Academies Bill [Lords]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hoyle. This is the first time that I have had the honour of speaking when you are in the Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) because he makes a very important point. We have had a helpful debate on all the issues over the three or four days of consideration of the Bill, and it has been remarkable how much common ground has been found, even by those who are diametrically opposed to the idea of academies. Several of us have seen the merits of some of the issues, and the debate as a whole has been fair and frank. I suspect that the Minister has also found some of the comments helpful in framing the final form of the legislation and the detail that is provided to future academies. I support the amendment, because the effect of a large secondary school on the social fabric of a community—with possibly an increased role in the future—is important for social cohesion. I had hoped that we would consider new clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), because that talks specifically about the importance of social cohesion. If that obligation were in the Bill, there would be no going back on the school's commitment to the community. I have been a governor of schools where the local authority put in money for community facilities—such as a nursery—and bit by bit those services, which were additional to the school, disappeared, because of the weight of numbers. First, we lost the community room, and then the nursery. Those community facilities are not paid for by the education budget, but by the general rate fund—and in large council estates by the housing revenue account—but the pressure of numbers at the school means that they are lost to the community. The investment needed to make real social cohesion work in large secondary schools, in both rural and urban areas, but especially in large schools in densely populated urban areas, is important not only to the school, but to the whole community. I want to see our academies, and all our schools, used seven days a week, with proper facilities being offered and without the restriction of governors saying that they do not want strangers in the building. Social cohesion means that the school can be used on a Sunday afternoon if someone is prepared to put the money in to pay the caretaker, not that the facilities are jealously guarded by the school as if they are only for its use. If this is going to work, we have to accept that these schools are an integral part of community provision. Sadly—[Interruption.] I thought that the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) wished to intervene. He was either yawning or mumbling about his leadership bid.