Oral Answers to Questions

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will look very carefully at my right hon. Friend’s suggestion in relation to the Special Olympics. I am very happy to join her—I am sure everybody across the whole House will—in congratulating our GB team on the significant haul of medals they brought back from the Special Olympics. May I also say how much we value Loughborough University and the work it does on sports-related matters?

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Q13. Head- teachers and governors in my constituency have cut school budgets to the bones. They are now desperately concerned about the impact on children. The Prime Minister’s own advisers have been sent into schools and, as reported by Schools Week, their ideas are truly shocking: reducing lunch portions for some of the most disadvantaged; holding back money for charities; and even employing unqualified teachers. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that these suggestions belong to the days of the workhouse, not 21st-century England?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady knows that we are increasing the funding—£1.3 billion extra—available to schools. I am sure she will want to welcome, as I do, the fact that there are 22,500 more children in the Bristol local authority area in good and outstanding schools since 2010.