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Education Bill

My Lords, I want to pursue an issue that I mentioned in passing in my introduction: that of mobile phones. I refer not to whether a child could be searched but to whether they are carrying a mobile phone in the first place. My noble friend Lord Knight made the point that in the olden days pens could be scurrilous and used inappropriately, so we have to be a bit careful about what we are proscribing here. I believe I am right in saying that the latest draft guidance on searching states: "““Ministers have already announced their intention to make regulations to add to the list of prohibited items (cigarettes and other tobacco products, pornography, fireworks and specific personal electronic devices (mobile phones and iPods etc))””." I read that to mean that mobile phones and iPods will be included on the list of prohibited items. I hope that we can have a broader debate on whether that is sensible in the round because, as I said earlier, mobile phones can have a range of functions in a school, not all of which are damaging or unhelpful to the education process.