Neil O'Brien

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Some people really do not want to hear the voices of the victims. [Interruption.] Even though no one in authority has been held to account, the Government seem to think that there is nothing further to be learned. I do not think that is right. This afternoon, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), said that there should a national inquiry if victims wanted one. Victims are calling for one, so what are we waiting for? There are real challenges that we should be facing: recruitment, discipline and attendance. Instead, we have a Bill that just takes us backwards. As one of the nation’s leading educators, Sir Daniel Moynihan, said today on “World at One”: “We are worried in the sector about what the problems are that the changes are designed to fix. We can offer better pay. It’s not clear why constraining that solves a problem. Why academies…should be constrained beats me…We’re hoping that some of this will be amended. It would be a terrible shame if the reforms that Labour introduced over 20 years ago…were watered down.” Likewise, the Confederation of School Trusts is warning that the loss of academy freedoms proposed in the Bill risk making it “more difficult for trusts to do the hard work of improving schools in the most challenging circumstances”. I remember what state schools were like in the ’80s and ’90s. In my school, it was chaotic, with loads of fights, discredited progressive teaching methods, failed kids and good teachers being ground down. [Interruption.] You think it is funny, but the life chances of the kids I was at school with were flushed away by your disastrous ideology. [Interruption.]