| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset): The children may come from an inner-city school that is failing. If the older child is offered an assisted place at another school, the younger brother or sister will not be able to join the older sibling, unless the amendment is passed. Is it not correct that if every child was sent out of that failing school and it was closed, the Exchequer would save money? It costs more on the SSA to send a child to an inner-city school than the average cost of the assisted places scheme.
Mr. Nicholls: My hon. Friend is right. As he is a gentle and fair-minded person, he does not mention the fact that the worst LEAs in the country are controlled by the Labour party.
Mr. Nicholls: One might have expected some contrition from Labour Members--although perhaps not from the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice), who is an old Wykehamist--about the fact that the schools that people flee from are overwhelmingly those provided by Labour LEAs. Although the position might be at its most graphic in inner cities, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) pointed out, it happens all over the country.
If there was a shred of principle behind the Bill--I freely accept that there is not--the Government would say, "Okay, perhaps we are simply not too good at figures, perhaps we really have not thought this through, but we have this vague waffly idea that in some way we might be able to release certain sums of money. However, when it comes to siblings, the siblings who are educated within the independent sector on the assisted places scheme should be treated in the same way as the siblings who are educated in the state sector."
Even if one accepted the so-called underlying premise of the Bill, that would be the position, but it is not. That is where the Bill's socialist credentials--to which the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) has already paid tribute--come shining through in all their nastiness. It does not matter about the individual aspirations of parents and children.
The Minister of State, Departments of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Richard Caborn):
It does not matter.
Mr. Nicholls:
The hon. Gentleman wants to put it on the record that children's individual aspirations do not matter. It does not matter that they want to be educated with their brothers and sisters--
Mr. Luff:
On a point of order, Mr. Lord. I do not wish to pre-empt your judgment, but my understanding is that sedentary interventions are bad enough, but interventions made from beyond the Bar of the House are particularly unacceptable.
The Second Deputy Chairman:
The hon. Gentleman can safely leave such matters to the Chair.
Mr. Nicholls:
There we have it.
Mr. Brady:
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not merely a matter of the aspirations of children and their
Mr. Caborn:
There are always taxis.
Mr. Brady:
That is all very well for those who can afford them. But I am speaking for--
The Second Deputy Chairman:
Order. Hon. Members must resume their seat when I am on my feet. I take this opportunity to remind all hon. Members that interventions should be short and to the point. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) is a new Member, and I am not addressing just him.
Mr. Brady:
Thank you for your guidance, Mr. Lord. I apologise for remaining on my feet.
Mr. Nicholls:
I understand exactly my hon. Friend's point.
The spirit of Marie Antoinette is alive in this House. Once upon a time the cry was, "Let them eat cake." Now we have, "Let them take taxis." I did not know that the Labour party might be prepared to reconsider the case and provide taxis to take siblings to school. I had not expected that.
The point is perfectly straightforward. One could be in favour of the principle of the Bill while still saying that, out of sheer compassion, and practicality as well, for the few siblings--I shall come to the figures in a moment--an exception should be made.
Mr. Luff:
Does not the sedentary intervention suggesting that children could take taxis demonstrate the real sentiment that drives the Government? They genuinely and sincerely believe that it is rich people who benefit from the assisted places scheme. They do not understand that it is the poor people who find it so difficult to meet the costs that will result from a refusal to accept the amendment.
Mr. Nicholls:
My hon. Friend is entirely right. At this late hour, the problems of poor people and children who are suffering at school simply excite the insufferable arrogance of Labour Members.
I should like to know the numbers of children involved. We have heard nothing about that from the Minister; perhaps she will tell us when she winds up. I do not know how many children are involved, but I suspect that the numbers are small. If the numbers are small, the Government have even less justification for acting as they are doing. If, when the Minister winds up, she adopts the line that it is okay for people in the state sector to want to educate all their children together, but it is different for people who have chosen to use the independent sector--
if she says that, when she does not even know what the numbers are--that will say a great deal about the legislation.
The Bill will obviously be driven through the House at some hour, but we have heard nothing in the non-existent contributions from Labour Back Benchers--even from the old Wykehamists on those Benches--that justifies this piece of legislation. We have laid down the charge, in the debates on the Bill so far, that it has nothing to do with the interests of parents, children or education itself. We have charged that dogma seems to matter more than doing something to help.
It is time that we heard speeches from the Labour Back Benches. Labour Members will help to drive through a rotten, squalid, pernicious Bill, which we have shown to be bare of any shred of decency. I should have thought that a Government who are arrogant enough to drive through such a Bill might have found somebody arrogant enough to stand up and try to justify it.
Mrs. May:
When my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) moved the amendments, I thought that she spoke movingly about the examples of how the Bill would affect children and families. It was disgraceful that the Ministers and others on the Government Benches chose to ignore the cases that my hon. Friend advanced; indeed, they laughed and talked among themselves. That shows either that they do not want to know the implications of the Bill or that they do not care.
Mrs. Gillan:
I am glad that my hon. Friend takes as seriously as I do the examples that I tried to lay before the Committee. Does she agree that it is easy for Opposition Members to laugh because they would not qualify if they wished to send their children to independent schools--their incomes would be too high?
Mrs. May:
My hon. Friend is right. That is the point that we have tried to make throughout the debates on the Bill, but Labour Members fail to understand that it genuinely is people on low incomes, poor and less privileged people, who benefit from the assisted places scheme. Those families and those children will be hard hit by the Bill, if it is passed, and by the abolition of the assisted places scheme.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing those cases into the debate, because until now we have talked mostly about statistics and numbers of children who would be affected in different constituencies and counties. It is right that we think about the impact that the Bill will have on families, especially on brothers and sisters, and the divisions that will occur if our amendments are not accepted.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |