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Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

No, I am on a time constraint here. I am sorry. [Interruption.] I have only two minutes left. In yet another concession—but an unfortunate and cruel concession—to the DUP, the order also provided that if there was restoration of devolved government by 24 November, there would need to be a cross-community vote to confirm the ban on selection. It did not work—the 24 November deadline will not be met—but that is not the end of it. Astonishingly, clause 21 of the Bill goes even further, offering the DUP a veto on education reform if there is restoration by the new deadline of 26 March. It also appears to allow different rules to be made for different types of schools, to ensure that academic selection of the worst kind remains the order of the day. It is wrong for our education system to be thrown into chaos in that way, and I would plead with the Secretary of State not to do it—not to allow our children's education to be held to ransom. I have an eight-year-old child, a daughter, who, believe it or not, regularly asks me whether she will do the 11-plus, because her friends in her class at school, P4, do not quite know where they are. My daughter does not know what pathway will be available to her in three years’ time; her teacher does not know; her mother, my wife, does not know; and I do not know, and that is representative of the situation for a whole tranche of eight-year-olds throughout Northern Ireland. Nothing in the St. Andrews agreement requires that confusion, and the Social Democratic and Labour party will oppose the clause that introduces it in Committee and at every other opportunity. It is tragic that the Democratic Unionist party is driving forward this awful education agenda, ironically ensuring the total neglect of the children of people in loyalist working-class areas, who are the very people from whom it demands. But that is the case not only in loyalist areas, but for all children, ensuring that they do not get the education opportunities that they deserve. Regardless of whether the issue is education, water, rural planning, the review of public administration or Workplace 2010, the people I talk to want devolution and they want it now. They want us to get a grip. I appeal to Sinn Fein and the DUP to stop their ritual hostage dance and to get on with things, because that is what ordinary people want. We want devolution, and we want it now.