Academies Bill [Lords]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I shall come to when I ask the Minister how his handling of the amendment will affect that specific point, which is very important. I am not sure how the Bill or, to some extent, the amendment will address the problem of school places and provision. The cancelling of the BSF project caused major problems for schools such as St Chad's Roman Catholic school and the Heath specialist technology college in Runcorn in my constituency, which were going to expand. How will they now expand? They are popular and successful schools that have seen increases in their GCSE results—the Heath had a success rate of more than 82% last year. Problems were also caused for the likes of Bankfield in Widnes, which is my old school and has been told this week that it has an outstanding report from Ofsted. How can that school expand? Wade Deacon school has a 100% pass rate in GCSEs at A to C and serves both an affluent area and a disadvantaged area. The previous school, Fairfield, is now being closed down and will amalgamate with Wade Deacon. They were going to be built on one site. How will that happen now? It will mean a split site and all sorts of difficulties, with 400 pupils displaced. That is the consequence. I am not sure how the Bill and this clause will help the situation in my constituency, and that is a consequence of the decision that the Government took. This amendment is about ensuring that parents and the LEAs views are known and taken into account. Parents and LEAs will take account of the sorts of buildings that schools need, and that was what BSF was delivering. They were consulted on the buildings, they had a lot of say, and the buildings were designed to suit the ethos of the school and what it wanted to deliver. In particular, they were designed to suit other parts of the community's involvement in them.