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Education and Skills Bill

I support the principle of paying particular attention to those with special educational needs and, as I said at Second Reading, their early diagnosis, which this amendment does not directly address. I hope that we will get round to that later. I cannot escape mentioning the way in which Amendment No. 53, by referring to those in custody, puts its finger on the supreme irony of a system which compels people to do something when they have very little freedom of choice and where the ultimate sanction is that they go into custody. There is a certain Alice in Wonderland dimension to that. We will return on Report to the question of compulsion and perhaps it is better to reserve anything else that needs to be said on that until then, but I cannot help looking at this sad picture of the person already in prison compelled to complete a duty which he cannot possibly do unless everybody else does their job of providing him the means to do it and the threat of imprisoning him if he does not.