Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Addington

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 82 in this group, asking that local authorities give reasons when they choose to deviate from guidance. I hope this will be dealt with in guidance rather than in the Bill, but it is important that both local authorities and home educators come to regard the guidance as something to which they can resort for support. Therefore, when local authorities need to go outside the guidance, as they may, that should be clearly explained.

I very much support the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has proposed, in particular Amendment 81. It is important that there is a strong set of guidance around attendance. This is a change of structure for local authorities. They are taking on much more of a responsibility that was formerly shared with schools. We will need them to reach deeper into the reasons for non-attendance and to deploy other strengths that local authorities have to deal with those reasons, going well beyond the usual educational provision. To have a set of guidance that enables them to do that well and to have ways of sharing good experience will be really helpful. In the next group we come to the punitive side of this. We really ought to be strong in making sure that as few families as possible get tipped into that, and guidance seems to be a clear part of that.

I have one question on government Amendment 99, which applies to regulations passed

“before the end of the session of Parliament in which the Schools Act 2022 is passed.”

I wonder whether it should refer just to the first passing of the guidance. Given the extended timescale on this Bill and the consultations we hope to have, it may run beyond that. The Government are really saying that they do not want this to last for ever. It should cover the first issuing of regulations, whenever that may happen to occur, and we should not have to rush things just because we have this in the Bill. If it is passed next year, will it still be the Schools Act 2022 or will it be the Schools Act 2023?

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of these amendments. They follow on from my noble friend Lady Brinton’s amendment on the fact that specialist guidance and help will be needed. The education sector is going into an area where it does not expect to have the expertise readily at hand. It may have to go and find it, and the parents are often the people who have done the finding. I hope that, when the Minister comes to answer, the Government will give us a little insight into how they expect to handle this process. We are talking about often very seldom-occurring incidents, which means that we cannot expect there to be group memory. These are incidents occurring not only infrequently but over long periods of time; certain combinations of events come through. Stress tends to trigger mental health incidents. If a child happens to have been failing at school, they and their parents will have more stress. It does not take a genius to take it to the next step. I hope the Minister will give us an idea of the Government’s thinking and how they are proposing to address these very real concerns.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Addington

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, these essay mills are getting ever more sophisticated and are employing in some cases quite high levels of artificial intelligence to disguise what they are creating based on existing sources so that the cheating software cannot find it. I suspect that there is no reasonable solution if we are to continue with a system where essays produced in unsupervised conditions count towards a qualification. However, there is some hope, and I encourage the Government to look down this avenue in the work that has been done, for instance, by FutureLearn on analysing the pattern of keystrokes made by a particular individual typing an essay and working on that essay while they are in the course of preparing it. That sort of analysis is very difficult to duplicate and defeat. If we use technology to defeat technology, we can again be confident about the quality of essays.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend—despite the fact that he has been defeated by the wonders of technology—here addresses one of the other problems we have. Something went from students who knew certain essays would come up in certain courses at certain times, and vaguely plagiarising them—that went on just about everywhere—to an industry that means students can gain a qualification. Continuous assessment is reckoned to be quite a good way of learning or of assessing somebody’s ability, or has been in many cases. That is particularly vulnerable to some of these services. The sums of money involved are considerable, because people are paying for it. Furthermore, a student who does this is then open to blackmail for the rest of their professional career. Their qualification, which is the way they make their living for the rest of their life, could be invalidated or they could have a black mark against them. They might not have to pay just a few hundred pounds but could end up paying tens of thousands over the course of their lifetime.

I hope that the Minister will give us a positive answer. My noble friend is quite assiduous on this—he has a Private Member’s Bill going through. If I may appeal to those who are planning government business, it might be a quicker and easier way to accept this amendment or one like it than to have to have an entire Bill go through Parliament. There is not much hope of that but let us try.

Can we find out what the Government are planning to do about this? Technical checking of every essay might be possible—I do not know the state of play of the technology—but everything will have to be entered to be assessed by it, and I am not sure how long that takes. We will have to look at this and at things such as dissertations, or studying by oneself, which are a traditional part of long-term studies in further and higher education. These cannot really be done in any other way than a person working independently, unless there is a lot more monitoring or a lot more time spent on it by staff.

We will have to deal with this problem, or at least learn to live with it and minimise its impact. I hope that the Minister can tell us that there is a coherent plan to at least display the dangers of blackmail and coercion that people are exposed to throughout the rest of an academic career. This is a real problem, and if we can solve it or at least make it slightly better now, surely we should.

Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Addington

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

When the Government come to review the performance against targets, I very much hope that they will commit to undertake detailed research into the reasons why the targets have not been met, not only nationally but regionally, because for most of them the underlying reasons will be significant at a local level but perhaps not so nationally.

To take the example of air pollution in Eastbourne, where I live, we often record quite high figures, but no one has the slightest idea why. There does not seem to be that much traffic; we do not seem to be in a place where you would expect fumes to be trapped; there is not a lot of wood-burning going on. We end up ascribing things to container ships in the channel. However, all this is soluble if we do a bit of research. Every bit of this pollution has a chemical signature. With some money put into it, we would know quite rapidly what lay at the root of the problems we experienced and could therefore accurately understand what we should be doing over the next planned period to reduce it.

Without that sort of research, we are operating blind. We are operating on a set of national suppositions as to where this pollution comes from—diesel engines, wood-burning stoves, whatever—none of which has any obvious application locally. However, it is locally that the efforts must be made to reduce it. In this amendment, I ask the Minister to put us in a position to take effective action locally to drive through the achievement of his targets. I beg to move.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the amendment in my name suggests that the Government should be talking to other bits of government when creating policy. Its wording might go back to some earlier bits of this clause—nearly one and half days into this, we are not half way through the first clause, but that is quite normal for the start of a Bill. I am thinking here about some of the targets on recreation and enjoyment of the countryside. If I do not like it, I should have stood up earlier and said, “Move it”, but we are where we are.

The Department of Health has a considerable investment in, and has spent a lot of time, making sure that people take exercise. The countryside is an incredibly good potential facility for getting more people to take exercise in a pleasant manner. They will not do it if the environment they are in is unpleasant, dangerous or difficult to reach. We can go on in this way for quite a long time. Will these two departments work together coherently? We may discover from the Minister that “They should possibly consult, that is definitely a good idea”, but in reality they will not, because we have two people defending their own little bailiwicks—“This is where we have authority; this is where you have authority—get your tanks off my lawn.” They might throw a few expletives in there as well, because that is the normal relationship. People like to be in control of what they are doing.

This is an attempt to make sure that two bits of government that should be working together are doing so. It might be the case that we go back and put in a couple more amendments about the new office for health promotion—by naming it I might be expanding this slightly—but if we are to make sure that activity can take place outside, we must know what is going on.

On the other hand, if you are suggesting that everybody should go out and march up and down hills, you have to know how much damage you will do to the environment in certain circumstances and whether that should not happen for environmental reasons. We have talked about mountain bikes ripping up paths, and will talk about it again. We will talk about where walkers are and where they should not be. All these things should be discussed sensibly in government, with somebody having some duty to make sure there is some form of coherent whole coming out of this.

I could expand at considerable length about certain well-meaning groups in the countryside finding themselves totally at the throats of other well-meaning groups in the countryside. They all want similar things but none are prepared to compromise—“And, by the way, we normally fight, don’t we?”. Okay, I will say it: the canoeists and the anglers. If we are going through this, we need some form of guidance from government to make sure they will work together. I suggest that giving some idea of how this will happen in future would not hurt the Bill in any way.

Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Addington

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it does not seem that long ago that we discussed these types of issues on the Agriculture Bill. My noble friend is a skilled and subtle operator in Parliament and did not dive in on the issue of footpaths and their creation. Footpaths and access to the countryside inspire in people either a Messianic gleam—“This is where you should go”—or a grating of teeth because you hate the person who is planning the path. The advantage of this approach is that you are looking at it as a whole. If you are trying to make sure that people have some access to the countryside and put it in a plan, you stand a chance, albeit a slim one, of getting rid of these quite silly and childish arguments. We should have access.

The comments of my noble friend bring this down to the fact that we should have access. There is a benefit to you and a way out, and this cuts into other agendas. I will not expand on this for long, because I will have another opportunity later in Committee, but the fact is that, if you want a fitter and healthier society, you should give people some access. Opportunities for gentle exercise are there for those of a more advanced age, but—why not?—if you want to run up that hill, off you go. We need to make sure that people have opportunities to use and enjoy the countryside. That will enhance people’s buy-in, because they will see what is there. There is also a chance that they will see the problems that other people have in making sure that the countryside works to deliver a good environment and to produce food; it is all there.

I hope that when the Minister comes to answer he will make sure that he embraces the idea that things come together. We all know that Ministers are very keen on working across government so long as their department is dominant and their scheme is the one having the final say. I have seen dozens of documents that state, “Yes, the other departments should really do what we say, but we don’t impose upon them to actually do it”. The Government should get a plan together that makes people co-operate. I would be interested—maybe I will get a chance to expand on this later—to see how the various bits of government will communicate, what is required here, and what they can expect.

Also, when the Government encourage people to enjoy the environment, they should take into account little things, such as whether there is a bus service to walking facilities or whether everybody has to pile into a car, go down small roads and clog up the local infrastructure. Things such as this matter. You have to get in there and make sure that there is some form of communication. This is a good idea.

I also cannot resist saying that we have a bit of a parliamentary evolution; it is now “may” and “must”, as opposed to “may” and “shall”. Maybe that is a step forward—or are we just going to a new cliché? I do not know. But if we are moving things into these areas, it will be interesting to see what the Government are going to say and what the priorities are, because good intentions have far too often been the paving stones of the road to hell.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, my two amendments in this group are Amendments 9 and 57. Amendment 9 adds “connecting people with nature” to the priority areas in Clause 1(3), and Amendment 57 looks at the environmental improvement plans and adds “understanding” and “participation” to “enjoyment” in Clause 7(5).

Clause 1(3) lists the priority areas of air quality, water, biodiversity, resource efficiency and waste reduction. If we are giving priority to all those areas, we will be asking people to make substantial changes to the way they behave: to use less water; to drive less; to drive slower cars; to make fewer demands on the environment and the food they eat; to spend much more time recycling than they do at the moment; and doubtless other changes too. People need a motivation to do that, and the underlying motivation surely has to come from reconnecting people with nature, so that they value it and feel part of it, and it will therefore come into the equation when they are considering whether to go along with and support the changes the Government are proposing. There have been a number of changes recently where those proposing them have not chosen to take people with them. There is growing opposition to low-traffic neighbourhoods, for instance, because people were never involved, consulted or taken with them, and there was no underlying motivation for the improvement of the common environment.

It is silly to make those entirely desirable changes in a way which conjures opposition. Stonewall has done this with trans rights. It does not have to be this way. It means that those proposing change must take long steps to involve people in the reasons for those changes, and the underlying motivations. In the case of subsection (3), the underlying motivation is a love of and connection with nature. We know that people are capable of that because we can see it all around us, in those people who are connected. We know from that, and from research, how much well-being and how much joy and pleasure—at a very low cost to the environment—comes from having a deep love and understanding of nature. It really ought to be the underpinning value in subsection (3), and it ought not—coming to the environmental improvement plans—be just about the enjoyment of nature. This is not a passive thing, like a television show, but something which people need to be part of. I hope that the changes I propose will find favour with the Government. They will make everything else they are trying to do much more effective when it comes to putting it into practice.