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Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab): Is not the problem that we have to judge the Bill without knowing what the code of practice will contain?
Mr. Sheerman: When we took evidence on that, we were happy that the code of admissions would be tougher. It had already been accepted that there would be no interviews. The Secretary of State assured us that the admissions code would be stronger, more robust and fit for purpose. Our suggestion that the admissions forum, local authorities and schools could call in the schools adjudicator toughens up the number of times that the adjudicator can be brought in if something that should not go on is happening.
The Select Committee also made a genuine breakthrough in getting the concession on what the school commissioner could do to assess the intake of schools throughout the country. Although I would prefer an annual assessment of schools' social mix, I am most proud of the biennial assessment, which the Select Committee's report recommended.
The White Paper and the Bill received more consultation than any other measure that I can remember in my 26 years in the House, and not only in the Select Committee, although I think that we did a darned good job. Okay, we did not get unanimity, but we produced a very good report. However, we also saw Labour Back Benchers and people from other parties making positive suggestions that were listened to by the Secretary of State and the Government, and we got change. Not only that, we got change in the School Transport Bill that came in last year. The Transport Committee looked at it, and it was obvious that it needed changing and improving. Why cannot we be proud of ourselves sometimes, not just because of our parliamentary responsibilities but because we have changed a Bill and improved it, and because we are now on course to make our country's education better than it was before?
3 pm
Mr. Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con): I am confidently expecting, at the end of this debate, to take part in Divisions that will give the Bill a bigger majority on its Second Reading than almost any Government Bill of recent times. That would give me particular pleasure because it is on the subject of education.
This also marks a considerable shift in the agenda of political debate. A large bloc of the Labour party is moving towards consensus with members of my own Conservative party, at least on the agenda of political reform, and it is important that we should do that. The poor performance of the British state education system, compared with that of most major industrialised countries, is one of the weakest features of British society. I rejoice that we are moving so close to a consensus; I only regret that it has taken us almost 20 years to get there, during which key figures who are now advocating the reforms from the Labour Benches have spent some of their time bitterly opposing the very principles on which they now base their legislation. However, that is behind us now, and I understand their difficulty. The Secretary of State made a speech in favour of a Bill of which I am broadly in favour, during which I had to listen to her stressing—for reasons
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I entirely understand—all the parts of the Bill that she never wanted to put in, and with which she hopes I disagree. I do disagree with some of them and I hope that we can amend them in Committee. However, we all know the direction in which we are going.
Some peculiar versions of the history of education reform have been given recently, but they have glossed over Kenneth Baker's reforms of the mid-1980s. The parenthood of the Bill is only too plain to see. I shall not labour that point because we are looking forward to what needs to be tackled and how we can make the best of what we are now doing. However, I shall just remind the House of the old adage: if it looks like a dog and barks like a dog, it probably is a dog. Labour Members are never more ridiculous than when they go blue in the face trying to convince us that the supposed trust schools are not grant-maintained schools, or that the city academies are not city technology colleges, renamed. Indeed, the same legislation was used to introduce the academies that we used to introduce the city technology colleges. Labour Members also talk about diversity of supply, parental choice and the opportunity to compete in terms that would have resonated with everyone who was Secretary of State during the third term of Mrs. Thatcher's Government.
I get worried when the Secretary of State tries to tell the likes of me that I am about to vote against principles that I hold dear. She plucked out as an example some feature of the Bill that she had thrown to old Labour. However, I am reassured when I go back to the White Paper, because there is absolutely no doubt about the direction the Government were setting out when they produced these measures. The Prime Minister's foreword states that
"the local authority must move from being a provider of education to being its local commissioner and the champion of parent choice."
[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear!"] So say all my right hon. and hon. Friends. The Prime Minister's foreword continues:
That is perfectly clear, and it explains why the Secretary of State's veto over local authority proposals to carry on opening new community schools has been insisted on by the Government and remains part of the Bill. I am warmed by the fact that they have stuck to their guns on that, at least. I hope that any future Secretary of State in a Conservative Government will make ample use of that veto when local authorities try to challenge the structure for which this Secretary of State is paving the way.
If I may, I shall embarrass the right hon. Lady further by quoting her own White Paper. Paragraph 1.30 on page 20, describing the new system, states:
"This can only be achieved in a system that is dynamic, with weak schools replaced quickly by new ones, coasting schools pushed to improve and opportunities for the best schools to expand and spread their ethos and success".
That involves competition. It also involves enabling the best schools to expand and moving quickly to close irredeemably failing schools. That has been slightly obscured in the wording of the Bill, but let there be no mistake among Members below the Gangway on the Labour Benches: I know how a Conservative Secretary of State—and new Labour Secretaries of State over the next year or two, if they can get away with it—will implement that policy and use those powers.
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Paragraph 1.35 on page 21 of the White Paper states:
"And if parents want to open a school, then it should be the job of the local authority to help them make this happen."
That follows a long, clear description of how parents should be in the driving seat when deciding what kind of school provision they want. They should be the best arbiters of the arguments about unsuitable people coming in and trying to run trusts or unscrupulous people misusing their powers. We must trust parents more; they want the best for their children. I agree with the Government that creating more parent power in this way within this kind of structure will finally move our education system further forward at a much more satisfactory speed.
Mr. Clarke: I shall give way in a moment.
The problem is obvious. Before we get to our resounding majority in this debate, the main problem is that the Labour Government are not being allowed openly to express the courage of their new convictions by their own Back Benchers. We are engaged in a curious political exercise this afternoon, but I hope that it will lead the way not to total agreement—there are plenty of details still to argue about—but to a new agenda, a new footing for the education debate. That is certainly what Margaret Thatcher, Kenneth Baker and I, when I was Secretary of State, would have wanted to see 15 or 20 years ago.
Mr. Willis : I was a head teacher when the right hon. and learned Gentleman was Secretary of State, and I know just how effective those Conservative policies were at dumbing down standards—[Interruption.] I had to get out. He has made some serious points in trying to drive more Labour rebels into the Opposition Lobby, but will he tell me where the evidence comes from that more parents want the powers that are now outlined in the Bill and which Baroness Thatcher and others wanted from 1983 to 1987?
Mr. Clarke:
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I am conscious of the fact that the Labour Front Bench, my Front Bench and Members like myself have not yet managed to get the public to catch up with us. It is only too easy for the Liberal Democrats, every time reform is proposed, to get on a platform and oppose all reform and structural change. The easiest way to get a cheap round of applause is to say, "We don't need to change anything. All we need to do is make our own local school better." We have spent years doing that, and the present Secretary of State and every Conservative Secretary of State have been driven to the conclusion that that will not just spontaneously happen. We need resources and reform, and we need the system to be shaken out of its complacency about its performance. People do not realise, if they live in a decent area and their school is doing rather better than those in the run-down downtown areas, that this is not good enough. As the Government rightly say, too many schools are coasting along. Some are doing quite well, but they are not doing as well as they should. Diversity, choice and competition
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will enable us to challenge that complacency, bring a new dynamic to the system, and introduce some new providers who will do better.
I want to make one more point, very briefly.
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