Immigration: Harmondsworth
Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Greaves(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Greaves (LD)
No, we have just had a Labour question.
Yesterday I visited some houses in a Home Office scheme in a street in West Drayton, run by an adjoining hotel, Heathrow Lodge, which provides a few days’ initial short-term accommodation for asylum-seeker arrivals before they are dispersed. There are very basic bedrooms, with communal bathrooms and no kitchens. Will the Minister look personally into the numerous problems that I found there? I will send him a briefing, but they included people who seemed to have been effectively abandoned there for up to three months instead of three days; the quality of food provided; a lack of necessary Home Office communication and documents; ridiculous rules; a lack of facilities for a one year-old child who had been there for some time, and much more.
Lord Bates
I am very happy to look at those issues, just as we looked at the issues raised by cases in Cardiff and Middlesbrough recently. If the noble Lord supplies me with information, I am very happy to look at it more closely.
Police: Funding Formula
Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Greaves(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact on police numbers and local crime of the proposed new funding formula for police forces in counties such as Lancashire.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, allocations for individual police force areas have not been set and decisions on funding will not be made until the spending review reports in November. We will carefully consider the impact of the spending review alongside the implementation of a new funding model in the design of transitional arrangements.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, only today, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has issued the results of its police efficiency review, which shows that Lancashire is one of only five forces in the whole country rated as “Outstanding”. Lancashire was a pioneer in the development of neighbourhood policing and now has a comprehensive and highly successful neighbourhood policing system across the country—across the county, I should say; we have not taken over the whole country yet, but wait for it. Have the Government heard that the chief constable of Lancashire, Steve Finnigan, has said that if the present expected spending cuts come about, together with the proposed changes in the police funding formula announced last week, by 2020 the county would have to get rid of most of its specialist police units, and the whole of its neighbourhood policing would have to be swept away? Is this really the legacy that the present Government want to see at the end of this Parliament?
Lord Bates
No, absolutely it is not, but I certainly join the noble Lord’s tribute to Lancashire police constabulary. It has been judged “Outstanding”, it has produced an incredible performance, it has reduced crime by another 3% this year, and it has managed to increase its reserves by a further 30%.
The formula to which the noble Lord refers went out to consultation. The predecessor arrangements were widely criticised by all chief constables and police and crime commissioners. They wanted something simpler, more transparent and easier to understand and more stable for the future. Invariably, when you consult on something such as that, there will be winners and losers. Lancashire is making representations to Mike Penning—the consultation is open until 30 October —and I know that he is meeting Members of Parliament from Lancashire tomorrow. In the event that that decision stands, there would be transitional arrangements to dampen the effect of any changes in Lancashire.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I saw this only a few minutes ago when I was alerted to it by an e-mail from the Bill team. I congratulate them on doing that, since, along with the Minister’s comments, it gives us the opportunity to debate this under a rather different and less dramatic amendment from that of the noble Lord on the Labour Front Bench.
Having now read the Statement while the discussion was taking place, the proposal that is being put forward seems quite extraordinary. Anything that is announced as a new state-funded school and has the support of the Secretary of State for Education goes ahead outside the normal planning system. That is, I understand, exactly what is being proposed at least for the first year. Presumably it will apply to all of them and not just to those which are said to have had problems opening on time because of delays in the planning system. Once again, we find that if there is a problem with planning—which is presumably caused by something real and is not invented by the planning authority—it is the planning system that is to blame. As the Prime Minister said quite recently, the planners should be removed from the scene. Those were not his exact words, but he said that they should be swept away—that they should get out of the way and let growth commence.
If that is what parts of the Government want, they should be fairly clear and overt about it and we can have debates about it. However, what is happening is that bits are being chipped away here and there. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said that it is eroding the power of local authorities. I would say it severely undermines the whole reason for and purpose of the planning system. If it is to be undermined for somebody who wants to run a small business that does not really affect anybody else, and that person wishes to run that business in very unsatisfactory circumstances—in a condition of squalor—I suppose that is their business. However, we are talking here about schools, children in schools and the people who live in the neighbourhood around schools. Even if it is a small free school, it will inevitably have some impact on the people who live around it.
I read that these changes will be subject to a prior approval process to mitigate any adverse transport and noise impacts. I am not quite sure how that will work. Presumably, if there are adverse noise impacts, they will come under environmental health legislation anyway, but I am not sure how the prior approval process will mitigate any adverse transport impacts and what that means. Perhaps the Minister can explain exactly how that will work.
For everything else that might result from a change of use to a school, not necessarily with changes of any sort to the building, presumably you just close down whatever it was previously and move in. It could have been offices, hotels, residential institutions, secure residential institutions—perhaps they are appropriate for some schools, but I will not comment further on that—or used for assembly and leisure. These uses can be converted overnight to a school without so much as a by-your-leave other than prior approval to mitigate any transport and noise impacts. Surely this is fundamentally wrong. It is stated that in a small number of cases free schools have had to delay their opening because there were planning problems; that may be the case. If there were problems, whatever they were, that suggests that that opening should have been delayed and those problems should have been sorted out, just as with any other change of use that would take place.
The Minister’s Statement, headed “Planning and Schools”, says that the Government believe,
“that the creation and development of state-funded schools is strongly in the national interest”—
—we all agree with that; it is a question of how you create and develop them—
“and that planning decision makers can and should support that objective, in a manner consistent with their statutory obligations”.
I think that is referring to the planning decision-makers, but this proposal would abolish their statutory obligations, at least for 12 months. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, a free school supported by the Secretary of State for Education which opens without planning permission in the first year has to spend that year getting planning permission. If that planning permission is turned down because the premises are obviously unsuitable to be turned into a school, for whatever reasons, the idea that that will go to appeal and the inspectorate will uphold the decision of the local planning authority is not likely. The inspectorate will get its firm instructions. It is quite clear that the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government are in cahoots over this. The planning system is being pushed to one side.
Yet the Statement goes on to say:
“Experience to date has demonstrated that with the assistance of the Education Funding Agency new state-funded schools, and free schools in particular, have been successful in identifying sites that have gone on to secure planning permission”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/1/13; col. 25WS.]
Presumably we can discuss this further on Report, but since we are discussing it now, it seems that at the very least the Minister needs to be clear and tell us how many instances there have been, out of all the free schools which have been set up, of them having their opening delayed because of planning problems? Where is the evidence that this is happening? What is the scale of the evidence, and what were the circumstances in each of those cases? I suspect that there are not very many of them.
This is a shambles. It is a Secretary of State for Education and a Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, as I said, in cahoots, driving a coach and horses through the normal planning system. The problem is that if government policy always trumps good planning, where will it end? It will not end with free schools, it will end with anything that any Secretary of State thinks is a good idea and pushes through, regardless of the effects on the people using the premises and on the local community.
Lord Bates
Could I clarify one point in what the noble Lord is saying? He seems to suggest that this is something that the Secretary of State is imposing on a local community, whereas the whole point of free schools is that the demand for them comes from within the community; local parents of local pupils will have indicated their desire to see a school established. Contrary to the notion that this is top-down, this is therefore surely something that supports local people in their local community getting access to the education that they want for their children.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I do not think that in this Committee we want to go too deeply into free schools and whether what the noble Lord just said is true or whether other factors are involved and to what extent. Free schools exist and, whether some of us like them or not, they are part of the system now. I am not in any way arguing about that in this Committee because I do not think that it is our business. What seems to be happening, however, is that in certain circumstances, when a proposal for a free school comes forward, whatever the instigation or motivation for it, the Secretary of State is saying that the normal planning system will not apply for at least the first 12 months. That is the problem.
I believe that the two Secretaries of State are clearly in cahoots over this, although people might want to use a slightly less emotive term than “in cahoots”. They are, perhaps, working together across departments, which some of us sometimes complain they do not always do. Nevertheless, they are clearly doing this and saying that in those circumstances the planning system will be set aside. That is obviously what is being said. If I want to set up a free school and Mr Pickles thinks that my free school is a good idea, I will not have to get planning permission before it opens. In the circumstances of a school, with children being educated and with the potential effect of a school on the local community, pushing aside the whole of the normal planning system seems to me to be outrageous.
Academies Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Greaves(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Bates
My Lords, following that point, we need to be clear what we are consulting about. There has to be meaningful consultation in this regard. If we are dealing with a school judged outstanding by Ofsted, and the governing body and the head teacher have said that they wish to apply for academy status because they believe that it will give them greater freedom, then what exactly is there to consult about? There seems to me to be a strong case there. I noted the comments made about the right of children to be consulted under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, who consulted the children when a school was failing? Where was their voice then? Who came round with a clipboard saying, “Tell me what you think about the fact that you’re getting 20 per cent five A to Cs when the guys up the road are getting 60 and 70 per cent?” We have to be clear about what the consultation seeks to achieve and be absolutely sure that we are not trying to delay a process. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and his successor wrestled with that process in relation to the academy programme. Consultation could sometimes go on for years while schools were failing. Where a school body has an outstanding record, the process should be allowed to proceed on the say-so of its governing body. However, where a school is failing, in my view the governing body has forgone any rights in that regard and the Secretary of State has a right to intervene. That is in the best interests of children and parents.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I fundamentally disagree with the eloquent but mistaken case that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has just put forward. I discussed the matter this weekend with two chairs of school governing bodies in the area where I live. One of the schools is not sure what to do but has probably made further investigations and is therefore probably on the Government’s list of those schools that have made inquiries. It would rather not take this step but is wondering whether it will be forced to do so because otherwise it will be bad for the school. However, schools should not take this step for that reason. The second school has said plainly that it will not apply, no matter how good it is, because it does not want to break its links with the local authority. That is the school’s decision. Just because a school is outstanding does not mean that it is the right thing for that school to become an academy. A decision has to be made by the people connected with the school and, in my view, by the local community as a whole. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, if the proposal does not have considerable local support, it is unlikely to succeed.
I have a further amendment on this matter in the next group. As well as being confused about other things in the Bill, I am confused about today’s groupings, which all seem to be mixed up. Unfortunately I was stranded in Yorkshire this morning—the overhead wires were down in the Keighley area, and now I cannot even ask the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to intervene in the situation—so I could not get here in time to sort out the groupings in relation to my amendments. Noble Lords will therefore have to listen to me again on the next grouping.
However, the issue of the wider community—to which I referred at Second Reading, in comments to which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, kindly referred—is crucial and must be addressed. That would address some of the problems which the noble Lord referred to in terms of getting it right. Of course you have to get it right. However, I do not agree that the principle of consultation should not be in the Bill because the specific amendments which have been put forward are not quite right. I think that the Government will find it a great deal easier to get support for the Bill, and to get it through Parliament a bit quicker, if they are prepared to look very seriously at this issue.
The real problem is that the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, whom I admire in many ways, is a man with a rather revolutionary mission on this and other matters. Although I am all in favour of revolution, I am a liberal, and revolution must be based on two things. First, it has to be evolutionary—however revolutionary the end product is—and you must get there slowly or fairly slowly. Secondly, you have to take people with you. A sort of Leninist revolution whereby there is a leadership which everyone follows, and if people do not follow it someone such as Stalin comes along and makes them follow, is not the way forward. You must take people with you. A good process of consultation and debate locally among interest groups such as teachers, who have a legitimate interest in the school, and the wider community, is crucial.
The Secretary of State has impaled himself on a problem by setting September as the date by when the first new academies should be set up. Looking at the parliamentary timetable, I am not sure that this legislation can get through by September—not because it will be blocked or obstructed, but simply because of the time that it takes to reach the statute book. There is talk of bringing the Commons back, but if the Commons makes a few changes to the Bill, it will have to come back here, which would mean that it will not go through until we come back in October, unless we are all to be dragged back here screaming in September to get the Bill through in the interests of the revolution. I am not sure that the House of Lords is a body which usually marches behind revolutions—but who knows?
The Government must get themselves off this hook on which they have impaled themselves. They should accept that to do it properly—and it has to be done properly if it is going to work—it will take a bit longer. That is not delaying the legislation by years. Clearly that would be ridiculous. We need a sensible timetable, a sensible way of doing it, and a sensible way of getting local communities—all the people involved in the school, and other schools—to understand and to come to agreements on what is going to happen. If the process is done on the basis of a school selfishly and aggressively breaking away, it will not work. If it is done by agreement among people locally that this is an evolutionary way forward that will probably lead to other schools in the area becoming academies in due course, and if it is done in a sensible and organised way, then it might work.