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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on Amendments Nos. 1 and 2, to which I have put my name, and I shall speak also to Amendment No. 7, which is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Sharp. The Bill gives a clear duty to the LEA to identify those children who are not receiving an education. That is a very important matter, not just in terms of the education of those children, but in terms of their safety and protection. Children who do not come in front of teachers and other professionals every day may escape attention when they show signs of abuse and mistreatment. That is what happened to Victoria Climbié. However, the Bill misses the opportunity to make clear who is responsible, not just for identifying these children, but for making sure that they receive a suitable education. That is a pity, because the Bill is an ideal vehicle for so doing. I am a great believer in clarity in the law and in making it easily understandable and, in particular, accessible to the citizens of this country, not just to clever lawyers. In Committee, and in his letter to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, the Minister made clear that several bits of law added together do what the noble Lord and I seek to do today. He referred to several pieces of statute in different Acts of Parliament and a case-law judgment by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham, in which those are all listed. Other clauses lay out the sanctions that the LEA and the courts can use against parents who do not send their child to school or provide a suitable education at home. I do not think that is good enough. In the Bill, we have an ideal vehicle of statute to make the law clear, as was done in Scotland. We would not need to rely on case law. People would not need to go into a lawyer's office and have him take down several Acts of Parliament in order to explain what the child’s rights were. We would not be just talking about sanctions against the parents, but making it clear that it is the duty of the legal authority either to ensure that the child has a place in a suitable school—that can be very problematic these days where children cannot even get a place in their first six choices of school—and actually attends the school, or to satisfy itself that the alternatives are in place for a home education. Frankly, I do not mind if this involves a certain amount of repetition. British law is no stranger to repetition. That is why some people call for a total review of our laws, a codification and clarification. I understand that this may take a very long time and result in a vast reduction in the size of legal libraries, let alone legal bank balances. However, it is not a bad idea. I do not seek to do anything so ambitious today, but I am loath to let pass an opportunity to make the rights of children to receive an education absolutely clear, and to make clear on whom the duty lies to fulfil that right. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, mentioned the rights of children enshrined in a number of international human rights conventions, but it is UK law that gives effect to the rights of children enshrined in those conventions. Let us not lose an opportunity to emphasise our commitment to children's rights as enshrined in those conventions by not clarifying the law in this way today.