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Education and Inspections Bill

Perhaps I can begin by paying tribute to the work that has been done by hon. Members on both sides of the House in scrutinising the Bill in Committee. It emerged from the Committee remarkably similar to the Bill that went into Committee and remarkably similar to the Bill that the Conservative party voted for on Second Reading. We will, of course, support the Bill on Third Reading, for many of the reasons set out by the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. I welcome the Secretary of State to the Dispatch Box. I have not previously had a proper opportunity to welcome him to his new post. I have enormous respect for his abilities, both as a politician and as a Minister. Our paths have strangely inter-twingled—[Hon. Members: ““Inter-twingled?””] I should be the Deputy Prime Minister, talking like that. We have gone from pensions to energy and now to schools. In fact, the Secretary of State is to be found wherever the Government are in crisis, and he brings his own distinct sort of ““Dad’s Army””, ““Don’t panic”” style to the various crises that he finds. If I may say so, I thought that he was in fine form yesterday. I cannot think of any member of the Cabinet who could have handled the rebellion that he faced yesterday better than he did. His reward, of course, was a Labour rebellion of 69 Members who voted against the Government. Perhaps it tells us a lot about the state of the Labour party and the Labour Government that, with all his skill, he faced a rebellion that wiped out their majority. The debates on the Bill, both in Committee and on the Floor of the House, have had a strangely elusive quality, because the implications of the Bill may be quite modest. I hope that they are not modest in practice, but I am not as confident as the Secretary of State about how many schools will become trust schools. I have some concerns about what will happen when the human rights lawyers get to work on some of the points in a recent report. We may find that some of the Bill’s provisions are hard to implement.