'A head teacher, supported by that head teacher's governing body, may take the decision to exclude a pupil on disciplinary grounds from that head teacher's school for a fixed period or permanently, and there shall be no appeal against the merits of that decision; an appeal may only be made as a matter of law, to be decided by a magistrates' court, if it is alleged, with reasonable grounds for that allegation that there has been an abuse of process in the decision-making on the exclusion. All legislative provisions relating to 'appeals panels' and their powers are hereby repealed.'.—[Mr. Hawkins.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

We now return, perhaps for the first time this afternoon, to an issue of huge substance, although I am not seeking to minimise the importance of the Government accepting an Opposition amendment. New clause 2 represents something that is at the core of my party's policies.

I shall refer to one particular passage:

''Let's give heads more power over discipline in the classroom. We will abolish the costly and bureaucratic appeals panels that second-guess heads and governors''.

That is a policy commitment from the shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green), speaking to our party conference last autumn.

Whenever we discuss the abolition of appeals panels, Government Members, and perhaps Liberal Democrat Members, say that the panels were created when the Conservative party was in government. When the appeals panel process was instituted in legislation, however, nobody in our party anticipated that the Government would mess about with the national lottery in the way in which they have, which they promised never to do when they were in opposition. Indeed, when they were in opposition, they tabled amendments to the national lottery legislation saying that no Government should ever do what they have done. They have messed about with the national lottery to allow the Community Fund to provide lottery funds to an individual whose raison d'être is working with parents to use appeals panels to overturn the decisions of heads.

The matter came to a head because the head of a Surrey school in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), which is not far from my constituency, decided that because of death threats issued repeatedly over the phone to a particular teacher, who, if I remember correctly, happened to be the head of PE, some children should be excluded from the extremely good secondary school, which I know well. I also happen to know the chairman of governors, who is a former senior county councillor.

The governing body backed the head in that exclusion but the appeals panel overturned it. Why did the appeals panel overturn it? It overturned it because that individual, whose raison d'être is to work with parents who are disgruntled about exclusion decisions, went along to the hearing to try to persuade the people on the panel to overturn the view of the head and the governing body. Conservative Members consider that to be a travesty. It was a gross misuse of the national lottery.

The national lottery was supposed to be about good causes. It beggars belief that the people in the Community Fund can think it appropriate to give lottery money to that individual, whose contribution to society is to try to undermine heads and governing bodies. I wish that I had the people on the Community Fund in front of me, so that I could cross-examine them, which I used to do when I was a barrister in court, on exactly what they think they are playing at, not with taxpayers' money but with lottery money, which is the people's money. Such decisions contradict the idea that the Community Fund is about good causes.

I do not blame the Minister for the Community Fund's daft decisions but I blame the Government for

messing about with the original idea of the national lottery. Under the rules of the national lottery as John Major designed it and the Conservative Government set it up, that sort of travesty could not have happened and money could not have been given to that individual. I cannot remember his name because my anger has driven it from my mind; I wish that I could remember it because I would put it on the record.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman one question? We all sympathise with head teachers, given the situations in which they find themselves. If I were a head teacher and new clause 2 were added to the Bill, would it mean that there was no right of appeal against any decision that I made? For example, I could decide permanently to exclude a child who had shouted out in class for the first time. Would there be guidelines on the sort of behaviour that merited permanent exclusion?

That is a helpful contribution—I always find the hon. Gentleman's contributions helpful. He is entitled to ask that question, to which the answer is no. We would limit appeals to cases where it is alleged that there has been an abuse of process. If there were apparently an abusive misuse by the head and the governing body, it could be attacked as an abuse of process. We do not want appeals panels to be misused. I understand from remarks by Department for Education and Skills Ministers—I do not know whether the Minister will enlighten us on this when he responds—that they will keep appeals panels under review. At some stage, we may see Government legislation that hems in appeals panels, and they may try to stop the malicious activities of that lottery-funded individual.

The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) and I have always shared a passion for dealing with antisocial behaviour of various kinds. He knows that Conservative Members are not trying to drive a coach and horses through the Bill because we want to use it where it can be helpful.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way after I have completed my response to the hon. Member for Gedling. Given that the legislation deals with exclusions and truancy, we want to take the opportunity to do some of the Government's work for them. We want to get rid of the misuse of appeals panels.

The Government may say that they cannot possibly accept new clause 2 in its current form but that they will examine the issue given the national publicity. The case in Epsom led the news for several days running. People were trying to find out whether the decision was going to be upheld or overturned. In the end, the children were found new schools. The local education authority had to step in but there was a ridiculous situation. The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg), went on television and said that the Government would not allow the decision to be upheld. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Estelle Morris), had to admit that what he said on television was

wrong because the Government did not have the power to do it.

To conclude my response to the hon. Member for Gedling, it struck us that this is a good opportunity to try to highlight a big issue and to deal with it. I would be very happy if the Minister were to say that he cannot accept new clause 2 but that he will use the Bill to try to deal with the way in which appeals panels have become a scandal.

I have been studying the new clause and—perhaps the hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong—there would still be appeals through the courts. That would be ludicrous because head teachers would be tied up in the legal process if there were an appeal against an exclusion. If things were to go to court, public money would also be involved. I do not see how the new clause could work.

The hon. Lady would be right if we were saying that there should be unrestricted appeals in the courts. At the moment, if somebody challenges an exclusion decision before an appeals panel, the challenge is on the merits of the case. The parents, who are sometimes backed by the man funded by the lottery, say that their child should not have been excluded, or that the exclusion should have been temporary rather than permanent. The battle is therefore on the merits of the case. We are saying that the legislation should cover a gross abuse of process.

If a head teacher or governing body took leave of their senses—hopefully, no head or governing body ever will—and did something grossly improper, there has to be a fall-back, which is why the new clause is worded in that way. I have discussed the matter with my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady), the shadow schools Minister, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford, the shadow Secretary of State. We are trying to stop the way in which appeals panels have been used.

My hon. Friend would be grateful for the support of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac). Can he help her and the Committee by confirming that as matters stand every case has to go to an appeals tribunal, where it is considered as a question of fact? She looks puzzled. She has not seen the words

''as a matter of law'',

which would reduce the scope for appeals; it would restrict appeals to those brought as a matter of law. At the moment, as a matter of fact, every single case goes to an appeals tribunal. I thought that she was going to support the new clause.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend because he, like me, has a number of years' experience practising as a barrister in the courts.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Let me respond to the helpful intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison). He and I are well aware that if the ground of appeal is restricted to cases in which there has been an abuse of process, there will not be many appeals, which deals with the point about

public funds. It would have been possible as a matter of parliamentary procedure for us to table a new clause that said, ''No appeals on anything'', but it would have been struck down as being contrary to human rights legislation, or someone would have found some fault with it. If appeals are restricted to cases in which there has been an abuse of process, the number of appeals will be cut.

We do not want all exclusions to be challenged on their merits. What happened at the school in Epsom has happened in schools throughout the country

but the Epsom case received much publicity. The authority and decision making of governing bodies is being undermined. The Epsom case received so much coverage. The number of letters to the national press and people ringing radio and television programmes confirmed that the vast majority of the British public wanted to know why, when the head teacher and governing body had excluded pupils who had made death threats against a member of staff and repeated, anonymous telephone calls, their authority was undermined because an appeals panel forced the head and the governing body to take those pupils back.

I remember the interviews with the teacher against whom the death threats had been made. He was devastated. He was a senior teacher with around 20 years' experience. Other parents said in interviews what a good teacher he was and that they needed to support good teachers.

I shall give way to the hon. Member for Cleethorpes, but I do not want her to misunderstand the intention of our new clause. We want to restrict severely the number of appeals and to stop the undermining of heads' and governing bodies' authority that is happening at the moment.

What the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere in a previous intervention said was that the new clause would create more work for lawyers because the matter would go through the court system. However, he has not responded to my point. Although he said that the number of appeals would be restricted, there would be some appeals through the court system and that would tie up head teachers in the courts.

The hon. Lady simply does not understand. May I suggest that after this debate she talks to some of her hon. Friends, particularly the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, the former Secretary of State for Education and Skills, who resigned and her hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate who had to appear on television to discuss the matter. We are discussing a restricted group of people because only a tiny number might be able to allege abuse of process. If she shows the new clause to her right hon. and hon. Friends, I am sure that they will explain to her that there must be minimal grounds for appeal. People will not be tied up in court. We are trying to avoid so many exclusion decisions going to appeals panels and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere said, time after time—

especially when the lottery-funded man is involved—the original decision to exclude is overturned. Members on both sides of the Committee want to bolster the authority of heads and governing bodies when dealing with disruptive pupils. We cannot do that with the appeal panel system as it is. The new clause is a serious and genuine attempt to correct that abuse, which is why we tabled it. I hope that I have given the Committee an indication of how strongly we feel about this.

I oppose the new clause, but not because I do not accept some of the sentiments that have been expressed. I accept that there have been some appalling cases in which a school's discipline has been undermined. However, the new clause is an over-reaction in the opposite direction that could cause harm to others. The fact that we have had appeal panels apparently making decisions that are unacceptable to the majority of the public is not a case for abolishing the system. It is a case for reforming the system and getting the guidelines and processes right, and I know that the Government have made some progress with reforming appeal panels. I want to put on record that I oppose this draconian measure because it would remove fundamental rights, but I accept that reform is necessary so that appeal panels work well. It is easy to be lulled to either extreme. We must think about the policies of inclusion and the pressure on schools to keep as many pupils as possible. That has led to difficulties for some schools, and some parents have felt that their children's interests were being neglected. The reforms that are being introduced to provide more emphasis on the overall interest of schools should be sufficient. I think that the appeal panels will need to be monitored and it is for the Department for Education and Skills to get that right.

I oppose the draconian approach because, having been the chairman of an education authority, I know of one school—it was not in my constituency—that was responsible for three quarters of the exclusions of the whole education authority. It raised a few eyebrows that one school was responsible for so many exclusions. It had nothing to do with the school's location or the nature of its pupils, and it was absolutely vital that there were appeal panels and some support for parents when the pendulum swung too far the other way.

In some cases exclusions are not in the best interests of pupils. Those cases may be in the minority and the headline cases that we hear about may be rather more widespread than I would have thought, but the new clause is totally wrong. It takes away fundamental principles without focusing on the real issue of why we need a proper appeals process. We want to establish the best possible outcome for pupils. That may well be an alternative form of education, but in some cases it may be right to have a separate programme for a particular child, even if that is a little harder for the school. The new clause would force somebody out of the system without an appeal. That must be wrong.

As part of the background to the new clause, the hon. Lady heard my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath lay out how the matter came to public attention. Money from the national lottery via the communities fund was provided to an organisation that was assisting parents to appeal. She heard very clearly that the Conservatives oppose lottery players' money being given to an organisation for that purpose. Are the Liberal Democrats in favour of that money being used in that way or are they against it?

I do not feel that I have to respond to that challenge.

What a giveaway—another no policy.

I do not make judgments on the hoof. I consider things carefully—[Interruption.] I do not have the details of that use of lottery money in front of me. I have heard other examples that I would regard as misuse of lottery money, but I do not know the details of the case in question and I will not comment on something about which I do not know the full details. There are certainly examples of vulnerable people needing to be supported in appeals situations. Such circumstances do exist, but I am not necessarily talking about the case in question.

It would be a great shame if we did not get on the record the extremely wise comment of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes, who said to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) that it was a change of policy for the Liberal Democrats to say that they never made policy on the hoof.

That comment is beneath contempt and I shall treat it as such. I am sure that all parties have their policy processes and nobody could accuse the Liberal Democrats of not spending many hours in the policy-making process. Now that I have been led on to the subject, I recall that a newspaper commented at our last conference—[Interruption.]

Order. We have had our fun and we should return to what we are supposed to be discussing. I look to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole to do that now.

But of course, Mr. Cran. Perhaps I am like a schoolchild getting led astray.

To return to the point, the new clause is totally wrong. The jibes do not make the new clause any better. It undermines fundamental rights that need to be protected.

With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady who, I am sure, was an estimable chairman of an education authority, I have to disagree about the importance that she attaches to discipline—or rather, about her estimation of the problem of discipline. She said that there was a problem with discipline in one or two schools. The problem of discipline is much wider than that and has been so for many years. The problem has developed over that time. We have talked about how we can improve standards in secondary education. The Minister smiles, but I believe that it is a priority of the present Government, and rightly so, to

improve standards in secondary education because it is recognised that in some schools those standards are falling behind.

My personal opinion, for the benefit of the Committee, is that one of the most important steps that we can take towards improving standards in secondary education is to improve discipline. That is a particular problem in inner-city schools, which is where we especially want to improve standards. I do not think that we should have any illusions about the very difficult task of heads and teachers in inner-city and many other schools, and about the very bad effect that ill-discipline has on the education of children.

It may be, as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole has said, that those children are vulnerable; but we have also to think about the other children who are behaving themselves and want to get on with their lessons, and the teachers who have to teach them.

What I referred to was the reform of the appeal panels, which requires them to balance the interests of the excluded pupil against the interests of all other members of the school. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that that is a good, fundamental change. I am not taking on his point entirely, but just suggesting that because something has been fundamentally wrong, we do not have to swing the pendulum to an extreme. We can settle for a better position that is not extreme.

I was coming to that point, but I think that the hon. Lady would be hard put to disagree with my analysis of the serious nature of the discipline problem and the steps that need to be taken to deal with it. She can contradict me if she wants, but I believe that a lack of discipline is one of the biggest problems today in our secondary education system and that we should attach great importance to it.

Coming to the point that the hon. Lady made, the principle from which I start is to trust the judgment of the heads and teachers. Even if the reform that she has suggested was made, it would still—I am with the hon. Member for Cleethorpes on this—involve the proposal that every single exclusion case could go before an appeal panel to be decided. The test that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole described of balancing the interests of one against the other would have to be undergone. All the time of head teachers would be taken up in such a process.

I have to say that I support heads and teachers and that I want to do everything that I can to bolster their authority. That is in the real interests of the children today who are losing out. Let us not be complacent about that. There are many children losing out in secondary education—failing to fulfil their potential—because of the lack of discipline in classes and the demoralising effect that that understandably has on teachers. Whatever we can do to help teachers, I am game for doing it.

A couple of things are clear from the responses to my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes and the way in which the proposal has been presented. One is that the hon. Member for Surrey Heath is very angry. The other is that he is

proposing a draconian measure. The short answer to what my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling asked is no. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath wants to deny parents any right of appeal in the circumstances that he spelled out. The Government are committed to retaining the right for parents of permanently excluded pupils to appeal to an independent appeal panel. The hon. Gentleman appeared to suggest—perhaps I picked him up wrongly—that everyone has to go to an appeal. Everyone does not have to go to an appeal, but everyone has a right to do so. He effectively said that that should not be the case and that people should have no right to go to appeal except on a point of law, a point of process.

The appeal has been in legislation since 1987. It is in the interests of national justice and complies with the Human Rights Act 1998, to which I know the Conservative party is so opposed. It is an established safeguard for pupils and parents. Exclusion must be an option that is open to head teachers but, equally, it is a serious matter and parents must be able to appeal. Abolishing appeal panels would simply mean that many more cases ended up in court unless, as the hon. Member for Surrey Heath clearly proposes, people are completely denied any appeal on merit. It is clear that that is what he is saying: no appeal against exclusion on the merits of the decision taken.

Will the Minister put himself in the position of a head teacher who has taken a decision to exclude a pupil for a very good reason that was carefully thought out and involved the necessary discussion with the other members of his staff, who is then forced by an external body to reinstate that pupil? Would that not totally undermine the credibility of that head, and his or her ability to insist ever again on any level of discipline in the school? As we all know, pupils will seek to exploit that weakness.

Potentially it could. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am aware from comments made by Liberal Democrat Members during this debate, such as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, that they, unlike Conservative Members, have kept themselves abreast of some of the changes that we have made. I know how busy shadow Home Office spokespeople must be, and perhaps they have not been able to do that. We have made considerable changes that mean that appeal panels, even where they found that the exclusion was not justified, do not have to send the pupil back to the school and thereby undermine the head teacher. We have made considerable changes to improve the situation.

The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) asks me if I can put myself in the position of a head. Yes, I can. Can he not put himself in the position of parents who believe that their child has been permanently excluded from a school unfairly with no right of appeal whatever to anyone in any circumstances? That is what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting.

I mentioned in my opening remarks that I discussed those matters with my hon. Friends the Member for Ashford and for Altrincham and Sale, West and we are aware of the changes. We do not think that the Government's changes have gone far enough. We ought to return to the situation that existed when the Minister and I were at school. The situation then was that decisions were made by heads and governing bodies, and that was it. In those days, we did not have huge complaints about breaches of people's human rights because of the respect that the hon. Member for Gedling was bemoaning the lack of this morning. People understood that head teachers and governing bodies had authority.

If one has to choose between supporting the head and the governing body, and supporting parents who might be aggressively supporting their child however badly the child has behaved, I would prefer to give the right to the head and the governing body because they should be respected.

I do not disagree with what the hon. Gentleman says he intends to do, but I do not think that one should go about it in the way that he intends, by completely denying parents any right of appeal. The right approach is to reform appeals panels as we did in January this year, when new exclusion regulations made four significant changes to the composition of appeals panels and the way in which they work.

First, appeals panels now include a serving or retired head teacher—a person who can put themself in exactly the position that the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire asked me to imagine myself in, and who can understand the consequences of the decisions for head teachers. The panels also include a school governor and a lay member. People who understand the realities of dealing with school discipline will from now on play the major part in the panels.

Secondly, the panel will have to balance the interests of the excluded pupil against those of the school community as a whole. Thirdly, the panel will not be able to overturn exclusions solely on technicalities. If a clever individual wants to go around advising parents how they can do such things, he can, but the panel will not be required to base a decision on such technicalities from now on. It will be able to consider the merits of the case, balance the interests of the individual against the school community and it will not be in a position where it can be tripped up by technicalities.

Fourthly, the panels will be able to conclude that a pupil should not have been excluded without automatically having to order that pupil's return to the school. Even if an exclusion was not fully justified, relationships may have broken down to such an extent that it is in no one's interest for the pupil to return to the school. The new composition of appeals panels means that members are in closer touch with contemporary classroom conditions. Additionally, the new rules for panels strike a better balance between the interests of individual pupils and those of the school community as a whole.

May I offer two brief points? First, I am sure that the Minister, like all of us, knows head teachers in his own constituency. Does he agree that head teachers generally are very responsible individuals and that no head teacher would lightly or in a fit of pique take a decision permanently to exclude a pupil? They think extremely carefully before they make such a recommendation: it is a very serious decision, and head teachers treat it appropriately.

Secondly, even if a head teacher were to act in an arbitrary manner in respect of a particular pupil, they would still need the support of their school governors for the decision to stand firm. Those two important factors must be taken into account when considering the serious arguments for the new clause.

Overwhelmingly, that will be the case. In the vast majority of situations, a head teacher acting alone or with the support of governors will not take an irrational or stupid decision.

Does the hon. Gentleman have any evidence that head teachers want to be put in a position in which there is absolutely no second guessing of a decision that they have taken? That was a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling. They know that they are dealing with very serious situations. Now that the changes have been made, head teachers are not opposed to having appropriate people review their decision and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, confirm that they were right to take it.

The answer to the Minister's question is yes. Obviously, we did not table the new clause without doing some research into the matter. In particular, I have in my constituency several head teachers of schools who are involved with the secondary heads organisations. Without doubt, there is a feeling that the Government's changes, which were welcome, did not go far enough, although I accept that not every head in the country agrees with that.

None the less, there is a strong feeling that head teachers and governing bodies are still at risk from this lottery-funded individual. They are still looking over their shoulder in case this gentleman, who has already caused one huge controversy and who obviously enjoyed the publicity and being on all the national television news programmes, gets involved again in other Surrey schools. Therefore, when the Minister challenges us to say whether heads want this further safeguarding of their position, the answer is yes.

As the hon. Gentleman makes that assertion, I cannot say that he does not know a head who does not feel that way. However, we have issued new guidance in addition to the new regulations. It re-emphasises that the Secretary of State for Education and Skills would not expect an appeals panel to direct the reinstatement of a pupil if there had been serious or actual threatened violence towards another pupil or a member of staff. The same applies in cases of selling drugs, sexual abuse or persistent disruptive behaviour. That is the way to deal with the matter.

The new clause would replace the appeal to an independent panel with an appeal to a magistrates court on a point of law. My other problem with the new clause is that the magistrates court does not hear

appeals on a point of law, as it is generally composed of lay magistrates. Such appeals normally go to the High Court, which can already hear applications for judicial review arising from the decisions of an independent panel.

Does the Minister agree that, notwithstanding all the changes, which I believe were made for the right reasons, there will still be a need to monitor the outcomes of appeals? There may well be a need for further changes. Supporting that route does not mean that one does not care about the problem or about discipline in schools.

What the hon. Lady says is absolutely correct. I am sure that the Secretary of State and Ministers in the Department for Education and Skills will continue to monitor the way in which the powers are used and make other changes if and when necessary.

As I have said, I do not think that it would be appropriate to make such appeals lie with a magistrates court. I do not think that those courts are equipped to hear them. The independent appeals panels are free, whereas the High Court would involve costs for parents and so deny access to appeals to those without the means to use the law.

I think that the Minister may have jumped a point in his notes. He has just been pointing out that we have proposed magistrates courts, but he is now saying that the High Court—which he said that we could have proposed but have not—would incur costs. The reason why we proposed the magistrates court was so that the costs would be much smaller. Lay magistrates have a legally qualified clerk and stipendiary magistrates have a knowledge of the law.

I am aware of that, but I believe that the hon. Gentleman is only putting that idea forward to try to cover the draconian nature of his proposal. He practises law and knows better than I that magistrates courts are not really equipped to deal with matters of law. He is trying to deny access to any appeal whatever on points of merit. He will allow appeals on matters of law but does not want them to go to the High Court, which is equipped to deal with them. He wants to cover himself by sending them to the magistrates court where a lay magistrate will have to attempt to deal with matters of law. In my opinion, the new clause is not only draconian and unjustified, but a mess, too.

We cannot totally ignore the issue of cost. If people feel that they need support to go to an appeals panel, they would certainly feel the need for support—and the need to pay for it—if they had to go to a court, whether a magistrates court, a Crown court or the High Court. I therefore appeal to the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the motion. If he is not prepared to do so, I urge my hon. Friends to vote against it.

The Minister has obviously enjoyed accusing us of being draconian. He normally suggests that I enjoy accusing him of that, so the roles have been reversed for a few minutes this afternoon. On this occasion he has used the word ''draconian'' against the Opposition as many times as I have used it against him

in the past. The new clause is not draconian. We have built in a safeguard, but an inexpensive one.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere, with his considerable experience in the courts, pointed out from a sedentary position when the Minister was coming towards the end of his remarks, magistrates courts actually deal with points of law every single day, because they have a legally qualified clerk. Although the Minister is not a lawyer, I would have hoped that, as a Home Office Minister, he knew that. Perhaps he needs to take advice from some justices' clerks, or from some of his officials who deal with justices' clerks, to understand that magistrates courts deal with points of law every day. They are also used to dealing with matters quickly, cheaply and efficiently, without needing huge rafts of extra legal advice.

Having just corrected the Minister on that one significant point, I shall deal once again with some of the arguments on the merits of the case. We feel strongly that the Government's reforms do not go far enough. We accept that the changes in the arrangements for appeals panels are an improvement, but they have not dealt with the problem that head teachers and governors now have. Before they exclude a pupil, however disruptive, they have to look over their shoulder and wonder whether an appeals panel will overturn their decision. That may mean that some children who ought to be excluded end up not being excluded precisely because the governing body is worried about an appeals panel potentially overturning their decision. We think that the new clause would be a significant improvement in the law.

Can the hon. Gentleman explain to me why he supported clause 21, which gives a universal right of appeal against parenting orders, but is trying to restrict the right of appeal in respect of permanently excluded pupils? The two views do not seem to sit very well together.

I do so because of the national scandal that appeals panels became because of all the national news stories. It is not, as the Minister suggests, just because I am so angry. I am angry about the opportunity that an individual has taken to misuse lottery funding, but I want to make a serious improvement to the law. We are not going to agree. I want to put the new clause to the vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 12.

Question accordingly negatived. Clause 29Dispersal of groups and removal of persons under 16 to their place of residence