HC Deb 22 July 1986 vol 102 cc212-20

  1. `(1) The Secretary of State may make regulations requiring the governing body—
    1. (a) of every county, voluntary and maintained special school; and
    2. (b) of every institution of a kind mentioned in section 56 of this Act;
    to make available, to such persons or classes of person as y be prescribed, such documents and information relating to the meetings and proceedings of the governing body as may be prescribed.
  2. (2) Documents and information required by the regulations to be made available shall be made available in such form and manner, and at such times, as may be prescribed.'.—[Mr. Chris Patten.]

Brought up, and read the first time.

5.25 pm
Mr. Chris Patten

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

With this it will be convenient also to consider new clause 12.

Mr. Patten

In bringing forward this new clause, the Government are fulfilling an undertaking made at Committee stage, especially to my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Norris). We were spectacularly open-minded and generous in Committee, and this is one of several examples of the generosity of spirit that we showed during the happy weeks of June and July. The purpose of the new clause is to enable regulations to be made to provide for public access to the documents of school and college governing bodies.

It may be helpful for me to say a little about the content of the regulations on which, of course, we shall consult widely in draft. I stress that because it is important. We intend to specify that the agendas, papers and minutes of governing bodies should be available for inspection at the school or college concerned, and at all the schools grouped under a single governing body. We intend to provide in the regulations that references to disciplinary matters concerning named individuals, whether pupils or staff, and to discussion of named individuals as potential members of staff should remain confidential. In the consultation process, we shall ask particularly for guidance on the precise form that such a provision should take.

In framing the regulations we shall also bear in mind the point made in Committee by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) that signed minutes would not be available until the meeting after that of which they are a record and we shall consider whether draft minutes should not therefore be made available. I should mention in passing that amendment No. 55 will delete the provision in paragraph (c) of clause 8(6) since this is overtaken by the new clause. I am sure that the House will welcome this further evidence of the Government's support for public access to papers.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish)

We welcome this small concession from the Government, although it is sad that they did not manage to come up with rather more, which would have made the Bill rather better. If the new governing bodies are to be affected by the Bill, it is important that there is as open an access to as many documents as possible. I hope that on many occasions, the governors will meet in public, so that they can encourage a wide debate on matters such as the curriculum, discipline in schools and resources. We all recognise that there is a problem, in giving access to documents, with certain issues with which governors deal, such as the appointment of staff, or the suspension of staff or pupils.

We still think that there would have been distinct advantages in going through the procedure, originally suggested by the hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Norris), and set out in the new clause tabled by the Liberal party. Simply adding this provision to the Local Government (Access to Information) Act would have made it more clear and precise to those who want to press for access to all the documents. The Act makes provisions for keeping confidential matters that relate to individuals, and it would be far easier if there were a clear statement of all the information that people have the right to seek. I suspect that it will only add to the confusion if access to information about governing body meetings is set out by regulations.

I appreciate that the Government want to consult carefully about the regulations but enshrining the right to information in primary legislation has major advantages. I hope, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you will allow us to vote on new clause 12, which would go the whole hog and put the right into primary legislation rather than having the Government's compromise of doing it by regulation.

Mr. Freud

New clause 12 was originally drafted by the hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Norris) and moved by him in Committee. He has a good record on open government and access to information matters. Essentially, the clause extends the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 to meetings of school and college governing bodies. There is a clear prima facie case for making that move.

The Bill is about democratising school governing bodies and involving more people in their affairs, and about extending their boundaries to give citizens a real part in governing their schools. It is not only right but necessary to open up the school meetings, given the new and enhanced responsibilities that the governing bodies will have.

Above all, I believe that the ideas embodied in the Bill, about involving parents and the community and making education more accountable, should not stop with the increase in the number of parents on the governing bodies. It is not good enough simply to legislate for such an increase. We should be concerned with ensuring the fullest possible opportunities for involving all the parents and the community as much of the time as is possible.

The real impact of parental involvement, which can be very profound, on educational standards, will come not from the formal election of a few parents but from the openness and accessibility of the work of the school and the governing body. The hon. Member for Oxford, East gave eloquent testimony to the actual working of open government in governing bodies when he spoke in Committee of schools where this was the normal and accepted practice. He argued, and I share his opinion, that decisions were better made in the open, and that the quality of the decision-making process was enhanced.

In Committee, the Under-Secretary argued that the Government would look into this matter with care when the time came to draft the regulations. However, what has been drafted is inadequate. What is so different about school governing bodies from local government that the former is to be dealt with by regulations rather than by legislation? Do the Government not recognise the immense symbolic importance of having such a clause in the Bill? The access to records and minutes already permitted by the regulations does not compare to a statutory right to attend the meetings.

New clause 18 is clearly inadequate and much less of a reform than would be acceptance of new clause 12. I ask the Government to think again about this. I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to let the House have a separate vote on new clause 12 so that genuine access to information can be available to the people by right, and not as a special benefit. As the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) said, we already have guarantees of confidentiality. We should like freedom of access to governing bodies meetings enshrined in legislation.

Mr. Steve Norris (Oxford, East)

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Freud) for his support in Committee and for his kind words today. His support for freedom of information goes back a long way before I became a Member of Parliament. I am pleased that the Government have moved new clause 18, on the basis that half a loaf is better than none and that we have made considerable progress since the Bill was first drafted. I would have preferred it if my hon. Friend the Minister had been able to take on board rather more whole-heartedly the provisions of section 100J of the Local Government (Access to Information) Act. I appreciate that there are some technical difficulties in moving to that stage straight away. However, I am grateful that we have been able to make substantial progress before the Bill left the House of Commons.

The hon. Member for Cambridge, North-East spoke about what we were being offered, and by implication what we were not being offered. We are being given reasonable provisions for documents and information relating to the meetings and proceedings of governing bodies. That is welcome, particularly as we shall not have to go through the charade of being able to see the minutes of governing body meetings only after they have been approved by the governors. That meant waiting until the next governors' meeting had approved and signed them, by which time they were meaningless. This point was taken well by my hon. Friend the Minister in Committee, and it is good to see that the words "and at such times" in new clause 18(2) are intended to cover that eventuality.

However, we are left with the absence from the new clause of any provision allowing members of the public to attend governors' meetings as a matter of right. There is an irony there. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary wrote to me and to other members of the Committee after the sitting in which my proposed new clause had been debated, and made it clear that the Government were not unsympathetic to the general idea of access to information and the extension of that to education. He went on to make a somewhat curious argument about how governors' meetings were not meetings in the sense of councillors' meetings or meetings of health authority members, but merely meetings of groups of people who were part of the administrative process of the education system—rightly, as a number of my hon. Friends have said. However, my hon. Friend went on to say that governors' meetings had a status that meant that they would be injured or devalued if the public were permitted access.

I stress that when I talk about public access, I accept, as my hon. Friend the Minister said, that when dealing with named individuals, whether members of staff or pupils, many of the conditions that apply now in local authority agenda where part II requirements are frequently invoked, should be made available for meetings of school governors. No one disputes that, least of all me or the other hon. Members on both sides of the House who have supported the campaign.

More importantly, the argument that there is something qualitatively different about a governors' meeting as distinct from the meeting of a health authority, and that the former should be treated differently for public access purposes, is most unconvincing. Members of health authorities are appointed from many different bodies. They serve various sectional interests and their job is far more technical than that of school governors. All hon. Members will agree that members of health authorities deal with a specific allocated budget, and so they are in many ways immune to political arguments. Their job is to dispose only of the health resources allocated to them.

It has always been accepted that the meetings of health authorities should be public, but the issues dealt with by school governors' meetings are just as relevant to the public.

Mr. Freud

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the issues dealt with by health authorities are not as confidential?

Mr. Norris

That is entirely right. However, the proceedings of a health authority and of a school's governing body are both likely to be extremely important to the local community. We are discussing whether we should extend to governors' meetings the old received wisdom that the meetings of a local council or of a local health authority can be attended by the public. Much attention has been paid to the idea of allowing public access to the meetings of water boards. For some reason it is suggested that school governing bodies should be exempt from this process. However, the distinction is neither logical nor, more importantly, justifiable. A more important principle is involved.

Mr. Chris Patten

Just to inform me more clearly on this matter, will my hon. Friend tell me whether the meetings of management units are held in public?

Mr. Norris

If we start talking about angels dancing on pinheads we could, no doubt, think of many groups of public sector servants who do not meet in public. But there is a qualitative difference. The unit management group of a hospital is generally composed of the unit administrator, the treasurer, the medical officer designated to be a member of the unit medical group and possibly the nursing officer. They deal, literally, with nothing but administration. They are neither required to make, nor do they make, policy decisions other than those which have been directly delegated to them by the health authority, which meets in public.

Frankly, I am disappointed with my hon. Friend the Minister. If he was trying to think of an example to upset my logical progression he has picked a bad one. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire) argued long and hard about access to information in local government. It is always argued that there are technical difficulties which make it impossible to allow regulations to be invoked. It is always said that there are technical difficulties, and that such a step would upset or offend this or that group, and it would cause difficulties. As those hon. Members who have been kind enough to read the information that I have often sent them will know the universal, non-partisan conclusion is that the problems are simply perceived and are not real. In practice it is perfectly possible for a governing body to operate effectively, knowing that what is said will be open to immediate public access and scrutiny. The only change is that standards of presentation and of argument on the part of governors would have to improve. Governors would no longer be able to get away with an irresponsible, rather unfair or subjective aside which might have passed for judgment in days gone by.

We have half a loaf, and we should be thankful for that. The amendment which I moved in Committee and which now appears as the new clause shows the way forward. I commend that way forward to my hon. Friend the Minister. I appreciate that we shall need consultation, and that we should get things right before we embark on such a course, but access to information is a vital concomitant to a progressive and modern education service.

5.45 pm
Mr. Douglas Hogg

I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Norris) has just said. I am in favour of extending to parents as much control over schools as possible. If we are to improve education, which is, at the moment, rather an uphill task, it is desirable to make schools and their governing bodies as responsive to the consumer as possible. One way in which schools can be made responsive to the consumer is to meet the principle that underpins new clause 12. For that reason I am sympathetic to what my hon. Friend has said, and I support his broad objectives.

On the principle that half a loaf is better than no loaf, I propose to support new clause 18. It is the kind of clause that will delight officials and should distress parliamentarians, because it is an enabling clause. It does remarkably little. It merely empowers a Minister to embark on the process of secondary legislation. We must ask my hon. Friend the Minister of State what it obliges him to do. The answer is that it does not oblige him to do anything.

Let us consider new clause 18. The Secretary of State "may make regulations". That is nice. He "may make regulations" but equally he may not make them. It is not a mandatory duty.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that in Committee we discovered that several of the regulating powers which the Minister had taken in the Education Act 1980 had still not been brought into effect by him?

Mr. Hogg

That is true of every major statute that provides for secondary legislation that I have ever encountered. From the early 1960s, statute after statute empowers Ministers to make regulations, although they frequently do not do so. That is my point. These provisions do not require the Secretary of State to do anything. He can scratch his head and say, "I am able to do so, but I do not choose to do so." No one can say anything about that. If the Minister persuades himself to make regulations what will they say? New clause 18 is remarkably silent on that.

The Secretary of State may make regulations requiring the governing body … to make available, to such persons or classes of person as may be prescribed. That is interesting. We do not know what will be prescribed. It is entirely within the Secretary of State's discretion. What will he do? He will make available such documents and information relating to the meetings and proceedings of the governing body as may be prescribed. There is no mandatory duty there.

Subsection (2) of the new clause states: Documents and information required by the regulations to be made available shall be made available in such form and manner, and at such times, as may be prescribed. The magic phrase appears for the third time. It is a splendid enabling new clause, but it does not tell my hon. Friend the Minister what he has to do, to whom the information is to be released and in what circumstances it is to be released.

I am an enemy of secondary legislation. For important matters, the House needs to create the statutory duties and to impose the statutory conditions. I am against leaving such things to secondary legislation, both as a matter of principle and as a matter of practice. After all, we all know that my hon. Friend the Minister will come along with regulations that may, or may not be debated. Even if they are debated, the debate will be on a motion to affirm or negative them. As we all know, such motions are taken late at night for one and half hours, and are not amendable. Thus, we shall be given the privileged opportunity of rejecting or accepting the regulations in their totality. That is not a proper way of dealing with matters of major importance.

On the principle that half a loaf is a damned sight better than no loaf at all, I shall support new clause 18. It would be a mistake, however, for my hon. Friend the Minister to suppose that the House is wholly satisfied with it. I am sure that the House would like to see a more robust approach in future.

Mr. Chris Patten

Although the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Freud) thought that I should be prepared to think again, I am afraid that I am not prepared to do so despite his moving and worthy tributes to my hon. and very able Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Norris). Indeed, new clause 18 is a small tribute to the eloquence, passion and enthusiasm that my hon. Friend has shown in the cause of access to information.

We look forward to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) on the draft regulations, and we shall publish the draft regulations as soon as we reasonably can. New clause 12 seeks to apply the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 to the governing bodies of schools and establishments of further education. That would have two effects. First, it would make the governing body's agenda, papers and minutes more widely available. After discussion in Committee, the Government accepted the logic of that, and new clause 18 makes appropriate provision. However, I realise that my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham would have preferred us to act otherwise.

Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Bristol, East)

Although I understand why the words "as may be prescribed" are in the new clause, I do not understand why the first sentence says: The Secretary of State may make regulations". Why does it not say "shall make regulations"?

Mr. Patten

We pursued formulas that had been used before. But I am happy to make it clear that we shall be bringing forward draft regulations, and will look forward to comments on them.

We believe that our approach in new clause 18 is much more straightforward than applying the Local Government (Access to Information) Act, which would need various modifications to fit it to the particular circumstances of governing bodies. The need for such modifications underlines the important point that governing bodies should not be seen simply as part of the local government structure. It has been the intention since the 1944 Act that a governing body should be an independent voice speaking for its school in the local partnership. The Bill aims to make that a reality in all cases.

That brings me to the second effect of seeking to apply the Local Government (Access to Information) Act, which would be to allow public access to meetings. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East referred to what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State said in Committee. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary then argued that, unlike local authority councils or committees, properly meeting in public, meetings of a governing body are not formal events in the administrative process but part of that process itself. He went on to argue that the closest analogy might be to a meeting of education department officials. I accept that. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East and I disagree on this point. I believe passionately, although perhaps not as passionately as he does, in there being reasonable access to public discussion and documents, but the logic of my hon. Friend's argument sometimes makes him tip over into the assumption that any decision made in public will be better than a decision that is not made in public.

Mr. Norris

I fear that it is not me who is tipping over on this occasion. My hon. Friend's well known intellect and moderation will have enabled him to observe that there is qualitative difference between the meeting of an education committee's group of officers, whose job involves planning to carry out a policy that has been given to that committee by elected members who meet in public, and the meeting of a groups of governors who have been appointed from among a variety of interest groups so that they have special qualities and views to bring to bear on any debate. In part, the latter make policy and in part they make a significant input into a local school. Thus, their meetings are much more important to the community than any meeting of an education committee's officers. If that is not so, it is an indictment more of the officers' meeting than of the inadequacies of the provisions made by school governors.

Mr. Patten

I do not think that my hon. Friend and I will have a meeting of minds on this point, but perhaps I should try another tack. The Government also consider that unfettered public access to working meetings would be wrong. In my judgment, the effectiveness of governing bodies as a means of securing co-operative effort from governors drawn from a variety of sources would be severely hampered if they were required to meet in public, even with some safeguards for confidential matters.

I invite the House to consider the practical implications of allowing public access to meetings. In some cases, it might be very difficult for parents to share in the responsibilities that we want them to have. I wonder whether parent governors would always be able to perform to their full potential in raising and exploring inevitably awkward questions about standards and discipline in the face of a large, and possibly hostile, audience. That is not to say that governing bodies should be secretive. New clause 18 will ensure that their papers and the records of their proceedings are appropriately open. Governors would also be able to report back to those whom they represent. The governing body as a whole will he fully accountable to the parent body once a year through the annual report and parents' meeting.

Additionally, it is our intention that the post-Act guidance will encourage governing bodies to be as open as possible in their proceedings by inviting observers or allowing public access as they think fit. But we see it as crucial to the effective function of governing bodies that the attendance of non-members should be under their control. The House will note that I have set out my case based on my judgment of some of the principles involved. I know that it is always a dirty trick to make my next point, but there would be technical difficulties—

Mr. Douglas Hogg

Drafting errors.

Mr. Patten

—in making this apparently simple amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham is as perceptive as ever. Much work would be needed to ensure that various provisions of the Local Government (Access to Information) Act were appropriate to the special context of governing bodies. In the light of all that, I hope that the House will accept the Government's new clause, even if some hon. Members think that it is only half a loaf. I also invite the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East to withdraw his motion and new clause. But should he wish to press it to a Division, I must urge hon. Members to reject it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)

In response to the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Freud) and in order to help the House, I should say that if new clause 18 is added to the Bill, new clause 12 will automatically fall.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Forward to