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Mr. David Shaw (Dover): Would my right hon. Friend be attracted to the idea of having just one meeting of a Special Standing Committee, so that Labour Front Benchers could explain why they support Conservative education policies for their children?

Mrs. Shephard: I intend to spell out some of those Labour supporters in a minute or so.

The Government have a record of achievement in education of which we can be proud. We have put in place an education framework that is delivering the improvement in standards that we need. That framework is fair and sound because it is built on principles of choice and diversity and opportunity for all. Our policies are popular because they work. They are very popular with many in this House. I shall name some of the supporters of our policies--the right hon. Member for Sedgefield and the hon. Members for Peckham, for Walton, for Cannock and Burntwood, for Barking and for Blackburn, to name but a few.The choices that those people have been able to make are proof of the success of our policies, yet those same people represent a party that opposes all those things.

Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton): The right hon. Lady has now twice named me in her list of those whom she suggests support Conservative party policy. Will she explain to the House why, on previous occasions, both she and the Prime Minister have had to withdraw similar allegations about me and the school that my son attends? Those apologies were made both in writing and on the Floor of the House.

Mrs. Shephard: I certainly do not want to offend the hon. Gentleman. If he is sensitive about the school that his child attends, I unreservedly withdraw any allegations that he thinks I may have made. He is clearly sensitive about the matter and I do not want to increase that sensitivity. However, the principle holds good. Members of the Opposition Front-Bench team support our policies for their children, while opposing them for the children of everyone else.

In contrast, we have pursued the same principles with clarity, firmness and increasingly good results for 17 years--choice and diversity for all parents, clear expectations of all pupils and accountability and freedom for all schools, all leading to higher standards and greater opportunities. Those are the principles that we have made our own and applied consistently. Through the Bill, we shall continue to apply them for the benefit of all the children of this country. I commend the Bill to the House.

5.5 pm

Mr. David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside): I beg to move, To leave out from "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"this House believes that the Education Bill is not an acceptable and effective measure unless it focuses on clauses related to the improvement of discipline, baseline assessment and targets in schools, the regulation of supply teachers, inspection of local education authorities, careers guidance and the merger of the School

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Curriculum and Assessment Authority and the National Council for Vocational Qualifications; adds clauses to reduce infant class sizes to a maximum of 30, to introduce a General Teaching Council to promote and regulate the teaching profession and to establish the means to ensure that every 11 year old without a special educational need reaches level 4 in national reading tests; and removes those divisive proposals which reduce parental choice, extend the taxpayers' subsidy of private schools and undermine the efficient planning of school places."

The Opposition have also tabled a motion to commit the Bill to a Special Standing Committee because we believe that it would be sensible for the House to be able to take adequate evidence and to consider the sort of measures that would enhance the Bill and provide a genuine framework for higher standards and discipline in our schools. I fear that the Secretary of State's unwillingness this afternoon to adopt that procedure shows her insecurity, and her uncertainty about what she is promoting.

We are told that the Government are interested in opportunity for all children in our schools, but the Bill simply denies it. We are told that the Tories are interested in the discipline issue, but the Bill does the absolute minimum to resolve it. If they believe in lifting standards crucially for all children and giving choice to all parents, I fear that the diversity that is being denied in the Bill--and the denial of choice in the selective process--undermine the principles that the Government enunciate.

Almost 18 years, 18 separate education measures, endless Secretaries of State, muddle, confusion, withdrawal, recantation, recrimination--we have had all of those. The Government were dug out, by Sir Ron Dearing, of the hole into which they had dug themselves. It has been change after change, yet here we are again, after almost two decades, with a Bill that has two essential features--one is further division and the other is plagiarism.

I again make the offer to the Secretary of State that, if she genuinely wants to promote measures on standards and discipline, and if she wants them on the statute book before the general election, we will co-operate to achieve that--on the basis of the withdrawal of the divisive and undermining policies in the Bill on selection and the extension of elitism.

It is absolutely clear that there is a difference of philosophy on that part of the Bill. The Government want to go back to a bygone era, when only a small elite were eligible and educated to a high standard and level. It was presumed that the majority of the population would be in fairly low-level, low-wage work and that they would not need education to take them through to a university degree and postgraduate qualifications. It was thought unnecessary to educate society--every individual--to the highest possible level, so that just a few students could be selected. In the old days, 20 or 25 per cent. of students were selected, but the percentage now will be only 5 or 6 per cent.--with a grammar school in every town. Only a small percentage of students will be educated to a high standard, the remainder consigned to other schools in other parts of the country.

Mr. Nicholls: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Blunkett: Yes; I will in a moment.

The philosophy is very clear. If only a few students are to have access, through selection, to high-quality education and the remainder are to be rejected, we are

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being offered a world in which we will have a fringe economy on the very edge of Europe. We will be unable and unwilling to take advantage of a new technological era in a global economy, in which major companies can recruit from across the world the expertise and educated excellence they need to do the job. It is a type of trickle down of excellence to the rest--[Interruption.] It is a type of aristocratic incontinence that would allow the rest of us to benefit from the excellence provided to a few. Which Conservative Members--who, obviously, have benefited from state education, as have their children--would like to intervene?

Mr. Rowe: The hon. Gentleman is making a wonderful case for his eloquence, but his comments have nothing to do with reality. The Government have increased the proportion of people going to university to one in three, made it very much easier for people to return to education at any stage during their career and, in Kent alone, high schools are already sending children to universities--thus blowing a hole in the hon. Gentleman's argument.

Mr. Blunkett: I thought that, over the past 20 years, comprehensive schools had developed the potential of the individuals who are now taking up higher education. The hon. Gentleman is quite right, however, to say that higher education is now being taken up by more people than were ever given access to grammar schools. There has been a transformation, but a transformation the Government now wish to reverse. They want to go backwards--to another era in which only a few people made it through the trap-door into the land of opportunity. That development is not only socially pernicious, it is a dangerous economic doctrine.

Several hon. Members rose--

Mr. Blunkett: I shall give way in a moment.

Occasionally, in some newspaper leaders, I read the belief expressed that that is the era to which we should return, and that quality must be rationed so that it will not be diluted. That is claptrap of the first order, and everyone who struggled to escape the previous system based on elitism and selection knows it is. Every person who was rejected after taking the 11-plus and who still made it is a living example of why we should not return to a divisive system.

Mr. Nicholls: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Several hon. Members rose--

Mr. Blunkett: I will give way to the hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn), whose interventions I always enjoy.

Mr. Dunn: The hon. Gentleman's use of the word pernicious was interesting. What is more pernicious than living in an area to gain access to a certain school, given that many people will be locked into sending their children to the neighbourhood comprehensive school, as suggested by the Labour party? In the 1960s, we discovered that only parents who could afford to buy a house in the catchment area of a good comprehensive

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school were able to send their children to that school, thereby denying choice to thousands of disadvantaged children who could not afford to move.

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