Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Maria Miller and David Lidington(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
Mr Lidington
My right hon. Friend and her Committee did indeed make a powerful case. It has needed a lot of cross-departmental discussion, but I hope that in the very near future, we will be in a position to give her a definitive response.
Business of the House
Debate between Maria Miller and David Lidington(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
The Government acknowledge that the level of sexual harassment and violence in our schools is worrying, but they have not yet embraced my Select Committee’s recommendation to make sex and relationship education compulsory. Will the Government make time for an urgent debate to demonstrate the support for that measure not only in the House but from nine out of 10 parents in this country?
Mr Lidington
It is important that all schools should be safe places and that no young person should fear, let alone suffer, harassment or violence, and we want all schools to put high quality personal, social, health and economic education, including age-appropriate sex education, at the heart of their curriculum. We are looking again at the case for further action on PSHE and sex education, not least in the light of the views that my right hon. Friend and her Committee have expressed, with particular consideration to improving quality and accessibility.
Business of the House
Debate between Maria Miller and David Lidington(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
The right hon. Gentleman will have other opportunities to challenge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. I must say that I may be responsible for many things, but commercial relations between Sweden and Norway are not one of them.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House, in his unique role, review the Government’s approach to their responses to Select Committee reports and speed them up? The Women and Equalities Committee has been waiting since May for a response to its gender pay gap report, and before that we waited four months for a response to our important report on transgender people.
Mr Lidington
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving me notice of her question. I have looked into this matter. The report she mentions involves the responsibilities of a number of Departments, and I think that she received a letter from the Minister for Women and Equalities to alert her to the fact that there would probably be a delay in making a response. However, I share my right hon. Friend’s disquiet, and I certainly do not regard it as defensible that her Committee should have had to wait so much longer than the normal period. I will draw her concern to the attention of the Ministers responsible, and I hope that we will be able to provide her Committee with the Government response to which it is entitled as rapidly as possible.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Maria Miller and David Lidington(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
5. What steps the Government are taking to promote human rights in Belarus.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
We make our concerns known through regular meetings between the British embassy in Minsk and the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and through representations by our senior officials in London to the Belarusian ambassador based here.
Maria Miller
I thank the Minister for that reply. There are likely to be Belarus presidential elections this year. Last time, such elections led to candidates being arrested, beaten up and even imprisoned. On this day, which is, after all, the birthday of our Parliament, what encouragement can he give to those who want to see free and fair elections in Belarus, which is such an important part of Europe?
Mr Lidington
We will continue to speak up publicly as a Government and through the European Union and other international organisations of which we are a member to draw attention to the continuing abuse of human rights within Belarus, to urge the Belarusian authorities to take the path towards European and democratic values of pluralism and the rule of law, and to speak up for individual Belarusian human rights defenders—men such as Mikola Statkevich, still in prison in Belarus today—and demand that those prisoners be not only released but fully rehabilitated.