Member

Legislation already contains protections to ensure that local authorities’ powers of direction can be used only in limited but deserving circumstances. As well as consulting with the child’s parents and schools, local authorities must ensure that decisions are made in the child’s interests, including ensuring that the school is suitable to the child’s needs. These decisions and proposals are all about children’s needs; people who have decided to devote their career to looking after children and our schools are not bureaucrats, as the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, continues to keep calling them, which I think is a shame. I hope that he does not mean it in the disparaging manner in which he continues to use it.