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Education and Skills Bill

I appreciate that when it comes to asking for any contribution sensitivity must be applied, but that sensitivity cuts both ways. It is important to ensure that schools ask for a contribution after admissions have been granted and in a way that ensures that members of the community are fully aware of how that money will be deployed. But it is also incumbent on the Secretary of State to show sensitivity to minority faith groups. If he believes, and I believe, that the situation could have been improved, he had a choice. His choice was publicly to name and shame schools in a way that led them to believe that their position was under threat, to see those schools criticised, and to see their names appear in the press under the allegation that there was a somehow a cash for access scam operating. The Secretary of State will have an opportunity later in this debate to disavow that implication, apologise for the coverage that his intervention generated and put on the record his admiration for those schools and his regret at his and his Department's clumsiness. I look forward to that; it would be a gracious acknowledgement that would do him great credit.