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Education and Skills Bill

When I see my right hon. Friend the Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household, I know that I need to be relatively brief. I will attempt to be so. I accept that we have had some debate by way of intervention with the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes), and I accept his general support for the amendments with gratitude. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) asked a few questions and commented on the rapid U-turn by the Conservative party. I can tell him categorically that there will not be any U-turn on key stage 2 tests. We have proceeded with the procurement for 2009, which is coming to a conclusion. As the Secretary of State said in his statement, we think it important that there is an independently assessed national measure of performance that allows parents and us to judge the performance of primary schools. That function is performed in another respect by GCSEs, but in respect of key stage 2, if there are any changes, those will be informed by the expert group set up under the leadership of Sir Alasdair Macdonald, the head teacher from Tower Hamlets.