Education and Inspections Bill
10:30 am
Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Redditch on her promotion, which I suspect is long overdue. I am a relatively junior Front-Bench spokesperson, but she is one of the most talented Ministers I have worked with, even if I have disagreed thoroughly with almost everything that she has said. I congratulate her wholeheartedly.
I welcome the Minister for Schools, the hon. Member for South Dorset, to his new role. I have great sympathy with him for the busy weekend that I suspect he has had, because I was reshuffled just a week before Second Reading and I know that this is a big Bill to get to grips with in a short time. The right hon. Member for Redditch is a tough act to follow, but I am sure that he will do very well.
We, too, voted against the programme motion on Second Reading, because we suspected that the time allowed in Committee would not be adequate to scrutinise the Bill. We will nevertheless support this motion and do our best to be as brief as possible, as we have at all times, to ensure that we can complete our deliberations by Thursday as required.