Education Bill

My Lords, I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate. The weightiness of the contributions, whatever conclusion each noble Lord has come to, has exposed the dilemmas posed by the Government’s proposal. It will be difficult for the Government to hold the line. I say with great respect to the Minister that he did not say anything about why the reporting restrictions should not also apply to school support staff, teachers in sixth forms and further education colleges and, as we have discussed, to a whole range of other people, some of whom work much more closely and in much more intimate situations with some very challenging young people than do teachers. As far as I understood the Minister, he gave two reasons for restricting the provision initially to teachers and targeting the provision on them. First, the Minister argued that teachers had a lead role in discipline and that that placed them in a special situation. However, noble Lords have exposed the weakness of that argument. If a member of the school support staff can be in sole charge of a class for two days, they are going to have to apply discipline. Similarly, people in other situations who often deal with challenging youngsters will have to apply discipline. School support staff in the playground have to apply discipline, so I am not at all sure that it is right to justify this targeting by drawing a distinction between teachers and members of other professional groups inside and outside schools. Secondly, the Minister acknowledged the dilemmas posed by the provision but argued that it should be focused narrowly and evaluated for three or five years to see whether it needed to be applied to other groups. The previous Government provided guidance to the Association of Chief Police Officers on what information they should release to regional newspapers and on measures to speed up the investigation process, as I and my noble friend Lord Knight mentioned. We have heard no evidence from the Government on the effectiveness of those measures or how they could be strengthened as an alternative to this legislation with all its problems. The impact on people caught up in these situations is the same irrespective of whether they are school support staff or work in sixth forms or in FE. That is why the Government are introducing this measure in relation to teachers. I perfectly understand that the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Jolly, are trying to find a compromise but you can reasonably argue that school support staff are much more likely than many teachers to live very close to an education establishment and are much more likely to be known by a very large number of people beyond the parents whose children go to the school. Therefore, the reporting of allegations which are later proven to be unfounded is likely to have a much more serious impact on them because it will be picked up by the local free paper and everybody will know about that—friends, relations, everybody. That has to be considered. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, argued compellingly that the legislation will be unworkable as restrictions on the reporting of a case will apply to some members of staff but not to others even though the allegations may concern a similar incident. That could also apply to a school nurse running a clinic with a teacher present. I argued before that when we pass legislation we ought to consider the evidence of the need for it, how it should apply and the principle. The principle that I referred to was that there should be parity before the law, which ought to apply equally to people faced with different situations. Clearly that will not be the case here. In so far as the Government have given us evidence, as far as I can see it is the same quality of evidence that we have in relation to teachers from the teaching unions as we have in relation to support staff and FE lecturers. We do not have a different quality or quantity of evidence supporting the case for targeting teachers. I hesitate to say this because I do not want to appear divisive, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is another populist proposal from the Secretary of State that is ill considered, unfair and will have serious implications for many individuals. The excellent debate today has exposed that. I concur with my noble friend Lord Knight and others; if we are to legislate to protect people in schools, we ought to do it properly. We have had an excellent debate. I have no doubt that we will return to this matter and beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 73E withdrawn. Amendments 73F to 73H not moved.