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Academies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the honesty in his considered reply. I am a little alarmed by the idea that Baldrick may be in charge of government education policy, but I do not think that he quite said that. If I cite him correctly, he said: "We have not come up with a clear answer to the role of local authorities". The more that we have considered the Bill, the more obvious it has been to me—this point was made by some of my noble friends—that it would have been a good idea for it to have pre-legislative scrutiny to try to bottom-out some of these issues and at least to present us with some considered alternatives on these important matters. The future role of local authorities in relation to schools is vital. Clearly, a few hundreds of academies can be created without, in most areas, severely affecting the role of local authorities, but not once it gets into the thousands. I think that there are about 20,000 schools in England. If 5,000 or 6,000 of them, a quarter of them, converted to academies, which is clearly possible under the criteria that the Government propose, during the next four or five years, that would have a severe effect on the viability of local authorities—at least in some areas, because their creation would tend to be geographically patchy. I believe that we are to get a schools Bill or an education Bill which will be a bit fatter than this Bill later this year. If so, this issue should certainly be returned to at that time, if not before. I am grateful for the Minister for saying that he will reflect on the matter. Finally, the answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, as to why we are rushing this, is that we have a Secretary of State in a hurry. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but if it results in bad legislation with all sorts of unintended consequences, we will have to sort them out in due course.