My Lords, I very much welcome the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I am not sure whether her suggestion is exactly right but the principles that she raises are very important. They concern local democratic accountability and they also concern what she described as flaws in the governance structure of academies, particularly multi-academies. I share her view on both points.
The noble Baroness suggested that we look at the health model and I think that she is right. One thing that puzzles me about academy trusts is that they do not seem to allow for a direct relationship between the governance and the parents, except in the circumstances
that she has described. I suggest that we look at NHS foundation trusts, which after all were developed at around the same time.
I know that the education department is very isolated in Whitehall and this is yet another example of that, but the ownership of an NHS foundation trust is rooted in patients, staff and members of the public, because they become members without paying any cost and it is the members who elect the governing council. The governing council, in turn, appoints the non-executives and the chairman to the board and approves the appointment of the chief executive. The board of directors is a statutory body. It is the board that you sue and harangue if things go wrong, but it is accountable locally through a very well-ordered structure and it carries with it a much better sense of accountability. There is a clear line of responsibility with a proper board of directors. There is no problem about its legal responsibilities and it is accountable. When I chaired a foundation trust, the fact that I had to appear before the governors’ council every month or so to explain the trust’s problems and what we were doing about them was a very good discipline. It was not a very easy discipline—I confess that I did not enjoy doing it—but it was an immeasurably strengthening exercise, and I think that the noble Baroness is trying to get at that in part of her amendment.
The noble Baroness also raises the whole question of the local authority’s role in the education policy that the Government are developing. I refer back to a point raised by my noble friend Lord Knight during our first day in Committee. He basically said that if the Government want all schools to be academies, why do they not just say so and bring in legislation? Why do we have to have this rather obscure, backwards way of academising all schools? That is basically dishonest. I hope that the Minister might just praise a maintained school—he has four hours in which to do so but I have yet to hear him ever praise a maintained school. Clearly, he has an ideological problem with maintained schools. That is why we remain suspicious of the Bill and some of the motivations behind it.
3.45 pm
I would like to ask the Minister a straight question. In November 2010, we had the White Paper of this Government—although no doubt they will say that it was the coalition Government’s—which said:
“Local authorities will, over time, also play a role in commissioning new provision and overseeing the transition of failing schools to new management. We will consult with local authorities and Academy sponsors on what role local authorities should play as strategic commissioners when all schools in an area have become Academies”.
Can I now take it that, essentially, that White Paper is withdrawn and the truth is that the Government see no role for local government whatever in education in the future?
I come now to the letter that the noble Lord wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Lang, the chairman of the Constitution Committee, on 5 November. That letter was circulated just before our sitting today. The criticism that the Constitution Committee makes is that the provisions of the Bill, in respect of both education and adoption, go against the Government’s localism agenda.
That is something that I raised last week, only to be told by the Minister that I was enunciating political theory. I thought that what I was talking about was the Government’s localism policy. If the noble Lord had read the letter that was written to him by the chairman of the Constitution Committee, he would have noted the speech of his right honourable friend the Chancellor of Exchequer, who said that,
“we all know that the old model of trying to run everything in our country from the centre of London is broken”.
He was speaking in Manchester; it was all about the northern powerhouse and the agreement and memorandum of understanding reached between himself and the combined authorities in Greater Manchester.
The Constitution Committee has pointed out that there seems to be huge tension between the Government’s overall policy on devolution and the Education Department’s approach to schools. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, in his remarkable letter to the noble Lord, Lord Lang, says that, in fact, the Constitution Committee is wrong and apparently this Bill is entirely consistent with the Government’s localism agenda. You could have fooled me. Decisions about school improvement are apparently going to be made by people with a real understanding of local needs and priorities, but these people are the regional schools commissioners—who do not, I think, have any sense of local accountability, do they? I rather thought that their only accountability was to Ministers. I do not see how that fits with the localism agenda. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, goes on to say that the proposals in the Bill are in keeping with the Government’s wider devolution commitments. The RSCs certainly do not have devolved responsibility; they have delegated responsibility, or have I got that wrong? There is a huge difference between devolvement and delegation.
I come back again to the localism agenda. In Greater Manchester, and potentially Cornwall, the whole of health and social care is going to be handed over by central government to the combined authorities at local government level. So why is education being completely ring-fenced from any of those factors? It is a puzzle to me.