Let me pay tribute to the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) for leading this important debate and for doing such a good job in setting out all the different issues at stake. Although he covered a huge amount of ground in his opening statement, we also heard some excellent speeches f…
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Although they did not mention it before the election, Labour is committed to abolishing every district and borough council in Leicestershire. It has also invited proposals to expand the city’s boundaries, and the Mayor of Leicester has put forward such a proposal. This is univ…
Ministers recently announced that they were axing level 7 apprenticeships. Strangely, they made the announcement during recess; and also strangely, it was only the day after the announcement that they finally answered my parliamentary question from April, revealing that they were making a 90% cut in…
Asked whether the Government were planning to restrict EHCPs so that they apply only to children in special schools, the Government’s strategic adviser on SEND, Christine Lenehan, recently said:
“I think, to be honest, that’s the conversation we’re in the middle of.”
Is she correct to say that Min…
The last Conservative Government added 27,000 extra teachers. Although we would never know it from the Minister’s answer, there are 400 fewer teachers in our schools than last year. Labour promised 6,500 more teachers, but it is ignoring the loss of 2,900 primary school teachers, because apparently …
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement.
The truth is that the families benefiting from today’s announcement are the same ones who are paying for it, because the same group of people are hit hardest by Labour’s national insurance increase. Labour promised not to increase national in…
I congratulate the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) on securing this important debate. We have had some fantastic speeches, and any debate in which Johnny Ball gets a shout-out is a good debate in my view.
Our profession, politics, is awash with mathematical metaphors. L…
I am happy to agree that we can bring maths into many other things, and that is also a fun way of teaching maths. In return, I put back to the hon. Gentleman that there are limits to that. If we want to have more time for something else, we have to say where it is coming from. The improvement in tho…
Under this deal, we will be paying billions of pounds for the privilege of having our own territory taken away from us. The Secretary of State talks about the threat to the base as if Mauritius, a country with no navy, is about to steam in or pick a fight with the United States. That is implausible.…
It is, Mr Speaker. Earlier, the Minister said that funding had remained below 2010 levels. I am sure that was an innocent verbal slip. However, according to the widely respected Institute for Fiscal Studies,
“Coming on the back of an 11% real-terms increase in spending per pupil between 2019–20 and…