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Education and Inspections Bill

Well, the hon. Gentleman may be right, but his majority in Bury, North might prove more elusive than mine at the next election. I would have much more faith in the arguments that he advances—especially his argument for the maintenance of the balloting arrangement to mitigate the damage of his proposals—if he had put in his amendment a proposal that the ballots should be extended more widely to other communities. As I said in an earlier intervention, I might even have been tempted to vote for such a proposal. I have no doubt whatever that the situation in my constituency would be similar to that in Kent, where the few campaigners against the grammar schools could get nowhere near the 5 per cent. threshold necessary to trigger a ballot. However, if such a ballot were to take place in my constituency, I am confident that the majority in favour of preserving the highest performing education system in the country would be at least as great as it was when such a vote took place in Ripon, albeit with a different type of electorate.