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Children, Schools and Families Bill

My Lords, this Bill is a complete car crash. Hardly anything remains of the old banger in one piece. There are bits remaining for which you might get a fiver in a scrapyard, things being sent to the crusher that should remain on the car, and parts that the Government do not propose to scrap but which should go to the crusher. It is a complete mess and completely unroadworthy—and all because of two sad facts. First, the Government have rushed through ill thought-out measures in a vain attempt to appear to have done something about schools and children before they finally expire and become a dead-parrot Government. Secondly, there is the fact that they carved this whole thing up with the Conservatives, behind closed doors, and did not bother their pretty little heads about the opinions of the party that represents about a quarter of the electorate; so much for their respect for democracy. We are now faced with an appalling carve-up without either moral legitimacy or logic. The Conservatives are seeking the support of the electorate on the basis that they will bring change. This old two-party alliance has been going on for as long as I can remember, even in the face of the fact that half the electorate voted for other parties in 2005. Neither of them wants to face that fact, so they get together in dark corners and try to get away with deciding between them what is going to happen. After all, they were born to rule, weren’t they? If it is not one then it is Buggins’s turn. It really is time that they accepted that that is not the way of things any more. Having got that off my chest, I turn to the matters in this grouping. These clauses sought to introduce pupil and parent guarantees, home-school agreements, parental satisfaction surveys, regulations on school improvement partners, powers for local authorities on schools causing concern, licences for teachers to practise, and regulations on the supervision of youth offending teams. In the short time that we have had available, we on these Benches have opposed all that as being unrealistic, undeliverable and too bureaucratic—apart from the youth offending regulations, which we think are okay but which have not been properly debated. Despite the sneaky way in which the Government have acted behind closed doors, then, we are happy to support dropping all these clauses.