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Education and Inspections Bill

Yes, I do think that it is reasonable. That is precisely the point that I am making. I oppose new clause 39 because I saw the damaging effect of anti-grammar school campaigns in the late 1990s and the early years of this century, both in my constituency and across Kent. Those campaigns damaged all the schools in the area, and not just grammar schools, because they diverted effort, money, resources and energy from education. People who should have been involved in improving school standards took up opposing positions in destructive political campaigns that, in the end, achieved nothing because they had no support. In Kent, for example, the Government’s regulations meant that the anti-grammar school campaigners needed 45,000 signatures to trigger a ballot. When they set off, they were extremely confident that they would achieve that number, but that was in the late 1990s heyday of new Labour, when it was both new and popular. It is neither of those things today. After months of trying, however, the campaigners were forced to admit that they were giving up, as they were able to raise only 7,000 signatures in the whole of Kent. That was not just a failure, it was a pathetic failure. Despite the opinion polls quoted by the hon. Member for Bury, North, the campaign showed that the parents who knew most about education did not want it to be disrupted. A majority of those parents would have known that their children would go not to grammar schools but to the high schools or comprehensives that we have in certain parts of Kent, yet not only would they not vote to change the system, but they would not even sign the petition to trigger a ballot. That is clear evidence, in addition to the one ballot that actually did take place—in Ripon. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) could not even bring himself to say what happened, which was that when parents were faced with a choice they voted to retain the existing system. In Kent, which is a much larger area, parents did not even want a ballot. However, the anti-grammar school campaigners came back again and again, and the energies and efforts of too many people were spent for too long on something that was not helpful to any school in the area. I hope and expect that the common sense of those on the Treasury Bench, including the new Secretary of State, means that people of reason and common sense on both sides of the House will vote against the new clause—against the hard left of the Labour party and their natural allies, nowadays, in the Liberal Democrats. I am sure that they will be defeated, because when parents have had the chance to speak they have spoken loudly against that type of change. They do not want to destroy the existing school system.