Academies Bill [Lords]

That is a helpful clarification and answers some of the points that have been made by Labour Members suggesting a bias in favour of outstanding schools. The shadow Secretary of State tried to give the impression that the entire system of state education was being ripped up. If he really believed that, it is strange that we have not seen more Labour Members in the Chamber during this debate. He tried to claim that the Bill was a perversion of the Labour party's approach to academies. In an earlier intervention, I cited remarks by Tony Blair on 24 October 2005, when he said:"““We want every school to be able quickly and easily to become a self-governing independent…school””." What the Government are doing may be a departure from what the previous Secretary of State was doing, but it certainly is not a departure from what the Labour Government under Tony Blair was planning to do. Indeed, the Government are fulfilling the promise that he made. The shadow Secretary of State's main objection was that the proposals would create a two-tier system, but some of my hon. Friends have already made the point that that is what we have at the moment. Some schools are academies and some are not. If parents have the money to move into the catchment area of a good school, their children will get a good education. If parents are locked into a particular area by lack of money, they have to put up with the school in that area. There is huge so-called social segregation in our schools. One school has just 4.2% of families on income-related benefits, but at the other end of the spectrum there are schools with nearly 70% of families on income-related benefits. The shadow Secretary of State claimed that the Bill would widen the gap—that somehow allowing outstanding, good and satisfactory schools to get better is a bad thing. That is the classic Labour argument of trying to hold the good down in order to narrow the gap. Surely what we should do is try to get everybody to improve. The Secretary of State confirmed that these schools will partner with a good school, and that is an important element. I would not want a free-for-all. I want to see schools collaborating and working together. Even when it comes to outstanding or good schools, there are too many parents who do not have confidence in those schools and choose to move out of the area or to the independent sector, and we want those schools to improve. We want parents to have confidence in their local schools, but they can have concerns even about some of the schools that we class as good or outstanding. The Government's policy on the pupil premium should give schools an incentive to take pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. My final point in response to Labour Members is that they seem to lack confidence in the teachers and parents of children from deprived areas. In my experience, the vast majority of teachers are motivated by the desire to help the least well-off kids. Rather than hearing a lot of publicity about parents setting up these new free schools, I hope that we will see teacher groups going into some of my most deprived communities and using this legislation to drive up standards in those areas.