Member

People really resent going back to 1997, so I am always cautious about doing so, but when we first got in in 1997, the drafters and parts of the Department for Education and Employment, as it was then, told me that, because the Bill we initially brought forward, which was the first of a number of education Bills, dealt with grant-maintained schools and structures, the Bill should have “structures” in the title and that the word “standards” was not relevant to the Bill as drafted. We had the most enormous tussle, including with officials—God bless them; they had a way about them—and particularly with the drafters, about what that Bill should be called. In the end, we prevailed because we wanted the Bill to describe what the overall programme, objectives and mission, if I may use that word, were about. They were about standards. In the end, it was called the School Standards and Framework Bill. Everything that we were endeavouring to do was about standards.