Business of the House

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Mel Stride

Thursday 27th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I congratulate every single one of those children who have stepped up and said they are willing to travel halfway round the world to engage in what sounds like a fantastic sporting competition involving 1,500 other competitors. I wish them well. Sport and exercise for young people is a very worthy subject for debate. I might direct the hon. Lady to the hon. Member for Gateshead and the Backbench Business Committee.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I thought the Leader of the House was very ungracious to suggest that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) was not the best-looking member of Runrig but if I can paraphrase Paul McCartney, he is not even the best-looking member of MP4! [Laughter.] I’m not saying who is, obviously. By some strange omission MP4 have not been booked to play the Glastonbury festival this weekend, but it is a reminder of the importance of music festivals to the economy and to people’s wellbeing. A lot of smaller music festivals are now being hit for the first time by business rates bills, making their survival marginal at best. May we have a debate on why it is that music venues and music festivals now seem to be being picked on for business rates and other costs by the Government, when they contribute so much to our wellbeing and our economy?

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, first, for his observation about the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). I think we have plumbed new depths in terms of his desirability. It is a very cruel observation, but I will check the photographs and see whether it is true. Perhaps I will report back next Thursday with my observations.

On the serious matter of music venues and business rates, I think the hon. Gentleman may be referring to the applicability or otherwise of tax reliefs, which have recently been announced, in relation to business rates. They typically apply to pubs, but currently I do not think they necessarily always apply to music venues. On music festivals, I am not familiar with exactly how the business rating system works in that respect. These are both matters for the Treasury, specifically the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. If he would like to drop me a line, I would be very happy to facilitate a meeting with the Financial Secretary to discuss them.

Business of the House

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Mel Stride

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend’s raising of this very specific matter is entirely indicative of the very assiduous approach she takes to her constituency matters. She is quite right to raise this issue, and I can confirm that I will do whatever I can to assist her in the approaches she is seeking to be made to the Department for Transport.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

May I caution the Leader of the House against trading song lyrics with my fellow colleague from MP4, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), and indeed the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), not least because the preceding line to the lyric the right hon. Gentleman quoted—

“Why don’t you come on over Valerie?”—

from “Valerie” is:

“Stop making a fool out of me”,

which is exactly what she will be doing here every week? And

“So I say

Thank you for the music”,

but let us stick to the business of the House.

Will the Leader of the House at the very least endorse the words of the leadership contender he is supporting this afternoon, who has said:

“Proroguing parliament in order to try to get no-deal through, I think, would be wrong for many reasons.”

Will he at least endorse that?

[Mel Stride]

As for the lyric

“Stop making a fool out of me”,

nobody was attempting to make a fool out of the hon. Gentleman, I can assure him.

On proroguing, I have made it very clear that the view of Government Members and of the Government is that this should not be used as a device to ensure that Parliament is absent from the decisions that may have to be made towards the end of October and, furthermore, that it would not be appropriate for Her Majesty the Queen to be drawn into those kinds of political decisions.

Business of the House

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Mel Stride

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

These arrangements are clearly subject to a variety of commercial contracts and arrangements between businesses. As to the suggestion of our having a debate, I invite the hon. Gentleman to write to me setting out precisely the arguments he is putting forward and what he wishes to be debated. I would then be very happy to have a much closer look.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I did not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) when he was a member of the Oxford University Conservative association, but I agree with him when he challenges the new Leader of the House to be much clearer about his constitutional position in relation to proroguing Parliament. Will the Leader of the House now make it absolutely clear from the Dispatch Box that he would oppose any future Prime Minister who proposes Prorogation in order to avoid this House being able to express its view on a difficult constitutional matter such as Brexit? As Leader of the House, he needs to be clear that that is his position.

[Mel Stride]

If I may say so, Mr Speaker, both your interjection on this matter and my previous answers cover the hon. Gentleman’s point.

Education Performance

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Mel Stride

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Rosindell. I am afraid that I have to inform my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) that I am another Oxford graduate and, to compound her concerns, that I went to the same college as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field)—although, of course, he was there much later than me, which is why he is looking so much more youthful and fresh.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) on securing this extremely important debate. Education is one of the most important policy areas considered by our Government. It is important to the individual because a high level of educational achievement correlates to higher earnings, a lower propensity to be unemployed, better health outcomes and, indeed, greater longevity. As she eloquently pointed out, in a world that is increasingly dominated by global competition and where knowledge-based industries are king, education is also important to the economy.

I shall illustrate that point. In 1978, 6.5 million people worked in manufacturing. That figure is now down to 2.5 million. The scope for less-skilled jobs in our economy has diminished considerably. As my hon. Friend pointed out, in a recent survey, the CBI indicated that some 40% of the UK’s population could be classified as low skilled compared with just 22% in Germany. That is a serious problem for the economy.

Many hon. Members have mentioned social mobility. My parents left school at 15 and 14 for reasons of economic hardship. For them to have dreamt of becoming a doctor or a scientist would have been about as fanciful as any Member in this Chamber dreaming of walking on the surface of the moon—it was simply never going to happen. One of the most striking and pitiful statistics I have heard since becoming a Member of Parliament is that, in the last year for which figures are available, of the 80,000 children who qualify for free school meals, only 40 achieved places at Oxford and Cambridge, which is down from the princely figure of 45 in the previous year. That is simply not good enough.

I have listened with great interest to the debate about the programme for international student assessment figures and trends in international mathematics and science study statistics and so on. Of course, the problem is that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. The Government will rightly point to what they see as a diminishing level of education performance over the past decade, and the Opposition will start to unpick those figures and say that they are unfair comparisons. As the shadow Minister may tell us in a moment, I accept that there is an issue with the 2000 PISA figures having a cohort of just 32 countries and the 2009 figures having a cohort of 65 countries. Of course, such factors make comparisons difficult. However, the Government make a good point that, of those new countries coming into the later figures, many of them are outside the OECD and are therefore lowering the average standard involved.

[Kevin Brennan]

I may or may not make the point about the figures when I speak, but does the hon. Gentleman accept that the OECD itself has said—not just me—that we cannot make the comparison between the 2000 figures, the 2003 figures and the latest figures for the reason my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) mentioned earlier: the inadequate size of the sample. Given the hon. Gentleman’s Oxbridge education, he would not want to make that mistake.

[Mel Stride]

From one Oxbridge man to another, I accept that that certainly is the case with the 2003 figures, where the lack of information provided by UK and English schools meant we were not included in the league tables. Although there was a paucity of data in 2000, we were included, as the hon. Gentleman will know. Therefore, some level of comparison is justified if we go back to that year.