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David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op): A good LEA is the one in the county of Leicestershire, which has never been controlled by the Labour party, so this is not a partisan point. Does my hon. Friend agree that the analysis of the White Paper and the Bill is still very much a metropolitan one? It has little to offer in many areas of the country. Would it not have been better to pilot some of the ideas, such as trust schools, to see whether they work in some contexts?

Martin Salter: I seem to recall that in the alternative White Paper, which I think that Ministers truly understand now, we suggested piloting trusts. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: that is not a party political point.

It became clear to me that, without significant reform, an education Bill based on the White Paper would not command wide support on the Labour Benches and elsewhere. In his introduction to the White Paper, the Prime Minister quite rightly emphasises the real improvements in education since 1997. Teachers' pay is 20 per cent. higher in real terms. There are an extra 32,000 teachers and 130,000 support staff. There is improved literacy and numeracy. Ofsted reports that the proportion of good and excellent teaching in primary schools has risen from 45 per cent. to 74 per cent. There have been big improvements in GCSE results and more children are gaining university places. All of that has been achieved within existing structures.

Recently, however, we appear to be in danger of talking down our own achievements and implying that further progress cannot be achieved or sustained. That is in marked contrast to our earlier education mantra: standards, not structures. Labour MPs and Labour councillors were entitled to ask what had changed, where the evidence was and where the proposals came from. At the last election, in the Labour document "Schools forward not back", we attacked Tory education policy. The document stated:

"The current catchment areas used by schools would be abolished and schools would be forced to introduce their own admissions system. This policy would see the end of community based schools and lead to a massive increase in bureaucracy for headteachers, with each school having to design their own admissions process."

The fundamental concerns of many colleagues centred around the potential for pupils from poorer areas to be disadvantaged as popular schools expanded and wealthier and better informed parents were able to set up their own schools, operating their own admissions policy. There was also concern that local education policy should remain democratically accountable—something lamentably missing from the tenor of the debate.

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): Will my hon. Friend give way?

Martin Salter: I have given way once, so I will not.
 
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Sir Jeremy Beecham, leader of the Local Government Association labour group, said of the White Paper:

"The proposals around admissions, the planning of new schools and the expansion of popular schools give insufficient leverage to councils to maximise fairness or the efficient use of resources".

Small wonder that there was such a hostile reaction to the publication of the original White Paper. In fact, 95 Labour MPs eventually backed our alternative White Paper, which was fairly entitled "Shaping the Education Bill—Reaching for Consensus". It challenged the absence of a mandatory code; the ban on local authorities promoting new community schools; and any attempts to force trusts on communities by financial inducement or ministerial diktat. The Government have listened, and conceded those substantive points with assurances of more movement and clarification in Committee.

All seven of us who were proud to co-author the alternative White Paper have come to the conclusion that it is worth consolidating the gains that have been made. We have spent three months of our lives on the issue, and none of us wants to throw away what has been achieved or to disengage from the process. Colleagues who are thinking of voting down the Bill on Second Reading should realise that disengaging from the process at this point is subcontracting education policy from the Labour party and the Labour Government to the Opposition. That is not something that any of us came to Parliament to do. My message to colleagues still concerned about aspects of the Bill is to stick with it: continue to engage with the process by supporting the Government on Second Reading but reassess the situation when the Bill returns to the House on Report. That is what parliamentary democracy is supposed to be about. We can all make grand gestures on Second Reading but, quite frankly, some of the issues have become conflated. I have a view about how long our Prime Minister should carry on, but I do not think it should be confused with the issue of how we vote on the future of our kids' education.

4.7 pm

Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): What an interesting speech. Remembering Michael Foot's words about ratting and reratting, I believe that it generally helps to stay in one corner.

The Prime Minister knows that I am a great admirer of his, and I very much welcome what he said in the White Paper. It is unpopular to hold such a position in the Conservative party nowadays, but he and I are born-again Thatcherites. We both believe that state schools should be fundamentally independent. I hope that he will forgive me, but I am an impoverished middle-class refugee who has fallen on hard times and travels across several boroughs to send his children to the London Oratory.

John Bercow (Buckingham) (Con): Surely not all six of them.

Mr. Leigh: No, not all six—I mix and match like all the other middle-class parents.

Mr. Willis: How did the hon. Gentleman get his children in on parental interview?

Mr. Leigh: We got on very well in parental interview.
 
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John McIntosh, the headmaster, has asked me how one can achieve choice and diversity in a school—and he does so—unless one interviews parents. My hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) and other hon. Members have made an important point. There is not a problem in my rural, prosperous constituency, which has a mix of grammar and comprehensive schools. We have two excellent grammar schools that regularly appear among the top 20 state schools in league tables, and comprehensive schools, such as William Farr, whose headmaster told me only a few weeks ago that he already has a foundation school. The Bill will not make a scrap of difference to him, as it is now so hedged around with caveats on admissions and the code of conduct that in many parts of the country it will make very little difference.

I wish to talk about inner London, as I feel strongly about the problem that we face in metropolitan areas—an issue rightly raised by my hon. Friend. The London borough of Hammersmith has the fastest growing population of parents who send their children to private schools. Unless they can get their children into free schools, which are Lady Margaret school, the London Oratory or the Sacred Heart school, they will not stay in the state sector. That is the problem. Surely middle class parents—people in the Labour party who want diversity—should be worried about that. Why are people fleeing from state schools in inner London and the metropolitan areas?

Mr. Kilfoyle: The hon. Gentleman may not be aware of it, but there are middle class parents all over the country. Why should they have to suffer the downside of the Bill, which is markedly London-centric? Surely the problems that he is adumbrating and the problems addressed in the Bill revolve around the situation in London, more than anywhere else in the country.

Mr. Leigh: That may arise from the situation where both the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister send their children to state schools in inner London. That is not my problem, is it? The hon. Gentleman must put that question to his own colleagues. I can speak only from my personal experience of my constituency and of London. I do not know a lot about Liverpool. I apologise. I cannot speak about it. It is much better in the House to speak from one's own experience.

To those who knock the London Oratory, all I can say is that it is a school that gets a huge, diverse social mix. It is a school that works. It draws pupils from 40 boroughs.

Jeremy Corbyn: Does the hon. Gentleman understand that those of us who represent inner London constituencies have seen enormous improvements in the past five years in our local secondary schools? Our concern about the Bill is that it will take away the most able children, who will be able to get out to the suburban schools, which have the space and the money to expand, and we will return to a situation where the inner London comprehensives are seen as second best and school of last resort for too many parents. We want a continuation of the excellent levels of funding that we
 
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are getting, which have so dramatically improved our inner-city comprehensives. We want comprehensive schools.

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