My Lords, I am grateful for the contributions to our short debate. I shall not follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, in discussing the virtues of the Education Bill. We shall have an opportunity to do so in the near future. As we might be here for a somewhat protracted time if we talked about the advantages of the Bill in terms of deregulation, I shall confine myself to the order.

I thank the noble Baroness for producing the answer I would have given to the main point introduced by the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman. I refer to the fact that at an early stage the committee criticised the order in terms of its draftsmanship. However, we have succeeded in carrying out the most extensive consultation exercise, to which the noble Baroness kindly made reference. Due to the length of the consultation, we were faced with the question of whether we could meet the tight deadline of making the changes on 1st April.

I entirely accept the criticism, evidenced elsewhere, to which the noble Viscount has every right to refer. I plead the obvious point that the consultation exercise having been so extensive things were somewhat hurried to meet the deadline. However, we have achieved the best of both worlds in that we have hit the deadline and been able to consult sufficiently widely to obtain the comments of the committees of both Houses with regard to the order.

On that basis, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, that on this occasion he can act as our messenger to higher places. It is not often that I feel that there is a higher place than your Lordships' House, but I recognise the force of the noble Lord's remarks. We greatly missed the contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, but he had a more than adequate substitute and I thank him for his commendations. I commend the order to the House.