My Lords, I too thank my noble friend the Minister for listening, I think she has had a torrid time over the last six weeks, and has done it with great courtesy and patience. I am delighted that she is leading on the removal of these first 18 clauses. I am anxious for the Minister to reassure us, as many other Peers have said, that we will see properly the outcome of the regulatory review that has just been kicked off, because that always was putting the cart before the horse. We need to understand exactly what the Government have in mind, and to make sure that it is proportional and specific.
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I was given one explanation by officials: that I could rely on the principle that government will always act in a proportional way. I am afraid that I have very little faith in that, and the only defence we have in public law is a judicial review. Very few academy trusts would have the resources or the courage to bring that against the Government, knowing that if they lost, they would have the costs from the Government as well. So I ask that, maybe not today but in the course of this process over the next few weeks, the Minister gives us reassurance. For example, on the slightly pernicious reference to “interim trustees”, who essentially arrive as completely powerful and able to kill off everybody in the trust and take full control, there needs to be a very specific set of reasons why something so drastic could ever happen.
I also ask that the Minister reassure us that the academy freedoms will be carefully spelt out, because that is an important principle which brings people such as me into this movement. If I am just going to be put into a bureaucratic straitjacket and told from Whitehall how to educate children, why would I bother to do it? Whitehall and DfE need to understand that the inputs needed in different communities are radically different. As I have said to the Minister before, we have two primary schools in Norwich that are two miles apart, and we use a completely different form of education in each to reflect the very different types of children we are dealing with. This is really important. I ask the Government: please do not dictate inputs to us. We have a primary school in Great Yarmouth which has finally got a good rating for the first time in the history of Ofsted’s existence. Is that some 40 years? I do not know. I think my noble friend set up Ofsted; it
was a long time ago. The school has been through every permutation of educational pedagogy, and we have finally found the formula. Nobody in Whitehall came up with those answers.
Lastly, on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, over the last few weeks we have seen demonstrated what I would call the overweening will of the Executive. Frankly, they have just ploughed forward against the interests of my noble friend the Minister—and of the Secretary of State, as far as I was aware, because I had direct conversations with him about this Bill as soon as I understood the full extent of it. So, on the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, it is very important that the Executive not be able to just bulldoze their own agendas through. However, I thank my noble friend the Minister again, and I am delighted that these clauses are being withdrawn.