(6 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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The Minister has really diminished himself over the course of the past 45 minutes, and Toby Young is really not worth ruining his own career for. Mr Young is someone who has contempt for women, contempt for disabled people, and contempt for people from deprived communities who have the effrontery to try to get into Oxford. Will the Minister do the decent thing and disown Mr Young, and see his own reputation much enhanced for doing so?
We are going over much the same ground as in previous questions. The tweets, remarks and comments that Mr Young has made were clearly wrong. He is absolutely right to have apologised for them. Since making many of those remarks, he has continued to do good work in our educational system: he is delivering good outcomes for disadvantaged pupils at his schools in west London; and he is working hard on the Fulbright Commission. We have every expectation that he will make a valuable contribution to the work of the Office for Students.