Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 54A and the consequential amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lexden, to which I have added my name. I declare my interests as chairman of governors at Brentwood School and as president of the Boarding Schools’ Association and the Institute of Boarding. I have just two brief points to add to the comprehensive remarks that my noble friend delivered with his customary eloquence, with which I agree entirely. First, why do we need a definition in the Bill, given that the 1988 Act, as far as I can tell, does not use the term or make any reference to schools, and talks generically only of charities? If the concern is to make a differentiation between independent schools and academies as state-funded and independent schools, it would surely be much simpler to make clear that the Bill does not apply to academies. The only conclusion you can reach is the one that my noble friend reached: the novel insertion of this definition is simply to shoehorn what I am afraid is party-political dogma into this legislation, and that makes for bad law. That leads me to my second point. At some point this legislation may well end up in the courts, when the legal definition of independent school, which has been long established in law, as my noble friend said, may become very important. Therefore, there needs to be certainty about definition, which there will not be if independent education is dealt with in different ways in different pieces of legislation. What steps have been taken to ensure that this definition is not compromised or contradicted in some way in other legislation, which will at some point down the line cause real legal uncertainty?