Education and Inspections Bill

I will not give way. Our view is that the Bill’s net effect, taking the good with the bad, will make it easier to establish trust schools and therefore increase the freedoms available to our schools. The Secretary of State has written to my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) to ask why, if we support the Bill, we oppose the programme motion. We oppose the programme motion, because we almost always oppose programme motions, as they are an affront to the procedures of the House. It would be wrong therefore if we failed to oppose this programme motion simply because we happen to support the Bill. Some of the concessions made to Labour rebels that were agreed behind closed doors should be debated more fully on the Floor of the House—issues such as the powers of the unelected schools adjudicator; the outlawing of interviews by schools, even interviews that help to enforce home-school contracts, which are particularly important in raising standards in inner city schools; and, of course, the concessions on community schools. Those concessions were negotiated by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Education and Skills, on which I had the pleasure to serve. I was struck by his impressive speech, in which he said that we did not think hard enough—all of us, collectively—about what we replaced grammar schools with and that some of us have been slow in realising that vision. He is right: we need to take ideology out of education and to replace it with what works. A similar point was made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke)—a former Secretary of State for Education and Science—in an excellent speech. He said that we may now be moving towards a consensus, perhaps one that is 20 years too late, and that we should try to build a consensus on how we tackle low expectations and poor leadership and standards in schools, such as those referred to by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), where only 8 per cent. of pupils achieved five or more good GCSEs in the 1990s. Consensus was also sought by the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), in a very powerful and passionate speech, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson), whose speech was very different from that of the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter). I was surprised by the speech of the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), who leads on the issue for the Liberal Democrats. She agrees with the provisions on discipline and vocational education, yet she is pledged to vote against the Bill. She also agrees with not serving mechanically recovered turkey, yet she is pledged to vote against those provisions in the Bill. Perhaps her predecessor and fellow Liberal, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), hit the nail on the head when he said, in the shortest speech that I have ever heard him give, that this was a Tory Bill. In a very thoughtful and candid speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) made a similar point when he asked how Conservative Members could vote against a Bill that promotes diversity and choice. He, indeed, is right. I understand the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) about the ban on interviews, particularly for faith schools such as the London Oratory. We will table amendments to try to redress that in Committee. My hon. Friends the Members for Salisbury (Robert Key) and for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) are passionate about the grammar schools in their constituencies. I have been to both the secondary moderns that my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West referred to—Wellington school and Ashton on Mersey school. Despite 40 per cent. of the children in Trafford going on to grammar schools and Wellington school taking some of the other 60 per cent., 73 per cent. of its pupils achieve five or more grades of A to C at GCSE. It can be done. In a highly effective three-minute speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) made the key point that we need more good schools. My hon. Friends the Members for Buckingham (John Bercow) and for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) sought more setting in schools. I believe that that is the way forward. This is a modest Bill, but it is significant in one important respect. It probably marks the last education Bill that we will see from this Administration and the last serious education reform that we are likely to see over the next few years. Education remains one of the most crucial issues facing this country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) said in his speech, in today’s increasingly competitive world in which knowledge and intellect are the source of new wealth creation, the only way that we can compete with India and China and the millions of highly educated graduates these countries are producing is if we can deliver a significantly improved quality of education. Leaving aside the economic importance of the issue, we should also want all our children to be highly educated for its own sake, so that they can enjoy and enrich our culture. That means ensuring that children are taught to read properly and effectively at primary school with methods that work—with synthetic phonics rather than whole language teaching—that maths is taught properly and that children learn their multiplication tables. We need to ensure that the curriculum is rigorous and that pupils are set by ability so that the less able have the time and space to learn and the most able are stretched to their full potential. What the Bill, the White Paper and the row and debates in the Labour party over the past few months reveal is that Labour can no longer deliver any future serious reform to our education system. What Lord Kinnock and Lady Morris have established, together with all the Labour Members who signed up to the alternative White Paper, is that only a Conservative Administration can now deliver the changes we still need in our education system if we are to provide for a prosperous and fulfilled future for the next generation. We support the Bill this evening, modest though it is, because we believe that it will increase the freedoms that are available to schools and that it will make it easier to close bad schools, easier to expand good schools and easier to establish new schools. All this is a small step to ensuring that children from whatever background get a better education. That is why I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends and right hon. and hon. Members from all wings of the Labour party to join us in the Lobby in support of the Bill.