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Education and Inspections Bill

I should like to speak briefly in favour of new clause 1, and I want to illustrate its importance by sharing with the House a story about someone known to me personally. This is a case exactly like those that my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) mentioned in his opening remarks. I should preface my remarks by saying that they do not refer to a constituent of mine or to anyone who teaches in a school in my constituency. They refer to a very experienced teacher whom I know personally. He had a false accusation made against him, although of course it was not immediately known that it was false. He was suspended straight away, as one would expect, pending an investigation. The story immediately got into the local newspapers, however, and he was vilified and lost his reputation. It took two years for the case to come to court, during which time my acquaintance had been unable to teach. He was found not guilty, but that did him no good whatever. His reputation had gone, and he had lost his home in the meantime. The local education authority, notwithstanding the court’s decision, was very reluctant to accept him back on to the supply teachers list. It took another two years before the authority felt confident enough to allow him to go on to the list. My acquaintance then began to get jobs in local schools. The head teacher would be pleased with him, as he would settle in well and develop a good rapport with the children. After a few weeks, however, as sure as night follows day, the gossip would start at the school gates. ““Oh, that was the teacher—you remember the one—that we read about in the local papers.”” I should add that the local papers had printed a very small comment to the effect that he had been found not guilty. So the head teacher would ask him to leave. He would then find another job, but the same thing would happen again and again. After three or four attempts to get back into the teaching profession, this man decided that it was impossible to recover his career. So a good teacher had been lost to the profession. Furthermore, he had been a lifelong foster parent, but as soon as the accusation had been made, he had been removed from the foster parents list. This is someone whose earlier foster children came to visit him with their children, whom he regards as his own grandchildren. He had had decades of blameless foster parenting. This man had also spent decades as a scout leader. He would take his scout pack out every summer washing cars, cutting hedges and mowing people’s lawns to earn their own money so that he could take them on holiday every year at no expense to their parents. In other words, he is just one of life’s good eggs. The boy who had made the false accusation turned out to have been aggrieved because he had been dropped from the football team as a punishment for larking about. But this man has now been lost to the teaching profession, lost to the fostering service and lost to the scout movement. His reputation is irrecoverable. That is why it is so important that all possible protection be given up to the point at which charges are brought. That would not have helped in the case that I have described, because once this man got to court, he was found not guilty. I take the point made by other Members that even if it is an offence for other people to leak such stories, it is of no great comfort to the accused person, as the very fact that their name is in the public domain means that their reputation is lost. That should not stop us at least trying to control that and to give some protection to the good reputation of teachers who have been wrongly accused.