My Lords, I rise yet again. This substantial group is about intervention and termination powers. Most of the group is made up of stand part debates on a series of clauses. My amendments are about a level of accountability for the Secretary of State around the use of powers. The clauses we will be thinking about in this group relate to the power for the Secretary of State to give compliance directions, give a notice to improve to an academy provider, impose directors on the trust and then, if none of that works, terminate both the single academy agreements and the master agreements, perhaps after seven years’ notice by mutual consent or if the academies are perceived to be failing, if the trust becomes insolvent, after failure to address concerns or after warning notices. That is what the set of clauses that we are about to debate is all about. They are substantial and, in my judgment, overweening, and that is why I have also signed up to the stand part debates in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Agnew, Lord Nash and Lord Baker.
My problem at its heart is the sense that the Secretary of State becomes judge, jury and executioner. The Secretary of State is taking powers, essentially, I think in reality, through a network of regional directors, as they are now called, and officials appointed on a regional basis. They will be monitoring the performance of academies across anything and everything they do and will then be suggesting to academies that do not do what they want that they have this huge range of powers and will make them do as they are told. I am mindful of the discussion we had earlier, what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said and the advice from Stone King about how that might impinge on the independence of the trustees of multi-academy trusts. I was grateful to hear the Minister’s reassurance that the Government have been given legal advice that it will not, but I still have concerns.
My amendments would add in Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, and once it has made a judgment about a multi-academy trust—yes, my amendment says that Ofsted should now inspect multi-academy trusts as a whole, not just the individual academies—that can act as a trigger; it is acting as the judge or jury and the Secretary of State can then act as the executioner. An independent party will have been able to have a look at it, and one would assume that Ofsted, in coming up with its framework for how to inspect multi-academy trusts, would be informed by the academy standards that eventually, in one form or another, we think will be in place.
I would anticipate that the MAT inspection would look at the educational quality and safeguarding and governance arrangements and ensure they were sound, and at the trust’s compliance with various regulations, including financial. When that judgment is passed, action can be taken. All my amendment seeks to do, whether perfectly or imperfectly, is to introduce that.
In thinking about the stand part debates, of course there are questions about some of these clauses. Clause 6, which provides the power to give notice to improve, as I interpret it, reflects the academy agreement academy
by academy, rather than the master agreement with the whole academy trust. Clause 6(4) includes the phrase “make representations”. I should be interested to know to whom—one assumes the Secretary of State. In a world where every one of 25,000 schools is an academy, one assumes that they will not all be failing at once. Let us say that the figure is 1%, if we are generous, which is 250 schools at once making representations. In reality, they will be made not to the Secretary of State but to the regional directors. I should be interested to know how the Minister sees the representations process working, because it is as close to some sense of appeal as we have in the clause. Subsection 5 says that the Secretary of State “may make regulations”. Will those regulations be one by one, school by school? Perhaps that gives a little bit of power to Parliament, but I should be interested in some clarification of that.
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Subsection (6) seems pretty wild:
“A notice to improve may … require the proprietor to obtain the Secretary of State’s consent for”
almost anything they then do. What is the point of carrying on chairing a trust or being on the trust board if every decision you make is then subject to Secretary of State approval? That seems a bit wild to me.
I am struggling the most with Clause 7, on the powers to appoint or require the appointment of directors. Obviously, I want Ofsted to be the trigger, but I am still concerned about how this will work. For those who are not involved in multi-academy trusts, we have members and members of the trust board, and the members of the MAT appoint the trustees, the members of the trust board. Clause 7(2) proposes that the Secretary of State directs “the proprietor”. Is that a direction to the members to use their powers and responsibility, when they meet annually, to reappoint the trustees? Is the proprietor in this context the members, who then appoint the people the Secretary of State chooses, or is it directing the trust board, in which case, it is subverting the role of the members altogether, which feels quite challenging? The only point I could find at which the legislation mentions members is in Clause 7(2)(c), where it refers to
“the proprietor and its members”.
That suggests that the reference in paragraph (a) is to the proprietor being the trust board, so it feels to me as if the members are being undermined by this clause, which is problematic.
Then there is the fundamental policy question about remuneration in subsection (5). I am not absolutely against remuneration. I spend many days every month chairing a multi-academy trust board for nothing, and there are times when my family question why I do that, so part of me is sympathetic to the idea of some remuneration, but how will it look in practice? There is the issue of motivating people like me to do this for nothing, who then see this other bunch of people who suddenly start getting paid. Will that not raise the question in my mind and that of other trust board members of whether that is fair and whether they should be paid? A potential financial pressure might
be being created there. My more significant worry is that the regional directors will end up having a bunch of usual suspects they go to—they will probably be consultants—who will end up being paid to sit on boards as interim trustees.
Perhaps this is how I satisfy my family: perhaps I will chair the trust board, become a usual suspect and be asked every now and then to sit on an interim board and turn it around, for my sins. Perhaps I will get three, four or five and it might end up being a living; I do not know. I am interested how this will work in practice, because my sense is that we will have quite a number of MATs where these intervention powers may be necessary at different times, and I should like to know how that is likely to play out.
Finally, perhaps the Minister could reflect on the interplay between master agreements and individual academy agreements, which feels quite muddled as I read through this set of clauses. As a MAT, a single problem in one of your academies, if people do not like the cut of your jib, could end up with you having the master agreement taken away and losing the whole thing. All of this feels disproportionate; none of it feels well thought out. It all feels very rushed, as ever with this Bill, and yet again, my plea to the Government is to take some time, do the regulatory review, publish the outcome of the consultation on the review and come back on Report with something informed by the sector and by proper consultation. I beg to move.