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Education and Inspections Bill

That was exactly my point. I was not arguing against the convention. It is quite right that the people who have tabled amendments should speak first. I was simply explaining why it had taken four hours to call someone who had not tabled an amendment. So I am not getting at my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett)—not yet. I agree with my hon. Friend that the intervention made on him by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) was pretty fatuous. The hon. Gentleman said that the trust backers would not want a ballot because they would not want to be involved in a campaign. But trusts do not have to have funds. In fact, we do not anticipate that they would have them, so that argument does not arise. Equally, the scenario that my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth described for half his speech about five governors making an irrevocable decision about the future of a school could not arise either. One of the things that many Labour Members have been doing—either front of house or backstage—over the past few weeks is to try to get back into the Bill greater authority and responsibility for the local education authorities. And one provision that we have got back into it is that the local authority would have to decide whether the consultation had been legitimate and genuine. I cannot imagine any local authority in the country accepting as legitimate or genuine the scenario that my hon. Friend has been describing. It would therefore be ruled out. My hon. Friend is not listening to me, but he can read what I have said in Hansard tomorrow. I want to tackle the issue of ballots head on. Contrary to the impression that some hon. Members have given, the Bill will not ban ballots. It will not prevent schools or governing bodies from holding ballots if they wish to do so. Nor does it say that, if they do hold ballots, they should organise them in a particular way. I remember only one such ballot being held. There was only one ballot on a grant-maintained school in my constituency, and only one primary school in my constituency became grant maintained. The ballot had a majority of one. That was one of the last schools to become grant maintained so, fortunately, it had one of the shortest careers as a GM school. However, the ballot was binding, and it was carried by a majority of one parent, making that school become grant maintained. That could not happen under the provisions of the Bill, because the local authority will now have a veto if it does not consider the ballot to have been properly conducted. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby) told us in an intervention that a ballot would protect us from the organisations with the most money, the most eloquence and the most force dominating the debate. That could not possibly happen in a ballot, could it? Yes, of course it could, and it happened in GM ballots time after time.