My Lords, I was not going to speak on this issue; I will do so very briefly. It is really important, and it is a shame that it is so late in the evening. I am in two minds about it: I can see where the Minister is coming from but my views, on the whole, accord with those of my noble friend Lord Liddle, who has just spoken.
The point I want to make, and I would ask for the Minister’s observations on it, is this. When I was doing her job, I remember when I learned that my decision on how the money should be allocated was not replicated in the local authority. I was a bit cross about it: here we are taking decisions about this, we send the money out to the local authorities and, blow me down, they change it around. I then realised that we just had to live with it—that was democracy, and that was making sure there was some local flexibility. However, I can remember feeling irritated by it. We lived with it because we were not as centralised as this Government intend to be.
My worry about this is not that it is trying to remedy the wrong that was referred to earlier on this evening—that 20 local authorities do not pass on the funding to small schools in rural areas when it leaves the department. It does not look like that to me, although I do not doubt that she is concerned. The way it looks to me is that this Bill is about giving power to the Secretary of State over every school and over everything. The minute the Government do that
they have to control all the money. It seems to me that is the order: if the Government were not taking all the powers to control every school and everything they do, they would be able to be more flexible with the money, because that flexibility with the money would go with the flexibility given to the school. Because the Government are taking all the power to control all schools over all things, it looks as though they have thought, “The only way we can do that is to control every penny as well. We have to have that lever.” That is what worries me. If you put it together with what is happening in initial teacher training, it is the last brick in the wall of an absolute top-down, very heavily controlled nationalised school system. I would really like the Minister’s observations on that.