Academies Bill [Lords]

. Having listened to the whole debate, I wanted to make just one or two comments on the issue of selection. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) for the consistency that he has shown, and to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) and other Conservative Members who were at least clear in saying that they believe in selection. The attitude that I find most difficult to deal with is that of Opposition Members, whether Liberal Democrat or Conservative, who are pretending that the Bill does not aim to produce exactly the kind of division and increase in selection and exclusivity that my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) so eloquently described. Indeed, what my hon. Friend described is already happening. For example, this morning I met the head teacher of a new academy that is being built in my constituency. I have always had an ambivalent attitude to academies, in the sense that I do not have an ideological opposition to them—hon. Members might be surprised to hear that—if they work. The project of producing schools in deprived areas to increase the level of attainment in those areas is one that I have supported, and I do not really care whether they are called academies or not. However, I can say one thing. The two academies in my constituency, which are Hammersmith academy in Shepherds Bush, which is under construction—at a cost of £30 million—and Burlington Danes academy, which was praised by the Secretary of State earlier this week, at least have the benefit of £50 million of capital investment, which is something that none of the other schools in my constituency will have. However, even with just those academies, which were built under the previous regime, the aim of my Conservative local authority is already to increase selection and exclusivity. The question put to the head teacher this morning by a group of Muslim community leaders with whom I met him was why, when the boundaries of the admissions area for the new academy were drawn, the line stopped only a few yards north of the academy, excluding the most deprived parts of my constituency and most of the black and minority ethnic population, but extended a couple of miles south, to include the most prosperous and least ethnically diverse parts of my constituency. If that is the type of manipulation that is already happening under the current system, when we have that extra ability to affect intake, in the many ways that it can be affected, whether through existing selective schools or not—and we will have that ability, if the Bill is passed with the haste in which we are taking it—we will have a recipe for divisiveness, particularly in areas of inner London such as the one that I represent.