My Lords, I must take issue with the statement from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that the teaching in public schools is always better than that in state schools. I might well take issue with that but I certainly do not take issue with the fact that they have much better facilities, and that is what this is really all about.
We do not need to rehearse yet again the long-standing and tortuous arguments about what constitutes public benefit. In my intervention last week about funding the Charity Commission I talked about the quid pro quo that charities would expect in return for contributing to the funding of their regulator. Here we focus on another quid pro quo: in addition to the huge advantage that charitable status confers, independent schools are encouraged to further engage with local communities and make their facilities available for sports and arts purposes. Noble Lords have acknowledged that there is a lot of this about. There is some very good practice and it relates not only to the last Charities Bill. I remember that when I chaired the New Opportunities Fund, which did a great deal of work putting lottery money into schools, there were some excellent examples
of co-operation between public and state schools. As we have hard, though, it is very patchy. Too many of the sharing facilities and projects that go on are dependent on the history of relationships between that school and its local community. Even more concerning is that they are sometimes dependent on relationships between individuals, usually teachers. This is not satisfactory.
Facilities and coaching are important, as we have heard, so far as sport, arts and music are concerned, and they are disproportionately available in the public school sector. Only this morning, we heard that the Olympic legacy has not been realised so far as participation is concerned, and too many independent schools think it sufficient to say that facilities are available to local communities whenever their own students do not need them or they are not in use. When one headmaster was asked when the facilities were available, he said, “Any evening after 9 pm or any bank holiday, but funnily enough no one seems to want them then”. Quite.
I very much support these amendments. The only anxiety I have is one that we have raised many times before in this Bill—the issue of giving the Charity Commission more responsibility without increasing its resources. This is quite a heavy policing function that would be placed on it, and that will need to be taken into consideration, but I support the amendment.