Preparations for Leaving the EU

Debate between Michael Gove and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend makes a characteristically original, helpful and constructive idea. As well as the individual country guides, we should also publish a guide that allows for the comparisons of the kind he mentions.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Page 104 of the document says that the agricultural support will be continued at the current level until the end of this Parliament. Given that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster wants an election before Christmas, this is possibly the emptiest promise in the whole document. It is no wonder that the National Farmers Union described the Government’s plans as “catastrophic”. He knows that hill farmers will face 48% tariffs on lamb exports. He has a salary of £140,000 a year. They earn £14,000. How can he stand there and behave as if this is not a serious, critical, existential problem?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making those points about hill farmers, whom she represents with such energy and passion. She is right—I have never shied away from this fact—that if we leave without a deal some sectors of our economy will face bigger challenges than others. Sheep farmers, along with the Northern Ireland dairy sector, are perhaps two of the sectors most likely to be most adversely affected. We take very seriously our responsibilities towards those who rear and grow the food on which we depend, and that is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has the necessary comprehensive support package to help anyone who may be adversely affected.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Gove and Helen Goodman

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I have been working with the Secretaries of State for Transport, for Business and for Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that charging points are automatically included in new developments. But there is more that we must do to ensure that we have an infrastructure that allows us to move towards ultra low emissions vehicles as quickly as possible.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Contrary to what the Secretary of State said to me last week, the DEFRA main estimate says that the budget for peatland restoration is unchanged. I am not going to ask for an apology, but the Secretary of State knows that peat amounts to 10% of our carbon dioxide emissions, so when is he going to increase the measly £6 million budget?

[Michael Gove]

After a rebuke like that, I must do so as soon as possible.

Environment and Climate Change

Debate between Michael Gove and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I can only really give way a couple more times.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am most grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. He mentioned peatlands, but 80% of our peatlands are damaged, and this accounts for 10% of our carbon dioxide emissions. Will he therefore explain why the Government are only putting £6 million a year into peatland restoration?

[Michael Gove]

It is actually £10 million.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Gove and Helen Goodman

Thursday 29th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Certainement. Le Président de la France—

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

You are not allowed to speak in French.

[Michael Gove]

Sorry. I will translate. The French President is, on this occasion, wrong.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Michael Gove and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

It is crucial that we all recognise that food production in this country is critical to the improvement of public health. My Department is working with the Department of Health and Social Care and others to ensure that, not only in this Bill but in other measures that we take, we put the importance of improving public health at the heart of everything that we do. The hon. Lady will be familiar with the actions that we have already taken on air quality, and she will also know that we are launching a food strategy, the first aspect of which I announced at the Conservative party conference last week: measures to ensure that we deal effectively with food waste and that healthy and nutritious food is provided to those who need it.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State was just speaking about the commons, and many of the farmers on the commons are sheep farmers. Would he care to say whether the report in The Times that large numbers of sheep will have to be slaughtered in the event of no deal is correct?

[Michael Gove]

The Times is a great newspaper of record, but I did not recognise today’s report. Sheep do have to be slaughtered eventually to ensure that upland farmers and sheep farmers more broadly can get a fair price for the sheepmeat they produce. Indeed, our Bill has specific provisions to ensure that all farmers get a fair price in the market and that we can intervene where necessary to safeguard their economic interests.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Gove and Helen Goodman

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is using his current role to flirt with radicalism—in particular, taking cheap shots at the payments made to the landed aristocracy. Rather than capping total amounts paid in the future scheme, would it not be more sensible to look at the rate of return and the marginality of the land?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady, who is a former Treasury civil servant, makes a vital point. As a Conservative, when I take shots at the landed aristocracy, they are not cheap. I find that when the landed aristocracy want others to undertake shooting with them, they often ask quite a high price.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Michael Gove and Helen Goodman

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, but the idea that we should spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to determine whether this country will suffer or benefit by being freed from the bureaucracy of that particular agency would seem to be a massive misdirection of effort. More than that—

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

I will give way to the hon. Lady in just a second.

More than that, if we were to publish impact assessments on every single one of these areas, we would be falling prey to a fallacy that politicians and other officials often fall prey to, which is imagining that the diligent work of our excellent civil servants can somehow predict the future—a future in which there are so many branching histories, so many contingent events and so many unknowns. If we produce an impact assessment on leaving the European Union Agency for Railways, how do we know how leaving that agency might be impacted by the enlightened proposals being brought forward by my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary for the more effective unification and cohesion of our transport network? We cannot know, unless we have that fact in play, but we do not yet know—quite rightly, because he is taking time to consult and deliberate—what that policy will be. What we would be doing is commissioning the policy equivalent of a pig in a poke. With that, I am very happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

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[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

I will, in the spirit of inclusion, seek to give way seriatim to the four Members seeking to catch my eye.

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[Michael Gove]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman is making an impressive speech, but I should say one thing—

[Helen Goodman]

No, you should not! Sit down!

[Michael Gove]

I should, actually—just the one. Why is it that Scotland now has to import scientists and engineers when in the 19th and early 20th century we used to export them? Is it anything to do with the drop in international league table rankings for science and mathematics that has occurred under the Scottish National party’s stewardship of the education system?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Gove and Helen Goodman

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am amazed that the Secretary of State thinks he can produce a nation of six-year-olds all of whom can spell Tuesday and know that there are two ways of spelling pear/pair. I think that even Hansard will have some problems with that! Is the Secretary of State not aware that pushing children to do things that they are not ready to do is totally counter-productive? In most European countries, they are not even at school at the age of six. Does the right hon. Gentleman not know that, according to the results of a UNICEF study, the one feeling that British seven-year-olds understood was how it felt to fail?

[Michael Gove]

I feel sorry for some seven-year-olds because they will have lived through years of Labour government when failure was all around them, but at last there is a Government who have high expectations for every child. I am sorry that the spirit of consensus that has prevailed so far has been shattered by the hon. Lady, because I had assumed that Labour was committed to ensuring that children in their earliest years had an opportunity to enjoy the very best teaching. It seems to me that it is not just in east Durham that there is a poverty of aspiration on the part of the Labour party.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Gove and Helen Goodman

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend has just done so, with characteristic acuity and passion.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

14. What his policy is on the secondary school curriculum.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

We recently published a number of proposals for the reform of the national curriculum in primary and secondary schools and those proposals are now subject to public consultation.

[Helen Goodman]

We know from industry that computing science is extremely important, and particularly coding skills. However, two thirds of schoolteachers do not have the relevant skills to teach coding. What does the Secretary of State intend to do about that?

[Michael Gove]

That is a very good question from the hon. Lady. One of the things that we have done is disapply the existing information and communications technology curriculum that we inherited from the previous Government, which was not appropriate, was out of date and ensured that students did not acquire the skills they need. We now have a new curriculum and we are working with industry, including Microsoft, in order to ensure that that new curriculum teaches children the coding skills required. I had the opportunity on Friday to see a school in my own constituency doing just that.

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[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

T6. The Government claim to be promoting family life, but the truth is that the bedroom tax will penalise non-resident parents who keep a room so that their children can stay with them on a regular basis. What representations have Ministers in this Department made to the Department for Work and Pensions?

[Michael Gove]

I do not know why the hon. Lady and, indeed, all Opposition Members keep referring to this as a bedroom tax. It is not a tax. It is timely and necessary action to deal with our out-of-control welfare bills, and that action is needed because of the way in which our economy was driven into the ground by the Labour party. It was in power for 13 years, during which no effective welfare reform took place and during which money was spent on a series of vanity projects that only left the country saying, “Thank heavens that a coalition Government have two parties clearing up the mess left behind by that crew of socialist wreckers on whom we wish nothing but a rapid path to contrition.”