Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 359, in clause 31, page 21, line 41, leave out subsection (3) and insert—

‘(3) Local authorities or persons appointed by local authorities may not be members of a foundation and may not be foundation governors.'.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 256, in clause 31, page 21, line 43, leave out ‘20' and insert ‘10'.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

The idea of foundation schools is to create schools maintained by the state, but to exercise within that system the freedom to manage and teach. Regrettably, the Secretary of State sometimes falls  short of that objective in the Bill. She is still attempting to micromanage all schools, even foundation schools.

Subsection (3) permits local authorities, or persons appointed by them, to be part of a foundation, even though subsection (2) says that the foundation must be a body corporate and a charity. The amendment would delete subsection (3) and replace it with the instruction that local authorities cannot be on foundations for foundation schools. If they were, it would make a nonsense of the scheme.

It is no secret that I and, I suppose, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, are outriders. We are opposed to all LEAs. The other day, the Minister laughed at me when I cited the example of Essex LEA, but I meant Essex. It does not matter to me what political colour a local education authority is. I do not approve of local education authorities being involved, especially as the essence of the Bill is the freedom of new schools, be they trust schools, foundation schools, grant-maintained schools or whatever one wishes to call them. LEAs restrict freedom and good management, and we do not want them to have any part in the running of a foundation, a trust or a grant-maintained school.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

Our amendment No. 256 suggests changing from 20 to 10 the percentage of voting rights on a foundation allowed to persons appointed by local authorities. The reason is plain: for a local authority to have 20 per cent. of the voting rights on a foundation is likely to give it undue influence. It is a matter of judgment. Some will argue that it is right and proper that the local authority should have a powerful voice on the foundation, but I repeat that not all local authorities will embrace the changes with the enthusiasm present in the Committee. I therefore feel that we need to be cautious about the structural role that we give local authorities.

The Prime Minister’s intention was to embrace the idea of genuinely independent non-fee-paying state schools. It was not only the right hon. Gentleman who embraced it; we embraced it too. He wanted his party, the House and the whole country to embrace the idea. Why, then, should 20 per cent. of the representatives be appointed by the local authority? Why not a smaller number?

The amendment is essentially probing, and designed to discover the Government’s thinking. That is not to say, in my view and that of the shadow Schools Minister, that people working for a local authority should not be able to become members of a foundation. I make no bones about the fact that some in the Committee will express other views, but I take the view that local government is important and that those who work for it perform a great public service.

I do not have a prejudiced view about local government. I was a local councillor for many years and I enjoyed that time. I hope that I made a useful contribution to the locality that I represented. I got to know many councillors of all political parties and persuasions, and many local government officers, who greatly benefited the people whom they served. It would be quite wrong to prohibit members of local  authorities from being part of the process. They should be able to participate in the local community. Indeed, some may have educational experience and an understanding that could be highly beneficial to a foundation. Why would one want to prohibit their involvement and possibly lose the opportunity of bringing that experience and knowledge to bear?

The structural role of local authorities in the process is qualitatively different from the involvement in foundations of those who happen to work in a local authority. I urge the Committee to accept amendment No. 256.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

I oppose the amendment on the ground that many local authorities follow the established principle of allowing 20 per cent. of places on charity boards or trust boards that are partly funded by the public sector, or whose purposes are funded by the public sector, to be taken by local authority nominees. Sports trusts and the arts are two examples, and housing increasingly involves arm’s-length management, which requires 20 per cent. representation by local authority nominees.

If we accept the amendment, we will set an unhelpful precedent that would call into question arrangements for local authority representation on charities and trusts that are already in place throughout the country.

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I concur with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith). Amendment No. 359 would take us back to grant-maintained schools. The schools in question would become separate, and a collaborative model of education would be almost impossible. That is why it is so important to have an input by local authority governors.

I do not believe in the local authority having a majority. That side of the argument seems far more extreme than mine. I believe simply that the local authority must have an input. My local authority moved on so much further when working with our small number of secondary schools when grant-maintained status was abolished. When foundation status came in, we had healthy links with, not prescription from, the local authority. Every school buys into the LEA governors training scheme, which advertises for governors. The route by which the governors enter does not matter. It is a well respected service. Surprisingly, lots of services provided by local authorities are well respected and will be purchased at a reasonable price. The training by a local authority governors scheme, when it is good, is a great advantage. However, there is a bias in this matter, because even those of us who support local authorities do not support a majority of local authority governors.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

I endorse the remarks of the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough, because the amendment takes us back not just to the time of grant-maintained schools, but to the period before the Education Act 1870. It gives us the clearest insight into what a large section of the Tory party would want to do.

It is important that the Committee puts down a strong marker against this irrational, ill-informed prejudice against the functioning of local authorities. Clause 31 suggests the possibility of having 20 per cent. representation on a foundation, which is an extremely creative model for how certain schools may operate in future; it adds to the diversity of different models of governance. It is, therefore, strange that the Conservatives have argued throughout the debate that they want to extend diversity, but when we are given the opportunity, as we are here, of increasing diversity by another form of governance, their outriders oppose it.

The opposition to this measure is in complete contradiction to the spirit of the legislation following the “Every Child Matters” White Paper, which focuses on the need to bring about greater integration between education, health and social care. Therefore, if there is going to be a serious attempt to remove such provision, those who are promoting that attempt need also to make clear their view on the Children Acts and the question of bringing about greater integration in the delivery of childrens’ services.

The amendment is irrational; it is based not on any evidence, but on archaic, atavistic prejudices deep in the bowels of the Tory party, and I hope that the Committee rejects it.

Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)

The amendments relate to the local authority membership of trusts. Amendment No. 359 deals with the arrangements for the appointment of governors to trust schools.

Amendment No. 359 would prevent local authorities and their nominees from being members of trusts and prevent trusts from appointing local authorities as foundation governors. It is not clear whether that is intended to refer to elected members or officials. The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire did not make that clear when she moved the amendment. I will address that matter in relation to the legal effect of the amendment.

Amendment No. 256 would place excessive restrictions on the ability of local authorities to be members of trusts.

The amendments refer to clause 31, which makes various provisions covering requirements relating to foundations and inserts two new sections into the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, with respect to the requirements relating to foundations. I do not want to rehearse in detail the provisions of the clause, as they are not all relevant to the amendment. However, in responding to the amendments, it is worthwhile outlining again some of the overarching policy intentions on trusts and their formation as they relate to the clause.

As we have made clear, from the White Paper onwards, in this stage of reform the aim underpinning our trust schools policy is to bring in the experience, energy and expertise of new partners as a lever to raise standards in schools and to improve the outcome for every child. We want to strengthen the leadership and ethos of schools by enabling them to form long-term, sustainable partnerships with charitable trusts which will, where governing bodies so choose, be able to appoint a majority of governing bodies. Those  partnerships might be entirely new or they might take existing collaborations a step further.

However, as we have argued today and throughout the process, the policy is enabling, as is the Bill. No school will be forced to acquire a trust. Indeed, it will be for schools’ governing bodies to decide whether to acquire a trust and how it should be composed. There is no single model for the composition of a trust—it could encompass one partner or many. Decisions about the relationship that a school has with a particular trust should be taken locally, in accordance with its needs, and the school should have maximum flexibility to decide what will best serve the needs of its pupils.

Similarly, there are no set criteria as to who should be involved in a particular trust. That is a matter for the governing body and for local stakeholders to comment on as part of the consultation on published proposals to acquire a trust. There will, of course, be safeguards, as we have made clear not only in the guidance on the process for the acquisition of trusts but also by requiring trusts to have certain charitable objects and disqualifying certain categories of individual from being trustees.

In addition, clause 31 contains some requirements as to the composition of trusts. That is where amendment No. 256 comes in. The clause allows local authorities to be minority partners on trusts, with local authority trust members or local authority-appointed trust members accounting for no more than 20 per cent. of the total voting rights of the trust. That provision is included as part of the strategic shift in the role of local authorities. Local authorities are already represented on the governing bodies of all maintained schools, and they will continue to be represented on the governing bodies of trust schools. Against that background, we do not think that it would be appropriate for them to have a dominant interest in trusts; indeed, nobody is arguing that they should. However, local authorities may play a valuable role in brokering relationships and supporting the formation of trusts. The clause gives them the flexibility to do that.

Amendment No. 359 would remove that flexibility, so we do not agree with its presumption; my hon. Friends have been very clear about that. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North was right in saying that it gives us an opportunity to put down a marker to say that we do not agree that local authorities can never make a useful contribution to a trust or to the leadership and ethos that a trust can bring to a school. Given their wider strategic role, there could be circumstances in which a school would want local authority representatives to be part of its trust as well as of its governing body.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North made an important link to the “Every Child Matters” work that we are expecting local authorities to lead. It is reasonable and easy to envisage circumstances in which a local authority has a strategic role in a trust, supporting schools to manage a collective responsibility for delivering the five outcomes of “Every Child Matters” at a local level. For example, it could work alongside the local authority children’s trust or form a trust with other local partners and businesses to work with schools across the local  community, perhaps as part of a regeneration scheme, linking regeneration to improved opportunities for children in the area. We should not shut off such possibilities. We must leave such important opportunities as choices for each school, subject, as we have shown in relation to the clause, to some limitations on the local authority’s ability to be a member of a trust.

Amendment No. 256 acknowledges that there can be a role for local authorities as trust members, if that is what the school and the trust wish, but it takes a more restrictive view of the role of local authorities than we think is necessary. The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings said that the amendment, which would reduce the maximum voting rights of local authorities or their appointees to 10 per cent. from than 20 per cent. as we propose, is probing. In the spirit of his probing, so to speak, and in strong agreement with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough, let me say that the 20 per cent. figure that we have chosen is wholly consistent with provisions in local government legislation on other forms of local authority involvement in companies and trusts. It therefore provides certainty and consistency for local authorities, and it represents, as my hon. Friend said, the same limit that relates to other trusts, such as housing trusts or leisure trusts, in which councils may be involved. The limit gives those trusts the maximum flexibility of operation, while still allowing local authority involvement. It is appropriate to take a similar approach to local authority representation on school trusts. It would be perfectly possible, of course, for any school to choose not to have local authority representation on its trust, but we think that we have got the balance about right by creating the opportunity for representation on school trusts at 20 per cent., consistent with other approaches to representation of local authorities on trusts.

The second aspect of amendment No. 359 is the bar on local authorities from being appointed as foundation governors, though it is unclear whether the amendment refers to local authority members or officials. In my view, the provisions proposed in the amendment are unnecessary and, quite simply, wrong. The role of trusts is to appoint governors to the school or schools for which they act as a foundation. We need to have confidence that trusts will make the right decisions about who will bring the necessary drive and expertise to the governing body. If, having appointed a governor, the trust considers that they are not fulfilling that requirement, the trust can remove and replace that governor, but we should not and need not set excessive restrictions that could be unworkable.

For example, the trust will need to appoint a number of parents as foundation governors. Is it the intention of the amendment that a parent who happens to work for a local council, but who has a child at the school, should be excluded from being a foundation governor? That would be more restrictive than current requirements, because there are no such restrictions to prevent existing foundation governors from being local authority staff or members, and the governing bodies  of all existing schools are also required to have certain maximum and minimum proportions of local authority governors.

We see no need to change those arrangements, either for existing VA or VC schools, or for new trust schools. We think that our policy of allowing local authorities, or their appointees, to be members of trusts, subject to the 20 per cent. limit, is a balanced, proportional and workable one. It strikes a balance between allowing local authorities to be involved in trusts in a strategic but not controlling capacity, and that also gives greater flexibility to the school to decide on the most appropriate level of local authority membership of the trust. The choice will remain with the school as to whether to take up that relationship.

I hope that the amendments will not be pressed.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

The Minister is right: the amendment is a probing one, designed to oblige the Minister and the Committee to focus on the precise role that we expect local education authorities to play in the new schools that we all envisage.

Let me make it clear that the official Opposition Front Benchers see a role for LEAs in the process. Some of the Minister’s points on what LEAs can bring to the process are valid. It is entirely unimaginable that we should return—in the rather dramatic but none the less compelling words of the hon. Member for Bury, North—to the circumstances that prevailed before the Elementary Education Act 1870, when we relied entirely on private endeavour to provide education for our people. In those days, most of the working people in this country were not properly educated. I believe strongly in state education. I believe, as does the Leader of the Opposition, that Government can be a force for good. The issue is not whether we think the state should be involved in education, or whether we think that local government is a good thing; we are committed and convinced that it is. The issue is to what extent local authorities should be involved in schools. Our caution is born of our fear that some local authorities will not be convinced of the virtues of the measures in the Bill.

Twenty per cent. is a fair proportion of a governing body. Those Committee members who are school governors—I imagine that many have been or remain so—will know that because the quorum in a school governing body is rather less than its whole, if all the local authority governors and many fewer of the other elements on the governing body were to be present, that 20 per cent. would be a powerful block on what the school might choose to do. That is why in our probing amendment we suggested a smaller proportion, which might make the process somewhat more straightforward. However, it is a probing amendment. We might return to the subject, but we shall not press the amendment.

I hope that the Minister will consider our suggestion, perhaps before we enjoy high tea together, to which I am looking forward with some degree of relish. A seductive image is lodged in my imagination about precisely what that tea might be and where we might have it. [Laughter.] Let it suffice to say that it proves that there is no such thing as a free point of order.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

I am in awe of the Minister’s larynx. She has done so much talking this afternoon.

I am not as reassured by her comments today as I have been before, because I do not see a role for the LEAs. I am a rebel, as hon. Members might have noticed. I do not think that the Minister heard my previous comments. The other day when I quoted Essex as an authority, she laughed. It does not matter to me what political colour an authority is. We have enough badly performing LEAs in the country of all colours to bring their role into question, and we have enough failing schools and children from deprived areas being let down by their education to ask the question whether LEAs should have any involvement in schools.

Does it not go against the Bill’s essence to involve LEAs in trust schools or foundation schools as they develop? The desire expressed in the White Paper was for schools to have independence and freedom—the same independence as the independent sector—so that they can develop their resources. I do not agree with the comments of my Front-Bench colleagues, although I wholeheartedly understand them. I still think that we should not involve the LEAs.

The hon. Member for Bury, North gets me wrong. I am not prejudiced against LEAs. The fact that I do not feel that they should exist does not mean that I am prejudiced against them. [Laughter.] I simply do not think that they should be there. Prejudice is a strong word to use, and as the moderate person I am, I do not wholeheartedly agree with it. We should not be prejudiced.

Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)

The hon. Lady is now playing the role of outrider of the Opposition Benches. Given her previous comment that teachers are letting down the education system and her comment this afternoon that local authorities are letting down the education system, does she think anybody is doing a good job in our schools?

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

I do, actually. I think that the independent sector does a very good job, and I should like to see the state sector in total do as good a job. I do not know when I made that comment about teachers, but I must have made it if the Minister has it written down somewhere. If teachers are not doing a good job, that is probably because they are restricted by the local education authority from doing what they want to do and teaching as they want to teach. The headmaster of a school that I visited recently in my constituency made exactly that comment. Teachers would like more freedom with the national curriculum—more freedom to do what they want to do in schools. They do not have that now, but we hope that they will under the Bill.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

To return to the hon. Lady’s previous point, could she share with the Committee her definition of prejudice? If it does not include the concept of someone else not having the right to exist, what does it include?

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

I do not have my dictionary with me, but “prejudice” is a strong word. I do not loathe  education authorities; I just do not think that they have a role in education after the Bill, with the development of trust schools. That is quite simple. I have been accused of being extreme. I am extremely angry that children in schools are deprived of a good education, but I am not extreme. Although I am not as reassured as I was, we have had some debate and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.