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Academies Bill [Lords]

The hon. Gentleman will probably be disappointed, as I was about to move on to that point. Labour Members have said a great deal about the role of the local authority, and of parents in relation to it, in control of schools. In the area I represented as a councillor, when parents were up in arms about proposals to close our primary schools, the local education authority was in no position to fight such proposals or to act as a guardian for our local schools, because there is no genuine control by the local authority over education. The surplus places legislation and the Ofsted framework come down from central Government. It is a fallacy that parents are continuously engaged with their LEA about the structure of education in their area. The theory might look and sound good, but the reality is different. The Bill gives parents a choice—I limit my comments here to maintained schools that become academy schools—to vote with their feet. The hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) wants parents to vote in some form, and I suggest that providing a range of different education facilities in an area enables parents to decide not with a tick in a box but with their feet. My concerns about new clause 1 echo many of those put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson). We might end up with the strange situation in which 10% of parents are continually unhappy with the governance arrangements and go back for a second, third or fourth bite at the cherry. That is the problem with a 10% threshold, or a 30%, 40% or 49.9% threshold—