I thank noble Lords for the interesting debate that we have had around accountability. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for the general support that he has given for the idea of trying to establish a greater degree of accountability within the system. I also thank him for reminding us that this is in fact a very nationalising, centralising approach to education, notwithstanding the remarks made by the Minister. In essence, all academies have to report to the Secretary of State, with one layer in between, which is the regional schools commissioner who is appointed by the Secretary of State. If that is not a centralising, nationalising approach to schools, I do not know what is. That is one of my problems with the creation of academies without any local accountability built in to the system.
Moving on to the regional schools commissioners, they are not regional in the accepted, geographic sense of the word. In my part of West Yorkshire, our regional schools commissioner is in—dare I say the word?—Lancashire. I have to tell you that it does not go down particularly well to be described as being part of the Lancashire—and a little bit of West Yorkshire—schools commissioner. I jest, in a sense, to make the point: because of the way that the regional schools commissioners are set up, they do not understand and know the regions. Most of the north-west is made up of very different communities from the old textile and engineering communities that I serve in West Yorkshire. For one man—it is a man—to try to understand and have that soft information, rather than always relying on the hard data, to make decisions about accountability is much to be regretted.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, raised the shibboleth that is democratic accountability. We need to understand both those words. We are in danger, I think, of creating an education service in this country that has no, or very little, democratic input. For a service that is for every child, regardless of background, community or place, to have no democratically elected
person to whom they can call on for help and guidance, and for those elected people to have no means by which to address those concerns, is a route down which we should not be going. Where else will those people turn? There is no point saying, as the Minister did, that parents are already writing to the reginal schools commissioners. No doubt they are—but they will not be some of the parents in the communities that I serve, for whom English is a second language and whose own literacy skills are not very good. They will not have those skills, so who does it fall on? Who in this chain will stand up for parents and their children who are not perhaps getting a fair deal locally? That is what I want to know and that is why this amendment was tabled. I have yet to hear the answers.
Those are my concerns about the words “democratic” and “accountability”. It is about having a local voice; someone who knows and who can be trusted and relied on to stand up for local people. I have yet to hear that. That is a huge shame and one that I think we will live to regret unless we create some means of achieving this outcome. Having made those remarks, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.