---

Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. I would just like to say to him that although I too am a great admirer of the Archbishop of Birmingham and have known him for probably30 years, I have not actually spoken to him once about this Bill during its proceedings. He is more than capable of reading Hansard and seeing what the noble Lord has said. What I was agreeing with the noble Lord about is that the position has not changed since last week as far as the opposition of most Catholics is concerned. I do not speak for the Catholic Church—I speak for myself, like the noble Lord speaks for himself. Most Catholics in this country feel very strongly about their schools and would resist any attempt to change the 1944 Education Act, whether it is by central control, in the way that the noble Lord proposed seven days ago, or now, in his change of heart seven days later, by making it a local imposition.