---

Education Bill

My Lords, I echo something that the noble Baroness just said. The carrying of a weapon is often an essential part of a person’s sense of security. If he is in a community where everybody else carries a weapon outside, he will bring them into school. We are probably going down the wrong road by treating searching as the response to an emergency. I know as a former teacher that the emergency arises when the weapon has been produced. A knife was produced in a class I was teaching. It was quite a large knife, but luckily the owner of it was slightly smaller than me and there was no struggle. We had a discussion and it ended amicably. I am very much aware of the little thrill of horror that went through me when I first saw it and of the need for teachers to be protected from that. Searching is preventive. It is not to discover something in an emergency but to prevent the emergency arising by applying the search before the weapon can be used. One way is if the whole school is searched when everybody goes in, as you are at an airport. Another is if the whole class is searched because there is known to be a problem there. But to search individuals can produce exactly the difficulties to which the noble Baroness referred. This needs a good deal more practical thought about what happens on the ground, rather than just legislative thoughts about how easily it could be provided from an administrative point of view. We have not yet got to a point where we should legislate. There needs to be much more discussion, perhaps outside this Room as well as inside it.