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Schools: Statutory Instruments (Merits Committee Report)

My Lords, the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee is a wonderful committee on which to serve, not only because of the distinguished and incisive chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, but because of the range and perspective over the entire workings of Government and the impact of those rules on people. The topic of today’s debate is therefore an example of what can be learnt across the board in the following areas: the microscopic management of education, the fact that there are targets and rules rather than outcomes, the feeling that consultation is not genuine and the inaccessibility of law to those who need it. There were over 10,000 statutory instruments referring to schools from 1987 until today, found on the Government’s own website. Searching for the words "schools finance" brought up 2,560. The DCSF produced more statutory instruments than any other department in a recent 12-month period. There is an outpouring of rules without follow-up. There is unintelligibility, for those of your Lordships who have looked at statutory instruments, so that, without the accompanying guidance, schools cannot handle them. Drafting and sending out that accompanying guidance adds to the length of time taken to get the news to schools. No consideration appears to be given to people like governors and head teachers in relation to the lead-in time, and there is a failure, which the previous speaker referred to, to use IT to join up the many into the one. There is no reason why IT should not be used to put together and streamline all the statutory instruments on one particular point. Now is perhaps not the time to mention it, but that use of IT could so readily be made available in this Chamber. If we discuss a statutory instrument, why can the wording not appear on the screens that are already installed around the Chamber, for the benefit of all of us? Whatever can be said about the demerits of the statutory instruments applying to schools, exactly the same can be said in many other fields with which your Lordships have been concerned. Gambling and human tissue are recent examples of outpourings of apparently disjointed statutory instruments which ordinary people have to get to grips with. And just wait until this House gets going on the statutory instruments that will pour out in relation to ID cards. As I said, computing could piece them together and would help with plain language, avoiding the need to refer back to the Explanatory Memorandum to understand the instrument. I am glad of this debate because Parliament has not paid much attention to how statutory instruments work out in practice. But the Merits Committee has had the chance to hear the groans of heads and governors, and we share their pain. The department, and all others, must carry out post-implementation reviews of statutory instruments to see whether the policy objectives were met. If not, they must stop pouring out more statutory instruments until that problem is resolved. The most important recommendation of the report, as others have said, was that there should be post-implementation reviews, starting with the impact assessment that accompanied the statutory instruments. The committee was grateful to the Minister of State, the right honourable Jim Knight MP, for his constructive response to the review. But he has gone, and this is part of the trouble. The Minister is no longer in post, and the necessary follow-up to statutory instruments might get lost because the civil servants and Ministers who have been tasked with those responsibilities get transferred elsewhere and there appears to be no mechanism for picking up that responsibility within the office they have left. The then Minister made a commitment to establish a mechanism to ensure that the department monitors the impact of statutory instruments on schools; this House will wait anxiously to see whether that is done. There are some particular problems, such as communication. There needs to be a single portal through which schools access information. Sending thousands of e-mails to the schools apparently does not work because they cannot be sorted to see which refer to new regulations. As all your Lordships will know, there is nothing more calculated to block communication than the existence of thousands of e-mails. Another issue is the one term’s notice that needs to be given to schools. Too many broad exceptions to this were claimed in the government response. For example, teachers’ pay and conditions cannot be brought in at the same time as everything else. Another example is the schools admission appeals code, which was laid on 4 December 2008 and came into force on 10 February 2009, presumably leaving no time to train the panels and clerks involved. A uniform start date of 1 September was recommended, but, again, in the response there were too many exceptions—for example, 1 January for admissions and 1 April for financial matters. Finally, there are too many data requests to schools. Your Lordships are well acquainted, across the board, with the problems of privacy and loss surrounding data. What is the point of all those data? Reform should start with the proposals in the report from the Merits Committee. Then there should be a move forward to a radical new approach using IT for consolidation and communication. I cannot but reflect, as I stand in the very place where the late Lord Dahrendorf so often sat, that this House will miss his wisdom in academic matters very much. I had the privilege of serving as a fellow Head of House in Oxford across the road from his college, St Antony’s. I wish it to be remembered that he brought international sparkle to his college. He assisted in opening out the university to the international scene. From the academic point of view, he will be sorely missed.