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Education and Inspections Bill

I support new clause 16, proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) in favour of ballots, and I want briefly to speak in support of the three amendments tabled in my name. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made a powerful case in his opening statement for the Bill as it now stands. I shall support it on Third Reading because it is in much better shape than we were led to believe would be the case when the White Paper was published. Its long-term and short-term effects will actually be slightly less than its most fervent advocates hoped and its fiercest opponents feared. It will not be earth-shattering legislation but it has many important provisions, especially on school discipline, the reform of the curriculum, school travel and school meals, quite apart from the changes in governance and structure, which will be beneficial. I shall support new clause 16 because I tabled an amendment on similar lines in Committee; it was not put to the vote, but the arguments were valid. However, I approach the question of ballots from a slightly different point of view. I start from the Education Reform Act 1988. It is interesting that a number of Conservative speakers, including Front-Bench Members, now accept that their ballot system, introduced under that Act, was a mistake. But had that legislation not included provision for ballots, what would have been the position of the Labour Opposition at the time? Would we have accepted that it was entirely legitimate for a simple majority in a governing body to opt out of the local authority, with the huge additional resources that went with that, without further consultation with parents? Of course not. We thought that the ballot process in the 1988 Act was necessary. We participated in many ballots across the country and ensured that fierce local debate took place. We also ensured that when the result of the ballot had been announced it settled the issue, because the ballot conferred legitimacy. I take a slightly different view because I do not fully accept the argument that new clause 16 would reduce the number of schools that will opt for trust status. The advantage of a ballot is that it would encourage much better-informed debate about the implications of transfer to trust status. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), who made an interesting speech, pointed out that people are naturally conservative and reluctant to change. That is a reasonable generalisation when the status quo is acceptable but when it is not, and when parents are conscious of difficulties in respect of their children’s education or the capacity of their school, they are very open to alternative ways forward. That is why the use of a ballot would provide far better-informed local debate and would not necessarily result in a reduced number of schools taking that route. In the short term, I do not think there will be a huge wave of new trust schools. I am not opposed to the concept. We already have foundation schools, although few people seemed to know that they existed before the White Paper was published, and nobody has ever argued that we should abolish them, so I can see no great objection to having more of them, if it is the outcome of serious local debate and there is general agreement that they are a useful way forward. It has been argued that the ballot is a distraction or somehow not legitimate, and that other forms of consultation are preferable. Of course, it is important that there are other forms of consultation and that the ballot is not free-standing. My reading of new clause 16 is that the ballot would be a precondition for transfer to trust status but that it would not inevitably result in such a move, precisely because there would be other forms of consultation. The local authority would have the right to be consulted and to refer the matter to the adjudicator and neighbouring schools would also have the right to be consulted. It is important that we maintain the basic principle of one parent, one vote, but that there is also another set of procedures for consultation. As I said in Committee in response to Conservative amendments that would have allowed 50 parents to demand that a new school be built, I am not at all in favour of small numbers of parents, who may not be representative, sidetracking or hijacking normal democratic procedures. However, where such proper procedures are built into the system, they give greater weight to decisions. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred to one of my proposals, new clause 44, which provides that before a decision on trust status is taken, there should at least be a parents’ meeting. He expressed interest in that suggestion, so I hope that he might accept the new clause when he responds to the debate. However, it seems ironic and illogical that at precisely the moment at which we are relieving governing bodies of the burden of holding an annual parents’ meeting—because we know that the experience of annual parents’ meetings has been less than satisfactory and that the attendance is almost derisory—we are arguing that an annual parents’ meeting is a better means of resolving the issues than a ballot. I see the parents’ meeting as another part of a package of measures that would make up the consultation procedure. That package would include a ballot and consultation with the local authority and neighbouring schools.