Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I support the overall principle of this group. There are three interesting amendments, which are slightly different, and I am sure that Ministers, if they are ready to agree this—and it reflects what the Government committed to in their manifesto—will want to take it away. I think it is a sign of the maturity of the academy trust system that the governance of multi-academy trusts or the way that they are working should be inspected. Whether that is done when individual schools of the trust are inspected, when questions are asked about the running of the trust, is perhaps open for discussion, but I support the overall principle. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said the buck stops here. In the last group I asked who is calling the shots. We were both making the same point about accountability. In all the conversations I have had with multi-academy trust leaders in preparation for proceedings on this Bill, they are confident about the education they are offering, the schools they are running and the standards they are setting. Whether we get to the group today or not, we will talk about school improvement, and the reality is that the capacity for school improvement in England sits with our multi-academy trusts. They know a lot about the education system and, therefore, I do not think that they would be put off by being inspected. Of course, you will not want to cut across any other regulators that the multi-academy trusts are already governed by. Many of the multi-academy trusts are set up as companies and so they are regulated by Companies House; they will be producing accounts and will be accountable in that way. There is an opportunity for this legislation to be wary of creating regulatory burden creep, but it could ask the right questions. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, just raised an interesting question about local authorities. I think he was talking about the inspection of local authorities, as many of them are in the same positions as multi-academy trusts. Consistency of inspection is exactly what I was asking for in the last group, and I have to say that I am slightly disappointed, unsurprisingly, by the answer that I had from the Government Front Bench on that. Consistency in accountability, and in understanding who is really responsible for the education, is important. I am very pleased to see the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I should be very interested to see how the Government take this overall principle forward. I am sure there will be debates about it and I am sure we will disagree with some of it, but it is an important principle. It is a sign of the maturity of the multi-academy trust system, which is to be welcomed and which we will debate in the next few groups.