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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response. I am also most grateful to all noble Lords who supported the amendments. The Minister has offered considerable reassurance. I was interested to hear about a review in relation to the regulations in Section 47 of the 1998 Act. There is quite a lot of evidence to show that at the moment, or until quite recently, the resources that are being provided to meet disadvantage are not necessarily being passed through to the schools that need those resources. I am glad to hear that they have set in train that review, and I will be interested to hear the outcome when it is completed. In relation to admissions forums, I regret to say that, although I should have, I have not chased up the new regulations that were just issued on the draft admissions code. It is good to hear that the admissions forums have a specific duty to promote social equity and to look to the interests of all parents and children collectively in their community. Coming back to Amendment No. 6, I repeat what I said earlier that we recognise that in giving an explicit duty to local authorities to promote fair access and equality of opportunity they are moving in the direction of promoting social cohesion. We may come back at Third Reading with an amendment that provides a more explicit power for local authorities, which might be more suitable than the amendments that I tabled. I thank the noble Lord for what he said.