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Education and Skills Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Committee; he made an interesting speech that touched on some extremely important points. I am also delighted that he mentioned Alison Wolf's excellent report, which was published at the weekend. We will all want to come back to it once we have had the chance to consider some of its detailed points in Committee. I thank the Secretary of State, following his consensus-building speech—I think that that was the intention, although I am not sure. He passed me a biographical note about Herbert Fisher, of whom I confess I had not heard. Apparently, he was a predecessor of my hon. Friend the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Sheffield, Hallam as far back as 1916, and he advocated a Bill for compulsory education until age 14. I am not quite sure what point the Secretary of State was seeking to make. Nobody doubts that individuals aged 14 are children, and back in 1916 the voting age was 21. Are today's Liberal Democrats supposed to be influenced by the fact that somebody in one of our seats in one part of the country voted in a particular way 100 years ago?