Academies Bill [Lords]

That is a completely different argument from the one that the hon. Lady made in her speech, in which she said that these schools would be free of all checks, balances, regulation, inspection and control, and that they would go wrong. She seemed to be implying that we were giving schools the freedom to do badly. That is a particularly fatuous argument, because parents have considerable influence through governors and through their own voice, and they would take a great deal of interest. The number of pupils applying to go to the school would drop off very rapidly if the kind of disaster that she envisaged in her remarks came true, so I do not see that happening. I think that a combination of national regulation, the framework of law and local pressure would, on the whole, be benign. Now the hon. Lady is arguing a rather different case—that these academies are going to be so successful, because they have all these excellent freedoms, that they will attract more and more people from the local community at the expense of the other schools in the area. I wish it were so. I do not think they will be that successful and take all the pupils from the local area, but if they are very good, I welcome the fact that more people will want to send their children there. That is a benign pressure to place on the other schools in the local area. It may be, however, that some of the more traditionally maintained schools act as the beacon that she would like to see.