My Lords, the inspiration for this amendment, I am afraid, is much of what we have already heard about, which is the idea that the Government are basically going to change standards by statutory instrument, possibly with the affirmative procedure. Although the Minister has said that there will be structures and other things in place, nothing in the Bill says how this is going to take place and what will go on.
The Government should regard this as a helpful suggestion about where they could start from. Anybody looking on from the outside will know what these changes are going to be; there will be a consultation period when the Government bring something forward. Let us face it: we are talking about schools, and they happen to work in something called the school year. There is a certain amount of time before you can get regulations and changes in place, and I would have thought that a six-month period within a school year was a reasonable amount of time to try to undertake the discussion. The 13-week chunks are taken from the most recent example of something which I hope will bring positive examples to the Department for Education: the consultation on special educational needs. I remind the House of my interests in that field. Could the Minister tell us why we would not have a compulsory period in which we will discuss a new idea—in which the Government will publish what they have, take on board what is said about it and then give us a response?
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It will be quicker than a Bill—apparently, speed matters here, if we follow the Government’s logic—but it will not be that long. However, we would know what was going on. I do not particularly like that approach, but it would make it slightly more palatable. You would know what is going on and why it is happening. You would get an answer back and know what you are disagreeing with. To an opposition Member of Parliament, that is about as good as it gets, is it not? You know why you are disagreeing with someone. I would therefore hope that the Minister when she replies will be able to tell us, if this is not the right way forward, why not? If this is being done somewhere else, can she tell us where—where is it written down that guarantees that it will happen?
If you are going down the secondary legislation route, there is one little thing here about the use of the affirmative procedure: we are not exactly encouraged to vote against it, are we? We are not exactly told, “Yes, of course, reject it and send it back.” Something is presented to Parliament which we can vote on but there is a cry of shock and horror if you challenge it.