Academies Bill [HL]

I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 106—which, as I previously explained, should have been in the previous group, but it has ended up here, so I will speak to it here. It was originally intended as an addition to the amendments on consultation in the previous group proposed and spoken to by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Howe of Idlicote. I thought that rather than tabling three amendments adding on to them, I would table just one to discuss alongside them. I failed miserably, because we have to discuss it now. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that he thought that he would not be able single-handedly to persuade the coalition that this Bill should be scrapped and that we should start again. It would not take a lot to persuade me, but I do not think that I could persuade the coalition either. Even the combined forces of the noble Lord and I would not succeed in that. Therefore, we have the Bill that we have, and we have to do what the House of Lords traditionally does very well: look at the Bill, not challenge it in principle but look at how it will work, whether it will work successfully and the effect that it will have on everything else around it. That is what we are doing, and what we have to do. The amendment is about local consultation and, in particular, it is about attempting to widen the consultation and debate to the community as a whole. At Second Reading the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said that there should be an interactive relationship between schools and the community that they serve and in which they are situated. That is true; it has clearly got to be a two-way relationship and must continue whether a school is an academy, a maintained school or any other sort of school. The wider community therefore has a perfectly legitimate role in the debate that will take place in a lot of places about whether schools should become academies. If a town has one or two secondary schools, whether 11 to 16, 11 to 18 or whatever, they are important institutions in that community. They are not there to educate just those pupils who go to them at the moment; they are there to educate future pupils. Therefore, parents of future pupils, whether or not they are born, have a legitimate role in the debate. The schools may be providing community facilities—many schools do nowadays, and on an increasing scale. People who use those community facilities have a perfect right to take part in the debate. Schools very often play a role in the community in all sorts of different ways which impact on everybody. A primary school may be virtually the only public institution left in a village. There may be a post office, if you are lucky, and there will be a pub, which is semi-public, but the school is vital as part of that community. The future of that school is something in which everybody has a legitimate interest. Some people have a more legitimate interest than others. If you are employed there, if your children are there, if you are the children who are there, if you are the families of children there, you arguably have a more direct and immediate interest than somebody who is just resident in the village. That village school will play a vital part in the life of the village, and everybody ought to have the opportunity to take part in the debate and put forward their views. This is clearly true of those people who are elected to represent the people who live in those places.