Schools White Paper

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her statement, but may I ask her whether she believes that parent power will in any respect stand in the way of expanding schools and improving them? Where are the schools that want to expand to take on more challenging pupils? Are we not empowering parents who have moved heaven and earth to get near to the successful schools, and who often have moved house to do so? Will they turn round and say, ““Yes, expand this school and make it bigger to take on those more challenging pupils,”” when they feel that they have left those pupils behind through their ability to move closer to the most successful schools? I urge my right hon. Friend to think very carefully about the system we are introducing. Are not these proposals in danger of being a charter for the chattering classes to leave behind the inner city secondary schools, as they have always done in our education system? What mechanisms will she put in place to ensure that that does not happen?