Academies Bill [Lords]

I am really depressed by what is happening, particularly in relation to consultation. For years and years, quite rightly, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives attacked the previous Government for not having full consultation with people when measures such as this were going through. But to have a consultation process, or not to have a consultation process, when the people who run our schools—the teachers, the support staff, the people who do school meals and the people who clean the schools—are not even at work but are on holiday, if they can afford to take one, and to say that the head will decide and that when they come back in December they will be told what will happen to them, is clearly out of order. It is almost certainly not legal and I am convinced that there will be challenges. Let us just think about some of the things that could happen during the summer. People who may finish work this week and return in the first week in September may not have these questions answered. Will I, or will I not, still be entitled to the sickness agreements that I have had for years in my previous employment? Will I still be entitled to the same rights of annual leave? Will my salary be the same? Will my pension be the same? Will my redundancy rights be the same? Will my access to training be the same? Will my redeployment rights be the same? Will my career development still be the same? Will any rights that I have accrued in possibly decades of service for the people of my community be the same? In any normal consultation process—I have had long experience in six to 10 years of working for a local authority—under both the last Labour Government and the previous Conservative Government, even at the hardest of times, when there were real issues and really dogma-driven changes, people were still allowed the right to consult and to have their questions answered. There is no way, in six weeks, even if the staff were still at work, that these questions could be answered, and to say that this is the right way forward and to pretend that somehow it fits into the concept of the big society is clearly and utterly wrong. Staff will be going back to work in six weeks' time and they will be told by the head, by the board of governors, ““You either take it or leave it.”” That has to be wrong.