My colleague the Shadow Secretary of State for Education asked an Urgent Question on the Government’s plans to lift the statutory ban on opening new grammar schools in England. This came after a document proposing this was photographed outside Number 10 Downing Street. I am concerned that new grammar schools would impede social mobility and entrench inequality and disadvantage. In Kent, where there are grammar schools, the attainment gap is far wider than it is elsewhere. The evidence against them has been cited by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Sutton Trust educational charity, the chair of the Government’s Social Mobil it Commission and the chief inspector of the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. At a time when our schools are facing a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, with thousands taught in super-size classes and real-term cuts to the schools budget for the first time in nearly two decades, I believe that pushing ahead with new grammars shows thattheGovernmentmisunderstands the real issues facing our schools. I oppose the Government’s plans to expand grammar schools. All the major research shows that where there are grammar schools today, access to them is limited to the most well-off.