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Education and Inspections Bill

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb), and I want to engage with some of his arguments. After sitting on these Benches for nine years, I want to make one last effort to impress by speaking to these amendments and new clauses. After all, we now have a new Chief Whip. I want to speak to a series of radical, reforming and modernising amendments tabled in the very best traditions of new Labour. After all, new Labour started around the principle of one person, one vote. I remember helping to organise the Prime Minister’s internal election campaign in Yorkshire, when he stood for the leadership, and that was very much one of our principles. What is so wrong with one parent, one vote? That is the principle behind new clauses 16, 17 and 23, and I urge those on my Front Bench to resist the forces of conservatism. They must not be hidebound by the past; they must reach out to the future and involve parents in the fullest possible way. New clause 16 would allow for a ballot in the case of a community school moving to a foundation school. New clause 17 would allow for a ballot when a local authority proposed to establish a foundation school. New clause 23, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), deals with the situation in which a foundation school might want to revert to being a community school. In the interests of parental choice and freedom, that should surely be a possibility, and a ballot would be a means of legitimising the process. I have listened carefully to the arguments against ballots, and some of them have shocked me. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said recently in The Sunday Times:"““The governors have to make a decision. The school decides whether to be a trust. If it does, there has to be consultation with parents. But turning that into a ballot strikes us as unnecessary.””" My right hon. Friend has a proud tradition of advocating democracy in trade unions. Let us therefore imagine that quote, but with the following words substituted: ““The union executive has to make a decision. The union executive decides whether there is to be a strike. If it does, there has to be consultation with members. But turning that into a ballot strikes us as unnecessary.”” I am a great admirer of my right hon. Friend; he is a rising star and I am sure that he has further to rise, but when he put forward his argument for rejecting ballots, it was not his finest hour.