Education Bill

My Lords, I do not want to oppose any of the amendments that the Minister has tabled but I want to sound a cautionary note and put it on the record following our extensive discussion of the principles underlining the Government’s proposals in Clause 13. We had an extensive debate in Grand Committee and part of it was around the question that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, put acutely: whether the Government had made the case that teachers are in a unique position in relation to allegations of abuse, such that the restriction on reporting was justified. He said that, "““if Clause 13 goes through unamended, it will repose in the teaching profession a privilege unique in English law””.—[Official Report, 6/7/11; col. GC 158.]" I want to preface my remarks with great concern for any person in any profession against whom allegations of child abuse are made and are not true. I completely understand the concerns about blighting a career and suspending a person in an anxious time while investigations take place. I have a son who is a teacher at a primary school and many sisters and some brothers-in-law who are teachers, so I am appraised of and concerned about that side of the argument. I also understand why the teaching unions make it. However, I am also concerned about safeguarding children and that is the difficult territory that we are in here. The Government offered, in response to our debate in Grand Committee, to do some research to see what the figures were. That research has now been published and was referred to in the press at the weekend. When noble Lords look at the figures, they will see that of the cases examined—more than 12,000 where allegations were referred to local authority designated officers—under a quarter were in relation to teachers. If you add in the smaller, but none the less substantial, numbers of non-teaching school support staff, it is still well under a half of all the allegations. It is more telling that for teachers—this was the headline in the press—nearly half of the allegations, which came to 2,800 cases, were classified as unsubstantiated. This does not mean that there was no truth in the allegation but that the threshold of evidence for prosecution could not be reached. This is difficult territory because most of those allegations will depend only on the word of the pupil against that of the teacher. There will not be witnesses present in most of those allegations. ““Unsubstantiated”” means that there was insufficient evidence to proceed; it is not a judgment about whether the allegations were true. Even more telling than that is that only 2 per cent of the allegations against teachers and FE lecturers were classified as malicious. The guidance issued by the Government in August makes great play of, and refers extensively to, malicious allegations, and yet we now have from the research a finding that only 2 per cent of allegations were malicious. I am not going to oppose the amendments. I understand why the Government have acceded to the pressure from the unions, although we decided at the time, because of the problems that arise and the concerns about safeguarding, not to accede to that pressure because it opens up the other argument about where to draw the line. As I say, there were smaller but substantial numbers of non-teaching staff—some 1,700—against whom allegations were also made. I simply sound a cautionary note to the Minister. I hope that we do not find further down the line that a serial abuser—there have been serial abusers in schools—gets away with abuse over a long period because none of his—they are generally men—crimes could be reported because the evidence in relation to each one never reached the threshold for prosecution. I hope that in passing this legislation we are not responsible for the preventable abuse of any child. I say this without wanting to castigate the Government, but it is very difficult territory and I am not sure we are in the right place. I understand why the Government have done this but we will have to watch the situation very carefully.