Business of the House

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

Regardless of whether the problem is solved, I hope my hon. Friend will continue to fight a large number of elections in Banbury. He will know that one of the first actions we took was to establish the Dilnot commission, which reported in July. There is a commitment to publish a White Paper in the spring, which will outline the Government’s response to the important issues. There have been a number of debates on this important subject, but I would welcome a further one. We inherited a situation in which there were lots of White Papers but no action was taken during 13 years.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Can we have a statement from the Leader of the House—or whoever he delegates it to—on how we can hold the Government to account over participation in school sport? We put questions to the Secretary of State at DCMS Question Time this morning, but he refused to answer any about how we are going to monitor participation at school age. The Secretary of State has put £11 million into school games: it was announced by him and it is on his Department’s website, so it is not unreasonable to expect answers to DCMS questions about it. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on who is going to be accountable for answering questions on this subject in future?

[Sir George Young]

That sounds a little like unfinished business from the question and answer session that we have just had. I caught the end of DCMS questions and I thought that my right hon. and hon. Friends were answering questions with their usual competence and accuracy. I will, however, draw the hon. Gentleman’s comments to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to see whether there is anything he wishes to add to what he said a few moments ago.