Business of the House

Gerry Sutcliffe Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

We will make a statement in due course about the allocation of resources to local authorities. As I said earlier, we will be delivering school sports in a different way from the previous Government, and we will announce how we will spend the money we have allocated for school sport in due course.

[Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on where Ministers make statements, to whom, and at what time? We were promised a statement by the Deputy Prime Minister on the progress relating to immigration centres, Yarl’s Wood in particular, and that statement should have been made this week. Today, we are told by the press that he is going to make the statement via a video link from Kazakhstan to a charitable organisation. Is not that disrespectful to the House?

[Sir George Young]

The coalition agreement is quite clear that we want to phase out the detention of children for immigration purposes in centres such as Yarl’s Wood. At the moment, we are looking at alternatives—namely, looking after families with children in the community rather than in detention. When those alternatives have been developed, the House will be informed in due course.