Establishment of Review Body to Consider Statutory Conditions of Employment of School Teachers

Part of Orders of the Day — School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill – in the House of Commons at 6:43 pm on 6 June 1991.

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Photo of Jack Straw Jack Straw Shadow Secretary of State for Education 6:43, 6 June 1991

The answer to the question is this. On Second Reading we put down a reasoned amendment. By the way, the Liberal Democrats voted in favour of it. That reasoned amendment, apart from objecting to the way in which the Secretary of State had treated the House and members of the Standing Committee by suspending the previous Bill without explanation, spelled out our three conditions for supporting the review body.

We said that we declined to give a Second Reading to the Bill, first, because it contained no proposals to raise teachers' professionalism by the establishment of a general teachers council; secondly, because the policies of the Government had led to a serious decline in the morale, motivation, recruitment and retention of teachers and in their relative pay; and thirdly, because it gave unacceptable powers to the Secretary of State to issue directions to the pay review body. Those were the tests.

I am grateful for what the Minister said about an independent secretariat under the Office of Manpower Economics. There is no cavilling about that; we are grateful to him. However, the conditions that we set out on Second Reading have not been satisfied. I spoke at length on Second Reading about the issue of powers.