Clause 8
Education and Inspections Bill
4:00 pm
Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)
My amendments were probing amendments, and after the eloquence displayed by my hon. Friend, they are now even more probing than they were before. For all that, when coupled with my hon. Friend’s amendment, they do a useful job. We are going to elicit a wide range of possible consultees from the Minister and discover what she means by saying that the local education authority must
“consult such persons as appear to the authority to be appropriate”.
That is the key.
In all honesty, it must be clear by now, even if members of the Committee have not read the amendments, that my vision is that all schools should be independent charitable trusts, free of local authority control. That is my vision, but we are where we are. It is extremely unlikely that I shall be able to convince the Minister of the virtue of that viewpoint, although I am confident that, over the course of this Parliament, I will convince those who lead for my party on education.
I do not speak for the Conservative party. The virtue of being a Back Bencher is that one can be a sort of outrider for the party—[Laughter.] There is no harm in that. All political parties need people to think creatively, which is what I try to do. That is my role, as it is in part the role of my amendments.
The Minister will have to address the problem. I shall not labour the point—I made it this morning with regard to our experience with grant-maintained schools—but I suspect that, as my hon. Friend says, she will find that unfortunately not everyone shares her enthusiasm for the establishment of trust schools. With a clause such as clause 8, I fear that local education authorities will use consultation as a means of obfuscation or of putting barriers in the path of those wishing to set up trust schools.
Who should be consulted? Obviously someone should be consulted, otherwise what is the point of such a clause? My hon. Friend is right that there is no harm in consulting parents. One of the problems with that, as we all know, is that parents are rightly focused on their children at the time of their education, and it is difficult for them to take a strategic view. That is the argument continuously advanced by the hon. Member for Bury, North, by Members of the Liberal party and others.
Are parents best qualified to have a view—or, as I suggest in my amendments, does the Minister envisage that local authorities will consult
“the chairman of governors of all maintained schools in areas adjacent to the proposed school”?
That would seem to be a fairly sensible point of view, would it not? Presumably, therefore, the Minister might agree.
If someone wants to set up a new faith school, based on a trust, will the local authority follow the spirit of amendment No. 348, which states:
“in the case of religious-based schools, the relevant church or religious authority”.
One would think that that was sensible, but what do we mean by faith school? In the recent census, a large number of people apparently said as a joke that they were part of the Jedi knights religion, because a newspaper has suggested that it would be a good way of irritating the authorities. Would I be allowed to set up a Jedi knights faith school? If I said that I wanted to set up a Catholic school, what sort of Catholic school would it be? Would I have to consult the bishop and the local hierarchy?
It would be useful to know the Minister’s view of who should be consulted. The amendments, by their all-embracing nature, should encourage the Minister to do precisely that.