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Education and Inspections Bill

I intervene in an attempt to speed up the debate. As I said, I am sorry that some unions thought that they were not properly consulted. The provisions were discussed by the work force agreement monitoring group both last week and a year ago, when they were first being given serious consideration by the Government. The amendments were originally tabled by the Bishop of Peterborough during Committee stage of the Bill in the House of Lords, as the hon. Gentleman said. Following those discussions, to ease the handling of the Bill, we decided to respond with similar, but more minor, amendments. It would raise some interesting constitutional questions if we did not allow the Lords to amend Bills. That Bills may be amended in the House of Lords is part of the bicameral system that we enjoy in this country.