NB: This is uncorrected evidence from the liaison committee. Neither witnesses nor members have had the opportunity to correct the record.
Liaison Committee: 7 February 2005:
Edward Leigh challenges the Prime Minister:
1) School interviews
2) Policing of the
London demonstration against the Mohammed cartoons: School interviews
Q238 Mr Leigh: Prime Minister, why are you…under the concessions last night, explicitly going to ban The London Oratory from interviewing parents?
Mr Blair: Because the Churches have already said - and this is what the Code of Practice says - that it is bad practice to use an interview as a means of selection. I am not getting into The Oratory or any other individual school. There is a considerable view not just within the education world but also within the Churches that run these schools that what is there in the Code already is bad practice and should not be allowed.
Q239 Mr Leigh: John McIntosh, the Headmaster, has built up a superb school. There is no problem in the leafy suburbs and the rural constituencies. My constituency is full of wonderful grammar schools and superb comprehensive schools. I am talking about inner London here. There you have The London Oratory which has a fantastic social mix. You accept that, do you not? It is full of middle class people and working class people. John McIntosh has built up that school. You are now going to ban him from interviewing parents. You are going to ban him from maintaining the Catholic ethos or the general ethos of his school. How can you do that to him?
Mr Blair: That really is not right.
Q240 Mr Leigh: Well, you are. It is a concession you made last night. He has fought a court case and he has won his court case. The concessions made last night are going to ban this man from running the school in this way. You know about the Phoenix School down the road. No middle class person wants to go to that school; they want to go to The London Oratory. It is hugely over-subscribed. Why can he not run his school in his own way?
Mr Blair: What you are saying is entirely incorrect. We are not stopping Catholic schools having a Catholic ethos. The vast bulk of Catholic schools do not use interviews as a method of selection. I am not entering into whether The Oratory do or do not. It is already made bad practice in the Code. The Churches themselves have said they do not approve of it. It would be absurd to say, when the Code of Practice already says that it should not and when the Church schools themselves say that it should not, that is destroying the religious ethos of the school.
Q241 Mr Leigh: Where under the concessions made last night are you going to allow Hammersmith Council to challenge any expansion plans that John McIntosh has?
Mr Blair: It is already the case that if the local authority wants to challenge a school expansion scheme it can do so. The difference is the school now as of right can expand and the local authority have an appeal, whereas at the moment it goes to the school organisation committee and unless the school organisation committee agree the school cannot expand.
Q242 Mr Leigh: The fact of the matter is that after these great reforms, this lion has roared and a mouse has appeared. John McIntosh will have considerably less independence in the way he is running his school than before because he cannot interview any more and his expansion plans can be challenged.
Mr Blair: The expansion plans always could be challenged and that is there in the White Paper, but the difference is schools are entitled to expand as of right with an appeal by the local authority. On the interviews, I think it is absurd to say that that is the difference between a good school and a bad school. There are only a handful of schools in the entire country that do interviews as a method of selection and the Churches have already indicated that that is bad practice. The freedoms that will remain are precisely the freedoms set out in the White Paper. Schools will have the freedom as a right to become self-governing trusts, they will be able to own their own assets, manage their own staff, develop their own independent sense of freedom and culture and that is the heart of the reform and that remains in full.
Demo policing
Q311 Mr Leigh: You have taken me to task when I have criticised you over the invasion of Iraq. You said that there are people who hate our way of life so much that whether we had invaded Iraq [or not] it would have made no difference. So what are we going to do about what happened in London last week? There is a feeling in the country that if other groups of people had gone around central London talking about beheading people and dressing as suicide bombers, that the police would have gone straight in under public order legislation - existing legislation, so they obviously have the powers - but somehow they were treating people with kid gloves. Maybe there were double standards; maybe they were frightened of being accused of being racist or attacking Muslims. There is a feeling in the country, is there not, that this was an intolerable situation.
Mr Blair: There is a feeling, I think, entirely justifiably, of outrage when people see some of the placards that were there. I am very pleased that leading members of the Muslim community have expressed their abhorrence along with everyone else in the country. The police had a difficult situation to manage on the day. I think it is perfectly sensible for them to say: “Look, we want to study the evidence and come to conclusions”, but let me make it absolutely clear, the police will have our full support in any prosecutions they mount, but that is for them to decide. You are right; I think there is a real sense of outrage. I think what is more healthy about the situation, though, (and I think it is very, very important that we emphasise this the whole time) is that that sense of outrage stretches across all communities. In my view there is a real issue about how the sensible, moderate Muslim leaders go into their community and confront this type of extremism, and that is something we discuss with them continually. However, it is very important for our overall good relations in this country that people understand there is no political correctness that should keep the police from taking whatever action they think is necessary. That is my position one hundred per cent.
