Orders of the Day — Nursery Education and Grant-Maintained Schools Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:14 pm on 22 January 1996.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Kenneth Baker Mr Kenneth Baker , Mole Valley 5:14, 22 January 1996

It behoves everyone in public life to match personal behaviour with political commitment. If the hon. Member for Peckham fails to do that, she will have to answer to her constituents, to her conscience and, presumably, to her shadow Cabinet colleagues.

When I read about the hon. Lady in the newspapers over the weekend, I recalled something that George Orwell wrote in an essay in 1945—that the trouble with all socialists is their inability to tell the truth about the immediate future. I cannot help but feel that that is the dilemma facing the Labour Front Bench today. The Bill is about parental choice. The Labour party has accepted many of the reforms that I introduced seven or eight years ago, but—this is the sticking point—it does not believe in parental choice.