Academies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I move Amendment 17. In this group is Amendment 53 on a related issue, in the name of my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby and myself, to which my noble friend will speak later. This is really about the accountability of the new academy system and of the Secretary of State when he is exercising the powers that he will have in the management of the academy system. It has been pointed out on a number of occasions in debates on this Bill that in some crucial areas the Bill represents and provides a significant increase in the powers of the Secretary of State and a significant centralisation of the education system and the school system with regard to the academies. The more academies are created, the more that will be the case. There is a movement of powers of supervision, monitoring and various other aspects that have been discussed away from local education authorities to the Secretary of State and the processes that the Secretary of State will put in place, such as through the Young People's Learning Agency. These amendments look at two aspects of this. The first is the creation of academies. There were amendments in Committee to make the academy orders—in relation to the conversion of individual schools, for example—subject to parliamentary approval. I think that there were some amendments from the Labour Front Bench suggesting that this should be the case. The argument was put forward, with, I think, considerable justification, that in most cases, or all cases, they would simply be a formality and that would clog up the system because there were going to be quite a lot of them. Rather than parliamentary approval being required for individual academies being set up or converted, however, this amendment would require parliamentary approval for the criteria by which academy arrangements will be created. It suggests that before entering into academy arrangements, the Secretary of State must make regulations that set out these criteria, and the criteria will be subject to parliamentary approval. A later amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty—Amendment 28, I think—is similar, in a sense. It refers to academy orders and says that the Secretary of State has to publish the criteria by which academy orders will be made, but it does not actually go as far as requiring parliamentary approval. Whether this is about the orders or about the arrangements—obviously they are all part and parcel of the system that is going to exist—there are important policy issues here. It is not just a question of mechanically carrying out a system of creating academies; it is a question of setting out the criteria by which academies can be created. To some extent, it is a matter of whether or not schools qualify. To another extent, it is a matter of the model academy agreement, and it may be that that agreement, which this amendment does not cover, requires some sort of parliamentary scrutiny as well. These are important issues. All these important central policy issues are being concentrated on the Secretary of State, who will have considerable power. No doubt Parliament can find ways of scrutinising these as it wishes through various parliamentary mechanisms, but there is nothing automatic in the Bill that sets that out. That is the purpose of Amendment 17: to probe, and to promote yet again the concept that when the Secretary of State is making these decisions, the basis on which he is making them—the fundamental policy—really ought to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The second amendment, which my noble friend will speak to, is about scrutiny of the system after it has been operating. It is the other side of the same coin. I beg to move.