Oral Answers to Questions

Martyn Day Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We spent £5 billion on new school places in the last Parliament and we will spend £7 billion in this Parliament. I will look carefully at what is happening in outer London, but there is no doubt that there are pressures in our system. He makes the good point that our birth rate is going up, which is replacing our population, whereas the birth rate in countries such as Germany is not. We therefore do not need the wide-scale immigration that we have had and need to make sure that the numbers are properly under control.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

Q8. Will the Prime Minister tell the House what plans are in place to ensure that the interests of all devolved nations are taken into account in his forthcoming letter to the European President, Donald Tusk, on EU reforms? What plans are in place to ensure that the devolved nations are represented in renegotiation discussions before the EU summit in December?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary recently met the First Minister of Scotland to discuss Europe, but I say to the hon. Gentleman that Scotland voted to stay in the United Kingdom, and the Edinburgh agreement said that we should respect the decision of the Scottish people. We had a United Kingdom general election, and we will have a United Kingdom referendum. On this of all days I was hoping he might raise the fact that, because of the Chinese state visit, Alexander Dennis, the bus maker in his constituency, is signing a £2 billion deal that will provide thousands of jobs. [Interruption.]