Nicholas Dakin
Main Page: Nicholas Dakin (Labour - Scunthorpe)Department Debates - View all Nicholas Dakin's debates with the Leader of the House
(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Gentleman has spoken of someone who was clearly a very brave man. I will certainly pass his bid on to the Secretary of State for Defence.
The Government have relied for their evidence base for scrapping education maintenance allowance on a piece of research by the National Foundation for Educational Research. Dr Thomas Spielhofer, who led that research, made it very clear in evidence to the Education Committee yesterday that there is no evidence base in the research to say that EMA is a dead-weight. In view of that, will the Secretary of State for Education come to the House to explain the evidence base on which he makes his decisions?
If the Select Committee is doing an investigation into the subject, it would seem sensible for the Committee to summon the Secretary of State to respond to that evidence, rather than have him summoned to the Floor of the House.