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Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Nobody, but nobody, has ever taken a power to sweep away all legislation in a specific subject, in a specific area—education—past present and future. This is unique in government-taking powers.

Lord Peston: My Lords, no, it is not. The real point is that chickens come home to roost. The difference is that what they did, we are doing in spades. So we can complain, but the noble Baroness cannot.

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I turn to another of my old friends, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford. Again she made many remarks with which I agree, but I felt that her suggestion that what this Bill does is take us on the path to Nazi Germany is really going too far. My noble friend the Secretary of State will be subject to quite a bit of criticism on this Bill, but to see her as a successor of Joseph Goebbels is not appropriate. I hope that my old friend will withdraw the remark.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, perhaps I can remind my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that what I was saying was that in post-war Germany it was an important principle to decentralise power.

Lord Peston: My Lords, there is nothing wrong with decentralising as long as it does not involve professors, which I had to put up with at one point. I am simply saying that a reference to the possibility of another Nazi Germany with this Bill is simply absurd.

Lastly, addressing another of my old friends, the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, who again made a speech much of which I agreed with, she reminded me as a former HMI that one thing this Bill does not do, but which it should do, is to abolish Ofsted and bring back Her Majesty's Inspectorate and some of the people who both knew about education and, more importantly, cared about it.

Perhaps I can now get down to business. I have great difficulty with this Bill. I can see all the bits but I cannot see the whole, as other noble Lords have said. What seems to be lacking is anything resembling a philosophy. Perhaps I can therefore trouble your Lordships by enunciating one or two of my philosophical ideas in this area. What I have and what matters to me, first of all, is a commitment to education, and I regard that as something that is valuable in its own right. I do not doubt the economic benefits of education, which again my old teacher, the noble Lord, Lord Moser, referred to; I do not doubt the social benefits. But more important is the simpler, albeit now regarded as old-fashioned, view that it is a good thing to be an educated person.

No matter how rich one is, if one is not an educated person and one who appreciates the correct things, one's life is poverty-stricken. Nothing disheartened me more than reading in the paper not long ago that one of England's most brilliant young footballers, who will be playing for us in the World Cup in a few months time and who earns millions every year, proudly said that he has never read a whole book from beginning to end. What a dreadful state of affairs we appear to have in our society when we are told such things.

Secondly, in education—for me at least—equality is of the essence. I do not mean that those of us who lack flair or brilliance or other specific aptitudes can hope to achieve the same as those who are so privileged. I mean that all of us are as valuable in education as everyone else. We are all worth educating. I add that I have been convinced throughout my adult life that all of us ought to be educated in the same schools. I do not resile from that view today and shall never resile from

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it. I believe that the form of our education system should be comprehensive; that there should be a curriculum that all children follow, but within which there would be sufficient flexibility to cope with different speeds of learning and different interests; and that resources should be allocated not to give more to those who already have most but to give more to those who have least.

Try as I may, I can find nothing in the Bill that sets out the Government's commitment to comprehensive schools and their antipathy to selection. I am sure that the fault is my own. Ever since I have been here I have always had great difficulty in reading legislation. Therefore, I rely on my noble friend the Minister to help me out on this subject when she responds. As most of our children actually attend comprehensive schools—or what are called comprehensive schools—and the Government make a strong claim about rising standards, it is reasonable to infer that comprehensive schools have been a success. So it is also reasonable to expect that comprehensive schools ought to be reinforced in a piece of Labour Party legislation and not undermined by all the fancy new forms to which the Bill refers, the need for which has never been established.

I turn to the curriculum. I believe that I follow what the Bill says in that respect—largely, it seems sensible. However, I am rather lost on what it says on the subject of languages. I am also a little lost as regards history. It looks as if you can also drop history at the age of 14, but perhaps my noble friend the Minister can confirm that in her response. It also looks as if the role of languages will be downgraded; indeed, there has been more information on this in newspaper reports than appears in the Bill. However, we have already heard useful comments on that subject today.

I am absolutely certain that we need to reconsider new ways of acquiring foreign language skills. The traditional method that most of us experienced in school—the class of pupils sitting at desks with the teacher standing in front—failed for most of us. Whatever else we say, there must be better way of teaching the subject. Indeed, we know that there is. I know from personal experience that the use of tapes and videos, and being forced to express myself in the foreign language, is the way to do it. If that is what the Government propose, I totally support them.

I am doubtful about two matters. The first, which worries me, is that this seems to imply that such teaching would not be available in schools from now on. Secondly, following the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill, it seems that it will not be provided for a large number of children. There is a great problem with the curriculum: if you are to introduce new methods, you have to drop some old ones. The laws of arithmetic still hold. In the case of foreign languages, it might make sense if those who demonstrate skill in, say, French could drop the subject, but we all know what will happen. It is precisely those who do not demonstrate such skill who will drop the subject. It seems to me that we ought to reflect upon that possibility. I wonder whether that is the way forward.

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However, I believe that the Government are trying to go in the right direction as regards the curriculum. I also think that the same applies to vocational skills, though I entirely accept that we must be careful how we approach the matter. When I was at school the cleverest boys all wanted to be doctors. That is what you did if you were clever in east London. But in order to be doctors they had to be adept at dissecting frogs. One of the reasons that I did not become a doctor was that I could not even face the thought of a frog, let alone face the prospect of dissecting one. If people who dissect frogs are regarded as intellectuals, I do not understand why those who have the ability to strip down a car engine or rebuild a computer are not held in exactly the same esteem.

As various speakers said, especially the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, if people have such vocational skills they still require the appropriate fundamental engineering and physical principles at the same time; in other words, doing it but not knowing why is not satisfactory in education. That is a vitally important point.

I am faced with my usual problem. I have written down many points to raise, which following the example of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, noble Lords will hear in Committee rather than tonight. However, I feel obliged to say a few words about what are called "faith schools". I regard the expression as neither grammatically nor epistemologically satisfactory. When we debate the subject in more detail we shall look for a more appropriate expression. I have said nothing about them substantively; and, indeed, I have said nothing about the other phenomena that are beginning to litter the education field.

I should like to make a few remarks on the subject tonight while saving my heavy artillery for later. First, I simply see no serious argument—I have heard none today—in favour of expanding the number and range of such schools. We have been told that there are Christian schools and a few Jewish schools, from which we are told we must infer the need to use public money to provide Sikh, Muslim, Greek Orthodox and goodness knows what other schools. We may have to do it. However, it does not follow logically from the fact that we have some schools of that sort that we must have more of them, as well as different ones. That case needs to be made in some other way.

We have also been told that parents want such schools. I do not wish to be cynical, but what I find astonishing is the number of parents who suddenly discover that they are truly religious in order to get their children into schools that do not let in rough boys, blacks or those sorts of people. Again we shall look into the matter at a later stage. There is a good deal of evidence to consider, both on the social nature of these schools and on why parents choose them—

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