Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to help ensure that teachers and other education staff can choose to be accompanied to disciplinary or grievance hearings by a person other than a trade union representative or colleague.

My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, is supportive in principle of a change to the Employment Relations Act 1999 to give teachers who are not members of a trade union the right to be accompanied by a representative of another professional body, such as Edapt, to disciplinary and grievance meetings.