Education Bill

My Lords, when I tabled the amendments to Clause 13, I thought that I would leave it at that. However, as I delved more deeply into the background to the clause, had conversations particularly with the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, and read carefully the 13th report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which was published on the 13 June, I became more and more concerned about the blatant lack of any satisfactory evidential base to support what is, on any reckoning, a very major change in the law of this land. It is the first time in our history that such privilege has been given to a protected group. I want, therefore, to test with the House a little further the whole notion of Clause 13 being removed from the Bill. Many noble Lords have already said that it poses all sorts of technical and other problems. I noted that, in her opening on the previous group of amendments, the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, expressed some concern about the whole position and about the whole of Clause 13. The noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, was clearly concerned. My noble friend Lord Black and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, were among a number of noble Lords who directly challenged the need for Clause 13 and several others who have hinted at it. So I hope that noble Lords will bear with me if I plod, as I have to, through the specifics of the factual base which the Government say justifies this novel provision, which, let us not forget, strikes at the heart of freedom of the press, law and order, and open justice. My first point is that the JCHR report to which I have just referred put questions to the Secretary of State for Education. The 13th question was: "““In each of the last three years, how many examples is the Government aware of in which allegations against teachers have been made public before charge?””." The Committee will appreciate that that is the very heart of Clause 13. Publicity after charge is unaffected by the Bill. It is still a highly complex subject, even after charge, but unless there is clear and voluminous evidence that criminal allegations against teachers have been made public before charge, I submit that there is no ground for Clause 13. What was the reply of the Secretary of State to this pregnant question? It was: "““The Department does not routinely collect this data””." The next question from the Joint Committee—question 14—asked the Government for, "““specific examples … of allegations against teachers””—" again, before charge. They came up with just six cases, referred to in their human rights memorandum. I urge Members, if they are interested, to read the reports of those six cases on page 63 of the June report. Each is a verbatim transcription of the pre-charge press report in each of the six cases. There is nothing but what was actually published on those six occasions: no spin, no colour, nothing. Four of the excerpts from pre-charge publication detailed the suspension of the teachers concerned and two of them detailed their arrests. I emphasise that they were dry and factual; there was no colour and no tendentiousness. None of the reports took more than four lines. That did not stop the Government from asserting, in paragraph 114 of their extremely long and careful response to the Joint Committee on Human Rights: "““In the examples that the Government has of allegations against teachers being published before charge, the Government is satisfied that in the majority of cases there was no overriding public interest in””," publishing allegations at an early stage. But how many cases were there? Six—and, as I said, in four of those cases there had already been a suspension, in two there had been an arrest and in none of them was there any additional comment. In advancing the case for the need for Clause 13, the Government relied principally on what they were told by NASUWT, because these six other cases came by another route. The union was extremely professional and open in providing me with further information in addition to that which it gave to the Government and the JCHR, and which appears in tabulated form on pages 62 and 63 of the JCHR’s 13th report. NASUWT gave me brief details of five further cases of the publicising of allegations against teachers which it obtained from its solicitors, yet the majority of those five cases do not involve any pre-charge publicity at all. They were all newspaper reports of trials—mainly acquittals. Even on the issue of the number of allegations made against teachers, which my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford made quite a bit of in responding to the set of amendments before the ones that I advance now, the Government appear to have misinformed themselves. The Minister, Nick Gibbs, said in the other place on 22 March that, "““since 1991 the number of allegations””—" against teachers— "““had increased, and … the majority of allegations made against teachers were false or malicious””.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 22/3/11; col. 553.]" Both those points were reiterated by the JCHR in its June report, but the statistics show otherwise. Over the past 10 years, in the statistics for 2000 to 2010 from NASUWT on cases brought to it of teacher involvement with criminal allegations, the average number of reported allegations per year is 181. However, for the past three years there has been a decline: in 2008, not 181 but 148; in 2009, 115; and, last year, 107. Yet the Minister in the other place said that the number of allegations had increased, which is simply wrong. Further, the NASUWT figures do not state how many allegations were false, let alone malicious. Many allegations fizzle out because of insufficient evidence or corroboration, or because other aspects of the case cause difficulty. I have mentioned the age of witnesses, for example. Your Lordships should also not forget that the authorities involved in schools and in prosecutions, with the police and the courts, are all incredibly overstretched and are usually making choices between a superfluity of cases which they could prosecute. Again, it seems that the Government are working blind on this. Incidentally, the ATL provided the Government with some rather bald statistics from a survey that it did in 2009—no details of which are given in any of the documentation. It stated that 50 per cent of teachers said that they or a colleague had had false allegations made against them. The fact that some of these allegations were second or third hand, with no indication of whether they were in respect of criminal behaviour by a teacher, and most of all, of whether there was any pre-charge publicity, makes those statistics wholly unreliable as a basis for supporting a change in the law of this importance. In case any Member of the Committee thinks that the number of convictions, including cautions, is insignificant in relation to the number of allegations, the NASUWT figures show that in 2009, 15 per cent of all allegations resulted in cautions or convictions. That is not an insignificant number.