---

Education and Skills Bill

I hope that we may share that letter. The Minister’s reply to my noble friend’s very humble amendment was quite surprising. We have three or four paragraphs on how excellent the present system is and what it has delivered, then we had many more on how much is going to be delivered under the new system, but there was nothing much addressing the question of aspirations as distinct from requirements. We have now had requirements defined, but I have not heard a reason why aspirations should not be included, except for the suggestion that the council will be too exalted to assess them—although it can apparently assess requirements. At this point I am tempted to reflect that every Bill team, backed and encouraged by every parliamentary draftsman, starts from the position that the Bill is perfect and must be defended and only slowly yields to a suggestion that it could be in any way improved. Parliamentary draftsmen can, on occasion, be persuaded to revisit an issue; this may not be such an issue—but until we know how the Minister interprets ““aspirations””, as compared with how my noble friend interprets the word, it is really very difficult to see whether we should ask the Minister to do so or not.