. I shall then go on to talk about “coasting”, and oversight and inspection of schools.
The aim of any education Bill surely has to be to improve the life chances of all children. I think we would all agree on that. I support excellence in education, but I would want to look at the meaning—the definition—of education more thoroughly. The Prime Minister, other politicians and other people lately have talked about the importance of social mobility. Schools, of course, should contribute to that, not just from testing and examination results—and I shall talk a little more about that later. The Minister knows that education is much more complex than just examination results.
I would like to give just a few facts from the Government’s own State of the Nation 2014 Indicators.There weresome worrying facts about progress. The number of young people not in education or training is the same today as it was in 1997. The gap in attainment between pupils of different social backgrounds persists. This is extremely disappointing. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission published its report on the state of the nation, also in 2014, stating that children from less advantaged backgrounds who attained highly in cognitive skills were found to be less successful at converting this early high potential into career success. In a report called—significantly—Downward Mobility, Opportunity Hoarding and the ‘Glass Floor’, the commission states that to change matters, politicians will need to,
“address barriers that are preventing less advantaged children from reaching their full potential and remove barriers that block downward mobility”.
The Minister may say that this unblocking of downward mobility is what the academies programme is about. However, I personally do not trust that.
Academies are not the entire answer to downward mobility. The National Foundation for Educational Research has conducted several studies on the performance of academies. In 2014, it found that, in relation to underperforming academies,
“attainment progress in sponsored academies compared to similar non-academies is not significantly different over time when the outcome is measured as GCSE points”.
The same was found to be true for converter academies—those performing well, but which have converted to academy status—though to a lesser extent. Academies open for more than two years make less progress than non-academies.
The cross-party Education Select Committee, earlier this year, called on the Government to,
“stop exaggerating the success of academies”,
and to be more open about how they run the programme. It warned of a lack of proof that academies raised standards for disadvantaged children or overall and also warned of the rapid conversion of secondary schools and the impact that that had on primary schools. Moreover, it called for Ofsted to have the power to inspect academies. Other research has shown the differences between academy chains. There have been warnings from educationalists about expanding academies too rapidly and without more research into their impact.
Earlier this month, in a letter to the Times Educational Supplement, the Catholic Education Service challenged the aims of this Bill. Its director stated that academisation —a horrible word—is not the only way to improve inadequate schools. Schools have improved in attainment measures over the last ten years, indeed since the year 2000, due to changes in teaching methodologies, including some virtual and online education, teacher education and good leadership, which has been talked about a lot this afternoon.
However, we now have a situation where teachers are leaving the profession. They blame greater bureaucracy, a greater emphasis on academic testing and a lack of support. Sadly, some of these teachers were from the Teach First scheme. Last year, 50,000 teachers left. We will need 160,000 teachers over the next three years to avoid a staffing crisis, yet applications to teach fell by 21,000 in the last year. Noble Lords have expressed on many occasions today how important teachers are. Many of us have benefited from inspiring teachers, whatever the school structure. These are the areas on which the Government should be focusing in particular.
One key to understanding how schools are performing is inspection, and schools have got better at self-inspection, using methods such as school improvement partners. Ofsted is key, yet it is prevented from inspecting academy schools. I have seen no comparative data on the performance of different academy chains. I believe it exists, but it has not been made public. Could the Minister explain this? Could he explain the role of school governing bodies? When I was a governor, parents were involved. Is this still the case? Who will be on these executive boards?
I will move on to “coasting”, of which there was much discussion during the passage of the Bill in another place. It makes fascinating and long reading, in particular the Committee stage, when a definition was finally given. I find it extraordinary that a Bill can be presented without a definition of a key concept in it, but there we are. The Secretary of State gives a definition of “coasting”, but it relates entirely to academic performance. I can see the dangers in this. I know that teachers have been known to teach pupils how to pass tests—it is not very difficult. Educationalists would say, “This is not real learning”, and I would agree. There is evidence that young people and teachers in our schools are stressed and overpressurised by an overemphasis on testing. What about the broad and balanced curriculum spoken about in previous Education Acts? What about schools, like the one where I was a governor, where the intake had a large number of pupils who did not speak English or had poor language and communication skills? Progress was slower, but it was made. They did not “coast”.
I would define a coasting school as one which does not provide pupil access to a broad education—to sport, the arts, self-discipline, teamwork, spiritual and moral education, citizenship and, yes, personal, social and health education. Many head teachers say that academic learning will take place only when these basic elements are fundamental to a school. All this is part of the ethos of a successful school. Of course academic achievement is important, but so is the joy of learning and the development of curiosity.
What about Burntwood comprehensive school for girls in South London, which was recently awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize for architecture? One girl there said:
“The new building has made me more excited and motivated”.
The school environment is also part of the school ethos and is important. I wish that the Government would stop chasing distant bandwagons such as the Shanghai system—Shanghai is a long way away, with a different culture—and look instead at things closer to hand. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned Finland, which has excellent academic outcomes but which also scores very high on measurements of child well-being. Finland is aghast at our obsession with interminable tests and measurements.
The picture is not black and white; education should have many bright colours. The education section of the Bill is limited. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to unravelling some of these conundrums in further stages of the Bill.
7.03 pm
Baroness Benjamin (LD): My Lords, first, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, to the House, as I am truly grateful to him for having been instrumental in creating a Minister for Children in 2003 after I had campaigned for one for over 20 years. He, like me, believes that we should have joined-up policy across all government departments when it comes to children. I look forward to his contribution to this House, as I am sure that it will be stimulating and forward-thinking.
I always say that childhood lasts a lifetime so we must make sure that we give every child the best start in life. I therefore welcome the Education and Adoption Bill because it will bring that kind of stability into children’s lives, and I thank the noble Lord for bringing it to the House. I also like the new measures to improve the adoption process, because they will help those children who do not have that good start in life to have a better one. However, the Bill also presents a key opportunity to highlight the need to improve the system for children in care and to pay attention to their mental health needs. I will cover these points later.
I particularly welcome the Government’s proposal to create regional adoption agencies, as it will provide more choice and speed in matching children with their adoptive families, which is a positive goal. Improved matching will not only mean that children join their permanent families quicker, but that significant aspects of their needs are well matched—such as their racial, ethnic, and cultural needs—and that the importance of staying with their brothers and sisters is taken into account.
Regional agencies could well provide the environment for these positive developments for children. It is therefore vital that the partnerships formed include local agencies such as CCS Adoption—I declare an interest as its patron—as it possesses specialist knowledge and expertise. The strong encouragement of government to ensure that local authorities and voluntary agencies work together is to be applauded, as that is essential if the best outcomes for children are to be achieved.
However, there are strong indicators that other action is urgently required to improve permanency planning for very vulnerable children. Figures show that there has been a 15% drop in the number of such children placed for adoption in 2015, mainly because there is a significant lack of confidence in and confusion about making long-term plans for this group of highly vulnerable children. We must ensure that all children have the benefit of a loving, stable and lifelong family life, as the noble Lord has said. The Government must therefore urgently address the wider issues affecting permanency planning for these very vulnerable children.
How will the Government ensure that the new system improves outcomes for harder-to-place children such as older children, sibling groups and children from BAME backgrounds? How will the new system ensure transparency and accountability? How can we be sure that when the Secretary of State transfers powers from a local authority to a regional adoption agency, it is in the best interests of the children affected?
I now turn to the question of what is missing from the Bill, as raised by the NSPCC and Barnardo’s. I declare an interest as a vice-president of Barnardo’s. Children placed for adoption account for a very small percentage of children in care overall, so I am extremely disappointed that the Government have not taken the opportunity of this legislation to restate their commitment to improving support for all looked-after children.
To give noble Lords some idea of the scale of this problem, last year only 5% of children in care in England were placed for adoption. According to Barnardo’s, in total there were over 68,000 looked-after children, with many experiencing three or more different placements in a single year. This disrupts a child’s educational achievement and broader development. After leaving care these young people continue to face significant challenges. They are twice as likely as their peers to live in the most deprived areas of the country and experience homelessness, and their risk of a suicide attempt is five times higher. I am proud to say that the coalition Government made good progress in this area, partly through “staying put”, which allows children in foster care to stay with their foster families until the age of 21. However, this does not address the fact that too many care leavers are still underprepared to live independently without access to the support they need.
Care leavers who are in or want to return to education can receive support up to the age of 25. However, that leaves those not in education—who are usually the most vulnerable—without the support they need. Without a personal adviser they do not have access to advice on how to adjust to living independently, finding a job or managing the pressures of early adulthood. Providing access to a personal adviser up to the age of 25 could transform the life chances of some of the most vulnerable
in our society. It will allow them to gain skills, to work, to support themselves and to be healthy. It will also avoid reliance on public services later in life. So I urge the Minister to reflect on the importance of improving support for this vulnerable group.
Due to abuse or neglect, 45% of children in care have a mental health disorder, compared with 10% of the general child population. However, the mental health needs of children in care often go unassessed and unidentified, and therefore there is a lack of mental health support. Again, I urge the Government to reflect this in the Bill and to include specific mental health measures.
There are many reasons why children in care fail to get the support they need if they have mental health problems, and there is often a failure to make appropriate referrals. The NSPCC has therefore recommended that all children entering care receive an automatic mental health assessment in addition to the physical assessment they currently receive. They should then immediately get the vital support needed to help them deal with mental health issues and contribute to their improved well-being.
The NSPCC recently released figures showing that more than a fifth of all children referred to local specialist NHS mental health services, including children whose problems stem from abuse, are rejected for treatment. These children could face serious long-term mental health problems because of a lack of support. This is a ticking time bomb, because these findings come as reported abuse across the UK is soaring. With the right support, children in care can overcome mental health illness issues and improve their life chances in the long term. Adoption can be the right solution for a child, but it will not be so for all children, and we need to act now. We must ensure that there is improved support for all options for looked-after children.
As the Bill moves through Parliament, I hope the Minister and the Government will consider these points in the constructive spirit in which they are intended, and that they will take action to improve the lives of children in care with mental health issues. It is extremely important that we think about these children, who are some of our most vulnerable, the role of the state as their parent, and how we can ensure that they are seen as a priority within current allocated funding and given the better support that they need.
I wish the Bill well and give it my utmost support: here’s to the safe passage of an important Bill.
7.13 pm
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con): My Lords, I shall speak briefly only to the education clauses in this Bill, although I warmly welcome the provisions relating to adoption. I have long welcomed the programme of academies and free schools, and I declare an interest as the unpaid chair of the Wandsworth Academies and Free Schools Commission.
There is ample evidence that thousands of young people have had their life chances enhanced by being in a school which was transformed from failure into one which has maximised the achievements of pupils. We have heard some very moving stories this evening. I have visited many academies and been genuinely inspired
by what I have seen. For me, however, it is perhaps even more important that the success of academies in the most deprived areas, with young people from the poorest and most troubled families, has for ever killed the belief that nothing can be expected or achieved with such children. To any head or teacher who declares “What can you expect?”, we can now reply, “You can expect the best and highest achievement from these young people”. In the days when I inspected many schools, I used to say that I would be a rich woman if I had a pound for every time that I heard a teacher—or, sadly, even a head—say, “Well, what can you expect, look at where they come from?”.
The provisions in the Bill which require every truly inadequate school to become an academy, with an experienced and successful sponsor, are therefore wholly appropriate. Young people—as many other noble Lords have said—have only one chance, and every one of them deserves that chance to be in a good school. So I applaud the Government's wish to tackle those schools which, while not failing badly, are nevertheless not expecting and achieving the highest standards for their pupils. They are coasting. The mantra of the most successful and exciting schools I have ever known has always been: “Next year, we’ll do it even better”.
It is any Government's responsibility to be on the side of the pupil, to help create the conditions in which every child has the best start in life, achieving everything of which they are capable and able to take their place in society, contributing to both work and community life to the best of their potential. Asking of all schools that they perform at the peak of their strength is truly fulfilling this Government's promise to give every child the best start in life.
The Secretary of State said, when introducing the Bill in the other place, that coasting schools were those which could do better but were not improving their performance over time. I was pleased that she emphasised that this judgment would not rely on Ofsted alone but would take into account a range of factors. Nor, I am sure, as the Minister has said, should it be on examination results alone. Examination success in a school is a necessary but not sufficient condition for excellence. I was also pleased that it has been emphasised that becoming an academy was not the only and immediate option for a school found to be coasting: it might be given time to demonstrate that it has the capacity to improve alone, or perhaps by linking with a neighbouring successful school, or by strengthening the leadership. Rushing in to disrupt an institution is not always the best way to achieve improvement. I hope that it is also recognised that good local authorities have a part to play in helping coasting schools to improve.
In welcoming the Bill, I have some questions for the Minister. Central to the success of the academies programme has been the quality of leadership. We have been fortunate in finding talented, dedicated heads who have both leadership skills and vision for their schools. As the number of schools turning into academies increases, are we assured that what is being done by the academy sponsors to develop the next generation of leaders is sufficient and of the right quality? I know that in the Harris academies, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, there is
already a development programme of this kind, but many have not yet achieved that kind of mature programme. There is already some suggestion of a shortage of people coming forward for the leadership role. Is this confirmed, and if so, what can be done to change it?
My second question is perhaps a more difficult one, since it has, I know, no easy answer. I have a real concern, shared with other noble Lords around the House, that as more and more schools become academies, and more free schools are started, the checks that are available on whether they are sustaining their high performance may not be adequate. A school can very quickly go backwards and become less mindful of standards. With no regular inspection, how will this decline be picked up? The regional commissioners, as others have said, have many hundreds of schools in their territory and few resources to inspect or visit every school regularly. Who will ensure that they, and through them the Secretary of State, will know what is happening in every school and when action is needed?
I am not asking for Ofsted to be required to impose regular inspections. That would be counterproductive. I ask the Minister, however, whether it would not be appropriate to have some system of experienced local visitors—perhaps successful recently retired heads or other senior teachers—who would visit, perhaps only once a year and for only a day, just to check that the high standards are being maintained, and if they are not, to trigger action on a larger scale by Ofsted to find out what has gone wrong and ensure that action is taken. Any experienced educator can tell within hours whether standards are being maintained or are slipping: by the behaviour of the pupils, by the work going on in classrooms, by the courtesy and good humour of relationships between pupils and teachers, and by the discipline of both pupils and staff in the rhythm of the day. The absence of these good signs can be detected much more quickly than a fall-off in examination results. By the time examination results begin to decline it is too late for many young people.
I want to see the schools of our country giving the best education in the world. I ask these questions because I would like us to have confidence that systems are in place to ensure that this is so for all children in all our schools.
I repeat my welcome for the Bill and look forward to our discussions as it passes through further stages in our House.
7.20 pm
Baroness Humphreys (LD): My Lords, I add my name to those welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, to his place in this House. In doing so, I want to say how grateful I am to your Lordships for allowing me to speak in the gap and for the opportunity to take part in this debate. At this late stage in the proceedings, I will keep my contribution relatively brief and restrict my comments to the education sections of the Bill. I will also be posing a few questions for the Minister to consider as I go along.
As a former teacher, I always welcome moves to attempt to improve the performance of pupils, teachers and schools, and, at first glance, these attempts to define and improve failing and coasting schools may
have some merit. However, I join many colleagues from this side of the House in expressing a certain amount of scepticism. Are these moves a genuine effort to improve standards in our state schools or are they another step on the road to achieving the Government’s ideological ambition of complete academisation of the education system in England? The Bill presents a significant increase in the powers of the Secretary of State to intervene in schools and, in a great many respects, diminishes the powers of local authorities.
At this point, I should like to comment on one of the Government’s proposed measures for defining coasting and inadequate schools. I have always had some doubts about the value of the five A* to C GCSE grades as a means of judging the performance of schools, although, as a gold standard, it probably gives a headline impression of a school. However, I have to admit to a certain amount of approval of one of the Government’s assessment measures: the Progress 8 measure. Based on students’ progress across their eight best subjects and using key stage 2 results in English and Maths as a baseline, this measure gives a far clearer indication of a student’s attainment across their secondary school career. The measure includes a double-weighted GCSE mathematics component and a double-weighted English component, and I welcome the inclusion of the three highest grades from the EBacc subjects studied. These can be science subjects, computer science, geography, history and languages.
However, for me, the most welcome aspect of this measure is the inclusion of the best three grades from any of the remaining subjects included in the “open group”—a group which, importantly, can include three vocational subjects. This gives a far fairer indication of the pupil’s progress and of the progress of the school in educating the child as a whole. It also gives a far clearer indication of the breadth of the curriculum within the school. Perhaps most importantly, it gives an indication of the success of a school in preparing pupils for the next stages of education.
I talked earlier about the Secretary of State’s powers of intervention in failing and coasting schools. It is estimated that there could be some 2,000 such schools across England. I would be interested in knowing from the Minister the cost of supporting schools where it is deemed necessary to intervene, the cost of the regional schools commissioners and the boards of head teachers which will be necessary to assist them, and the cost of converting the remaining schools into academies—and, indeed, whether the capacity exists within the academy system to deliver all this. The commissioners are responsible for more than 4,000 academies, 141—
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con): The noble Baroness has spoken for three minutes.
Baroness Humphreys: I am sorry. Perhaps I may just finish my sentence. How will the commissioners cope with the extra responsibilities that they will have?
7.24 pm
Lord Touhig (Lab): My Lords, we have had a first-class debate with many excellent contributions from those who strongly support the Bill and from those who
have grave doubts and do not support it. In particular, I compliment my noble fiend Lord Blunkett on a classic maiden speech delivered with style and humour. He served with great distinction in the other place and brought his very considerable talent to bear as a Cabinet Minister. We are indeed fortunate that he has come to this House, and I am sure I am not alone in looking forward to hearing him speak in future, bringing to our deliberations that special and rare insight for which he is well known.
The Bill enables the Secretary of State to intervene in so-called coasting schools, yet when it started its Committee stage in the other place the Government were so unprepared that they had to deal with the adoption part first because they had not worked out the meaning of the term “coasting”. Those of us who have just completed the Committee and Report stages of the Childcare Bill should perhaps not be surprised, as we know full well how the Government will steam ahead with a policy, even though, as in the case of that Bill, they have not yet worked out how they are going to fund it.
As I said, at the start of this Bill’s passage through Parliament the term “coasting” was not defined, but now we have it—or do we? The Minister said in his opening remarks that the whole notion of the term is now to go out to consultation. What we do have is a narrow and short-sighted definition that is exclusively data driven and takes no account of the individual circumstances of a school. However, despite the definition being so narrow, it will have great consequences for pupils, teachers and parents. This definition of coasting is likely to exclude many schools that require intervention and include some that do not. Given that the Secretary of State has tied her hands by forcing herself to intervene in coasting schools, surely we need a stronger definition that takes into account all relevant factors and not just numbers and figures. That definition should be arrived at through proper research and consultation, not through a lottery.
When my party first developed the policy of helping underperforming schools, it specifically required local authorities to consider a full range of evidence about a school in order to make a balanced and fair judgment as to whether it was underperforming. The Bill completely removes this ability to consider both performance and context, which will inevitably mean that the term is used inappropriately—whatever the term is following the consultation.
Further to giving the Secretary of State no discretion in how a coasting school is identified, the Bill also allows no discretion in the making of academy orders. This means that a school in special measures must become a sponsored academy whether or not an adequate sponsor can actually be found.
The research group Education Datalab estimates that 1,179 schools would be classed as coasting if the previous three years of data are used, including four Ofsted-rated “outstanding” schools—two primary and two secondary. However, the data also show that schools serving more affluent areas will escape the “coasting” judgment. We know that schools serving more affluent communities make better progress on average than those in more deprived communities. Progress measures
are still clearly affected by socioeconomic factors and that is why, before a school is labelled as coasting, it would be unfair not to consider contextual factors. Of course, the Bill does not allow for this and we can already see how the Government’s ill-thought-out definition of coasting would lead to wrongly labelling some schools as coasting while others were left unjudged.
Unlike the requirement for the Secretary of State to take action in a failing local authority school, there is no requirement whatever for her to act similarly in a failing academy. What is more, there is a lack of evidence to support the idea that academy status will lead to school improvement—not all academies are the success stories that the Minister indicated in his opening remarks. A number of academy chains have been criticised by Ofsted, the Sutton Trust and the Minister’s own department, because it has been shown that they are performing poorly compared with local authority maintained schools. Earlier this year, 146 academies were in special measures and 619 required improvement, but the Bill does nothing to deal with this. It simply creates a two-tier system with different standards for local authority and academy-sponsored schools. The Minister painted quite a rosy picture of the success of academies. I hope he might be prompted to provide us with a little more detail—he might write to me, if he can, and put the letter in the Library.
This Bill puts enormous further power in the hands of the Secretary of State. The noble Lord, Lord True, was a bit concerned about centralisation, but, whether it has a red or a blue tinge, centralisation is, nevertheless, centralisation. The Bill allows the Secretary of State to make decisions about academy sponsors behind closed doors and removes the right of local stakeholders—and, importantly, that of parents—to consult on the future of their school. But much more than that, the whole trend of encouraging more parents to take a stakeholder interest in their children’s education is being brought to an end by this one measure. For more than three decades, in my experience, there has been cross-party agreement on the need for greater parental involvement in schools—ranging from the appointment and election of parent governors, to parents having the right to meet school governors and being encouraged to set up before and after-school clubs. Why have the Government introduced legislation to specifically take away the right of parents to say what kind of school they want to send their children to every day? To me, this seems entirely wrong and at odds with the gains we have made over the last few decades in getting parents involved. Parents are not simply being sidelined; they are being deliberately excluded by an Act of Parliament. My Lords, this is Britain—some of us still like to call it Great Britain. It is not North Korea. It is important that we allow parents to have a full and proper say in changes to their children’s education.
I now turn briefly to the provisions on adoption. The legislation supports local authorities in combining into regional adoption agencies. Although we support this aim and that of speeding up adoption rates, we need provisions in place to ensure that super-regional consortia do not squeeze out smaller and more specialised voluntary adoption agencies.
It is also important that we improve the support given to people post-adoption, particularly mental health support. I hope that there will be an opportunity in Committee to look at the actual experiences many people have faced post-adoption. In my view, society’s involvement in adoption should not come to an end at the point the adoption takes place. I know from cases that I came across when I served in the other place, and from experiences made known to me by family and friends, that there are many lessons we could usefully learn.
The Bill fails us as much in what it does not address as in what it does. My noble friend Lord Watson said that the Bill does not address teacher recruitment and retention, or the provision of adequate pupil places. The Government seem much more concerned with restructuring our education system than with tackling the real problems we face in encouraging more teachers into our schools. This will become particularly difficult under the new system proposed in the Bill: teachers are unlikely to want to join schools that may be one inspection away from academisation. I hope that, during consideration of the Bill in your Lordships’ House, we may be able to make the Government see the problems it will create. I hope there will be opportunities in Committee for us to improve it, and that the Government will take note of the common sense they hear from all sides of the House.
7.34 pm
Lord Nash: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate this evening; it has been incredibly valuable. It is very clear that the House is immensely passionate and knowledgeable about education and adoption.
I have heard many helpful points this evening—so many that I have, in fact, entirely rewritten my closing speech in an attempt to answer all the points made. I am sure that I will not manage that—I apologise if I do not—and I hope people understand that, as a result of my rewriting, there may be a certain amount of paper shuffling during my closing remarks.
Most of the opening remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, were nothing to do with the Bill so I will not waste noble Lords’ time by rising to all his comments. However, I will refer to a few. He made a point about the Ofsted ratings for academies versus those for local authority schools, and a similar point was made by the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Touhig. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, was very quick to point out that many academies were failing schools that were then taken off local authorities. Academies have a far higher proportion of children receiving free school meals than other schools and, of course, many of these schools are in those sad, sad areas—of which we have too many in this country—of intergenerational unemployment, such as some coastal towns. In such areas, the statistics cannot take account of the drip-drip of negativity that these pupils experience when going home to a household where nobody works and where they know very few people who are in work.
Another point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was the question of teacher recruitment.
The Labour Party does like to make a crisis out of the perennial challenge of recruiting teachers. The reality is that the teacher vacancy rate has remained stable at about 1% or below for the past 15 years and, on several occasions during the last Labour Government, was higher than it is now. However, I will write to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about our teacher recruitment strategy.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, had certain concerns about voluntary adoption agencies. Personally, I think the fact that 140 of 152 local authorities have bid for the regional support fund shows the enthusiasm with which local authorities are embracing this approach.
I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, that the interests of all children will be critical to what lies behind the regional adoption agencies. Concerning her more general remarks about children in care, I reply that under the last Parliament we took many steps to improve the support for looked-after children. This included £99 million in funding through the Pupil Premium Plus grant, a new duty on local authorities to appoint a virtual school head, strengthening quality standards for residential settings and launching a cross-government strategy for care leavers. At the moment, we are looking at how we might build on this and do more to support care leavers, particularly those not in education.
The noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, spoke about the democratic deficit caused by removing consultation when a school becomes an academy. What we on this side of the House are concerned about is the education deficit that takes place in failing schools by the frequent exploitation of the democratic process and the fact that it takes, on average, a year for a failing school to become a sponsored academy. This is often because of roadblocks put in the way by dogmatic influences and people putting the interests of adults ahead of those of children.
We heard from my noble friend Lord Harris, whose academy group is one of our top-performing sponsors. I pay tribute to the remarkable achievements of his group and the thousands of children’s lives that he has improved as a result. When the Harris Federation took over the failing school Downhills, opponents tried to block the change through judicial reviews and various other tactics—they even made a film about their opposition. However, their attempts failed. Members of the Harris Federation did not let this deter them. This was not a popularity contest but something that was absolutely needed to help the children of Downhills.
In my experience, it took almost two years for the Pimlico Academy to open as a sponsored academy from the point at which it was judged to have special measures. The transformation was delayed by various objectors. People resorted to tactics that included consistently lying about us in the press, lying to pupils about our plans, breaking into my office, finding someone who had no real interest in the project but who qualified for legal aid to front up a judicial review application all the way to the Court of Appeal—all the applications along the way were thrown out fairly quickly by judges at huge cost to the public purse—and even resorting to having Pimlico pupils lying in coffins on the pavement
so that my wife and I had to step over them on the way to a meeting. This was all done to further the interests of adults and for petty dogmatic principles rather than worrying about the education of pupils. These delays cost hundreds of children lost educational opportunities, yet when after just two years, which was a record time, the school was transformed from special measures to outstanding, many of the same people asked to become the friends of Pimlico Academy. Also, while many of the original teachers had left, many others stayed. Others who had objected to the original proposals were lifted by the oxygen of success and have now transformed their own performance.
I am big enough and ugly enough to put up with the kind of nonsense we experienced at Pimlico, but I do not see why other sponsors should. More importantly, as the Secretary of State for Education has said on a number of occasions, a day spent in a special measures school is a day too long for the pupils in that school. Parents do not want their children in a failing school, and that is why we are bringing in proposals to speed up the process by which failing schools become sponsored academies.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie: My Lords, it is all very well for the Minister to blow his own trumpet, and I am glad that he has had success in Pimlico. But he is using that and other arguments to say that, if democracy is too much of an inconvenience, we can just set it aside. Is that what this country is really about?
Lord Nash: Consistent with our manifesto pledge and the Queen’s Speech, we are bringing forward proposals in this Bill, if it is passed, whereby in certain circumstances a school will become an academy, and we feel that there should be no delays in that. All too frequently there are delays.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie: Yes—
Lord Watson of Invergowrie: So democracy can be suspended when it is an inconvenience.
Lord Nash: No, democracy can be suspended where it is in the interests of the children. Rather than us proposing a democratic deficit, we are seeking to stop the abuse of the democratic process that takes place by vested interests. In addition to Downhills and Pimlico causing vast loss of educational opportunities, delays happened in the cases of The Warren, Camden Juniors, Twydall Primary, Roke, Bydales, Eton Porny, Manor Primary and many, many others.
The noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Storey, expressed their views about the inspection of academy chains. I agree that it is critical that multi-academy trusts are held to account for their performance. At his most recent appearance before the Education Select Committee, the Chief Inspector of Education, Sir Michael Wilshaw, was clear that the current arrangements, whereby Ofsted can inspect batches of schools within an academy trust at the same time, are appropriate.
The Government do not consider that Ofsted should have an additional role in judging a trust’s central functions or operating model. As part of its assurance role, the Education Funding Agency already assesses the financial and governance arrangements of academy trusts to ensure that they are operating in line with the
Academies Financial Handbook
and the terms of their funding agreement. A point was made about parents. Through our free schools programme, parents are driving this and free schools are more accountable to parents than any other kind of school. Parents have often fought for the development of a school of a certain type or with a certain ethos.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, who cut swiftly to the chase in his speech. I was impressed with his concept of pace and impatience because it is the feeling of pace and impatience which characterises our most successful sponsors. Regional schools commissioners will identify as soon as possible those schools which are coasting, seeking to bring about change for the better as quickly as possible. The five years he referred to of course include two years of history which have already passed, and sadly we cannot put the clock back. As far as his comments about IT are concerned, I wholly agree with the importance of this area in helping to assess the progress and attainment of pupils, and in identifying those pupils who are not being properly served.
I pay particular tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely for his work in the Diocese of Ely Multi-Academy Trust; he knows that I share his interest in the importance of character development. I also share his concerns about consistency of practice, and I hope that the Schools Causing Concern guidance will provide considerable clarity on this. I also look forward to working with him on refreshing the memorandum of understanding that we have with church schools. We had a helpful meeting this morning and I will work with him to ensure that we achieve the consistency that he desires. The right reverend Prelate succinctly summarised the importance of school-to-school support, as did the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes.
The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, made an extremely eloquent maiden speech and I welcome him to your Lordships’ House. I had the very great pleasure of meeting him for the first time this morning and sharing some thoughts. I am delighted that he has become the chair of the David Ross Education Trust, which sponsors more than 30 academies. I am sure that the trust will benefit greatly from his involvement.
During the last Parliament we created hundreds of local multi-academy trusts based around one local outstanding school and we focused national chains on local hubs. It is acknowledged that the best way to improve failing schools is through local school-to-school support. The Government believe that the evidence is clear that the best way to provide such support—the most rigorous, the most permanent, the most efficient and the most accountable support—is through a multi-academy trust. People who run multi-academy trusts, some of whom were very against academies in the first place, talk glowingly about their advantages: a sense of being in control of their own destiny; the ability to
retain staff they know they would have lost if they were running only one school; the career development opportunities through the ability to move staff around schools; the enhanced CPD opportunities; the ability to finance far higher-quality people; the economies of scale achieved through purchasing efficiencies, standardisation of assessment, and many more.
We now have enough multi-academy trusts performing really well to know that there is a gold standard out there to which all can aspire. This has been recognised by many commentators, including the Sutton Trust. People such as Outwood Grange, REAch2, Harris, the Inspiration Trust and smaller groups such as WISE and Tudhoe are setting the bar really high. With strong oversight from the RSCs, we will ensure that poor performing groups up their game, and the RSCs are holding many events where strongly performing groups such as Outwood Grange share their experiences and methodology. Outwood Grange’s record is superb. It has been holding a series of roadshows around the country and it has put its entire school improvement methodology on to a memory stick. We want to do far more of this kind of development. The Sutton Trust has said that the best academy chains are outperforming and some are substantially outperforming. The job of the regional schools commissioners and my job is to spread good practice and intervene in failure so that all groups raise their game towards the standards of the very good, and this Bill is about helping them to do that.
I was very interested to hear that my noble friend Lady Eaton is a trustee of the Sir Simon Milton Foundation because Sir Simon was a truly great man whose ambitions for the academy programme and for the children of Westminster were enormous. He was also extremely courageous. I am grateful for her words of support in relation to our adoption proposals because I know that she is extremely experienced in that field.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, spoke eloquently on a number of points. I am always very interested to hear her remarks because she is always worth listening to. We had many constructive discussions during the passage of the Children and Families Act 2014, and this is our first discussion since then. I have to say that I have missed her. I agree entirely that structure is not the be-all and end-all. What really matters is what is taught in the classroom and how. She also talked about the advantages of collaboration. We believe that the freedoms provided by academy status in a MAT structure as I have just outlined are the best way to ensure such collaboration. Why do we need a power to issue our own warning notices when we can direct local authorities to do so? Unless a school is in category 4, it is because the regime that follows the warning notice is entirely at the discretion of the local authority. As Ofsted has reported, there are many examples where local authorities’ use of warning notices has been found wanting.
On the comments of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Morris, about the only route out of failure being academies, I must respond by saying no. As I said in my opening remarks, we may well encourage many schools to stop coasting by using NLEs and seeking support from other schools which may not be
academies, and as far as devolution is concerned, we see the regional schools commissioners and their elected head teacher boards as giving control over the school system to school leaders. On co-operating with other areas of the school system, we have a very good model in Birmingham through the Birmingham Education Partnership under Sir Mike Tomlinson, which is across all sectors.
The noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, talked about the capacity of regional schools commissioners. I can assure her that we will be very focused on the capacity that they have and on the capacity of sponsors. The noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Northbourne, talked about the coasting definition. On 30 June, the Government published illustrative regulations setting out how we propose to define coasting. This sets out the database definition which will be used to identify coasting schools. As I have said previously, this is focused particularly on secondaries and will be increasingly focused on Progress 8. I was very pleased to hear the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, about that, as we move away from what Tristram Hunt called the “great crime” of the C/D borderline. Shortly, we will launch a consultation on this definition and the Schools Causing Concern guidance, setting out how we propose that RSCs will tackle failing coasting schools. I reassure the House that this document and the consultation will be available for Peers to scrutinise during Committee stage.
This Bill is about schools causing concern but a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Morris, raised points about the performance of converter academies; that is, schools which are approved to become academies without a sponsor. The latest data from Ofsted show that almost 90% of converter academies are good or outstanding, which is a greater percentage than local authority maintained schools. The latest primary and secondary schools results also show that the performance of converter academies is continuing to rise. In particular, secondary converter academies have improved their performance by double the rate seen in maintained schools.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, talked about teacher retention. Almost 90% of teachers continue in the profession following their first year of teaching. This rate has remained stable since 2006. Recent reports suggesting a 40% leave ratio are completely inaccurate. Almost 75% of new teachers are still in the profession after five years. More than half of teachers who qualified in 1996 were still teaching 18 years later. The proportion of the teacher workforce that leaves each year has remained low over recent years. Just 10% of those teaching in 2013 were no longer in the workforce in 2014. Teacher retention has remained stable over time with very little variation over 10 years. I am delighted to arrange for the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to visit a sponsored academy soon.
As regards governing bodies and parents, all academies and multi-academy trust boards must have two parents on them. My noble friend Lady Perry talked about leadership, which is incredibly important. We have developed the future leaders MAT CEO course, which the department sponsored across 24 CEOs. This is being rolled out with 30 more going on the course this
month and 30 next month. I am delighted that the Church of England is developing its own leadership development programme, which is so important.
The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, talked about mental health support for children in care. All children and young people deserve to grow up feeling safe and supported, and the Government are committed to improving the mental health of the most vulnerable. I assure noble Lords that the Government are determined to deliver the transformation we need to see if we are genuinely to improve children’s mental health. We are working across government departments to respond to the challenges set out in the Future in Mind report. The Department of Health has identified £1.25 billion to improve mental health services for children, young people and new mothers over the next five years.
It is vital that we provide the best possible start in life for every child. That is why we are here today and why we need these reforms. The measures in this Bill are essential to ensuring high standards of education across the country and permanent loving homes for some of our most vulnerable children. I know that Members of this House have considerable expertise and have passionate views on how we should tackle these issues, which has been shown by tonight’s debate. I also know we agree on the objective that lies at the heart of the Bill and that every Member of this House has high expectations for our children.
The Bill demonstrates the Government’s commitment to real social justice and making a real difference to giving children the chance to aim for a brighter future. We have heard so many noble Lords speaking passionately about their own journey. This is an ambition which I am sure is shared by all who are here tonight. I look forward to debating this Bill further and I hope that all noble Lords who are interested will accept my invitation, which I will issue shortly, to attend a meeting on 2 November at 3 pm to meet with some regional schools commissioners and chief executives of academy trusts. Some noble Lords in particular might find that helpful.
I commend this Bill and I ask the House to give it a Second Reading.
Bill read a second time and committed to a Grand Committee.
Taxi and Private Car Hire Market
Question for Short Debate
7.55 pm
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals they have for bringing up to date the regulation of the taxi and private car hire market.
Lord Bradshaw (LD): The Minister may be glad to know that this is a genuine Question and not an opportunity to criticise him or the Government, or to say that things should be very different from what they are now.
First, it is important to decide where the taxi business should be regulated. There is a difference in some parts of legislation between national issues and the parts that are devolved, as are most parts in London, to the mayor. With the creation of combined authorities, when the opportunity comes, it would be as well for the Government to consider devolving powers over taxis and private hire cars to those authorities.
The existing legislation is very old and a lot of it begins in the 19th century. These laws have not held very well in these days of information technology and apps, by which people can summon private hire cars. I want to make it clear that I and, I think, those on my side of this House support the freedom of choice for the passenger and acknowledge the benefits that have been brought to many people who use Addison Lee, Uber and other such bodies.
However, it is necessary that vehicles remain mechanically safe and are maintained in a good condition. I believe that whatever authority oversees taxis there should be random checks to see that these standards are maintained throughout the life of the vehicle.
Vehicles should be properly insured. This should be backed up by the owner of the app by which the private hire car is summoned, who is a proxy for the operator in this case. It should not rely on an initial declaration that the car is insured, because there is no necessary continuity in that. I think it is the operator’s job to ensure that there is continued back-up insurance, so that people know that they are protected.
Vehicles will have to comply with increasingly tough environmental standards. Such standards need to be signposted ahead, so that people know when their vehicle will fall within the new standards and will purchase accordingly.
Drivers should be fit and proper persons and it is necessary that people have criminal record checks. Who is responsible for overseeing that? Is it the local authority or the person who owns the app and the private hire cars which work for them?
I say that the drivers should understand English. Whose responsibility is that? I have seen some papers which suggest that the responsibility is brushed off to the DVLA or someone like that. Actually, they need testing in their locality as to their command of English, their knowledge of what people want and whether they can help the many tourists and foreign visitors. They should have some knowledge, and some authorities require a medical. These matters need to be considered and thought about before any fresh legislation is embarked on.
The black taxi was described by the mayor as “iconic”. Understandably, it is instantly recognised by visitors as a symbol of London, but that symbol is now under threat. There is no doubt that an element of monopoly pricing exists, but this is to some extent offset by the meeting of exacting and expensive specifications as to the type of vehicle, its ability to turn around in a very tight space and the cost of acquiring the knowledge, which is required in London and is very expensive. It might be necessary to give the black taxi some element of protection through proper and sufficient enforcement of the distinction between a taxi and a minicab. The black taxi trade has latterly responded by setting up its own app called Gett.
I have been asked to mention the question of access for disabled people who have wheelchairs, guide dogs or mobility difficulties. The black cab trade, and previously the largest private hire company, carry out these obligations—not always, but they are equipped to do so in most instances. If private hire companies do not offer these facilities, then it is worth discriminating in favour of those that do.
I have also been asked to mention the question of rickshaws, which any forthcoming legislation really ought to deal with. They are quite dangerous; it is doubtful whether they are properly insured; they certainly tend to rip off tourists and probably give London a bad name.
A Law Commission report was published in May 2014, which made a lot of suggestions as to what the shape of forthcoming legislation should look like. Will the Minister tell us how the department is proposing to progress that Law Commission report so that it sees the legislative light in the near future?
Taxation is a vexed subject; there are all sorts of allegations about whether companies or their drivers are paying the correct tax. This needs to be addressed by future legislation.
Lastly, if we are to have real air quality improvements, it will be necessary to have electric vehicles. What is being done, either by the Government or by local authorities, to increase the number of places that have charging facilities for such vehicles?
8.03 pm
Lord Selsdon (Con): My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for asking this Question and also to the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, who will speak after me and whom until recently I failed to associate with one of my favourite companies, Manganese Bronze, which makes the cabs—TX1, TX2, TX3 and the Fairway, which I have always wanted to buy and own myself.
However, there is a little more to all of this because the cab is iconic and the situation is very intriguing at the present time. Having been on the Information Committee, I do not have to do very much in my speech today because the House of Lords Library has produced a fantastic and thick briefing pack that covers all the issues. What is causing concern at the moment is not so much the rickshaws that will be arriving shortly when the flower shows open around Sloane Street and thereabouts; it is the application and use of taxis themselves and the control and management of the taxi system. There seems to be a sort of subliminal attack on the cab driver at the moment, which is confusing issues because cab drivers in general have been extraordinarily fair and are extremely honest people. I hardly ever used a cab until my knees went; when I was told I needed new knees, I then had to start taking cabs, which has been rather an expensive business.
The issue at the moment lies in the row going on within the cab trade between this new organisation, called Over Here or Uber or whatever it might be, and the cabs themselves. If noble Lords want the background to it, I recommend the Library pack which covers almost everything. There are difficulties in the future. It is being said that a cab is not really a cab if it is
linked to Uber—Uber is not a cab, it is an organisation. How does it all fit together? I would rather we went back to being a little bit simpler. A situation has arisen in which TfL controls the number of private hire vehicle licences, which now stands at 89,000 and is increasing at the rate of 2,000 a month—therefore, 24,000 a year. This is an administrative and bureaucratic worry. The number of enforcement officers is also too low to control the behaviour of private hire vehicles touting in the street, both licensed and unlicensed. This touting by private hire chancers shows that it is too easy to get private hire licences. There needs to be some way of coming together on this; perhaps only black cabs should be allowed to respond to a street hail. The confusion within the industry is rather worrying.
I loved the black cabs that came from my noble friend’s company, because you could talk to the drivers. They were very proud and they knew when it worked. Sometimes they would almost give you their home number if you wanted a bit of help. I got used to the mistakes—when they had a Fiat gearbox that went wrong, or something else—but gradually they managed to get it right. One of the things I enjoyed most of all, when we had a major mission to Japan, was the idea of selling taxis to Japan, as well as Rolls-Royces and Bentleys. When I was on the Trade Board, we made the mistake of forgetting that the Japanese drive on the same side of the road as we do, so we had left-hand drive vehicles, which made it rather difficult. The suggestion was made that left-hand drive vehicles were provided deliberately, so that being nearer the pavement they could open the door and let the passenger out on to the street.
We have a little bit of a row coming up. I would really like to have a Fairway cab. I think it was the best ever made, and so do a lot of the drivers. We all know that most cab drivers live in east London and either play golf or cricket or fish. We need to look not so much at the vehicle itself but at the cab trade as a whole, which is very united. I have been briefed by many of its members, who are very concerned about the Uber business at this present time. That concern is getting to very serious levels, because we are not quite sure what Uber is. Is it an organisation or an association? Suggestions have been made that there is a shortage of compliance officers; that we should regulate licence holders; that only black cabs should be allowed to respond to a street hail; that all private hire should be pre-booked and bookings passed to an individual driver; and that the queues of masses of quasi-cabs or cars picking people up outside restaurants late on Saturday nights should be banned because this is causing anxiety.
We need to permit TfL to control the number of private hire vehicle licences, which, as I said, are at 89,000 and increasing rapidly. We are in the midst of a bureaucracy. I would like to know what the Government feel they can do to help. We are probably the best cab manufacturers in the world as far as the disciplines and organisations we have are concerned, but we have a row between providers of services—between those who drive cabs and those who feel that you can do everything by an electronic system. In my time here, even having been on the Information Committee, I have still failed even to send an email when the system
is down, so I cannot speak from great experience. What I do know is that we have a really great cab trade that we should protect. We should stop this argument going on between the various parties at this time.
8.10 pm
Lord Borwick (Con): My Lords, I declare a past interest, having spent 15 years in the London taxi industry as the chief executive and later chairman of Manganese Bronze, which made the London black cabs. Also, I now own a licensed London taxi and employ a taxi driver.
I shall talk about one of the best features of all London taxis, which I introduced in 1997 with the late Sir Peter Baldwin and Ann Frye. We made wheelchair access for London taxis as standard. That meant that black cabs were the first form of public transport to offer this kind of access in all its vehicles. In my experience, taxi drivers very often do fantastic work for their own charities, but they also do wonderful work picking up a whole variety of individual passengers with individual needs, taking them directly to their destination.
We now know that Uber has been declared “lawful”, but we are still in murky waters when it comes to regulating the sector appropriately. TfL has recently published new proposals for the regulation of minicabs, which I think are broadly right. That is why today’s debate is so important and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for raising it.
It is clear that the system of regulation for taxis—certainly for minicabs—is out of date in London, but there is much to be proud of in our approach. For instance, we regulate the taxi industry in London by quality, while other cities around the world regulate by quantity. That is a fundamental difference between London and elsewhere. In New York City, for example, the cost of medallions, or taxi licences, topped $1 million in 2011 because of the limited number issued originally. I am told that the value has fluctuated down to about $300,000 as a result of the growth of Uber.
In London, we are rightly proud of the quality of our taxi drivers and the service that they provide. With the knowledge, we have a wonderful three-year system for weeding out the chancers, crooks and con artists. Such future convicts do not have the patience to learn the knowledge. A very small number might get through, but it is extremely rare. As such, completing the gruelling training, studying and examinations rightly generates immense pride in people who have gone through it. Three years’ work, voluntarily undertaken, unpaid, by intelligent people is a tremendous investment in good public service. It is about £150 million of labour, volunteered to make our taxi service better.
The trouble is that structuring a test around geography means that we are just testing people on a computable problem. The taxi driver of the year competition used to challenge drivers to visit places scattered around London. The driver with the least money on the meter was declared the winner. Only in London could this happen. But technology moves on: today’s smartphones know the geography of London better than the London taxi driver of the year. Apps such as Hailo, Uber and Gett do a wonderful job in enabling a customer to get a cab without waving their hand in the air.
Here I declare another past interest. I believe that the first hail of a taxi from a mobile phone anywhere in the world happened in 2002 from my office. It was through Zingo, a subsidiary of my then company, which developed this technology. Having had often to walk in the rain from my house to get a black cab, I thought I should be able to order one from my kitchen instead to pick me up. This was way before the advent of the smartphone, so it was too early to be a success. We had no idea that we had invented the concept behind Uber.
When we worked on a prototype, we were sure that there must be a relationship between the number of taxis and the speed to answer an electronic hail. We did not know whether this related to the square root of the number of vehicles on the system or some other way of calculating it, but there clearly is a connection. The number of private hire vehicles in London was nearly 63,000 at the beginning of this year, an increase of 26% since 2013. There are about 88,000 or 89,000 drivers today, growing at about 650 per week.
That rapid growth in the number of private hire vehicles in London is so important. Because of that enormous growth relative to taxis, the market has been disrupted. This is not necessarily bad, but it could have some unpredictable effects. People living in residential streets near Heathrow and other Uber “money pots” complain about the number of Uber cars parked in their streets waiting for calls. It should not be illegal to park in a street, but sleeping in cars is certainly undesirable. Should we even think of restricting the number of minicabs? Should we think of charging them a fee for working in the central London congestion charge area?
A taxi has a driver plying for hire, while a minicab is a pre-booked service. The system of hailing through a mobile phone has made plying for hire more efficient, but has bypassed the regulations requiring minicabs to be pre-booked. Because of it, the distinction between minicabs and taxis has been markedly reduced.
When the user’s screen on a smartphone shows 20 private hire vehicles within half a mile and one responds, coming directly to them, it is really hard to argue that these vehicles are being pre-booked in accordance with the spirit of the original regulations. One of the new regulations being consulted on by TfL removes the possibility of showing these 20 minicabs geographically on a screen, but I doubt that it will be possible to write such a regulation without it being bypassed by a message saying, “There are 20 Uber cars within half a mile of you”. But is this always true? There have been suggestions that some apps add vehicles to the screen that are not actually there, to make it look busier. In any case, the best that could be achieved is to have the operator at least certify that the information that he provides is accurate.
Another new regulation being considered is to build in a five-minute delay to enable the passenger to read the details of the driver arriving. I also doubt that this will work, as any extra five-minute delay is not in the interest of the passenger wanting a vehicle right now. I believe that a simple extra chip in the minicab could broadcast to the passenger the details of his cab when
it arrives, and confirm that it is not an imposter. The regulator, however, has on file the national insurance number for minicab and private hire drivers. It would, therefore, be easy to require private hire operators, such as Uber, to ensure that their drivers had a good tax history. Uber will be paying tax in Holland, as is its right, but will it not be eager to ensure that its drivers are legal taxpayers here?
Uber is an astonishing company because it has made itself disliked worldwide by regulators, but loved worldwide by customers. The hard truth for any industry is that disruptive technologies are the most powerful way of updating sclerotic practices. That means we must have new regulations so that the good work of London taxi drivers does not die out. It is an astonishing coincidence that this afternoon Uber has announced UberAssist, a system which it says will help disabled passengers. However, the vehicles are not accessible, and a very few partially trained drivers will help but not meet the need. To lose the wheelchair access of the purpose-built London taxi would be a tragedy for disabled people. One of the great costs of disability is the overhead of planning. To spend one’s life constantly working out when and where you relieve yourself, and how you are going to get home, is the sort of thing that most disabled people are required to undertake as part of their disability. London taxis, with wheelchair access as standard, provide an important service that allows disabled people to make spontaneous decisions. That gives them freedom to change their minds—a privilege that should not be reserved to the able-bodied.
The future of regulation for this industry must be designed to preserve and enhance the pride and self-confidence that typify the taxi drivers of London. The system of testing geography, though, is outdated. Many features of dealing with the public responsibly could be designed into a testing system. Furthermore, the full range of disabilities is wider than can be easily imagined by taxi drivers, so I also recommend that drivers are required to do a longer course in disability awareness. That could even include sitting in a manual wheelchair for a few hours, attempting to carry out everyday tasks. I also say that, to embrace the future while preserving the high standards of our taxis, they should be required to incorporate at least one of the taxi-related hailing apps. Taxis must not be harder to hail than private hire. Furthermore, taxi drivers must be more welcoming of customers who prefer to pay with credit cards. People go about their entire daily business with no cash and use cards only. Making it difficult to use cards, quite often purposefully, or charging an absurd premium, is losing customers for taxis.
Overall, the growth of Uber and the efficiency of its system is much loved by the public, but it would be a tragedy if its system damages the taxi trade and accessibility for disabled people. If it does, then the only solution will be to require minicabs to be accessible.
8.21 pm
Baroness Randerson (LD): My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing this debate on an important issue. I have always believed that progress and change are to be embraced rather than resisted; hence I welcome the technological changes that IT and apps have brought
to the taxi and private hire industry. Not to do so would put us in the same position as the Luddites in the 19th century and the newspaper and printing industry in the 1980s. However strong your protest, the industry will keep changing around you.
The secret is to harness the best of the new and to make sure that it works for both employees and customers. Just as the 19th century Industrial Revolution needed the Factory Acts and a whole gamut of employment legislation, so the taxi and private hire business needs a swift regulatory and legislative response to the technological change it faces. The customer must be at the centre and the customer has changing needs, changing work patterns and changing leisure patterns. Above all, the physical safety of customers must be paramount, with a good standard of driving and protection from crime. We need to look at the availability of cabs, as well, of course, as the universal accessibility to which the noble Lord has just referred. Passengers must be central to that change.
There has been a depressingly slow response to rapid change. In London TfL regulations have not been comprehensively updated for 20 years and sit within legislation that is even older, some of it a great deal older. A very useful report in 2014 by the Transport Committee of the Greater London Authority, chaired by Caroline Pidgeon, called Future Proof, tells a woeful tale of inaction by TfL and I am really glad that TfL is now at last consulting on the need for changes to the regulations and its proposals for legislative change.
As noble Lords have already said, this is a two-tier industry throughout the country but now it is almost a three-tier industry, with Uber operating like a private hire vehicle and charging like a taxi. The problems are most acute in London but, as so often, where London leads a lot of the country will follow, so I will concentrate on London. Today one in 11 vehicles entering the central London congestion charge zone is a minicab. Two years ago it was one in 100 vehicles. The number of private hire drivers has tripled in the past decade. There are 600 applications a week for private hire licences. That is an unsustainable expansion. Meanwhile, the number of black taxis is stagnant at about 25,000 and their drivers are an ageing population, with only 5% of taxi drivers under 35 and 40% over 55. Of course, this is because of the complexity and how long it takes to complete the knowledge, with 80% of candidates failing to complete it.
Black cabs in London are a gold standard. We are justified in being proud of them, but that gold standard is at risk. It needs action to protect it. We need to do something. The knowledge probably needs to be amended. It needs to be incorporated with what you get from apps giving you maps and locations and so on, but it does not need to go altogether. It supplements those things rather than replaces them.
If you have too many minicabs, in the end you are going to drive down standards because people who are desperate for a fare will be touting and going in for illegal actions and sharp practice, and this will harm the customer. There is also the issue of traffic congestion, of cabs endlessly circulating, of parking problems and additional emissions. We need to be very conscious of that.
In the current situation there is a concern that in the case of Uber the onus is on the driver to ensure that their insurance and so on is up to date. If you put too much pressure on drivers, you put them in an unfair position and it makes life very difficult for them. But insurance is a concern to us all. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the Guardian article earlier this year, a piece of good investigative journalism which revealed that the system used by Uber allowed fake insurance documents to slip through unnoticed. At a much less sophisticated level, there is the issue of whether a driver’s insurance is fully valid. Private hire companies generally have their own fleet insurance, which ensures legality at a fleet level.
Then there is the High Court decision last week that the Uber app used to calculate fares is not a taxi meter and therefore is not subject to the regulations that apply to one. I find this perplexing. It is probably due to the fact that the law is out of date. But there are parallels with the apps that now do the same thing as electricity smart meters, which we were all going to have installed in our homes. You can get the same thing on your phone for your electricity supply.
What is happening is that technology is conflating and overtaking the legislation. Our phones are now also our cameras, our emails and our maps. This applies to taxis as well. The two-tier industry serves different needs, and Uber straddles the two in its way of working. Why and how are taxis different from minicabs? As the noble Lord has said, taxis are hailed and minicabs are booked. Because taxis are hailed in London, this justifies the rigorous demands of the knowledge. The driver needs to know where to go and how to get there immediately. The legislation requires minicabs to be booked, which enables them to look up where they are going to go, because you are supposed to state your destination. However, the Uber app effectively allows a cab to be hailed by smartphone and does not require or allow information on the destination at the time of booking. Users of Uber tell me how quick and convenient it is, which is important. We need to remember that people like it, but we also need to remember the insurance problems and the lack of a requirement for disability access. The app is not a taxi meter, according to the court judgment, so there is no obligation to go by the shortest route. We need to remember the use of surge pricing, which is the equivalent of your going into Marks & Spencer, selecting a winter coat for £80 and discovering, when you get to the till, that it is a very popular coat and they are going to charge you £100. I do not believe that is acceptable.
A separate issue, not for this debate but of concern to us all, is that these companies are legally set up to pay very little tax indeed. Competition is good; unfair competition is bad. There is huge demand for the Government to modernise the legislation to deal with the issues that I have outlined. I very much hope the Minister will tell us that a taxi Bill is on the way.
8.32 pm
Lord Callanan (Con): My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue today. In the taxi market, as in most other industries, choice and competition
should be encouraged and should be our watchwords. For too long though, choice and competition have been regulated almost out of existence by both our local and national authorities. Now, however, thanks to the miracle of new technology, the market is being effectively disrupted, and consumers are benefiting all over the country, particularly in London. We are talking, of course, about the apps that everybody else has referred to in this debate, particularly the most popular one, Uber, although there are many other examples. They are, in my view, a splendid example of market disruption in practice—in the single digital market, of which the Government keep telling us they are strong supporters.
The supply of taxis in most cities in the UK has been artificially restricted for years. I have long believed that the ridiculous distinction between private hire and hackney carriages is outdated and out of time. Those differences, in my view, should be abolished. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Borwick pointed out, that is effectively being done by new technology. So long as they are appropriately licensed, insured and with a safe vehicle, let all who want to do so operate a service in a safe manner, whether by an app, hailing in the street, telephone or any other means that they want to use to operate that service.
Needless to say, it should come as no surprise to us that the incumbent operators are resistant to change in the market. That is understandable: typists were opposed to word processors and typesetters were against desktop publishing software. They failed in the end—you cannot resist the march of technology. Surely, in here of all places, we should be on the side of consumers rather than of producers. Consumers are demonstrating in their millions that this is a service they want and require and, frankly, they will use it irrespective of what we choose to do in this place.
I was particularly incensed by the current TfL consultation on future taxi regulation in London. If anyone has a bored hour, they can look at it on the internet. It looks to me as though TfL has precisely identified the specific business model of apps such as Uber and decided to attack it. My noble friend Lord Borwick has already referred to some of the more ridiculous parts of the proposals, but let me also talk about them.
The consultation says that operators must not show vehicles being immediately available for hire. It is a bit like asking corner shops to hide their stock away from customers lest they want to buy it. It proposes to impose a five-minute delay from the booking being taken to the journey commencing. That is the daftest of the lot. Are they seriously saying that someone should stand in the rain alongside a pre-booked vehicle until that artificial five-minute period has expired? It is crazy. Next, I assume that we will have to have a five-minute delay in our house lights switching on to help candle makers impose their trade.
TfL wants to ban ride-sharing apps because of apparent concerns about driver safety. I thought we wanted to encourage more efficient use of vehicles and our road space. We know that this already happens informally in airports all over the world. Two people will stand next to each other and agree to share a taxi
into a city centre. All that smartphones do is make that option, which happens informally any way, more formal and easier for customers to access.
It proposes that all apps have to offer the option of pre-booking a week in advance. Personally, that is one aspect of the Uber service that I find irritating. I like to have the option to book in advance, but I have a choice. I have another app that allows me to book in advance. That is the essence of consumer choice. Let us not restrict one market mechanism in favour of another; let us deregulate. Let us allow black cabs to offer their service—they offer a very good service; I have a lot of sympathy with black cab drivers—but let us not restrict people’s choice to use other services.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, referred to the specific requirement of a language test—for drivers to speak English. Many customers may want that, and they can access apps, taxis and black cabs that allow them to specify that, but in my view, it is not an essential requirement. I have often used Uber in Brussels, and I have not been able to discuss the options with the driver. He has not spoken the same language as me. Some of them have spoken Dutch, some of them have spoken French. Frankly, I do not care. I tell the app where I want picking up from. I tell it where I want dropping off. The driver does that. No cash changes hands; my credit card is charged afterwards. It may be a service that some people want, but it should not be a specific requirement imposed by regulation.
It seems to me that the TfL motto, “Keep London moving”, should be changed to, “Keep London moving following a statutory five-minute delay”. As I said, I have sympathy for black cab drivers. In my view, they are over-regulated. As several Members have said, it is ridiculous to make them follow the knowledge when GPS, smart phone apps and traffic monitoring systems do the job equally well. Surely that regulatory requirement should be shifted from them. The answer is to reduce regulation on black cabs and other hackney carriages, not to impose more regulation on other disruptive services.
I strongly urge the Government to have the courage of their deregulation rhetoric and let 1,000 apps flourish.
8.39 pm
Lord Crickhowell (Con): My Lords, in asking to intervene in the gap, I must congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, on raising the issue, my noble friend Lord Borwick on an admirable summary of the problems and merits of the situation and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on emphasising the flood of private hire vehicles that are entering London. I am entirely in favour of competition. I say to my noble friend Lord Callanan that I do not entirely agree with the TfL consultation. I do, however, think that there is a need for a re-examination of the regulatory system.
I started the day by going to a funeral in Wales, employing my admirable minicab service locally which picks me up at my house. I know what it is—I know that it is secure and well managed and has proper insurance. I travelled back to the House in a black cab. I therefore have nothing against competition. However, there are real issues, a number of which have been emphasised today. There is a flood of drivers coming in.
We know very little about the driving ability of many of them, and I think that that is a matter of concern and interest. There are real issues about insurance—insurance not just of vehicles but the adequacy of insurance for the passengers and for third parties. I have heard of cases where, because the insurance was not adequate, the private hire drivers have actually run away from the scene of an accident. Such an incident, I am told, happened in Trafalgar Square only last weekend and caused a security alarm.
There is the issue of knowledge. I am not entirely a believer in the perfection of the sat-nav. The lovely driver who drove me this morning had his sat-nav on, but he wisely followed my instructions for the route to Paddington, and it was a great deal shorter and more direct than if he had followed the sat-nav direction. There has got to be some knowledge if we are to get best value for customers. There is also a real issue about moral standards and the lack of knowledge of what is involved. My noble friend Lord Borwick made some important points about wheelchair access.
My conclusion is that certainly regulation needs amending. I am not arguing in favour of the TfL recommendations. I do not think I know enough about them. We do, however, need some kind of regulation to deal with this situation. It should certainly embrace the contribution that major technology can give—yes, of course—but we need adequate safeguards so that passengers are not exploited by companies that, after all, are managed from outside this country. Any challenge to individuals is promptly referred to the head office in the United States, and, as we have heard, taxis apparently get paid in Holland. I am not sure that that provides a really secure basis for people using cabs in this country, so I think we need revised regulation. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to tell us that the Government are giving very proper consideration to this important issue.
8.43 pm
Lord Rosser (Lab): My Lords, this is a very timely debate that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has secured, particularly given the uncertainty that now seems to exist in the taxi and private car hire market in light of the development and expansion of Uber and the recent High Court ruling that the Uber app is legal, and Uber cars are not considered to use meters.
As has been said, Transport for London has announced a public consultation on new regulations on Uber. It has said that it welcomes the legal clarity of the court ruling and that it will continue to gauge public opinion on potential changes to private hire regulations. It says that those have not been comprehensively updated for almost two decades and now need to take account of recent developments and to ensure they are fit for the future.
The Mayor of London is calling on the Government to bring forward primary legislation to give TfL the power to cap minicab numbers, the number of private hire drivers having risen substantially over the past six years, as had already been said, with the rate of applications now reaching 600 per week.
Uber, though, is not confined to London, as far as the UK is concerned; it says that it has a presence in 11 major UK cities, so this is not simply a London
issue. The court ruling underlines the need to get taxis and private hire vehicle regulation right. The Government need to bring forward statutory measures to ensure that, when someone contacts a taxi or a private hire vehicle firm, they can have confidence that the firm is reputable, the price is fair, and that their safety and security are paramount.
There surely needs to be a level playing field, which no longer appears to be the case. That is felt particularly acutely within the London black cab taxi trade, which feels that its specific right to ply for hire is under threat and that the demanding standards to which it is still expected to conform, not least in the interests of passenger safety, are not being applied to competing newer operators in particular. No doubt the Minister will tell us what the Government’s position is on Uber and whether they see any need to review the relevant taxi and private hire vehicle regulations—and, if they do, with relation to addressing what issues.
The development of Uber is normally considered as representing a challenge to existing regulated taxi services. However, do the Government see its impact as stretching further than that and having consequences for the level of use of the bus and rail services in our conurbations or on the use or frequency of use of private cars, or impacting on traffic congestion or air quality? Perhaps the Minister could comment on that point.
Last week we had a debate on shared spaces and the difficulties that they could create for blind and visually impaired people. The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association also has concerns, as has been said, about assistance dog owners being refused access to taxis and private hire vehicles, and has provided a briefing on this point. The briefing states that of more than 1,100 assistance dog owners, 43.5% of survey respondents had been refused access to taxis and private hire vehicles in the past year, even though they are entitled by law to such access without discrimination. The briefing goes on to say that refusal of carriage is so common that assistance dog owners often do not report cases—two-thirds of assistance dog owners who had been refused access within the last year had not reported it. The briefing goes on to point out that, due to the nature of visual impairment, it can be difficult for a person with sight loss to identify the offending driver.
The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association says that local authorities are not required to make disability awareness training a requirement for licensing of taxis, although a Law Commission report has recommended it. The association is also calling for it to be made easier for assistance dog owners to report cases of access refusals and to increase the penalties for those committing such an offence.
In a recent Written Answer to a parliamentary Question in the Commons about what steps were being taken to address taxi refusals for assistance dog owners, the Government said:
“The Equality Act 2010 includes a legal requirement for all taxi and private hire vehicle drivers to carry assistance dogs and not to charge more for doing so”.
The Government went on to say in their written response:
“In addition to their ability to take appropriate action in the event that licensed drivers fail to comply with this duty, local licensing
authorities can inform taxi and private hire drivers of all their responsibilities as licensed drivers”.
That Answer smacks of a Government declining to get involved in an issue of national application and significance, when the evidence available suggests that something is going seriously wrong. It also relates to one of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, in opening this debate—namely, where does responsibility for regulation of the taxi and private hire market lie? Where does responsibility lie for ensuring that the regulations maintain their relevance by reflecting changing circumstances, and where does responsibility lie for ensuring effective monitoring and application of those regulations, whether it be in relation to the needs of disabled people, the suitability of operators, the reality or otherwise of fair competition, the quality of service provided or the implementation and maintenance of appropriate safety standards, including insurance?