Contribution
Some people may be unfamiliar with the detail of the Bill because it did not receive a Second Reading debate. It went through on the nod on 16 May. It then went into a quite truncated Public Bill Committee on Wednesday 2 July, and it has now come back to the Chamber on Report.
I tabled amendment 1 to highlight my concern about the consultation arrangements proposed in subsection (4). Amendment 2 is a consequential amendment. As people will have noticed, in the Bill’s long title, it states:
“expand a secure 16 to 19 Academy; and to alter the consultation question required when it is proposed to establish or expand a secure 16 to 19 Academy.”
If amendment 1 were successful, the long title would need to be amended, and in anticipation of that, I tabled amendment 2. As ever, I am most grateful to the Public Bill Office for having ensured that I was on the right lines with that and that such an amendment could be tabled.
Amendment 1 arises from the fact that section 10 of the Academies Act 2010 states that before entering into an academy arrangement, the provider
“must carry out a consultation on the question of whether the arrangements should be entered into.”
Clause 1(4) would insert into that provision an exception that
“where the educational institution, if the arrangements are entered into, is to be a secure 16 to 19 Academy…the person is not required to carry out a consultation on that question”.
In other words, it is an exemption from the requirement for a consultation on the question of whether the arrangements should be entered into. I do not see that as a reasonable thing to do.
In the short debate on this matter in the Bill Committee, there was a bit of a misrepresentation when it was stated that
“secure schools do not compete with other schools.”––[Official Report, Secure 16 to 19 Academies Public Bill Committee, 2 July 2025; c. 4.]
That may be true, but they can compete with other institutions, particularly those providing alternative provision.
Clause 1(4) adds to section 10 of the 2010 Act that for a secure 16 to 19 academy, the person is not required to carry out a consultation on that question, but
“must instead carry out a consultation on the question of how they should cooperate with potential local partners in connection with the establishment and carrying on of the Academy.”
Those local partners are described as “potential local partners”, meaning
“persons exercising functions of a public nature”—
I think the Bill has in mind organisations such as the health service, the local education authority, councillors and so on—
“and…so far as not falling within paragraph (a), proprietors of educational institutions…with whom the person carrying out the consultation thinks it appropriate to cooperate.”
Again, that discretion is left with the person carrying out the consultation.
I do not understand why we are abandoning the much more fundamental issue of the consultation.
There might be no competition between a secure 16 to 19 academy and an ordinary school, but there may well be competition between that secure academy and another such academy that is already in existence or that may be proposed.
The 2022 legislation on secure academies was introduced in the previous Parliament. At the time, nobody thought there was any problem with having the same arrangements for secure 16 to 19 academies as for other academies. This short debate on amendment 1 will give the Minister an opportunity to explain why that change is necessary, how it is justified, and why there needs to be a deletion of the existing consultation arrangements rather than an addition to the existing arrangements of being subject to consultation, which is the subject of proposed new subsection (2A)(b) to section 10 of the Academies Act 2010, as in subsection (4).