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Education and Skills Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, and I will tell him in a minute what the Government's response to that question is. He will probably know, as an assiduous Back Bencher, that the Select Committee investigated this precise point in its report of 2004. It said that it could find"““neither evidence of a meaningful distinction between aptitude and ability nor evidence relating to the purpose or justification for selection by aptitude””." I know that the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), the Select Committee Chairman, was in constructive mode in his earlier comments. I pay tribute to the report that he and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes), drew up a number of years ago, which was clearly ahead of its time in respect of Government policy. The hon. Gentleman was perhaps a little generous, however, in overlooking some of the other parts of that Select Committee report on admissions, which the Government have yet to address. Some of the issues are dealt with in new clause 18 on selection by aptitude.