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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I would like, if I might, to give a practical welcome to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth saying, ““Three cheers for Amendment No. 9””. I think it is the only non-controversial thing that has been said tonight. I support it because I took a view earlier that it was important that a school improvement partner should be en rapport with the governing body. Amendment No. 16, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, is a very constructive, well intended approach to a major issue: the well-being of society and its coherence. I do not think that we can have this debate without hearing the Muslim voice, and I have not heard it tonight. That is what underlies this debate. We cannot bring it to a conclusion without listening respectfully to the views of the Muslim community. If I may recall history imperfectly, at one time Catholic schools were looked on with considerable suspicion. I think I remember the opposition to Pope on the rates. No one now thinks of Catholic schools as divisive in our society. The right reverend Prelate said that church communities were at different stages of development. It is right that the Church of England as the national church should see itself as serving the whole nation to an extent that I would not expect of other churches. As I read the letter of the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Birmingham, the Roman Church accepts that it has an obligation to address this issue, although it does not accept the noble Lord’s approach. It is saying that its inspections shall look at the contribution of Roman Catholic schools to social cohesion and that the outcome should be public. The archbishop lists a dozen criteria. That was what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said was the way to test whether a school was making that contribution. I was quoted twice in this debate and I listened fearfully to what I had said. This time I quote without fear. Speaking in a debate on ““Churches and Cities”” on 19 May, I said: "““Faith schools have a special responsibility not to be isolationist but to adopt an ethos of positive commitment, goodwill and respect towards other faiths, and to proactively seek opportunities to engage with the schools of other faiths or, where there are none locally, with community schools, which serve a large number of other faiths””.—[Official Report, 19/5/06; col. 548.]" So I believe that there is an alternative route that addresses the major problem that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has in mind. I worry whether the noble Lord’s well intentioned amendment will be seen by some of our absent Muslim community, perhaps many of them, as ill-intentioned—innocent but nevertheless interpreted in that way. What matters is how people interpret things in the very sensitive situation in which we find ourselves. I am fearful that the amendment will be misinterpreted. Once upon a time, I led a large corporation. When negotiating with a guy called Alan Johnson, now the Secretary of State for Education, who was one of the trade union leaders, I learnt a little rule, although I did not tell him about it at the time: never drive the other side into a corner from which there is no escape, because all they can do is fight. I am worried that we may be driving them. We want to hear what that community have to say, because they know the problem and what contribution they want to make to addressing it. We should find ways of enabling them to make that contribution, perhaps in the way that the Roman Catholic Church is doing so by being open to inspection and so on. I respect the noble Lord’s motives, but I fear that they could be misinterpreted and do damage. There are other ways, and whichever way we go, we must not drive people into a corner of antagonism and hostility. We have serious problems enough.