Business of the House

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman will have seen that an agreement was reached during the prorogation between Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry and the Government about the terms on which information will be made available and can be published. That is very much welcome, and it enables us to look forward to the publication of the Chilcot inquiry.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

May we have a debate on schools admission policies and the appeals process because some parents in my part of west Yorkshire—the Colne and Holme valleys and Lindley—are struggling with the process of trying to get their children into good-quality local schools, which are overcrowded, and sometimes struggling even to get their children into schools where they already have siblings?

[Mr Lansley]

I completely sympathise with my hon. Friend, not least because I know from similar constituency cases about the importance parents attach to this endeavour and about the frustrations they often suffer in trying to understand some of the criteria that apply to school admissions. The admissions code was reformed under the last Government and has been further improved under this one, but if I may, I will ask my right hon. Friends at the Department for Education to come back to my hon. Friend on this issue, which would be helped if he were able to add further information about this particular case.