There’s a row afoot in the House of Lords. That’s a bit of a dog-bites-man line these days, with government defeats in the Upper Chamber being so common that they’re totally unremarkable. But this latest spot of bother doesn’t come from Labour or the Lib Dems or even those difficult-to-read crossbenchers. No: the new rebels are a bunch of Tory ex-ministers who want to delete a large chunk of their party’s own bill.
At this stage, the trio are merely politely asking ministers to delete the first 18 clauses of the bill.
The Schools Bill is currently in the Committee Stage – where peers go through line-by-line scrutiny of the legislation – in the Lords. At yesterday’s sitting, former Education Secretary Lord Baker announced that he and two other former education ministers, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew, want to delete the first 18 clauses of the 69-clause bill. They are angry that the bill will give huge new powers to the Education Secretary over academies.
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