---

Education and Inspections Bill

I feel the need to rise briefly in response to the noble Lord, Lord Young, to say that I hope he will come further in the Buscombe direction than the Walmsley direction, given that Buscombe has been quoting from the Labour manifestos for 1992 and 1997, the 2005 White Paper and ad infinitum. I feel that I am almost seeking to do the noble Lord’s job for him. This may sound very controversial, but it has been nagging at me that there is a feeling that if one is going for anything other than a community school, one is somehow leaving the community and that the local authority body that sets schools up and manages them is somehow intrinsically linked with a local authority and therefore with the community. As a punter, I never felt any connection with my local authority until I became a representative of it. I hope I am making myself clear here. Most people who live in towns, villages or cities feel a real sense of connection not with their local authority but with the place that they live in and the community as a whole. To somehow feel that if one moves away from management by the local government structure one is leaving the community is fictitious and completely wrong.