Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, we return to issues that we covered in Committee. I hope that the Minister will feel able to offer some further response, as we remain very concerned about them. Our amendments in this group are designed to restrict the complaints that can be brought against a school and then taken up for consideration by the local commissioner. We on these Benches are not too worried by the complaints structure introduced by the Bill as a whole. It is important for parents and pupils to have a channel through which they can communicate complaints and, as many noble Lords said in Committee, it is clearly unsuitable for this to be the Secretary of State. He should be a last port of call, not the first above the board of governors. However, we have some reservations about the scope of the powers. In Committee, we were happy to receive a concession from the Government that allowed the local commissioner discretion not to commence, or to stop, investigating any complaint that he deemed to be vexatious. We welcomed the Government’s agreement in this matter. Here, we would like to limit the scope still further. Our Amendment 209 would restrict complaints so that those relating to temporary exclusions could not be reviewed through this channel. Amendment 210 would exclude complaints relating to enforcing any decision that would come under the published rules of the school. We thank the Minister for her responses in Committee. We are glad that she does not intend the provisions to be draconian, that it is intended for teachers to have the right, ""to agree their own behaviour policies and rules"," and that they should be able to apply them as they wish, as long, of course, as it is in a "reasonable and lawful" manner. She assured us that she did not consider that the provisions would be, ""asking good schools to do anything that they are not already doing".—[Official Report, 19/10/09; col. 523.]" We accept all those reassurances and are grateful for them. Nevertheless, our concerns remain. It is possible for the provisions to have a damaging impact on teachers’ morale and on school discipline. The Minister said that she would not demand anything more of good schools than was already happening. Yet a wide-ranging complaints procedure may cause damage regardless of a school’s implementation procedure. If pupils feel that they have been unfairly treated and it is all too easy to complain, they may take too much advantage of it. The process of external investigation by the local commissioner may be very damaging to teacher morale, even if the complaint is not upheld. Furthermore, it may discourage teachers from using disciplinary measures open to them, such as temporary exclusion, out of fear of investigation and all the embarrassment that it might entail. We received some reassurances from the Minister relating to the ability of the local commissioner to disapply the time limit to listen to complaints. She assured us that she would work with teaching unions and others to make sure that all involved knew exactly what the restrictions of the service might be. I wonder if there are any further updates on discussions. I am sure that the Minister is entirely honest in her reassurance that the intention is not to open the door for long-gone pupils to resurrect grievances from bad schooldays; I do not doubt that that is the case. Nevertheless, we are concerned that, while this may not be the intention, there is a possibility that this may be the effect. Can the Minister offer us any more reassurances?