Education Bill

My Lords, I was a little concerned, after listening to our previous debate on searches, when we all became energised and passionately concerned about some of the dramatic situations we were envisaging, that when we came to debate something that sounds as sterile as a duty to co-operate we would not capture what this was about. I am sorry—I need to apologise to noble Lords, because I completely underestimated the ability of colleagues to see the importance of what we are talking about and to get behind the rather dry phrase, ““duty to co-operate””. I care enormously about this issue. It is one of the most significant aspects to the Bill, as my noble friend Lady Morris and others have pointed out. While I am on this subject, I have to say that I had no idea that the intervention of the noble Baronesses, Lady Sharp and Lady Walmsley, in the genesis of this legislation was partly why schools are included. That was before my time as Children’s Minister. I am full of admiration because I know the weight of opinion among civil servants in the Department for Education—with respect to those here—and that they would have resisted this like mad. Therefore, it is a tremendous achievement that the noble Baronesses managed to get it included. One of the themes in this legislation, which I am sure the Minister will rehearse, is that the Government want to reduce what they regard as burdens and unnecessary duties on schools. We all have some sympathy for the potential for innovation and creativity if we can give professions who are capable of exercising it wisely their head. However, my problem is that the Secretary of State’s view—and I absolve the Minister here from responsibility, because it is the view of the Secretary of State—that it is a good thing if he can take away every single duty and burden as he sees them, and he is not necessarily thinking judiciously about the effect of each and every one. The more he can tear up the better. To be honest with noble Lords, that genuinely causes me great disquiet because reducing requirements and duties and thinking about the impact of what you are doing is one thing. Simply to tear them up without thinking about or understanding the impact properly is quite another. The best interpretation of the Secretary of State’s proposal here is that he does not know what he is doing and does not understand the issues. I am absolutely convinced that if he understood them properly, he would not be proposing to repeal these duties on local authorities. It is incomprehensible to me—if not indefensible—that anyone should propose this if they really understand what they are doing. The amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, are a way of getting to a stand part debate. I know we will not have that later on, which is why I and others are speaking now. The noble Lord, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, gave us a history of all the inquiries, from Maria Colwell through Victoria Climbié and recently up to Peter Connelly, and their identifying the need for agencies working with children to speak together and to work together. That is a process that we still cannot say is perfect, as other Members have pointed out. It is why the legislation placed an equal duty on all those agencies—it was no greater on one than it was on another. They were the local authority and all the relevant partners, including the health, schools and employment services and the police. There is a mutual lock on all those agencies to talk and work together. To take one of those partners out of the equation, particularly the only partner that has contact with every single child over the age of five, is incomprehensible. The duty was brought in not only to address some of the failures of the past but, in recognition of the limitations of legislation, to start to change culture and practice. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that simply to remove the duty from schools would send a very bad message and cause problems. It would also start to reverse the improvements in culture and practice that we have undoubtedly seen. I know that legislation cannot determine the behaviour of single school or every single authority, but it can create a direction of travel. To repeal the provisions would be to go backwards. There is still a lot further to go. When I was Children’s Minister leading up to the implementation of the legislation, I saw that it was a matter not just of schools not co-operating. I heard many complaints from schools that had tried to engage children’s social care—they had rung up about a child. They told me, ““Do you know what? They said they can come in three weeks’ time. Well, that’s no good to me””. Reciprocity has to be developed between the key agencies. I can see the noble Lord, Lord Storey, smiling, but I can tell him that I got a lot of stick when speaking at local government conferences and directors of children’s services’ conferences, and I became well known for it, for saying, ““Come on, now. It’s not just schools; it’s you as well””. To unpick and start to weaken that apparatus by taking out schools would be very dangerous. Many noble Lords have touched on why that co-operation is still necessary. Children with special educational needs are a very important group requiring multi-agency assessment and intervention. The recently published special educational needs Green Paper, when referring to special educational needs and exclusions—a topic that we will come to shortly—states that a whole-family approach to the assessment of needs and delivery of services is necessary and that, "““we will recommend in … guidance that children are assessed through an effective multi-agency assessment for any underlying causal factors. We will suggest that schools trigger this assessment””." Here we have a Secretary of State in the Education Bill proposing to repeal the duty on schools to co-operate but envisaging, in addressing the needs of SEN children who might be excluded, that schools trigger the assessment. There seems to be a contradiction in the Government’s thinking. The assessment is essential not just for children with special educational needs, as noble Lords have mentioned, but for children at risk, for children in care, for those with mental health problems, and for children with parents who are in prison or who are abusing drugs and alcohol. There is a whole range of factors. Indeed, to promote the earlier intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, who is very experienced, schools—that universal service—are necessary to identify the problems early, to get those services in to intervene early and perhaps to prevent escalation and further problems down the line. One response that the Minister might make—his colleague Tim Loughton has referred to this as an alternative—is that schools should be formally represented on the local safeguarding children boards. That may well be a very good thing, but it is not the same as requiring each school to co-operate in the case of individual children. That raises concerns about how far Ministers understand what we are talking about with this proposal. We certainly give our intention to vote against the repeal of these two clauses when we come to Report, but I would be interested in the Minister’s response today.