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Education Bill

In a minute. In Committee, we will consider the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) and others to ensure that the proposals are not window dressing, but a genuine enhancement of what we achieved in office. We will consider whether they will cause more problems for teachers and schools. Part 1 of the Bill seeks to build on the revolution in early-years provision that Labour pioneered in office. In particular, we will look closely at the power the Secretary of State is awarding himself to decide who gets early-years teaching, how much and when. We will approach the Bill in Committee in that way. Overall, we oppose the Bill on Second Reading because, along with a number of other pieces of legislation, it fits in with the ideology of the coalition Government; an ideology that the Lib Dems appear to have been duped into going along with, having been seduced, it seems, by Lady Localism. Well, she is not what she seems in this Bill and I ask the Lib Dems to consider carefully what the Bill does about localism. Localism, for them, used to mean enhancing local democracy. This fits in with the Orwellian use of language that the Government have adopted. Just as for the Home Secretary a curfew has become an ““overnight residence requirement””, localism is used to describe a Bill that takes away local democratic power from communities, teachers and parents, and puts the power into the hands of one man—the Secretary of State. The Bill is described, unbelievably, as a decentralising measure, but he is taking more than 50 new powers to himself to control almost every single aspect of the schools system.