Law Weblog

Passage of legislation, a rare variation on the process

Tuesday 20 July 2010 at 7:48 am | In News | Post Comment Parliament will pass major legislation by early next week so some schools can be academies by September.

The government has taken the unusual step of compressing the parliamentary process by taking the committee stage in the Commons. It means MPs will get just five hours to debate the proposed laws. Ministers usually reserve such a compressed process for anti-terror laws and constitutional matters. Although in 1997, Labour used the same method to push through legislation to scrap subsidised places at independent schools.

The proposed legislation will allow schools to apply to opt out of local authority control and become independent academies, directly funded by central government.

The Academies Bill has already had 22 hours of committee debate in the House of Lords, and another nine hours of report debate.

Fifteen hundred schools have expressed an interest in becoming academies.