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Education and Inspections Bill

As I have listened to the debate, I have felt like an outsider intruding on a family row. The debate has really been between the two warring factions of the family on the Labour Benches. However, while the Bill will not apply to Northern Ireland, and Northern Ireland has not had trust schools, it has had a body of schools with some degree of autonomy—voluntary grammar schools. Those have been subject to some local control, with the greatest control resting with the boards of governors and the headmasters who run those schools. That flexibility has been beneficial in making decisions. On Second Reading, the Democratic Unionist party supported the Government in their aim to increase the degree of diversity and autonomy where schools decided that they wished to have that. I am pleased that the Prime Minister and the Government have not been influenced by the forces on their Back Benches who wish to see substantial changes made to the Bill. As the debate has progressed, it has become clear that the argument about the local ballot has really been an argument about how those who know that they are likely to lose today’s debate can find some way of thwarting the main elements of the Bill when it is implemented locally. The ballot is seen to be the means by which that will be done. [Hon. Members: ““It’s called democracy.””] Hon. Members may say that, but in what system of democracy would such fundamental change, especially that which is designed to improve the quality of education for youngsters and have a dramatic impact on their lives, be subject to such a veto? Let us not forget that the argument about the ballot is really about placing a veto in the hands of one narrowly defined group of stakeholders—the parents of youngsters currently at the school. That is what would happen were the new clause to be accepted. Such a small group of people should not be handed the right to exercise a veto on something that would lead to such fundamental and, I believe, advantageous change. As some Members have pointed out, should not parents of children who might attend the school in future be involved? Should not parents of children who have not currently chosen the school but who might choose it were there a change of status also be involved? Why are they excluded? Why should we focus on such a narrow group of people and give them a veto? The hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) did not tell us the reason why a veto should be given to people to change the nature of a school when the same veto would not be given to people on a more dramatic decision such as the closure of an unsustainable school. We would not dream of giving parents that veto, and it would not be practical to do so. However, those Members who tabled the amendments say that a veto should be given on a decision much less fundamental than that.