Business of the House

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Lady has launched the campaign this afternoon, and I am sure she will have opportunities, whether in questions to Ministers or debates of various kinds, to make the case even more strongly. Most of us know that the towns making up the modern city of Stoke-on-Trent have an amazing history of cultural contribution to our country, most notably through the pottery industry, but also in the role Stoke played in the industrial revolution and in the development of British industry and technology over many years. We have seen with Hull this year the difference that being designated City of Culture can make to a city’s self-confidence and opportunities. I hope, without prejudicing any future decision, that one day Stoke-on-Trent might have that opportunity as well.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I would like to associate myself with the remarks about the late Father of the House. I did not know Gerald as well as some of my colleagues, but I always found him to be immensely kind.

I wish to talk about my private Member’s Bill on boundaries. Last year, more than 140 Members, from every region and every party, stayed on a Friday to vote overwhelmingly for the Bill. It was and is the will of the House. Yet, instead of allowing it to progress into Committee and, if they so wish, voting against it on Third Reading—if they could get the votes—the Government have chosen to engage in what I can only describe as a series of dirty tricks to prevent it from getting into Committee. I suspect it was because they feared I would have the support of the Committee and that the Bill would have progressed to Third Reading. I remind the Leader of the House that we had a referendum in this country in which the sovereignty of Parliament and the will of the House was an important feature. Yet this has demonstrated to me that the will of the House counts for nothing if it clashes with the will of the lady in No. 10. I have worked well with the Leader of the House in the past—I shadowed him when he was Europe Minister—and I have found him to be a decent man, but this has not reflected well on him. It has not been well done.

[Mr Lidington]

There is no doubting the hon. Lady’s commitment to her private Member’s Bill, but in fairness she must acknowledge that the Government are the Government only by virtue of having a majority in the House of Commons and that the Government came into office with commitments of their own on boundary changes—commitments on the basis of which they fought and won a general election. I understand that it is possible for her Committee to meet and to begin debating, irrespective of whether a money resolution has been secured. My advice is that the Committee convene and begin its work.

Business of the House

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I join my hon. Friend in expressing condolences to Mr Noskwith’s family and friends and to salute the vital and secret work that he and so many other men and women did at Bletchley Park during the second world war. They really are the unsung heroes of that period. My hon. Friend may wish to write formally to the House of Commons Commission about a memorial. She will be reassured to know that the Bletchley Park Trust has reconfigured the museum at Bletchley Park so that it is much more of a memorial than it has sometimes been in the past to the heroic work of those men and women.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I understand that my private Member’s Bill is mentioned regularly in the House in business questions and that the Leader of the House’s response is that he is waiting for me to come forward with some costs. We are talking about a private Member’s Bill, which means that there is only me. The Leader of the House has an array of civil servants who are willing and able to provide those figures for him. However, if he wants to let me know in detail what exactly he wants, he can write to me, and I will be happy to provide it—I will try on my own—for him and his civil servants. He must accept that this is the will of this House and that Members, from every part of this country and from right across this House, gave up their Friday surgeries to be in the Chamber when the Bill was debated. Will he stop trying to prevent the passage of this Bill and let me know when he will put it into Committee and come forward with a money resolution?

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Lady is sincere, as always, in speaking up for her private Member’s Bill, but it is also the case that the Bill was published, I think, only two or three days before it was introduced, and there was no memorandum of costs associated with it. Frankly, it is also the case—[Interruption.] She is sincere in her championship. The Bill is not exactly a disinterested initiative, but a deliberate effort to try to ensure that we have very unequal-sized constituencies. As I have said before, the Government are continuing to consider the financial implications of her Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch]

Many grassroots sports clubs would not exist were it not for the volunteer coaches and others who run them incredibly well. We should celebrate the people who get involved. The forthcoming sports strategy looks at making sure that we encourage more people to get involved in delivering sporting activities through clubs and in their communities. I hope everyone will welcome that.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

T4. The Arts Council will have more than £1.5 billion to invest in the arts across the country over the next three years. Of that sum, 43% will be invested in London at about £81 per head, but in my region the figure will be closer to £15 per head. That is just not good enough. What is the Minister doing to redress the balance between London and the regions?

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

We debate this important issue regularly. It is important to stress that a lot of the money that goes to “London” arts organisations goes to organisations based in London that do work all over the country. The chief executive of the Arts Council has made it absolutely clear that he intends to ensure that more lottery money goes outside London. He is quite right and has our full support.

Education for Young People with Disabilities (UK Aid)

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) on securing this excellent debate and on his contribution to it; there was little, if anything, that I disagreed with in what he had to say. It is a real shame that there are not more Members in this Chamber. I suspect that we are preaching to the faithful.

I will start by quoting from article 26 of the universal declaration of human rights, which the UK signed back in 1948. Back then, we said:

“Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.”

So, 66 years ago we signed up to free primary education for all—not just for those in the developed world, or those who could afford it, or those who were not disabled, but all children. However, for many children, particularly those living in the developing world, that is as far away from becoming a reality as it was 66 years ago.

Even in countries where children get access to primary education, millions do not complete it, or else leave school with limited skills and poor levels of reading and writing because the quality of teaching is variable, to say the least. Women and girls fare poorly, with less than 50% of girls making it to secondary education in some African countries. Across the world, women make up almost two thirds of the 796 million adults without even the most basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Although those statistics in themselves are awful, as has already been pointed out, the children who fare worst in this situation are those with disabilities. The United Nations millennium development goals committed to providing universal, free primary education for all children by 2015, yet we are still short of 1.8 million teachers to deliver that, with 1 million needed in sub-Saharan Africa alone. That situation is unsatisfactory for everyone, but for disabled children and their families the picture is far worse. Disabled children are far more likely to be out of education than the general populace and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) said eloquently, a disabled girl has virtually no chance at all of going to school.

For those few disabled children who get access to education, what is provided is far from appropriate and in the vast majority of cases falls well short of meeting their educational needs. I was pleased that the hon. Member for Ceredigion spoke about physical access, which is part of the issue, but making education accessible in terms of access to the curriculum and an inclusive culture is as important—if not more so—as ramps, wider doors and so on.

The UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities has forced some recognition of the rights of disabled people to be involved in their own development. It places an obligation on signatories, including the UK, to ensure that their overseas aid programmes include disabled people. However, the millennium development goals are largely silent on disabled learning, and so miss out a whole 15% of the world’s population. Data on this subject are not good—although I congratulate the Department for International Development on its recent work to improve data—but even from the poor data we have, it is estimated that disabled children make up one third of the out-of-school population across the world.

I want to set our debate in the context of what is happening to disabled children across the world. I do not think that we can afford to be smug about this issue in the UK. We require disabled children to attend school, but far too often we provide for disabled children by segregating them in special schools. In my experience, too many of those schools have low expectations of their pupils, and I say that as a supporter of special schools—I am a strong supporter of inclusion, but it must sit firmly on a foundation of good special schools. However, in my experience, even in 2014 too many of our special schools have low expectations of children with disabilities.

Even those countries that we consider progressive and enlightened often have a far worse record than we do. The hon. Member for Ceredigion mentioned that the UK is something of a beacon of good practice in this regard. I am a member of the Education Committee. Last year—or the year before; I am not sure—we travelled to Denmark. When I asked what percentage of children with disabilities there attended special schools, I was told it was 6% of the school population. I was amazed; in the UK, 1% of our children attend special schools. That means a huge number of children in this country are attending mainstream schools and having their needs met very well in those schools.

I never quite got the previous Secretary of State for Education to accept this point, but when we look at the PISA—the programme for international student assessment—tables we are not comparing like with like. In this country 1% of children with disabilities attend special schools, but 6% or more do so in some of the jurisdictions at the top of the PISA tables, and in countries such as Singapore or China disabled children never get access to mainstream schools at all.

On that trip to Denmark, we clearly looked shocked when we learned that fact, and officials were quick to tell us that they were going to do something about the situation because they recognised that it could not continue. I then asked how many children attending special schools in Denmark went on to university. Basically, the officials said it was none, as children from special schools went on to get Government pensions, by which they meant benefits. Although the situation is better in the developed world, when it comes to disabled children, none of us can afford to be smug.

Most disabled children in the developing world who manage to go to school face learning in segregated schools with very large class sizes, poor teaching from teachers with inadequate training and skills, and a lack of resources. We know that education is fundamental to reducing and ending poverty. Good quality, free education should be the right of every child, including every disabled child. More than anything else, education has the power to transform lives, and will help economic development and poverty relief, contribute to social stability and promote global health. We know that children whose mothers have received five years of education are 40% more likely to live beyond five years of age. That is as true for a disabled child as it is for every other child.

I call on DFID to introduce a disability strategy that gives disabled people full and inclusive access to its programmes, with clear baselines, milestones and success criteria. The strategy should make it easier to access funding for programmes that support disabled learning, and should make sure that all mainstream civil society organisations that DFID funds do the same. To do that, DFID must build a larger team of disability specialists, so that it can champion disability learning in its programmes, provide disability training for its own staff and even—here is a revolutionary idea—employ a few disabled staff in its programmes overseas.

I welcome the Government’s response and commitment to the report by the Select Committee on International Development. DFID has argued that a disability strategy is not the right approach and prefers to take a more holistic view in its social inclusion programme.

Before I came to Parliament in 2010, though not immediately before, I was the person who turned up in a school or local authority the week after a school had gone into special measures and the senior management team had gone. The two things I did immediately were: first, make friends with the secretaries, because they made life bearable; and secondly, put together a strategic plan with clear goals for what I would achieve and by when. I then measured periodically how far I had achieved those goals. The bottom line is that what gets measured gets done. Taking a holistic approach generally means faffing about a bit with nothing really changing. A strong framework setting out clear goals, milestones and success criteria, and measuring impact, is the only way to change things. Anything else is just nice warm words. Will the Minister be brave and ambitious today?

I started by quoting from article 26 of the universal declaration of human rights from way back in 1948. Sometimes it feels as though we had greater aspirations and hopes for our children and ourselves back in 1948. We were living in a time of austerity, and the UK was practically bankrupt and saddled with massive debts after fighting total war for five years, but we had ambitions for ourselves and our children. We created the NHS, a welfare system with a safety net for the poor and a free, compulsory education system for our children. We had a commitment to provide the same for others throughout the world. The Minister can be the new Clem Attlee. What better time to rediscover the same ambition, aspiration and courage we had in 1948, and to secure the universal free education for every child, including disabled children, that this country has promised to deliver, but has failed to for more than 60 years?

Oral Answers to Questions

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

1. What assessment he has made of the implications for his Department's policies of the National Audit Office’s recent report on funding arrangements for the Big Society Network.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

3. What assessment he has made of the implications for his Department's policies of the National Audit Office’s recent report on funding arrangements for the Big Society Network.

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Brooks Newmark)]

I take this report seriously. I am satisfied that the issues raised concerned adherence to process, and therefore do not feel that there are any implications for the policies of my Department.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Newmark]

I shall certainly look into that matter, as the hon. Gentleman has asked. We welcome the NAO’s report and have learned the lessons from this experience. There are no conclusions that the Cabinet Office did anything untoward in this regard. All the report says is that we did not adhere to the guidance we issued for this particular programme on a couple of points.

[Pat Glass]

Is it true that the Prime Minister’s flagship Big Society Network is now being investigated by the charity commissioners over allegations of misuse of Government funding and inappropriate payments to directors, including a Tory donor?

[Mr Newmark]

This has been investigated and no evidence of impropriety has been found.

Business of the House

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am scurrying to answer. I was just wondering whether there were any traps in my hon. Friend’s question.

My hon. Friend will recall that when we came into office, under the previous Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme no school construction had started. It is the experience of many Members that considerable reductions in costs and an acceleration in process have been achieved under this Government through the new Priority School Building programme. The Secretary of State recently announced that 260,000 schools places had already been created under this Government, and additional substantial funding has been announced that I think takes the funding over this four-year period to about two and a half to three times what it was under the previous Government. All that is positive news. We want to ensure that plans put in place are cost-effective and achieved in as timely a fashion as possible, and I know that that is the intention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Members on both sides of the House have long had concerns about the badger cull, the Government’s case for its efficiency and effectiveness, and its very morality. We now find out that their case is based on largely dodgy statistics. May we have a debate in Government time on this issue, which is so important to our constituents?

[Mr Lansley]

I do not think that the hon. Lady should get too carried away until the statisticians have quantified the error. One should not characterise the situation as she did and certainly should not exaggerate. The Government have been assiduous in bringing this issue back for the House to consider, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will continue to do so.

Business of the House

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I would be delighted if we had such an opportunity early in the new year. I cannot promise it immediately, but I hope that it will arise. My hon. Friend is quite right. The most recently published data show that in the east midlands, for example, the number of people unemployed has fallen by some 6,000. In many regions there have been similar substantial decreases in unemployment, which is very encouraging, and at the same time vacancies continue at a record level.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine contacted me this week to tell me that his daughter, an agency worker at the passport office in Durham, will be made redundant in the new year when her job and others will be transferred to India. It is a tragedy not only for her, but for the region, as every job in the north-east is precious. May we have a debate on the scandal of Government and Government agency jobs being transferred overseas?

[Mr Lansley]

I will of course, because of the personal circumstances of the hon. Lady’s constituent, raise that with Home Office Ministers and ask them to respond to her directly. If she has any additional information, I would be happy to include it in the query. On the general point, it is encouraging that the most recent data show a reduction in unemployment in the north-east.

Paid Directorships and Consultancies (MPs)

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I entered this House in 2010 and did so because I wanted to change things for the people I represent. In that sense, I do not think I am different from the vast majority of Members, whichever side of the Chamber they sit on. We might have different priorities and we may have different policies, but our aims are the same.

Like many other Members who entered this House in 2010, I left a well-paid job—it was much better paid than that of an MP—but I understood exactly what I was taking on. I knew what the job paid and the kind of hours I would need to work. I have not regretted that decision. I did not enter this House with the expectation of using it as a stepping stone to lucrative company director posts or as a route into other, better paid jobs or consultancies.

I understand that some Members have more than one job and some have several. My take on that is that I honestly do not know how they do it. Being the Member of Parliament for North West Durham is more than a full-time job. It takes up all my time here and in the constituency, and I believe that that is how it should be. The people of my constituency, whether they voted for me or not, deserve nothing less, and I simply do not understand why some MPs think that their job here is part time or that their constituents deserve less than a full-time MP.

I accept that some Members have special talents, skills or qualifications that would be wasted if they were not able to use them outside this House. I have spent a career working in education and consider myself to have specialist knowledge of the education world, particularly with regard to special needs or additional educational needs. I am regularly asked to write articles and to speak at venues to young people and their teachers and schools, and I am happy to share my skills and knowledge with any group or organisation that is prepared to work in the best interests of those people. The difference is that I am never paid for it. I never accept payment, because I consider that work to be part and parcel of the job that I am paid to do as a Member of Parliament.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I think most of us would accept that an awful lot of the things that MPs do with charities as part of our job take us well beyond normal office hours, but could the hon. Lady explain the motion, which refers only to “paid directorships or consultancies”? What is her view of GPs and people in the health service who continue their second job while they are here and authors who spend a lot of their time writing books and pamphlets and getting paid for it?

[Pat Glass]

If the hon. Gentleman had been present in the debate for more than three minutes, he would have understood it better.

The current system allows MPs to take additional jobs and to get paid for them so long as they declare them in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I do not understand this. It seems to be completely within the rules and I am willing to accept that in the vast majority of cases MPs can operate without any conflict of interest in practice. However, we have to understand the perception outside this place. This is a Westminster bubble.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Pat Glass]

No, I will not.

Government Members have argued about the intricacies of the motion and the legal aspects, but this is about how it plays outside this place. The perception among the public is that MPs are getting kick-backs for services rendered, and that damages the reputation of politics—it damages the reputation of us all. I support a ban on remunerated directorships and paid consultancies and a cap on other forms of earned income. We have a cap on benefits, so why cannot we have a cap on MPs’ income?

Government Members have argued about this and confused the issue, but it is simple: it is an issue of access and of privileged access. It is about people outside this place paying for special access and privilege in a way that the vast majority of the people who vote for us and who pay their taxes and MPs’ salaries never can.

Lobbying

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure, although not always easy, to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). He is always informative and entertaining.

I have been a Member of this House since May 2010. When I was considering standing for selection as a candidate, I had to think carefully about whether this was something I wanted to do. I had concerns about the male culture and ethos of this place, and the impact that that would have on me as a woman MP. On that, my worst fears have been more than realised. I also had concerns about leaving a relatively successful career in education where I was relatively well respected to become a Member of Parliament, when the path to Parliament is hardly littered with respect and trust. I think we all know the reasons for that: it is not just the scandal in the previous Parliament but the view, widely felt out there among sections of the public, that we are all in it for ourselves and that election to Parliament is an open door to all kinds of experiences and funding not available to the general public.

I know that the vast majority of Members of this House are here because they genuinely want to make a difference to the lives of the people we represent. We may do that in different ways and we may have different priorities, but that is the reason why we are here. Scandals connected with lobbying, like those highlighted in the press in recent weeks, simply reinforce the negative view of politics and politicians, and the view that the relationship between lobbyists and politicians is far too close and is built upon mutual greed.

It is going to be really difficult to regain the trust of the public, but surely a good start is to put in place a statutory register of professional lobbyists that is backed up by regulation and includes a clear definition of what we mean by lobbying. When I say a clear definition, I mean a definition that will make sense to the people who vote for us. That should not just include third-party lobbyists, but in-house lobbyists and anyone who lobbies for commercial gain. Our constituents understand that the majority of all-party parliamentary groups provide information for parliamentarians, and work to influence MPs on issues of concern. All-party groups that support the work of parliamentarians in education, care leavers, social mobility, multiple sclerosis, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and autism—all groups that I am happy to say I am involved in—and the charities and even companies that support those groups, are not lobbying Members with anything other than good intentions. It is right that those groups have access to politicians, and that is what our constituents would expect.

However, it is also clear to our constituents that we need regulation for all-party groups funded by private companies and for organisations that are bidding for Government contracts, offering lucrative jobs to former Ministers, MPs and Peers, and whose profits depend on Government policy. At its most basic, this issue is about the rich and powerful gaining access to those in government who make decisions, very often financial decisions, that can affect a company’s bottom line. That access is not available to the rest of the population. Although we may never be able to stop that completely, it is important that we regulate it and make it transparent.

I have to admit that I have received very little of what I would consider to be lobbying for commercial gain, but that is probably because I tend to involve myself in areas of activity that do not attract lucrative contracts. However, as the Government privatise more areas of health and education it will be harder to avoid. It is therefore ever more important that we have a statutory register in place that includes not only a clear definition of professional lobbying, but a code of conduct that is so clear that our constituents will understand it and approve of it, including a headline that forbids inappropriate financial relations between lobbyists and parliamentarians. I know that that is difficult. As the hon. Member for North East Somerset said, this is the crux of the matter. It will be incredibly difficult to define, but we know exactly what we are talking about and so do our constituents.

We need strong sanctions for both parliamentarians and lobbyists where breaches occur. It might just make a difference to lobbyists if they knew that if they breached or even attempted to breach the code, they could be prevented from working in Parliament again, and that in the most serious cases matters could be referred to the police and ultimately result in jail sentences. Despite the Prime Minister’s promises that he would deal with this, all he has done is to kick it into the long grass and he has only retrieved it following yet another scandal. However, I am less concerned about how we got here. Let us be glad that we have got here and let us get it right this time.

My concern is that the Government’s proposals are late, are weak and will not stop the most insidious and lucrative lobbying. The Government, either inadvertently or deliberately, failed to deal with the real problem.

[Damian Collins]

Does the hon. Lady agree that we must proceed with some care in terms of how we put together a register of lobbyists because, in the most recent scandals, it has not been lobbyists seeking to entrap parliamentarians but journalists masquerading as lobbyists? Many people who consider themselves to be lobbyists as part of a voluntary registered scheme already would never engage in such practices.

[Pat Glass]

Absolutely, which is why I said at the beginning that lobbying has a long tradition in this place and should continue. But we need to deal with that lobbying, or as the hon. Member for North East Somerset said, that corruption, which is about gaining commercially.

Finally, I want to say that Labour did put a voluntary code of practice in place in 2009 but, like so many other voluntary codes of practice, it simply did not work. We need a statutory code of practice; something that has teeth and will bite. Our constituents need to see that, this time, we mean business. That will happen only if there is a statutory code of practice in place that works, so that those who breach it—MPs, peers and lobbyists—are dealt with severely. This will not in itself reinstate trust in politics, but it will be a good place to start.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Lady for providing that clarification. I am not sure that the same clarification has been provided by Opposition Front Benchers, but we will have other opportunities to hear from them about the scope of their proposals.

Given the rather convoluted phrase about sunlight and soap with which the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) began his speech, he appeared to have been lobbied by Procter & Gamble. I am afraid that I lost the hon. Gentleman towards the end of that phrase, but his main point was that the problem of undue influence would be dealt with by the inclusion of everyone on a register. I do not understand how that can be the case. Simply including people on a register cannot ensure that they will not exert undue influence.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) for having missed the beginning of his speech. He spoke of the need for an engaged, interactive citizens’ democracy, which is something that I would certainly support and welcome.

I hope that the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) feels that the House is becoming less—

[Pat Glass]

indicated dissent.

[Tom Brake]

No, she clearly thinks that the House is still too confrontational, or too male-dominated or testosterone-driven. I am not entirely sure what she considers to be the cause of the tension.

The hon. Lady advanced the same arguments about the need for an extensive register. She, too, did not take account of the fact that meetings with in-house lobbyists are reported. Those who want to establish whom Ministers have met and why, and the dates on which they have met, can refer to the quarterly report, and can then ask questions if they wish to do so. If, for instance, it concerns them that a Minister has met representatives of Tesco to discuss food labelling, they can pursue the matter further. However—this is relevant to what my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross said—I should welcome greater transparency in that regard. I know Ministers are looking at that collectively.

Finally, in summing up for the Opposition the hon. Member for Harrow West touched on many of the issues that his hon. Friends had raised in the debate, in particular the code of conduct. The Government’s position is clear: that is best addressed by business, so we can focus on the third-party register.

This debate has provided a timely and refreshing opportunity for the coalition to set out how we intend to tackle the potential risks associated with third-party influence, by bringing forward coherent, finely balanced and proportionate measures—measures that will not burden charities and other organisations with huge regulations, as requested by the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson).

These are measures that I believe the whole House will be able to support. I urge Members to back the Government amendment and reject the Opposition motion.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.

Business of the House

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Members of this House are happy to send Christmas cards to their constituents and others at their own expense. I do not see why councillors should not do the same.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Education came to the Select Committee on Education to answer questions on his plans to replace GCSEs. However, he did not answer questions. I do not mean that he avoided them, evaded them or gave non-answers—he point blank refused to answer questions from the Conservative Chair of the Committee and other Members. Given that the parliamentary role of the Education Committee is to scrutinise the Department for Education, is that not contempt of Parliament, and can we have a statement?

[Mr Lansley]

As I understand it, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was perfectly happy to answer questions on matters for which he is responsible. He was not willing to answer questions relating to the views of Ofqual, as it is an independent regulator. I think that is perfectly fair.