Speeches by O'Brien.

“I am keen to get a piece of information that the Government have not properly put into the public domain. They clearly know how many schools they expect to go through academisation in the next three years. What is the number? That is all I am looking for.”

“rose—”

“rose—”

“The hon. Lady, in her speech, is talking a lot of sense. I would just point out to her that in the last Parliament, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, per-pupil funding, in real terms, went up by 11%. There will always be constraints. Indeed, the current Ministers have cut the academisation grant and the tr…”

“I am trying to get the Minister to de-conflate her own statistics. The Government want to present the statistic in a deliberately conflated way and I am trying to get it de-conflated. This is the Government’s statistic; I am not offering it. I would like to have some sense from them of how many schools—they must have t…”

“Just a second. To make the claim that Ministers want to make for all kinds of reasons, they have to know. It is not me who is making the prediction, but them. I just want them to give us the numbers behind it.”

“I am afraid that the Minister is the one making the prediction. It is her consultation document that says that the Government expect that twice as many schools will go through some combination of either RISE or structural intervention. The Government must know, to be able to make the claim—”

“The Bill ends the automatic conversion of failing schools into academies. That measure was put in place because it became apparent that the most effective way to turn around failing schools at scale was to put them under new management. It also became apparent that when there was a question of discretion and choice, th…”

“I beg to move amendment 80, in clause 44, page 103, leave out from line 25 to line 8 on page 104 and insert— “(a) in subsection (A1), after ‘measures)’ insert ‘unless the Secretary of State determines that no suitable sponsor is available’; (b) after subsection (A1) insert— ‘(A2) Where the Secretary of State determines…”

“For all the reasons we have just rehearsed, I am keen to push amendment 88. Ministers may well vote against it today, but I hope that later on in the process they will listen to what school leaders are saying. There is a group of amendments, but I intend to push only amendment 88 to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdr…”

“The Minister mentions a trust that is not complying with its legal duties; I do not think we would have a problem with addressing that, but that is not what is drafted here. As the provision is drafted, the Secretary of State can intervene whenever he or she thinks, in their own eye, that the school is behaving unreaso…”

“No, I said that that happened in the ’80s.”

“I did not say that.”

“It is always a bad sign when someone has to misrepresent completely what their opponent is trying to say. Allow me to address that point directly by, once again, reading what Leora Cruddas of the Confederation of School Trusts told the Committee: “We accept that the policy intention is one of equivalence in relation to…”

“It is not nonsense. It is your legislation. Sorry, let me correct the record: it is nonsense. This is nonsense legislation that we are being asked to pass. Now we come on to something really serious that school leaders are warning us about, which is another completely out-of-control piece of centralisation. As drafted,…”

“This is a very centralising Bill. We have already talked about what PE kit people should be wearing at school; we have talked about whether schools will now have to apply to the Secretary of State to put up a bike rack. [Laughter.] Ministers laugh, but it is serious. They agreed to a clause just this morning that has t…”

“I beg to move amendment 78, in clause 43, page 102, leave out lines 35 and 36.”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“And on whether all the costs will be met.”

“Well, she said the concerns are hysterical. They are not my concerns; they are concerns that have been put to this Committee by incredibly respected school leaders. The Minister says that only a few of them are using these freedoms. Well, if it is only a few, why should they not have the freedom to do what they know wo…”