Lord Lucas (Con)

My Lords, I hope that my noble friend Lord Balfe made a very good case for a purpose clause that puts children at the front of the Bill. I will make a rather more restricted case to use a purpose clause to support the home education clauses in the Bill. The first virtue of a purpose clause, when it comes to home education, is that we are trying to give local authorities guidance on how they conduct themselves towards the home education community. To have something clear at the beginning of the Bill would make that much easier for them. Secondly, we are dealing with a diverse community in home educators; for them clearly to see the effect on them, in a complicated Bill, and the Government’s underlying purpose would be a great help in moderating and steering their interaction with the Bill after it is introduced. So I strongly urge the Government to consider a purpose clause when it comes to home education. It does not need to be much longer than “to support children not in school, and their parents”. Something like that would make a substantial difference to the way the Bill is read. I will pick up on some difficulties that I have with the Bill and the way it is drafted, and in understanding its purposes. In English law, parents are responsible for their children’s education. In the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, said, the Government make substantial moves towards transferring that responsibility to the state. New Section 434A(6)(b)(i), in Clause 30, strikes at the heart of the relationship between parents and the Government. It will have enormous ramifications for the whole of the education system if we go down this track. The way that personal data collection and use systems in the Bill are expressed, and the control of education providers, leaves me at a loss as to the Government’s intended purpose for the relationship between home-educating parents and the state. Understanding that better—having it clearly set out—would inform our whole consideration of the Bill. What is the Government’s purpose in seeking to be—as I read the Bill—so intrusive and punitive towards elective home education? The state should be respectful and humble in its dealings with parents who educate their own children: respectful because it is a huge commitment that lifts a great burden from the state, and humble because of all the children we fail in the state system. Yes, we have some reasonable and long-established requirements that education should be satisfactory and that children should be safe and emerge as fully functioning members of society, but the best way to achieve that is to be supportive. In that way, the state gets to see the children and to help them and their parents. All that is left are the few cases where things are going wrong, on which the local authority can focus its efforts. Home educators are a complex and diverse community. Partly, they are people with a different philosophy of education, and the time and dedication to make it work. If they are doing well, why should the state not applaud that? Partly, they are people who the state has failed and who benefit the state hugely by removing difficult cases from underperforming schools. Do they not deserve our wholehearted support? Sometimes, parents bite off more than they can chew; local authorities such as Coventry, which reacts supportively, can crowd in the support of successful home educators to turn them around. Sometimes, parents are ill-intentioned or neglectful and their children need rescuing; a local authority such as Coventry finds that much easier because its time is not taken up with persecuting the well-intentioned. Some local authorities, as I am sure the Minister knows, are at the other end of the scale; their treatment of elective home educators is truly maniacal and damaging. A purpose clause would really help to set the intentions at the beginning of the Bill so that it became obvious to local authorities and home educators what the Government’s intentions were towards looking after their children. One case that needs careful examination is Haredi education, which is a particular aspect of home education because so much of it is religiously based. The community needs the Government to be clear and open in declaring their purpose towards it. Minister Morgan says that educational settings which operate full time—and, as a result, can be expected to bear a very great responsibility for children’s educational well-being—should be regulated to ensure that children in those settings are safe and receive a suitable education. That is being read as a direct threat to Haredi education. Ministers know, I am sure, what Haredi education is: an intense education in the Torah, plus home education. They know, I am sure, that that educational system has good outcomes: fully functioning people, albeit very much in their own tradition. Do the Government agree that these families are not neglecting their children’s learning but providing learning in keeping with their own long-established ethnic background, with secular subjects taught during evenings and weekends? Do the Government agree that yeshivas are not schools and should not be assessed as such? The schooling of these children takes place outside the yeshivas and should be assessed as home education. What is the Government’s purpose, in the Bill, towards this community? At the moment, it is obscure. Something at the beginning of Bill that makes it clear how the Government respect the different traditions and religions of this country, and the way that they wish to bring up their children, would be a really helpful addition.