My Lords, when we come back to this, we come back to our old friend the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and its second report of the 2022-23 Session. The report is all about the Bill and the things that are wrong with it. Primarily, this amendment is inspired by the last paragraph, which states that
“The Henry VIII power in clause 3(1) is too wide and should be removed from the face of the Bill”.
That is as damming an indictment to any piece of legislation as I have seen in three and a half decades here; it says that the Government have this horribly wrong. Nobody thinks that this is the right way to go about things.
The title of the clause—“Academies: power to apply or disapply education legislation”—is an incredibly wide starting point. Could the Minister give us a little more clarity and justification about why the Government think something like this is needed? We have not got much else on this first part of the Bill. We cannot really disagree with the Government because we are disagreeing with assumptions about things that might happen. That is where we start from. If the Minister—I wish her the best of British on this one—can convince us that we have got this wrong and there is nothing to worry about with it, then half of us can go home.
I hope—because hope empowers more than expectation—that we will get some reply here. I am calling to leave out Clause 3(1), but you could take a knife to any part of this and it would improve the Bill. The whole thing probably should go and, indeed, if someone were to ask me and it were the appropriate time, I would be voting for that to happen. However, I give the Minister one chance here to finally say why we need Clause 3—or any bits of it. I could jump up and down, make longer speeches and read out the report to noble Lords, but I think that this is enough. I beg to move.