Badenoch's amendment was extraordinarily smart and could have saved our children from Labour's mindless destruction of their education - Miriam Cates

At first glance, this seems a shocking decision by Starmer. There are obvious reasons why the Government might want to avoid a national inquiry into a scandal that will surely uncover negligence and possibly worse offences committed by officials in Labour-controlled local authorities in places such as Rotherham, Rochdale and Oldham. But it appears excessively heavy-handed for the Labour leadership to threaten to excommunicate backbenchers who decide to vote against the Government on a single amendment.

However, this is not the kind of amendment that will simply insert something new into a piece of legislation. Those kinds of ‘add on’ amendments are brought at Committee Stage and Report Stage of a Bill, where backbenchers and even the Government itself can suggest improvements that are then voted on by MPs and added—or not—to the legislation. But the School’s Bill is not yet at this advanced stage of its passage through parliament. Today’s debate is on what is called the ‘Second Reading’ of the Bill, which is simply a binary decision as to whether MPs agree that a piece of legislation should continue through the parliamentary process or whether it should be thrown out altogether. Any amendment at Second Reading that garners the support of the majority of MPs automatically kills the legislation in its entirety. In other words, if enough Labour MPs vote with the Conservatives and others on the Badenoch amendment, the whole Schools Bill will be dead on arrival.

Labour MPs therefore faced an enormously difficult decision. If they voted for the amendment because they agree that a national inquiry is needed, they will also be voting to sabotage a key piece of Government legislation, legislation which they personally may strongly support. But if they voted against the amendment to save the Schools Bill, they will be demonized by the press, the Conservative Party and their constituents. No doubt some will be labelled ‘rape apologists’ by the likes of Elon Musk. There are no easy decisions in politics.

And this is why the inquiry amendment is such a smart move by Badenoch. Not only is she rightly keeping up the pressure on the Government following Keir Starmer’s callous dismissal of those calling for action on the rape gangs as ‘far right’, Badenoch is also creating an opportunity to defeat the Schools Bill itself, which would be a victory not only for the Conservative Party but for every child in England.

Because the Schools Bill is possibly the most appalling piece of educational vandalism ever to be inflicted on Britain’s children. The last Government made many mistakes, but one of its undisputed achievements was the successful reform of our school system, which saw children in England shoot up the world rankings in academic performance. Not only did standards in maths, English and science improve, but we also saw the introduction of Free Schools, and the extensive rollout of Academies, which gave more autonomy to head teachers and more choice to parents. Yet through the legislation before parliament today, the Government seeks to undo all this good work, sending our schools back to the days of local authority control and top-down curriculum mandates.

The Labour Party is so desperate to micromanage headteachers that the Bill will make it illegal for schools to require children to own more than three pieces of ‘branded’ uniform. Given that the average school has around five pieces of branded kit (tie, blazer, PE top, school bag etc.), this means that thousands of schools will have to change their entire uniform policy as a result of Labour’s petty meddling. As if this wasn’t destructive enough, Education Secretary Bridget Philipson is undertaking a ‘curriculum review’ led by an academic whose specialism is gender studies. If you have children in the state school system, beware. Labour intends to replace education with indoctrination.

Why are the Left so keen to control what is taught in schools, even if it means sacrificing educational standards and thus robbing our whole nation of its potential? The answer is, of course, control. Compulsory state education is the Left’s most effective tool for social engineering. If the rights of parents to decide what is taught to their children, where and by whom are steadily eroded, it becomes easier and easier to indoctrinate the young with false and extreme ideas about race, gender, history and economics, views that most parents – and most people – do not support. Once children have been brainwashed, so the thinking goes, the Left will have lifelong acolytes. Independent Schools present a significant obstacle to this agenda of total control, which is why the Government is so intent on forcing them into financial failure through the introduction of VAT on education. Of course, we should fear the impact of the Labour’s economic policies on our financial future. But economic fortunes can rise or fall; once decades – even centuries – of educational excellence have been destroyed, it will not return.

The defeat of Badenoch’s wrecking amendment will make life very uncomfortable for Labour MPs, but more importantly, it will inflict a double blow to our children. Not only will hopes for a much-needed national inquiry into the rape gangs be dashed once more, we will also have to prepare ourselves for the mindless destruction of our education system.