Education Bill

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend, as he says in this debate. My noble friend Lady Massey has cited Northern Ireland. If you want, and I normally do, we can go back to 1176 when the Welsh allowed Pembroke, otherwise known as Strongbow, to first invade Ireland, and that was the start of the Troubles—English and Norman interference in Ireland. It is a long-term issue. What is coming across to me from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and certainly from my noble friend Lady Massey, is that faith schools—especially Catholic schools, it seems—are an inherently bad thing; they do bad things and they are not good for society. Among colleagues here there is a certain detachment from reality because that is not how they are perceived outside. It is completely unfair—