Nick Boles
Main Page: Nick Boles (Independent - Grantham and Stamford)Department Debates - View all Nick Boles's debates with the Department for Education
(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Is it true that there are 100 civil servants in the Department working on the free schools programme? If it is not 100, how many is it? What is the cost of that number of civil servants, and what on earth are they doing?
Michael Gove
Yes—a very good prompt from behind me. There are just around 100 civil servants working on the programme and I am delighted that they are, because I am convinced that helping idealistic figures, such as Peter Hyman and Sajid Hussain, a state school teacher who is setting up a school for disadvantaged students in Bradford, is a good thing. We are bringing schools to the areas of deprivation let down by the hon. Gentleman and his party. Instead of civil servants having their time diverted to the sort of politically correct projects that preoccupied the Labour party, at last they are concentrating on driving up standards for the poorest, and I am proud that it is the coalition Government who are doing it.