Education Bill

My Lords, I am grateful for the earlier discussions held with the Minister and his colleague, John Hayes. As the Minister said, he indicated on Report that the Government were prepared to reconsider the issue of staff and student representation. I am pleased to say that this commitment has now been honoured in both spirit and practice in the amendment before us. It was, of course, the Government’s own amendment that created the issue of representation being withdrawn and quite rightly caused consternation among students and staff. However, on this occasion the Government have been quick to acknowledge the error and put it right. In fact, I would go further and acknowledge that their amendment is indeed better than that tabled by those on our own Benches on this issue, so I am very pleased to support it and for our proceedings on this Bill to end on such a positive note. Since this will be my last contribution on the Bill, perhaps I could say a few words, particularly on behalf of my noble friend Lady Hughes—who cannot be here this evening but is now the proud grandmother of a baby girl—and also my noble friends Lady Crawley, Lord Young and Lord Stevenson. I thank the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for the courteous and good-natured way in which they have responded to the wide, varied and sometimes extremely controversial issues that noble Lords have chosen to raise on the Bill as we have progressed through it over the months. We started debating the Bill in May, and at times it has truly felt like a marathon. However, throughout the time the Minister has maintained an open door policy and has genuinely sought to answer and deal with our concerns, and for that we are very grateful. I would also like to thank the Bill team for its hard work. At one stage I thought that I might have to employ a secretary just to keep track of its daily letters. When it started to send letters summarising the previous letters that it had sent, I realised that it was not just me who was having trouble keeping up. I appreciate that all that was intended to be helpful, and it certainly helped us to improve the scrutiny of the Bill. At the end of the day, the Bill is a better Bill and the time was, in retrospect, well spent. However, I have no doubt that the Secretary of State is as we speak fervently brewing up his next grand plan and that it will not be long before we find ourselves back here again. But, for now, I thank the Minister and urge support for the amendment.