Tag: Speeches

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, on 23 February 2012.

When I was a news editor at The Times I recognised that each branch of journalism had its own favourite phrases: cliches to some, comforting and reassuring prose landmarks to others.

Footballers would always have “intelligent” (or “cultured”) left feet. Restaurant reviewers would sooner or later find a pudding – but never any other course – “toothsome”. No political correspondent ever quotes a “junior” backbencher, ever refers to the 1922 Committee without reminding us that it is “influential”; or ever fails to remind readers, uncertain about which issue decides elections, that “It’s the economy, stupid”.

For TV reviewers the one genuinely indispensable favourite phrase is the praise offered to those rare television programmes which are “worth the licence fee alone”.

Considering that a boxed-set of Borgen sets you back just thirty pounds and the licence fee is four times that amount, it’s a rare programme which actually deserves that praise.

But this month we’ve been privileged to see one series which undeniably does.

The BBC’s three documentaries – Protecting Our Children – recently screened on BBC2 are in the very highest traditions of public service broadcasting.

They show, unsparingly, and without fuss, the reality of life for social workers and their clients in Bristol. Thought-provoking, unsentimental and humane, they are gripping yet uncomfortable viewing.

They also remind us that public service broadcasting is at its best when it reminds us of what those in public service are doing for all of us.

And no-one watching this series can be anything other than impressed with the calmness, patience, compassion, good judgement, professionalism and nobility of those in social work.

By giving an honest account of the fantastic job social workers do, the BBC is helping to bring a little balance to the media conversation about social work. A conversation which has been dominated for far too long by caricature, finger-pointing, recrimination and misjudgement.

The reality of Social Work

We ask social workers to operate in conditions most of us know nothing about; to engage with people in desperate need; to make extremely finely balanced ethical and practical judgements; to retain the trust of adults while thinking always of the best interests of children; to navigate bureaucracy and cope with heavy workloads. All the while knowing that if a mistake does occur then their career, indeed their professional status, may be ruined for ever.

So I am very glad that, today, Andrew Christie – one of the finest social workers in the country – has given me the opportunity to place on the record my gratitude to his profession and my admiration for the vital and under-appreciated work social workers do.

I’d like to think, and I’m sure I’ll be told if I’m wrong, that we are now moving towards a more mature relationship between social workers and central Government.

Building on foundations laid by my predecessor, Ed Balls, we now have a new College of Social Work, we have a prestigious new route into the profession for career-changers who’ve been successful in other fields, we’ve had superb work by Moira Gibb on how to improve support and training for the profession and ground-breaking reports from Professor Eileen Munro, which pave the way for progress to a more thoughtful development of improved practice.

Shortly we’ll be publishing the job specification for the role of Chief Social Worker – a new role which, like the Chief Medical Officer, will help bring balance and authority to the national debate on the profession does its job.

And we remain committed to publishing serious case reviews to encourage an informed debate when something goes wrong – as it inevitably will. A debate which will demonstrate that, if there is fault, it will very often reside not with social workers but with others – whether police, lawyers or whoever – and that far more important than any allocation of responsibility is a commitment to learn from the past so we can all do better in the future.

And it’s about learning from the past that I want to talk today.

Specifically, learning from the experience of those who have tried over the years to improve our child protection and adoption systems.

The relationship between care and disadvantage
One of those I have learnt most from is Martin Narey – Chief Executive of Barnardo’s for five years – a dedicated professional with a very special combination of moral courage and intellectual rigour.

Martin has come under fire for making one argument in particular.

He has been frank in acknowledging that earlier in his career he believed having children in care was a sign of failure. And believed that being in care condemned children, more often than not, to failure in the future.

But he has explained that, over time, he came to realise that the poor outcomes faced by looked after children were not a consequence of them being in care – they were a consequence of what had happened to them before they were taken into care.

It was the abuse or neglect they may have witnessed or endured in their earliest years which will have blighted their future. Neglect will have arrested their cognitive development; abuse will have made it more difficult for them to form secure relationships; the fatal mix of the two will have harmed them emotionally, intellectually, socially and personally.

Children and young people do not encounter disadvantage because they have been in care. They are in care because they have had to be rescued from disadvantage.

Martin also came to realise something else. Taking a child into care is not a failure on the part of social workers – but leaving children at risk of neglect or abuse is something none of us should wish to encourage.

Understandably, social workers do everything they can to keep families together. And, understandably, they fear being branded child-snatchers, do-gooders or anti-family if they initiate care proceedings.

But it is far better if social workers follow their instincts to intervene and rescue rather than acquiesce in abusive or neglectful parenting in the hope things will improve.

Because we know just how much damage is done to a child every day it spends in a home where there is no security, safety and certainty of affection.

Better to take children into care than allow them to be abused
So let me underline this. We in Government will back social workers who take children into care. We believe Martin Narey’s diagnosis of the problem is correct – and we know there are far too many children spending too long in homes where they are not receiving the care they need.

We do not regard more children being taken into care as a problem with social work which the profession must address. It is a problem with parenting, which our whole society must address.

My overriding approach to Government is to leave well alone when things are going well: to leave good schools, good parents, good companies to get on with it when they are doing a proper job. But when things go wrong – when cartels frustrate consumer choice, when schools fail their students and, most of all, when adults are neglecting, or abusing, children – then we should intervene, early and energetically, to put things right.

There is strong evidence that, in recent years, there has been too much reluctance to remove a child from circumstances of consistent and outright abuse and neglect – or to return them to those circumstances later.

Harriet Ward’s research into at-risk infants last year provided some horrifying examples of children left unprotected in dangerous and damaging environments:

– a baby whose parents so persistently forgot to feed her that she ceased to cry;

– a two-year-old left to forage in the waste bin for food;

– a three-year-old who could accurately demonstrate how heroin is prepared.

All these children remained with their birth parents for many months without being taken into care. Who knows how much damage they suffered, and how many children like them all over the country are suffering still?

This cannot be allowed to continue. The welfare of a neglected or abused child is more important than the rights of their parents, more important than the schedules of the courts, more important than ticking boxes on forms and much more important than the old saw that blood is thicker than water.

It is emphatically not the case that care is worse than a neglectful or abusive home. On the contrary, the research is undeniable: care is not perfect but, for some children, it can make life an awful lot happier. And, for some of the most vulnerable children, the sooner they are taken into care, the better.

A study by DEMOS in 2010, commissioned by Barnardo’s, showed conclusively that care improves the lives of many vulnerable children and young people. But those children whose entry to care is delayed by indecision or drift, risk longer exposure to damage and neglect; increased emotional and behavioural problems; and more placement disruption and instability.

Nor should we assume that returning a looked after child to their family is necessarily in that child’s best interests. A recent University of York study found that maltreated children who remained in care did better than those who were sent home to their families.

Research by Professor Elaine Farmer looking at children taken into care and then returned to their parents found that, two years after the children had been sent home, 59 per cent of them had been abused or neglected again.

We cannot let children down in this way.

I want social workers to feel confident that they can challenge parents in homes where there is alcohol or drug dependency, where there is no proper interaction between adults and children, where there is domestic violence, where boundaries between adult behaviour and children’s conduct are not properly policed.

And I want social workers to feel empowered to use robust measures with those parents who won’t shape up. Including, when an adult is not providing the home a child needs, making sure that child is removed to a place of greater safety.

Adoption and other permanent solutions

But where should that place be?

Well the most important thing is to find adults equipped to care, in circumstances that provide stability.

Sometimes that will mean fostering – and if there are one group of people who rival social workers in their unselfish commitment to helping our most vulnerable young people then they are foster carers…

But more and more often it should – must – mean adoption.

Because adoption provides what abused and neglected children need most – stability, certainty, security, love.

Of course I’m parti pris.

I was adopted at the age of just four months – given the stability, security and love which allowed me to enjoy limitless opportunities.

My experience of adoption has shown me how – whatever your start in life – being brought up by adults who love you, who are now your parents, is transformative.

Adoption is – in every sense of the word – for good. And the readiness of adults to make such a firm and unselfish commitment for a child they cannot know is, to my mind, an inspirational example of humanity at its best.

Adoption does not finish at the child’s 16th or 18th birthday, any more than biological parenthood does.

My adoptive parents are just as much my parents now that I’m a grown-up with my own children, as when I was a child myself.

And of all the possible permanent solutions, adoptions are the most likely to last. A study in 2010 by the University of York, called “Belonging and Permanence”, found that just 11 per cent of adoptions were disrupted after 3 or more years – compared to 28 per cent of fostering placements. When a child is adopted quickly, before their first birthday, the breakdown figure is only about 2 or 3 per cent.

Adoption gives a vulnerable child a home, and a family, for life.

Adoption rates have fallen

That is why it troubles me – more, angers me – that so few children today are benefiting from that generosity and humanity.

The decline in the number of children being adopted means a cruel rationing of human love for those most in need.

Adoptions have fallen by 17 per cent over the last decade.

The number of children adopted in England last year was the lowest since 2001. Only 3,050 children found new homes by adoption last year, just 2 per cent of them under the age of one.

These figures are even more remarkable when the number of children finding permanent routes out of care has actually increased. And we need to be careful that alternative solutions like special guardianship or residence orders are not used as a substitute for adoption when it would be the best option for a particular child.

As I pointed out earlier, the fact that more children are now being taken into care is not a problem we should lay at the door of social workers – but it is a problem if children in care are not found a proper home quickly.

I was lucky enough to be with my adoptive mother within four months of my birth. But many of those children available for adoption today have complex and challenging needs – and the average time between a child entering the care system and being adopted is now over two-and-a-half years.

What’s more, this average hides huge variations across different regions. Last year, five local authorities placed every single child within 12 months of their adoption decision.

But another four local authorities placed fewer than half its children in need of adoption over the same timescale.

We need a system that works for all children, regardless of where they live. A system which is quick, effective and robust.

Making sure the whole system works and improves for children
When a child can’t stay with their birth family, then the longer they wait for a permanent adoptive place, the more damage they will suffer – and the harder it will be to form a bond with a new family.

That is why it is so important to tackle delay throughout the system. We need to speed up care decisions, and work with local authorities to ensure they speed up their processes too.

In October last year we published new performance tables and we’re currently working hard to make this data more valuable for local authorities in identifying best practice and areas of weakness.

As we are here in the Isaac Newton Centre, I must pay tribute to the work that Andrew Christie, as Executive Director of Children’s Services for the three boroughs of Hammersmith & Fulham, Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea, has been doing with us to work out how local authorities can speed up decisions for the child at every stage.

As we develop our proposals further, I look forward to seeing similar leadership from every Director of Children’s Services, every Lead Member for Children, and every Family Court Judge.

Finding and assessing adoptive parents

Happily, there are now clear signs that more children are moving through local authority and court processes and being placed for adoption.

And I am sure that the reforms which will follow David Norgrove’s report into the Family Justice System will encourage that trend.

But as a consequence, we have an immediate and pressing challenge. We need radically to increase the supply of adoptive parents who are ready to give these children the love and stability they need.

I entirely reject the argument that there are too few people willing to adopt. I think there could be a vast supply: parents with their own children; couples – heterosexual and homosexual – unable to have children of their own; single individuals, both men or women.

But the barrier which looms between these prospective parents and their potential children is a process of recruitment and assessment which turns enthusiasm into exhaustion and optimism into despair.

Too many examples of the assessment process going wrong
We have been overwhelmed by stories from adopters and prospective adopters, telling us that the current system actively drives them away.

Let me mention a few examples:

Like the woman who made her first inquiry about adoption three and a half years ago. After meeting a social worker in her home and spending four days on a preparation course, she applied to adopt. It was another seven months before the assessment process even began – a process which took 15 months to complete. She was eventually approved to adopt, but that was well over a year ago – and she is still waiting to be matched with a child.

Or the white couple in London who knew that there were lots of black children in care and that those children have to wait 50% longer on average to be adopted. The assessment process dragged on for months, their files were lost, then they were told that the idea of their adopting a black child could not be countenanced.

Or the couple who had already adopted a daughter from abroad, and who wanted to add another child to their family. Eighteen months after their first enquiry, they are only now attending their first preparatory meetings. In the interim, hearing nothing, they chased up repeatedly only to discover that their address had been lost, and no effort made to find it. Despite repeated enquiries, they have been told nothing about how the assessment is decided, nor what particular qualities are sought in prospective adopters. In their own words, they feel that the “assessment of prospective adopters is based on the subjective opinion of a small group of people and…success is wholly dependent upon conformity to whichever set of political or social values happen to be flavour of the month”.

Or the couple wanting to adopt a child whom they already knew and loved, but who were turned down because one of them had not yet given up smoking for a long enough period.

Or the remarkable adopters of five disabled children who, just a few months ago, when they were ready to adopt a sixth, were turned away by nine local authorities because their previous assessments were out of date. When they persuaded the tenth local authority to give them a fast track re-assessment, they were told that a further adoption could not take place until they bought a new electric kettle with a shorter lead.

I could go on.

But I can’t continue without asking one fundamental question.

When so many children are in such desperate need of a loving home, and are waiting for months and years to find one, how can we treat would-be adopters this way?

The flaws in the assessment system

The current system of assessment has become bloated. Assessments regularly run to over 100 pages. They include huge areas of repetition and an astonishing amount of trivial detail, which seems to bear dubious relevance to adults’ capacity to be loving parents.

Highly trained social workers spend hours asking questions like whether there is a non-slip mat in the shower, whether the prospective adopters have a trampoline in the garden and, if so, whether it has a safety net.

A three page pet assessment form has been extended by one voluntary organisation to include a six page dog assessment – nine pages of forms to manage the risk of an adopted child living with a pet.

The quantity of material gathered has been confused with the quality of analysis – and there is no direct correlation between the two.

Understandably afraid of something going wrong, successive governments have tried to eliminate risk by maximizing form-filling.

But while they were right that risk has to be managed – adoption is too profound a step for us not to take care – we cannot eradicate risk with excessive bureaucracy. We must instead take steps to manage it, proportionately and sensibly.

I would like to take this opportunity to state that if something does go wrong (which we all know is bound to happen at some point) I have no intention of condemning social workers for decisions and recommendations which were sensible and sensitive at the time.

No system can be perfect – and it would be utter nonsense to pretend otherwise.

The Action Plan on Adoption

But we can do much better. That’s why, next month, we will be bringing out an Action Plan on Adoption.

We know that more bureaucracy is not the way to secure better outcomes for vulnerable children. And we know that the current system is leaving many children waiting for years to be adopted, and many would-be adopters disheartened and discouraged.

We need a system which helps professionals to assess prospective adopters, with better analysis and less form-filling;

We need a procedure which can be completed at speed, and which will not drive so many would-be adopters away;

We need to slim down pre-adoption assessment, and beef up adoption support;

And we need performance indicators which can help local authorities to measure how they’re performing against each other and improve.

As Jonathan Pearce, Chief Executive of Adoption UK, has pointed out, “it is rare to find an agency that is failing across the board”.

Equally, even the best performers always have scope for improvement.

I know that demanding a process which can be completed more speedily will mean that I run the risk of being called cavalier.

But I don’t mind. What I believe would be cavalier would be to allow the continuation of an adoption process which is so slow, so inefficient, that we condemn thousands of children to a life without parents.

A group of sector experts (including the CVAA, ADCS and BAAF) is already working hard on redesigning the assessment process to achieve this radical ambition, and we look forward to working with them over the coming weeks and months.

Matching children with adoptive parents

Another area which will need particularly close scrutiny is how to meet the challenge of matching children with adoptive parents.

This can be the most vital stage of the whole process. But all too often, it fails.

Many children waiting for adoption never get adopted. Many parents cleared to adopt never get the chance. And even when a successful match is made, parents and children have still had to endure an agonizing wait because the process just takes too long.

However conscientious they may be, practitioners who wait too long for any particular child, holding out for a perfect parental match, are not acting in that child’s best interests.

And we must bear in mind that matching a child to parents cannot be simply an intellectual process. We need to be more flexible and encourage would-be adopters to be flexible. The child they might go on to love and cherish may not be the child they first imagined – and I welcome the experimental adoption parties which BAAF has recently introduced to give potential parents and children the chance to meet.

The task of finding the right adoptive family is all the more important for children with challenging needs. Most often, the children who wait the longest to be adopted are siblings (including about 75 groups of three or more), children with disabilities or children from ethnic minorities.

These children are the most difficult to place – and that’s why it’s all the more important to welcome with open arms prospective adopters who are ready and eager to give them a home.

The Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies is already developing a proposal for a Social Impact Bond focused on finding adopters and providing adoption support for hard to place children.

Innovative initiatives like this could achieve real improvements for the most vulnerable children, and we look forward to seeing how these plans develop.

One particularly sensitive element of the matching process is, as you all know, matching by ethnicity. Which is much more complex than simply race.

I won’t deny that an ethnic match between adopters and child can be a bonus. But it is outrageous to deny a child the chance of adoption because of a misguided belief that race is more important than any other factor. And it is simply disgraceful that a black child is three times less likely to be adopted from care than a white child.

I heard, recently, of a foster carer whose local authority refused to let her adopt her foster child. The child was happy, and contented – she loved him, and he loved her. But she was white, and he was black. And the local authority insisted that he would have to be moved to black adoptive parents.

Eventually, when no black adopters could be found, common sense prevailed and the adoption went ahead. But only after the mother had endured a nightmare lasting two and half years – during which, as she said, “each morning I thought my son would be removed because another family had been found”.

This mother is by no means the only adopter told that she cannot adopt a child with a different skin colour to her own.

And although the new guidance I issued to local authorities last year explicitly addressed this issue, evidence suggests that too many have failed to change their practice.

If there is a loving family, ready and able to adopt a child, issues of ethnicity must not stand in the way.

I won’t say too much now, in advance of the action plan – but I can promise you that I will not look away when the futures of black children in care continue to be damaged.

Conclusion

Adoption transforms the lives of some of the most neglected children in our country. It is a generous act – and it can achieve incredible results.

I know this from the advice of experts, the statements of parents, the stories of children and from my own experience.

That’s why we are determined that adoption should happen more often and should happen more speedily.

By changing our attitude towards adoption, reducing the unnecessary bureaucracy of the assessment process and freeing up professionals to rely on their own judgement, I feel confident that we will be able to create a more efficient and effective adoption system.

I know that some supporters of adoption will have heard this before, and will be sceptical.

But I can assure you that I will not settle for a modest, temporary uplift in adoption numbers, nor a short-lived acceleration in the process. Nothing less than a significant and sustained improvement will do.

The most neglected, the most abused, the most damaged children in our care deserve nothing less.

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, in Nottingham on 13 September 2011.

It’s a special pleasure to be here in Nottingham this evening – it gives me an opportunity to say some very heartfelt thank yous.

To Vanni Treves, Toby Salt, and, above all, Steve Munby, for the visionary leadership they have shown at the National College;

To their team – some of the most gifted and committed people in education today;

But above all to you – the heads of the first 100 Teaching Schools.

You are 120 of the best school leaders in England – which means 120 of the best school leaders in the world.

And 120 of the most important people in this country.

The history of educational improvement in this country has sometimes been written with references to parliamentary Acts – whether it’s Forster’s, Fisher’s, Butler’s or Baker’s.

And implicit in that narrative has been the assumption that educational improvement in this country has been driven by politicians – usually Liberals or Conservatives.

Whereas of course, the truth is entirely different.

Educational progress in this country has not been driven primarily by politicians.

It’s been driven, generation after generation, by teachers.

And especially headteachers.

People like you.

From Arnold of Rugby to Wilshaw of Mossbourne,

From Roxburgh of Stowe to Wilkins of Outwood Grange,

From Rae of Westminster to Ross-Warzynski of Altrincham…

The pioneers who have redefined what we think of as excellence in education have always been teachers…

And the reformers who have consistently raised our expectations of what education can achieve have always been headteachers…

But there has been one change – even in my lifetime…

The biggest names in contemporary education

The most influential leaders

The bravest reformers

Are now, overwhelmingly, in the state sector not the private…

So when people ask me the question – how will you improve our state schools

I always answer – by relying on our state schools…

And, specifically, by relying on you in this room.

So – no pressure there….

And, looking around this room, I feel a special sense of confidence that in your hands state education is in the right hands.

Every time Governments have given great leaders more room to exercise autonomy, they’ve taken an inch of freedom and made a mile of difference to thousands of young lives.

Look at the City Technology Colleges set up after 1988. These all-ability comprehensives enjoyed much greater independence than other schools. Headteachers exercised new-found power to extraordinary effect. Despite being overwhelmingly located in poorer areas, the CTCs achieved – and continue to achieve – great results: the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals in CTCs who earned five or more good GCSEs at grades A* to C is more than twice as high in CTCs as it is for all maintained mainstream schools.

Of course, the autonomy enjoyed by schools like the CTCs, and indeed Grant-Maintained Schools, was eroded after 1997.

But the best minds in the last Government knew that was a mistake. And when they were given the chance to shape policy we saw autonomy return and school leaders back in charge.

Andrew Adonis knew it was headteachers, not councillors, not ombudsmen, not advisers or consultants, who made schools succeed. So he cut through the red tape, and established the London Challenge, Black Country Challenge and Manchester Challenge. In every case strong heads were teamed with schools in challenging circumstances and they achieved great results.

Alongside those school improvement programmes, another, even more radical set of changes gave school leaders an even greater opportunity to make a difference.

The Academies programme gave great heads the chance to totally transform underperforming schools by taking them out of the local authority embrace, bestowing on them all the freedoms CTCs had, and then giving them the chance to take more schools under their wing through chains and federations.

And those Academy chains have achieved amazing things. School leaders like Dan Moynihan at Harris, Barry Day at Greenwood Dale, David Triggs at AET and Paul Edwards at the School Partnership Trust have spread excellence far beyond their own individual schools and transformed hundreds of lives for the better.

And inspirational as those individuals are, they are not exceptional. We know that given the right level of independence many, many school leaders can match them.

The evidence proves that if you empower those at the frontline they can exceed your expectations. A few months ago, academics at the London School of Economics published a landmark assessment of the Academies programme.

They found three things. First, that “Academy conversion generates… a significant improvement in pupil performance.” Second, that this improvement is not the result of Academies ‘creaming-off’ pupils from nearby schools: the fact that more middle-class parents want to send their children to their local Academy is a consequence of the school’s success, not a cause. And thirdly, beyond raising standards for their own pupils, Academies also tend to raise pupil performance in neighbouring schools.

Like CTCs and the Challenge schemes, Academies showed what amazing things can be achieved when heads are put in the driving seat.

And the international evidence confirms this.

The highest-performing education systems are those where government knows when to step back and let heads get on with running their schools. Rigorous research from the OECD and others has shown that more autonomy for individual schools helps raise standards. In its most recent international survey of education, the OECD found that “in countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better.”

In Singapore, often considered a model of authoritarian centralism, the Government has nonetheless deliberately encouraged greater autonomy in the school system – and dramatic leaps in attainment have been secured as a result. Schools where principals are exercising a progressively greater degree of operational freedom are soaring ahead.

In Alberta, Canada, a diverse range of autonomous schools offer freedom to professionals and choice to parents. As a result, Alberta now has the best performing state schools of any English-speaking region.

And in America – where the Charter Schools system implemented by New York and Chicago is one of the most radical models of school autonomy – headteachers are turning around the lives of hundreds of thousands of the most deprived children. To take just one example… Harlem Success Academy 1 in New York has a pupil intake of amongst the most disadvantaged in the state. Yet the school now performs at the same level as New York City’s gifted-and-talented schools – all of which have tough admissions requirements, while Success randomly selects its pupils by lottery. With New York and Chicago leading the way, more parents across America are demanding Charter Schools in their local areas.

Freedom works; and the word is spreading.

And what is also spreading – and with your help will spread even further – is the superb practice your schools exemplify.

When one looks at the best heads and the best schools in the country, several common characteristics leap out.

First, uniformly high expectations.

Our nation has suffered for generations because we’ve presumed that only a minority are capable of academic excellence. But the amazing performance of the best state schools proves otherwise.

As the Prime Minister pointed out last week, when comprehensives such as Walworth Academy in South-East London and Burlington Danes in Hammersmith, with almost half their students on free school meals, can get 70 and 75 per cent of their students to pass five good GCSEs including English and Maths, then its clear politicians have been consistently underestimating what our young people are capable of.

But you know that. Great heads, like you, recognise that giving many more young people a rigorous academic foundation will provide them with the basis for a brighter future, whatever they choose to do.

The OECD has reminded us today that the higher the level of academic knowledge, the greater the economic, professional and cultural opportunities open to any child.

And as Alison Wolf pointed out in her ground-breaking report on vocational education, premature specialisation, particularly the abandonment of core subjects before the age of 16, limits the opportunities all children deserve to enjoy.

RH Tawney was right when he said: “what a wise parent would wish for their children, so the state must wish for all its children.”

And any wise parent today will be aware that both prestigious universities and discriminating employers especially value students with qualifications in rigorous subjects such as Maths, English, the sciences, foreign languages and the humanities.

So inspired by the example you have set, we looked for ways to work with the grain of parental expectations and to meet the demands of employers and colleges.

Together I believe we can encourage more state schools to give their pupils an even more rigorous academic grounding. Which is why we have introduced the English Baccalaureate: a suite of rigorous GCSEs that, we believe, gives every young person more choices in the future.

I know that many of you agree: the proportion of pupils receiving the E-Bacc at the schools represented in this room is much higher than the national average.

The E-Bacc has already prompted a welcome uptake in the number of pupils choosing to study history, geography, foreign languages and the sciences.

There has been a particular increase in the number opting to study the three separate sciences at GCSE. In a recent survey undertaken by the Department the numbers doing physics chemistry and biology GCSEs appears to have risen by more than 100 per cent.

Of course, as I have learned during my short time in this job, no good deed goes unpunished.

And schools like yours, which perform superbly academically and thus give children amazing opportunities, are sometimes damned as exam factories. Gradgrindian institutions where children are shackled to their desks until they’ve managed to clear the C/D borderline and then starved of any access to culture, enlightenment or entertainment until they’ve got their A*.

But the truth we all know is that, overwhelmingly, those school that do well in exams are those schools that have also got other things right.

Schools that understand that citizenship is not simply a subject that you teach for one hour a week, but far more an approach towards others which you embody every minute of the school day.

Schools that encourage their staff and their pupils to see themselves as a part of a wider community; to volunteer; to show respect for others; and to exhibit the qualities that exemplify great citizens of the future.

Schools that can see the importance of competitive team sport extending beyond physical fitness – into character building and an ambition to be the best.

Schools that appreciate the need to foster creativity – in graphic art, in design, in music, in dance, in drama and in literature, while at the same time recognising that their pupils can only truly be creative when they’ve mastered the basics.

Schools like your schools.

These virtues, these values are obvious to any visitor – well before you’ve had the chance to inspect the pupil attainment stats and see how performance compares with Fisher Family Trust expectations.

That’s why I think its important for me, as a politician, to emphasise that the most important things that happen in a school can’t be captured in national curriculum programmes of study and will never be measured in league tables, can’t be legislated for, regulated into existence or implemented as part of a National Strategy.

What they can be, however, is observed, applauded, celebrated and replicated.

Which is why your role is so important.

Because Teaching Schools can exemplify these virtues, evangelise for these values and ensure they become widespread.

You can show that what is sometimes called the tacit – or hidden – curriculum is as important in making a school outstanding as performance in any test demanded by the national curriculum.

I want to work with you – and the National College – to spread great practice in these areas.

And I have asked Ofsted to ensure that is made easier. By using its reports to celebrate more often what is special about our best schools – by moving away from verdicts based on data to judgments based on wide, extensive and nuanced observation.

But let me be clear – that is not a retreat from telling hard truths to administering soft soap.

Your schools are all rated ‘outstanding’ in Ofsted’s ‘teaching and learning’ category. But it is a worry to me that so many schools that are still judged as ‘outstanding’ overall when they have not achieved an outstanding in ‘teaching and learning.’ I intend to ask the new Chief Inspector to look at this issue and report back to me with recommendations.

These are just a few of the ways in which you have influenced our approach.

And I want schools across the country to learn from you too. That’s why I am absolutely delighted that you have decided to take up our offer of becoming Teaching Schools.

There is a growing trend amongst world-leading education systems toward more classroom-based teacher training. Research undertaken by McKinsey’s in 2010 looked at eight high-performing education systems around the world. What they found was that the best systems embed professional and talent development in schools.

And that’s no surprise to me. Because that’s where the real experts in education – teachers and leaders – tend to be found.

In Finland trainees receive extensive classroom teaching practice under the guidance and supervision of experienced teachers.

In Singapore I saw trainees learning how to improve their craft and strengthen their classroom management skills by observing the very best teachers at work in the classroom.

In China I found that every classroom was treated as an open space with teachers welcoming observation so they could learn from watching others, and being watched themselves.

All of these nations currently outperform us educationally and the emphasis they place on both intensive school-based classroom training and continual school-based professional development is at the heart of their success.

Higher education institutions will continue to make a significant and important contribution to teacher training. But we want schools to play a much bigger role.

As employers, schools should have greater responsibility for recruitment; be more involved in the provision of quality placements; and have more say in the development of content for training.

There are already ways for schools to be involved in teacher training, and some of you here today are participating in these schemes. But we want to make it easier for more schools to get involved. So we will allow schools to recruit trainees and then to work with an accredited teacher training provider to train them to be qualified teachers.

Schools will be expected to employ these trainees after graduation. So there will be an incentive on the part of the schools to recruit the very best – thus driving up the standard of prospective teachers further.

And the enhanced prospects of securing a job in a great school will entice even more high-quality applicants.

And as a further incentive to attract top graduates into the schools that most need them, trainees who are recruited and selected by schools with a high proportion of pupils on free school meals will receive a larger bursary than other trainees.

Having a more direct involvement in initial teacher training means that schools will also get a greater say in shaping what teachers learn.

And I want your views on how we can, together, improve the subject knowledge of teachers in critical areas.

The science and maths communities have been clear that they would like to see much more teaching of science as three separate subjects in secondary school.

It provokes the question why the National Curriculum for science is not currently divided along subject lines. Why should we have a science curriculum that’s split into areas like ‘The Environment, Earth and Universe’ and ‘Organisms, Behaviour and Health’? Why not have biology, chemistry and physics? Of course, I don’t wish to pre-empt the National Curriculum Review, but I do want your views on how we can ensure the quality of science teaching continues to improve.

If our National Curriculum Review does conclude that science should be taught as three distinct subjects, this would obviously have knock-on effects on teacher training and the way that courses are funded. Many members of the science community argue that teacher training has hitherto focused too much on general science teaching, and that this has encouraged generalists at the expense of specialists. The physics community have found this particularly problematic. They say that many physics and engineering students want to train as physics teachers – or physics and maths teachers – but are put off by the way that training is currently organised, because many physicists and engineers do not want to teach chemistry or biology.

At a time when we desperately need more physics teachers, it makes sense to think of ways we can make entering the profession more attractive. With only 0.4 per cent of engineering graduates going into teaching, we need to look at how we might tap in to that pool. The Institute of Physics’ new pilot PGCE in Physics and Maths is exactly the sort of innovation we need and we strongly support it. We want to see more such innovations and, as Teaching Schools will have a greater involvement in course development, we look to you for new ideas.

Another topic on which I’d be interested to hear your thoughts is the issue of specialist primary teachers. Most state primary teachers are trained as generalists. But some of the best state primary schools in the country insist on discrete subject teaching in KS2. And one of the things many parents value about private primaries is that they often have specialist teaching from an early age. Obviously, I am alive to the practical difficulties of demanding too high a degree of specialism in, say, small rural primaries. Nonetheless, I think the idea is worth exploring further, and I will be discussing with the TDA how we could prioritise courses that train primary specialists – especially in maths and science.

Improving ITT is crucial, but while I am evangelical about the need to attract even more high quality people into teaching I am equally determined to improve the support we give to those already in the profession.

And I believe no institutions are better placed to provide superb continuous professional development for teachers than your schools.

At the moment, too much CPD provision is, frankly, a bit scattergun. There are a lot of great programmes being delivered, but there are also a number of less good schemes. It’s difficult for every school to know what constitutes a worthwhile investment. That is one reason why we see the level of spending on CPD vary so much between schools.

Teaching Schools can help, not only by advising other schools on great CPD services they’ve used, but also by providing such services themselves.

Teaching Schools can use their close relationships with other schools to develop CPD programmes that genuinely fit existing demand. And other schools will choose whether or not to take advantage of these programmes, making Teaching Schools accountable to their peers.

As with initial teacher training, the National College will be responsible for quality assuring the work Teaching Schools do, and will remove accreditation from any school not meeting the standards. CPD is yet another area where we’re moving to a model that puts schools in control. We’re letting heads buy in – and help create – the services they really want.

And one area where we are convinced the demand exists for improved support is at the level of middle leadership. Specifically at department head level.

That is why we are introducing a new programme – Specialist Leaders in Education – to ensure outstanding middle leaders, whether heads of department or those at assistant and deputy level – can help other schools and in turn prepare themselves to step up to the next level.

There will be 1,000 SLEs in the first year, rising to 5,000 by the end of 2014. Part of Teaching Schools’ role will be ‘talent spotting’ the best senior and middle leaders and helping them earn SLE status. This will involve providing them with training, mentoring and support – while at the same time deploying them to improve neighbouring schools. Through such programmes, the wealth of knowledge, wisdom and experience in this room will be passed on to the next generation of heads.

One in four existing headteachers will be eligible to retire in the next four years. We need to ensure that there are enough dynamic, committed young headteachers to take their place in the future. And with our SLE programme we can help ensure that succession planning in all schools becomes easier. So more gifted professionals can take on the special responsibilities, and enjoy the special sense of pride, that comes from being a headteacher.

Of course for all of us in education the driving moral purpose behind our work is the belief that every child has a talent which deserves to be identified, nurtured and stretched.

And we all know that children only have one chance at education.

That’s why I have made it clear that this government will not allow underperforming schools to simply carry on as before. That’s why we’ve raised floor standards and why we’re taking new powers in the education bill to intervene when schools are in trouble.

Where children are being failed, action will be swift. And Teaching Schools will be central to our reforms. You all have the capacity to help enhance the leadership, improve the teaching and fix the behaviour problems in our most challenging schools.

And it’s not only in our most challenging schools that you can have a transformative effect. As the Prime Minister pointed out last week, there are far too many coasting schools in the country, with a level of performance we still term satisfactory but we all know isn’t good enough.

Teaching Schools have the capacity to form partnerships with these schools, providing them with advice and support. Many of these schools will themselves have the capacity to improve but they need encouragement, a guiding hand, and the setting of higher expectations. We’ll be saying more, shortly, about how we ensure progress is made. But your role will be critical.

Looking at the road ahead can sometime be unnerving. The enormity of the challenges we face can be daunting: for all the advances we have made – and are making – in education, thousands of children are still being failed. And events such as the summer riots can test our faith further: schools are being confronted with a more complex set of challenges than ever before.

Yet looking around the room today, it’s impossible not to be optimistic about the future. Each one of you is living proof that one person can make a difference to the lives of thousands. And by listening to you, by trusting you, by handing power to you, there’s no limit to what we can achieve.

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath, in Westminster Hall on 17 December 2008.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) on securing the debate and the hon. Members for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) and for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on their speeches, both of which contained much good sense.

I draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Interests. As a journalist, I write for The Times and have been an executive of that newspaper as news editor. I am committed to the principle of free expression and the freedom of the press. That is not only a consequence of my professional career and vocation, but because I believe that it is only through an effective free press that the exercise and abuse of power can be monitored effectively.

While this country has the police, the courts and a system designed to track down and punish those who do wrong, the press has historically played an invaluable role in bringing such people to the attention of the courts and the police. Sometimes the press is needed to draw our attention to the failure of the authorities in the pursuit of wrongdoing, extremism or other activities that threaten the public interest. Only this week, The Times pointed out that someone who has connections to Islamist extremism that might concern us all has been employed as an adviser to the Metropolitan police’s Muslim contact unit.

Not just newspapers, but other institutions that exercise a journalistic or quasi-journalistic function have exposed extremism in public life. Think-tanks such as Policy Exchange, which I used to chair, and the Centre for Social Cohesion have pointed out the extent of extremist influence—particularly but not exclusively Islamist extremist influence—in British public life. Because of the international nature of the extremist threat, there are examples of the press being more effective than states or international institutions in exposing such dangers. An example is the work of Claudia Rosett at The Wall Street Journal in exposing the failure of the UN effectively to police sanctions against Saddam Hussein. In all those areas, free expression and a free press have been vital in exposing abuses.

The right hon. Member for Rotherham pointed out that it is of particular concern to all of us who are attached to the freedom of the press that individuals who have been alleged to have links to extremism have used British courts to close down the investigation or publication of allegations that are in the public interest. He mentioned the examples of Khalid bin Mahfouz and Mohammed Sawalha, a British resident who tries to close down legitimate investigation into extremism on the internet.

As the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for North Norfolk pointed out, there is in effect a public interest defence in law for the sort of investigative journalism that I am sure we would all applaud. The Reynolds defence offers journalists and newspapers a form of qualified privilege. That is qualitatively different from the sort of privilege enjoyed in courts and by Members of Parliament because it allows newspapers the comfort that it is legitimate for them to publish allegations provided that the process followed demonstrates that the journalism they are engaged in is of high seriousness, that appropriate steps have been taken to ensure that the allegations are in the public interest and that they are being properly investigated. They do not subsequently have to prove justification to the same threshold required in other cases.

A problem with the Reynolds defence is that instead of being an aid to free expression, according to some it has become an obstacle to free expression. The guidance that the courts originally gave newspapers to help them publish material in the public interest has become another set of hurdles that they have to clear. The hon. Member for North Norfolk pointed out that Jameel and others v. Wall Street Journal Europe Sprl made it perfectly clear that the Reynolds defence should help, not hinder, free expression.

There has been only sporadic implementation of that defence and a misunderstanding of it in many courts. That is why at the very least it is worth exploring whether we can enshrine the principles of the Reynolds defence in statute. That would send a clear signal from Parliament to the courts that the Reynolds defence is in effect as a public interest defence that allows the publication of material that should be part of public debate, particularly when serious issues such as extremism and terrorism need to be investigated.

Dr. Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon) (LD): The hon. Gentleman has set out some components of the Reynolds defence. I believe that part of that approach of responsible journalism is to report the denial of the allegations by the accused. That is not a requirement, but I am interested to hear his view on the matter.

Michael Gove: The hon. Gentleman is right that broadly 10 principles are outlined in the Reynolds defence, one of which is the strong suggestion that an effort should be made to secure the response of the individual against whom allegations are made. It is a basic principle of good journalism that the other person’s case should be heard.

I would not wish to erect those 10 principles into 10 absolute hurdles. Discretion should be exercised in the courts and any change to the law should acknowledge that. The important points are whether the material that is published is in the public interest, whether the case is urgent and important enough to justify publication and whether overall the journalists, the newspaper or the blog can demonstrate that they have done everything in their power to ascertain the truth and importance of the allegations that are published.

On costs, the point has been made that conditional fee agreements can raise profound questions of a chilling effect on publication. Indeed, Lord Hoffman has pointed out that freedom of expression may be seriously inhibited by conditional fee agreements. The hon. Member for Croydon, Central has pointed out that they can be helpful to individuals without resources who have been defamed. I do not wish to see the end of them, but it is important that an effort is made not to perpetuate the chilling effect on publication in the ongoing review into the costs of civil judgment. In particular, small and independent newspapers, think-tanks, research groups and other organisations that are vital components of a free and rigorous culture of debate and accountability must be protected in any structure that we create.

Finally, it has been pointed out that internet publication can lead to links being created to articles that were published and brought into the public domain four or five years previously because they remain on an internet archive. That may be done to substantiate a point that is being made afresh. An individual who creates such a link to material that is already in the public domain can be sued. At the very least, it is questionable whether we should allow the courts to pursue an individual who in all innocence creates a link to an article that has not been the subject of a defamation action. That individual may be sued because of the desire of another to pick off a weak link who he considers to be rich pickings and a suitably unprotected victim. In those circumstances, it would be appropriate for the court to ask, “Why did you not go for the big boys first?”

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath, in Westminster Hall on 17 April 2007.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Olner.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) on securing the debate. As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) pointed out, my hon. Friend made a brilliant speech in the debate on the Queen’s Speech, in which he outlined the scale of the challenge that our society faces. That challenge is not one of religious separatism, but one of ideological division, and here I must take issue with what the hon. Member for Hazel Grove said in his fascinating, wide-ranging, but in some respects misconceived remarks. He was right to stress the importance of community initiatives. He was, as ever, right to stress the importance of pluralism and to recognise that one size does not fit all when we are dealing with the various problems that we have all had an opportunity to analyse in the debate. However, he was wrong to suggest that the problem is an explicitly religious one, and to draw the historical comparisons that he did.

I should point out that, when the hon. Gentleman said that we no longer believed in one version of British history that saw us moving towards a golden future, he was disavowing a grand Liberal tradition. That version of history, which saw us moving towards a more liberal future, which used to be known as Whig history, and was the product of Macaulay and Trevelyan, used to be the guiding light of his party. It is a pity that it is no longer. One of the insights of Macaulay, Trevelyan and other Whig historians is that what has made Britain great is not just our respect for pluralism and tolerance, but a belief in liberty, rooted in our historic institutions. Those institutions are challenged by the specific ideology outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe.

Islamism is distinct from Islam. Islam is a great faith that has nourished millions for hundreds of years. To this day it contributes intellectually and spiritually across the globe to enriching the lives of a great many people. No one on the Conservative Benches would want to criticise Islam as a faith. Indeed, it has enriched this country. Islamic scholars and tens of thousands of British Muslim citizens make Britain a better and more tolerant place today, but the best of those—in fact, the majority of them—also recognise that those who call themselves, sometimes, Islamists or jihadists, or who use another name, such as Salafists, and who follow the specific Islamist ideology are following a 20th-century totalitarian aberration that is intended to undermine the very tolerance that makes Britain both a safe and a warm house not just for its Muslim citizens but for all citizens. If we are to ensure that toleration will survive in this country, and protect pluralism and liberty, we need to be aware of the precise nature of the threat. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe deserves praise for drawing attention to that challenge in this House and elsewhere.

Andrew Stunell: The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to address his remarks to me, and of course I acknowledge the points that he was making about the hon. Member for Wycombe, who has rightly set out his stall on the matter. I hope that I conveyed the point that I wanted to make, which is that confronting the extremists is not the major job that we have. We must address the society.

Michael Gove: Both go hand in hand, and we cannot effectively champion the interests of moderate Muslims and of our pluralist, tolerant and liberal society, unless we show a determination to tackle extremism. It is the extremists who, in the past, have crowded out from the debate the moderate voices in the Muslim world. I am thinking particularly of the voices of female British Muslim citizens, which have been stilled and silenced as a result of extremists operating not just in mosques but more broadly in our society.

I want to say a word of appreciation about my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and congratulate him on his speech. He brings huge expertise and great integrity to the debate. In his professional career before he joined us in this House he spent many distinguished years serving this country and defending its interests. While he has been in the House he has proved himself a dedicated public servant, and whenever he speaks on such issues it behoves all of us to pay close attention to the expertise and integrity that he brings to bear on them, as he did so effectively today.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) on his speech. Rather than inhabiting a constitutional Never Land, all that he did was stick up for those Enlightenment values that are the best protection for all minorities. In that respect I am delighted that his comments found a ready answering call in all my hon. Friends’ speeches.

When we are talking about integration and cohesion it is important for all of us to choose our words carefully and to tread with care. With your permission, Mr. Olner, I want to make a brief apology to the House. On a previous occasion, in December 2005, I had an opportunity to question the Home Secretary about his strategy for preventing extremism. I believe that several individuals whom the Government had asked to work with them on preventing extremism were themselves linked to extremist groups. I took the opportunity to raise in the House the names of some of those individuals. One of them, a gentleman called Ahmad Thomson, is a Muslim convert who was involved in holocaust denial, and I believe that it was right to draw attention to his involvement and that of several others whose enlistment by the Government in their fight against extremism seemed to be mistaken.

However, even as I was pointing out that the Government had made a mistake, I myself made a mistake. One of the individuals to whom I drew attention was Mr. Khurshid Ahmed. I remind the House that the gentleman to whom I drew attention has exactly the same name as another Khurshid Ahmed who is indeed linked with extremist activity, and who operates primarily in Pakistani politics but also has a link with institutions in this country. The Khurshid Ahmed who served on the preventing extremism together group is an admirable individual. I have now had the opportunity of meeting and working with him on several occasions.

When I discovered my mistake, I immediately wrote to Mr. Ahmed and to the Home Secretary to apologise and to put the record straight, but I have received representations from Mr. Ahmed’s Member of Parliament, the hon. Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Austin), who asked me to use any opportunity to place on the record in Hansard an acknowledgment of my mistake and to underline what I said in my letter, which was that Mr. Ahmed has done considerable work to further integration and cohesion in our society, and that he deserves nothing but the highest praise for his many years in public life. I am happy to use this opportunity to state on the record, for the benefit of Hansard and those outside, my appreciation of Mr. Ahmed’s work and of the calm, diligent way in which the mistake was brought to my attention by the hon. Member for Dudley, North, whose own contribution to fighting extremism in his area of the west midlands also deserves to be noted with credit by the House. I placed copies of the letters that I wrote in December 2005 to the Home Secretary and to Mr. Khurshid Ahmed in the Library earlier today.

I mentioned that it is important to acknowledge our mistakes, and I believe that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in her conduct since taking on responsibility for integration and cohesion matters, has acknowledged that the Government made errors in the past. She did that not in a breast-beating way, but in an appropriately respectful fashion. Before sitting down and allowing the Minister to reply to the many questions that have been put by my hon. Friends,

I would like to acknowledge that the Government have moved but also to indicate that there is still some way to go.

I believe that the Government have accepted that, before the fateful events of 7 July 2005, they had fallen down on the job when it came to questions of integration and cohesion, and of extremism, specifically within the Muslim community. They have acknowledged that the principle of the covenant of security—that unless someone is actively engaged in violence against the state, their activities would be tolerated, no matter how extreme their preaching—was a mistake. More than that, I believe that the Government have acknowledged that some of their chosen partners in the Muslim community and elsewhere were not as well chosen as they might have been.

The Secretary of State was absolutely right to point out recently that Muslim organisations that boycott holocaust memorial day should no longer receive public money. I also note with approval that recently she has been showing a willingness to work with the Sufi Muslim Council, the British Muslim Forum and especially the Fatima Women’s Network, all of which are more moderate Muslim organisations.

The Government’s greater openness to working with moderate, mainstream organisations is to be welcomed, but it provokes a couple of questions. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe pointed out, the Government still seem to be taking a disjointed and far from synoptic approach. I mention one area that he did not, which comes under the rubric of the Department for Education and Skills. Why is it that the Government’s adviser on the teaching of Islam in higher and further education, Dr. Ataullah Siddiqui, is linked with the Islamic Foundation and the Markfield Institute of Higher Education, both of which are institutions that were set up by the Jamaat-e-Islami party, an explicitly Islamist organisation, and its supporters? In other words, why is the man who is charged with checking extremism on Britain’s campuses in fact linked with a body that was set up by a separatist Islamist organisation?

Secondly and more broadly, I welcome again what the Secretary of State said about seeking to encourage mosques to register with the Charity Commission and, as a result, receive not only help with fundraising, but a higher level of oversight and help with governance. What, however, do we do with mosques that explicitly reject that kind offer because they wish to carry on with extremist preaching and teaching? How do we ensure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe said, that the flood of extremist Wahabi literature and, indeed, Saudi money into certain mosques is effectively checked so that the process of indoctrination in an extremist ideology is scrutinised and we deal effectively with teaching that might encourage a new generation of people who believe in separatism and division?

In that regard, I am very interested in my hon. Friend’s question about the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board. Why is the Muslim Association of Britain—the UK branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organisation—on an equal footing with the British Muslim Forum and the Muslim Council of Britain? Why is Finsbury Park mosque, which used to be the haunt of Abu Hamza, now run by the Muslim Association of Britain’s Dr. Azzam Tamimi? Why, having got rid of one extremist, do we have another version of extremism in control?

I have a final request for the Minister. I appreciate that time is pressing and that she has a limited amount of time in which to answer all our questions, but can she prevail on the Secretary of State and the Cabinet to ensure that we have a full-day debate on this issue in Government time? Given the setting-up of the commission, the Secretary of State’s announcements and, crucially, the prospect of significant changes in the Government machinery for dealing with this most sensitive of issues, as well as the Government’s fitful record of implementation, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Newark referred, we need the Government to give a clear statement in their own time on precisely what the new strategy is. That will give those Opposition Members who wish to see them and our multi-ethnic society succeed an opportunity to make an effective contribution to this ongoing process.

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath, in the House of Commons on 22 May 2007.

thank the Secretary of State for her grace and courage in coming to the House to make the statement today. It cannot have been easy announcing a retreat on a policy that she had no part in implementing originally. It is big of her to take the flak.

I also thank the Secretary of State for allowing me sight of her announcement, which I received just 25 minutes ago—clearly this is a day for doing everything at the last minute.

May I ask why, after being warned more than a year ago that they were comprehensively mishandling this issue, Ministers have seen fit to retreat only now with eight days to go before home information packs were due to be implemented? Why did Ministers not take the opportunity that we offered last week to think again? Was it stubborn vanity or sheer incompetence? The Secretary of State may argue that this humiliating climbdown was precipitated by the judgment issued in the High Court today, but that prompts the question that goes to the heart of the matter: why did Ministers find themselves in court in the first place? Why did they press ahead with a scheme that everyone who knows anything about the housing market told them was flawed at the heart?

Those warnings, unlike this climbdown, did not come at the eleventh hour. In this House at this Dispatch Box a year ago, we told the Government that their scheme was flawed. The Government told us that we were scaremongering, but 11 months ago they were compelled to execute the first in a truly embarrassing series of U-turns by dropping the mandatory home condition report, which was the keystone of the original home information pack, just hours after the Minister for Housing and Planning had defended it in this House. However, they were still determined to press ahead after that U-turn. Why did they not take the opportunity to work with us and others to put the stability of the housing market first? Why did Ministers decide to ignore the growing chorus of concern, shut out expert advice and carry on regardless?

On 21 February, all the key stakeholders who were originally invited to help the Government set up the scheme issued a warning letter to the Minister for Housing and Planning asking for an emergency meeting to address fundamental concerns with the scheme. They were not granted the meeting for which they asked: why? In desperation, the same group wrote to the Secretary of State on 2 March asking for a collective emergency meeting. Again, they were snubbed and no collective meeting was granted: why? What explains that refusal to listen to the experts, who were once charged with setting up the policy and whose involvement would be key to implementing it? Was it because this Government could not bear to be told that they were in the wrong, or did they not realise what a mess they were presiding over? Was it deadly arrogance or fatal ignorance? After today’s announcement, we know that this lady is for turning.

There are still many unanswered questions. The Government were warned that there were not enough qualified, accredited and certificated home inspectors in place. Over a year ago, I warned that getting those people in place was crucial. Only last week, the Minister for Housing and Planning told us that we had enough people to ensure the smooth operation of the scheme—she told us that everything would be all right on the night. Why did she offer that cavalier assurance, when the Secretary of State has told us that there will not be enough people in place after all? We know that relations between these Ministers are bad, but did the Secretary of State find out only in the past few days how few qualified people are in place? When did she know the real numbers? And why was not the House informed about the truth last week?

How can Ministers ever again ask to be taken seriously on the environment, when they have comprehensively mismanaged a measure that they argued throughout was vital to fighting climate change? Will the Secretary of State also confirm that today’s judgment in the High Court underlines what we have argued all along and what best practice in the European Union shows—you do not need home information packs for energy performance certificates? Will she agree to meet me, my colleagues, the Liberal Democrats and everyone with an interest in getting the housing market right to ensure that there is at last some expertise in this process?

Is this not a desperate, last-minute retreat designed to ensure that the Minister for Housing and Planning is airlifted out of this Department by her friends in the Treasury in a future reshuffle, so she does not have to cope with the chaos that she has created? And is it not truly tragic that confidence in the industry, the stability of the housing market and the battle against climate change have all been damaged by this Government’s arrogance and incompetence?