I am very grateful for that intervention. My hon. Friend raises an example—one he has raised on several occasions—that is exactly the kind of example my new clause intends to address.
The Institute of Education reported on the case of the Academy Enterprise Trust, a chain of some 80 academies, which paid nearly £500,000 into the private business interests of trustees and executives, with the payments ranging from project management to consultancy. In all cases, the services had not been put out to competitive tender and the AET’s accounts demonstrated a serious budget deficit.
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The small network of individuals who operate the relatively small network of academy chains act with little oversight or accountability from an independent body. That has harmed, and will continue to harm, the decision-making process. As my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) mentioned earlier, the Select Committee on Education has said that the funding arrangements lack transparency, because the Education Funding Agency acts as both a regulator and funder, and that they are heavily politicised and prone to favouritism. The report went on to conclude that civil servants in the EFA have become highly politicised and that schools may be given preferential treatment, leaving the EFA itself wide open to conflicts of interest. That is in the context, as we have heard, of an accountability system that goes back directly to the Secretary of State’s using private contract law rather than public law and parliamentary accountability, as applies to maintained schools.
Given that background, it is important to raise another concern: the very widespread involvement of Conservative party donors in a number of academy chains. Indeed, four of the top 12 largest academy chains have links to the Conservative party through donations. David Ross, for instance, has donated over £250,000 to the Conservative party. He runs the David Ross Foundation which has 30 academies, incorporating primary, secondary, grammar and special schools, and is looking to take over more, especially if the Bill goes through. Alan Lewis, a major Conservative donor and vice-chair of Conservatives for Business, was also initially listed as a chairman of the
Kings Science Academy, before that information disappeared from the public domain. The academy chain mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) is run by another Conservative party donor, Theodore Agnew. The trust is looking actively—some would argue aggressively—to take over more schools. Without rehearsing arguments for a different debate, it would be fair to say that there are serious local concerns about its accountability, particularly in reference to Ofsted.