Children, Schools and Families Bill

I start by thanking the Minister for Schools and Learners and his team for the generally productive approach they took in Committee, and I also thank him for starting today's debate with a small olive branch of consensus, before we move on to the dissent that is likely to permeate the rest of our debate. He has listened, to some extent, to the criticisms of clauses 1 to 3, and in response he has offered some small and rather modest gifts to the Committee and the House to try to dispose of a few of the problems that will arise if the guarantees are ever implemented, which we must doubt. We support him in seeking to remove "frivolous" complaints, and we agree with his points about not creating legal rights that could result in legal action, with parents and pupils suing for damages. However, our main problem with clauses 1 to 3—in this regard I agree with the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb)—is that the Government have drawn up the pupil and parent guarantees in such a vague and unhelpful way. Goodness knows what the ombudsman is going to make of trying to enforce those guarantees, which the Secretary of State and his advisors cobbled together one evening a few months ago. No ombudsman will be able to make a serious job of enforcing the types of obligations and supposed guarantees set out in the White Paper. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton cited just one of the flawed pupil guarantees. I have cited in the past, and shall cite again in future, the pupil guarantee that specifies that every 11 to 14-year-old should enjoy""relevant and challenging learning in all subjects"," and develop their""personal, learning and thinking skills so that they have strong foundations to make their 14-19 choices."" We are told that that will be phased in by September 2010. The Minister is a fair-minded person who must know that our criticisms are entirely right, and I put it to him that it will be impossible for any ombudsman service, regardless of how many staff it has, to make head or tail of most of the pupil and parent guarantees. Indeed, if we read the small print of some of these guarantees, we discover that in the commercial sector people would get into serious trouble for seeking to present them as guarantees. For example, the guarantees on access to physical education and competitive sport are phrased in such a way that although they give the impression that there is a guarantee of five hours of sport—or culture, or whatever—the truth is that all the Government are talking about is "access" to those things, which could be delivered in a series of very unconvincing ways that would mean that the vast majority of young people would not get five hours of any of them, because they are available in such a way that they cannot be taken for granted. Meanwhile, however, a head teacher—or more likely a Secretary of State—would be able say, "Hurrah, we've delivered all these wonderful guarantees, and young people can have access to these things." If the Secretary of State had come up with even a couple of sensible guarantees that were outcome focused rather than input focused, and had linked them to giving freedom to schools to make their own decisions about how to deliver them, we might have supported him. He was in the Treasury back in the early days when all those delivery targets were set. They often focused on inputs rather than outputs, and then the Treasury realised that it had got it all wrong. Because he is so experienced and knows all the flaws of setting targets in this way, he should not, as Secretary of State, have come up with such a lot of nonsense: so many guarantees that are unenforceable, or focus on inputs. He must know that he has cobbled these guarantees together on the back of a fag packet. Although he has sought to do that to create some dividing lines for electoral purposes, the guarantees deserve to be put in the waste paper basket before the election, rather than being implemented in such a way that they will be extremely difficult for any parent or pupil to enforce, and will give the ombudsman service an impossible job. Of course the Liberal Democrats welcome this small olive branch; we do not want to be churlish and we are grateful for all concessions. I hope that I have not struck a note that has implied any lack of charity or enthusiasm—[Interruption]—or, indeed, any churlishness, in response to these small concessions. However, they are very small concessions, they sit on top of a very big problem, and they do not address the flaws in clauses 1 to 3.