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Education and Inspections Bill

I will come to that later. I want to move on to the roles of central and local government. For all the spin on freeing up schools, it is notable that in the first 70 pages of the Bill the Secretary of State is mentioned in action or possible action more than 60 times, regulations prescribing this and that are mentioned more than 50 times, and the guidance of the Secretary of State is made available 20 times. She is going to be an extremely busy girl. It is hardly localist. We broadly support the idea of local authorities moving to a more commissioner-based role to support increased diversity in the system, but we do not see why they should not also compete to run community schools. That is a local decision that should not be subject to the Secretary of State’s veto or interference. If we want local authorities to commission, we need to decide exactly what we mean by that. First, we need to give them the power to decide how much money to put into education, and where to target it. [Interruption.]