Academies Bill [HL]

My Lords, Amendments 34, 35, 36, 37 and 54 are clarificatory amendments. Amendments 34, 35, 36 and 37 are intended to reflect the fact that the powers in Clauses 6 and 7 are intended to be used only when the school is very close to finalising funding arrangements with the Secretary of State, not merely because an academy order has been made. Amendment 54 is necessary because the phrase "converted into", which is currently found only in Clause 4(4), is now more widely used in the Bill. As noble Lords have previously commented, academy conversion is a two-stage process involving the making of an academy order and the agreeing of funding arrangements. These amendments ensure that should negotiations between the school and the Secretary of State not result in a final funding agreement being signed, there can be no question of the property transfer or financial balance powers being used. There would, of course, be no intention to use these powers other than to enable a school to make the necessary transition with all of its possessions, but we felt that this would make the position clearer. Amendments 42, 43 and 44 provide further strengthening of the regime already contained in the Bill to provide protection for investments of public money into land held by schools and local authorities. The Bill’s provisions currently protect publicly funded maintained school land after a school becomes an academy by allowing the Secretary of State to make directions on the transfer of that land, should the academy close or vacate the site. However, as it stands, those protections apply only where interest in the land was transferred to the academy upon its conversion. If the foundation owning the land did not transfer it or any interest in it to the academy in the first place, then the public interest in the land would not currently protect it if the school were to close thereafter. I am grateful to the Catholic Education Service for bringing this issue to our attention. We have made clear the importance of protecting investments of public money. This amendment therefore inserts a new provision to ensure that the powers to direct the transfer of land that was previously used for an academy also apply in circumstances where the land is retained by the existing foundation and used in any way for the purposes of the academy. It simply seeks to ensure that all possible and likely scenarios around land are covered equally and in a way that protects public investment in them. I beg to move.