Oral Answers to Questions

Amber Rudd Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I know that local authorities work with each other to share best practice and to look at what happens. A whole range of things needs to be considered from, of course, training provision for teachers in mainstream schools, to the availability of places in special schools and so on. I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman’s local authority will look at all those areas as well.

[Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

Hastings is one of the opportunity areas supported and funded by the Government, which will be the biggest driver of social mobility for those of us in it in a generation. Although we celebrate the success and work closely with the Department for Education to make sure that it delivers on those changes, such is the success that we are now concerned about the end of the opportunity area funding. May I urge the Secretary of State to think carefully about how that end might be smoothed so that areas such as Hastings, which will get such extraordinary change from the opportunity area, do not suddenly find themselves cut off?

[Damian Hinds]

I am thinking carefully about that. It was always the intention that it would be a three-year programme and that we would then take learnings from the opportunity areas both to continue that programme in those areas, and also to look at what could work elsewhere, and we continue to look at that. May I commend my right hon. Friend for her personal leadership in the Hastings opportunity area, which I had the chance to visit recently?