Speeches by O'Brien.

“Will the hon. Lady give way?”

“Will the hon. Lady give way?”

“How many will go through academisation?”

“The Minister keeps talking about private schools, but am I right in thinking that this also applies to academies?”

“I will be quite brief. Clauses 47 to 50 are all of a piece, though it is the last of them, clause 50, that we have the greatest concerns about. In the interest of time, I will reserve my comments on the other clauses until later. On clause 47, I just want to note my concerns that a rather vaguely defined duty to co-ope…”

“Sir Christopher, you are a superb Chairman. You are also a very kind and thoughtful one for those of us who are not quick enough on the draw. I will not make detailed comments here. We are abolishing something that was set up in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, and it struck me that there are related ideas …”

“It is generous of the Minister to give way. To address the point that I raised in my speech, does she agree that the principle of a floor but no ceiling should apply to school support staff as well as teachers?”

“We have been on quite a journey on this clause. At the Education Committee on 15 January, the Secretary of State said that critics of the Bill were confused. She said: “It has become clear to me that there has been some confusion and some worry about what I have said in this area, so today I want to be absolutely clear…”

“I am keen to press the amendment. Question put, That the amendment be made.”

“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…”