Violent Crime Reduction Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her support for our amendments. She raises important issues about school staff searching pupils and being at physical risk or danger because of the search. We cannot be entirely risk adverse—that is a fairly obvious comment—and if the head teacher decides that a search is not safe the school will probably wish to call the police to conduct it. That said, school staff—especially senior managers—these days are highly skilled and experienced in managing the behaviour of young people in their charge. From the feedback that I get from my children as they go through school, I have always been very impressed by how capable teachers are at resolving and avoiding confrontations. I think that the guidance we issue, the training given and the support provided will help raise that performance still higher. In so doing it should minimise the degree of physical risk or danger that otherwise might be present. Staff should search only if they are properly trained and judge it safe to do so, and they must, of course, be authorised to do so by the head teacher. Otherwise we always clearly advise staff that they should involve the police, and that advice which was given in the past still stands. The noble Baroness asked about the attitudes of staff, the unions and so on. This matter has been the subject of considerable discussion with the unions. Indeed, I understand that there have been discussions with the head teacher and teacher unions both today and previously. The unions are broadly content. Indeed, I have quotes from unions in my brief which state that the NASUWT has welcomed the provisions of the Violent Crime Reduction Bill designed to give more support to teachers and head teachers in maintaining good order and discipline by enabling searches to be conducted for offensive weapons. It is sensible and logical for such powers to apply to groups of pupils and not just individuals. And the ASCL, in the form of John Dunford, has put on record the following: "““There are few more difficult or more serious issues for a head teacher to deal with than pupils carrying knives. I therefore welcome the increased powers for heads to search for knives. This will be helpful to the small number of schools where this is a recurrent problem””." So there is generally a welcome there. The noble Baroness herself raised and dealt with the issue of the process to be gone through in conducting searches—the point at which the search should begin and how it should work proceed from there—based on the rephrasing of the Bill. We have reached a happy point with regard to these amendments and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her support. On Question, amendment agreed to.