Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I totally agree that we need to strain every sinew to stop this appalling trade in misery. There is no silver bullet, although I think the agreement the Home Secretary made with her French opposite number will help, and we are embedding UK officials with their French counterparts for the first time. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) is right to say that the Bill of Rights can also help, not least in preventing interim orders from the Strasbourg Court from being recognised in UK courts. On ID cards, we already have e-visas for people coming to visit and live in the UK, and they act as digital evidence of a person’s immigration status. What is clear, however, is that we will have to do all these things in the teeth of opposition from Labour Front Benchers.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

Q5. Our small rural schools in Wyre face particular difficulties. The headteacher at Scorton and Calder Vale St John Church of England Primary Schools told me that:“Budgets in schools like ours are stretched as we have to pay for lots of additional services which larger schools can provide in-house.”She has to hire the village hall for PE because the schools have no hall, and she has to hire taxis to bring in school meals because they have no kitchens. Given the school budget cuts, what does the Deputy Prime Minister advise this headteacher to cut from our local children?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We are very sympathetic to the challenges that all our schools face. More will be said about specific measures tomorrow, but the hon. Lady should stand assured that we are the top spenders as a percentage of GDP on primary and secondary education in the G7, and that standards, which matter to pupils and parents the most, have increased, with the proportion of schools rated good or outstanding up from 68% in 2010 to 87% today.