Education Bill

My Lords, my name is attached to all the government amendments bar one. As the Minister said, these amendments arise out of the debate in Grand Committee and I welcome them all. The only amendment about which I have reservations —because I do not understand it—is the first one, which would insert ““or may be”” in line 12 on page 20. It would then say that: "““This section applies where a person who is or may be employed or engaged as a teacher””." Perhaps the Minister could explain the purport of that insertion when he responds. The only thing I cannot resist saying is that sometimes we make life difficult for ourselves—or, more truthfully, for those who have to understand this legislation. There are two references in Amendment 49 to ““a matter””. It states that, "““the person who is the subject of the allegation includes a matter in a publication””." Such arcane language is surely to be avoided if at all possible. Why we cannot say ““includes information in a publication”” I do not know, except that there is reference in an earlier subsection to ““matter””. Amendments 48 and 51 concern a more important issue. They represent the two most important amendments I put forward in Grand Committee, which the Government decided not to accept. I have reworded the second of these amendments, Amendment 51, but the first is more or less verbatim the amendment that was argued in Committee. I remind the House that in Committee on 6 July—in cols. GC 158 to 178—not a single Member of the Committee objected to any of the amendments put forward, largely for the reasons that we have just heard. In my view, and I think in that of all who have spoken so far in relation to Clause 13, this is utterly wrong in principle. As has already been said, it will be the first time in English law that free speech has been curtailed in this way and where a statement that is true can be the subject of a criminal prosecution. It is not an issue just of press freedom but of individual freedom. It will curtail the freedom of speech no less of worried parents or guardians. The full panoply of criminal law can be arraigned against a parent who suffers the greatest anxiety in relation to a child, where the child maintains that he or she is being abused. The parent is prevented by law from publicising the allegation of the child, however true, and for what? To protect teachers. There is no one in this House more admiring of teachers than I am. I find myself in a very strange position on this clause. I wish it were not teachers at whom I seem to be aiming my gun. Freedom of speech and protection of children come before the pain and embarrassment which undoubtedly occur for some teachers with regard to false allegations. I have to say—I do not like saying it—that my Government are bending over so far to placate the teaching profession, and perhaps make up a little to that profession for other actions that they have opposed, that they are committing us to a law which our successors will think was a blot on the great and fundamental freedom of speech that is indispensable, particularly today. I was a governor for 10 years of one comprehensive school and of another comprehensive school as a parent governor. My wife is a state school teacher. The prejudice that I have is for the teaching profession but I do not speak from ignorance. I should quickly say what I said last time: it is almost a declaration of interest. I was unfortunately at a school where a predatory pederast was allowed for 12 years to do his doleful work. He eventually resigned or was dismissed—one does not know which—in the middle of a term. He was never seen again and absolutely nothing was made of it although he had blighted the lives of dozens of children. The reason that nothing was heard of it is the reason why nothing is heard of these cases in today’s educational world. It is no good the Minister saying that there are regulations for this and obligations to report on that. For schools that suffer some of the worst abuses—fortunately they are few—the truth is that the cost to the school’s reputation and standing of the truth being publicised will be devastating. Often, as in my own case, the governors hushed up the whole grisly affair, as governors today will, if they can, hush up grisly affairs of a comparable nature. That is why I have put forward these amendments and persist in them. The other thing that needs to be said, loud and clear, is that the law is sometimes unable to deal with all the subtleties of the human condition in a way that perfectly answers all aspects of the matter. That is why we have the burden of proof in criminal law of ““beyond reasonable doubt””, and that burden of proof which will come to the aid of a teacher if he or she is prosecuted. In the same way as having that bias, which I wholly approve of, there is another bias which is in favour of children, who are even more vulnerable than teachers. This legislation—let us make no bones about it—tilts the bias in favour of the teaching profession against children. Why? Because the criminal prohibition on any publicity in relation to teacher abuse, prior to charge, will in many cases—I would go so far as to say the majority of cases—come to the aid of the small number of abusive teachers that there are because the necessary evidence to bring a prosecution against a teacher, and a very important prosecution it would be, will never become available to the prosecuting authorities precisely because there is no publicity about the allegation. That publicity may well be the only opportunity of winkling out other pupils who have suffered the same abuse and who have hitherto kept their heads down. There is no jibbing the fact that this prohibition will protect that tiny number of abusive teachers who go about their shameful work by keeping from local communities the fact that, for example, a teacher has been suspended or even dismissed. As noble Lords will have noticed, my first amendment—Amendment 48—would take off this cap on free speech in circumstances where the teacher in respect of whom the allegation was made by a young person resigned or was dismissed. How can it conceivably be just, fair or prudent, or be balancing the scales of justice fairly, still to prevent any information about that allegation coming into the public realm in those circumstances where a teacher has, I repeat, resigned or been dismissed? It defies my understanding. I realise what a difficult task the Minister has tonight in defending these provisions. The Government will of course say, and the Minister has said, ““You can go to the court and get it to lift the cap on free speech””. Yes, you can, but how many parents are going to run up the very considerable cost of going to court? How many are going to do that, even if they are aware of their right under this legislation to go to a court to seek that remedy? Again, it is closing our eyes to reality to pretend that that is a sufficient counter to this cap on free speech. Then it will be said by the Minister, as he said it last time in summing up, that we should leave it to the prosecuting authorities and the regulators. I have an excerpt from his speech: ““It is our view””—the Government’s view— "““that once allegations have been reported through the proper channels to the police, the local authority and the school, it is for those authorities to investigate and establish if the allegations can be substantiated, and in the mean time to take proper precautions to safeguard the interests of … children””.—[Official Report, 6/7/11; col. GC 169.]" The way to safeguard the proper interests of children is to allow information about this state of affairs to come into the public realm; to allow the newspaper to say a teacher has been suspended or a teacher has resigned in circumstances it will go on to enumerate. To pretend that going through the proper channels, as it was put, is a substitute for free speech and the right of an individual to speak truly about a matter of public interest is, I am afraid, bizarre and so far against the traditions of free speech in this country as to be amazing to me. I am ashamed that my Government are doing this. I want to say a word, as I did last time, about the difficulties of bringing prosecutions in respect of adult abuse of children. Any lawyer who practises in the court—and I at one stage spent a long time practising as an advocate in criminal court—will tell you that the most difficult prosecution to bring is abuse against a child. The prosecuting authorities quite rightly will only subject a child to the appalling rigours of going into court and reliving the experience in public if they are confident that they can carry the prosecution through. In that regard I need hardly say that corroboration is the key. Usually an abuser will abuse a child in private. That is patently obvious. Getting corroborative evidence to bring a prosecution is extremely difficult and the best corroboration comes from another pupil or former pupil or another person—it need not be a pupil—who has been abused by the same person. That is another reason why the argument advanced by the Government to deny my Amendment 48 is wholly fallacious. It is no good saying, ““Leave it to the police; leave it to the school authorities and the Secretary of State. They will do it all perfectly right and dandy””. They will not because the police will in many cases be prevented from bringing the prosecution at all. Until there is a charge the cap on freedom of speech is not lifted. Similarly, I need hardly say to anybody involved in education or indeed the police that whether or not you get the sort of perfect treatment the Government assume everybody will get in these circumstances depends on the conditions prevailing at the time: the number of police available to do this job rather than 150 others; whether the head teacher at the school concerned has the time and energy to deal with a matter in a certain way when dealing with it properly will possibly bring the school a welter of publicity that could be of the most damaging kind. I am long enough in the tooth to know that the procedures that should be followed are often not, and I repeat that with prosecutions it is an issue of evidence in any event. The curtailment of free speech can only be justified by absolutely compelling and utterly irresistible arguments. We simply have not had them. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said in answer to the inquiries about the Government that the Government did not routinely collect statistics on these matters and in particular on pre-charge publicity—do not let us forget that this clause is about publicity before charge. It is not about the number of allegations made. It is about the number of cases of publicity before charge that identify a teacher. Noble Lords may remember that the report managed to come up with six cases of publicity before charge. The six cases appear on page 63 of the Joint Committee’s June report. Four of them related to newspapers that had reported suspensions and the other two were cases where the newspaper had reported arrests. All those reports are colourless, factual and minimalist. The notion that they are some sort of bandwagon reporting that hypes up the circumstances to the unfair embarrassment of teachers is simply unsustainable. I repeat that the only six cases of pre-charge publicity the report was able to come up with are those six—four involving suspensions and two involving arrests. NASUWT was asked to see if it could find evidence and it came up with five cases. However, three of those concerned publicity about trials, not pre-charge publicity, so they were irrelevant. The other two concerned acquittals. The latest evidence that we have, which comes from a consultancy—I think that it is called York Consulting LLP—provides completely irrelevant statistics. Not a single statistic that it presents has anything to do with pre-charge publicity.