Extremism Definition and Community Engagement

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am glad to follow both Front Benchers, who have given a lead to the House.

It is interesting to consider whether it would have been right 90 years ago to identify as a threat Oswald Mosley’s approach, as well as the people who marched through the streets to intimidate others. More recently, when Kathleen Stock was at the University of Sussex, the students’ union and many others called her a dangerous extremist for writing a rather good book and having views that are now mainstream.

Filling the gap between what is not necessarily criminal but should be identified as wrong is important, and I hope the whole House can give support to today’s proposals.

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the Father of the House. There should, rightly, be a high bar on the use of criminal sanctions. We should always seek to encourage free speech, but he is quite right to draw attention to the freedom-restricting harassment that some people have engaged in. I completely endorse the point he makes about Kathleen Stock, who is a distinguished academic.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend may know that, in Durrington in north-west Worthing, more than 1,000 new homes have been built. Will he ask his inspectors—and the Leader of the Opposition—to recognise that Chatsmore Farm and Lansdowne Nurseries should not be built on? We must have some green fields between one habitation and another.

[Michael Gove]

The Father of the House makes a very important point. Of course, his beautiful constituency—situated as it is between the sea and areas of outstanding natural beauty—has already seen significant development and we do need to ensure that settlements have the green belts around them protected.

Holocaust Memorial Bill: Committal

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Committal (to a Select Committee)
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for the way in which she has introduced these four topics. We are talking mainly about the instruction motion; I do not think that the others are very exceptionable.

I think I may have served on more hybrid Bill Committees—and certainly for longer—than most people, including that of High Speed 2. I doubt that the situation is quite as my hon. Friend described it. Hybrid Bill procedure exists for a reason: to protect the rights of those who are specifically affected by a Bill and allow them to put their case to a Committee. By making clause 2 the principle of the Bill, as well as clause 1—as I said before, there is no controversy about clause 1—the Government have already spent £17 million or more achieving nothing. They are now proposing to spend an extra £80 million to £100 million achieving not very much. I suggested in a previous debate that the Government should consider how to get a national holocaust memorial up—close to Westminster, if they want—within two years. Of course, the Government would not, as I have explained before, achieve it in four to five years extra, over and above the eight years that have been used up so far.

To go back to the hybridity, it is a matter of record that the Government declared in front of the examiners that this was not a hybrid Bill. They were wrong; it is a hybrid Bill. The reason for a hybrid Bill is so that people have the right to petition. The Government tried to stop that. I think that it is fairly clear to anyone who looks at this that the Government are now seeking to achieve the same result by using this instruction. It is up to the Government to decide whether the instruction, as introduced, is an abuse.

It would be quite easy for the Government to stand up and say what things the petitioners might rightfully put in a petition and be heard on, rather than telling the Committee that they cannot be heard. In addition, because this is a local park for local people, I believe not just that advertisements should be put in newspapers or in the gazette, but that a leaflet should be given to every resident, no matter how small or large their home, from, say, Vauxhall Bridge, Victoria station, along Victoria Street and south of Victoria Street up to the embankment. Those people should be told how the procedure works, how they can petition, what they can petition on and how they can be represented together by a common agent, if they want to be. That is what happened in my experience on HS2.

The instruction, as described by the Minister, would make the whole Bill part of the principle of the Bill. That is not common. In fact, I do not know of it happening before. The whole of the Bill cannot be made the principle, because that then makes it impossible for the petitioners to have their cases heard effectively. So I think we need to accept that the petitioners will be heard on nearly everything that is not an abuse. If someone says, “I do not want any money spent on it,” I can understand not allowing that. That is the principle, but the rest of it, I argue, is not.

Paragraph (3)(a) of motion 6 refers to a petition that relates to

“the question of whether or not there should be a memorial commemorating the victims of the Holocaust or a centre for learning relating to the memorial, whether at Victoria Tower Gardens or elsewhere”.

I ask this explicitly: can either the Secretary of State or the Minister stand up and tell me now that, if someone wants to argue in front of the Committee that it would be better to have the basement box somewhere else and just have the memorial, would that petition potentially be heard by the Committee?

[The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)]

I think it would be a matter for the Committee.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I agree with the Secretary of State that it would be a matter for the Committee, but it is a matter for the Committee under the instructions.

By the way, if it helps those who are concerned about votes and trains, I intend to vote for both amendments, but force a Division only on one of them. I am trying to make sure that these issues will be considered in the House during the Bill’s remaining stages and in the House of Lords as well, where I suspect there will be a degree of scrutiny.

This hybrid procedure gives ordinary people a chance to have their voices heard, and it allows the Committee to insert conditions when the Bill comes back to the House. Those conditions, I believe, could include—I am not going to tell the Committee what it has to do, although I volunteer to be a member if anyone wants to put me on it—saying that the Government should, before this Bill comes back for its further stages on the Floor of the House, show the alternatives to the present plans.

I do not think we should rely on the planning inspector, whose conditions were rather odd before, or on the Secretary of State’s colleague making an independent decision on the Secretary of State’s application. I think that may formally be an acceptable procedure, but it is not one that anyone would justify if we were giving a lecture on democracy in another country.

I believe that the Committee should have the capacity or ability to hear petitions that say, “If the Government say that the memorial only takes up 7.5% of the land in Victoria Tower Gardens, that should be written in as a condition in the Bill.” I believe, notwithstanding the acceptability of paragraph (2)(a) about the money, that the Committee should be able to say that the House can consider the Bill on the condition that the total cost is not more than another £80 million, if we go ahead with the box, or preferably £20 million without the box, whether at the north end of Victoria Tower Gardens, or Parliament Square, or Whitehall, or College Green.

There are a whole series of other things I could say—I have a long, detailed speech and I apologise to those who helped me create the arguments—but I think the House will find it convenient if I leave it with this point. This hybrid Bill must be considered properly by the hybrid Committee, which should allow petitions to be heard. Local people will put their points of view forward. If some duplicate each other, hear them together, but do not exclude any point of practice or of principle if we want to get a holocaust memorial in the next two years. We will not with this process. It needs conditions to change it.

We will not even, in my view, get it within the next four or five years at £120 million, unless the Government wake up to the fact that this is sticking in a big box that does not do what the original plans wanted in a place where it is not appropriate. We can do better than that, and I ask the Secretary of State to recognise that that is the point of moving these amendments. I ask the House not to restrict the petitioners. The Government have now accepted that this is a hybrid Bill, so use the procedures properly and be democratic.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. There has been controversy and there has been opposition to the site of the memorial, but it is only fair to say that the decision to site it in Victoria Tower gardens has followed consultation. There was extensive consultation on this project, starting with Prime Minister David Cameron’s holocaust commission in 2014, which received almost 2,500 responses. Following the announcement in January 2016 that Victoria Tower gardens had been identified as the most fitting site, an international design competition was then held to select a suitable design team.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I do not put this as a point of argument, but as something that I hope my right hon. Friend is aware of: when the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation put out its specification in September 2015—a copy of which, I think, is available to my right hon. Friend—it said that it wanted various criteria to be taken into account, including a possible location in central London, which on page 10 of the specification is illustrated as west of Regent’s Park, east of Spitalfields and down from the Imperial War Museum. In the four or five months between September 2015 and January 2016, there was no public consultation about the site at all. I do not want my right hon. Friend to feel that he needs to answer that point now, but if he could say before the end of the debate what consultation there was between September 2015 and January 2016, that might be helpful to the House.

[Michael Gove]

The consultation was undertaken after the announcement of the winning design, and from January to September 2017 the public were invited to comment on the shortlisted designs, which were exhibited in Parliament and across the United Kingdom. Of course, as the Father of the House will know, there was a planning inquiry, and during that inquiry extensive material about the memorial and the learning centre was published and shared. Interested parties were given an opportunity to raise concerns and objections, and objectors had the opportunity to make their case to the independent planning inspector at that point.

However, I stress that the decision on the site was not taken by Government Ministers, and—in respect of the understandable concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron)—it was not imposed by the Government themselves. The decision was arrived at by the independent Holocaust Memorial Foundation, with representations from different political traditions, including the right hon. Ed Balls and the right hon. Lord Pickles; the Chief Rabbi; the very distinguished president of the Community Security Trust, Gerald Ronson; and a host of others from civil society. While my hon. Friend is right to say that some people within the Jewish community have expressed concerns, the overwhelming view of the Jewish community and its representative organisations is that this is the right memorial in the right location, and that we must press on.

Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Monday 27th March 2023 Ministerial Corrections

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I declare an interest in having a leasehold property—although I have no problems with it—and I also have minor shares in some building companies so that I can get at their boards when necessary.

I thank the Secretary of State for his continuing work. May I reinforce a question asked from the Labour Front Bench: how many buildings beyond the 1,100 still need a way forward? Can we agree that leaseholders and others want to know that their own homes are safe and saleable? We know that the task is to find the problems, fix them and pay for them.

I put it to the Secretary of State that the one group that seems to be left out of this is that of the insurance companies who covered the developers, the architects, the builders, the component suppliers and, for that matter, those who did building control. I believe that leaseholders’ potential claims need to be put together, and that we need to get the insurance companies round the table and say that the surplus money will come from them, or else they can have expensive litigation backed by a Government agency, which they will lose.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the Father of the House, who has been indefatigable in his efforts on behalf of those affected by this crisis and of leaseholders more broadly. I should say, for his benefit and that of the House and the Opposition, that developers will be updating leaseholders on progress towards remediation quarterly on 31 January, 31 April, 31 July and 31 October each year—that will be public accountability.

I should also say for the benefit of my hon. Friend and the House that 96% of the most dangerous buildings—those with aluminium composite material cladding—have either completed or started remediation work.

[Official Report, 14 March 2023, Vol. 729, c. 731.]

Letter of correction from the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove):

An error has been identified in my response to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley).

The correct information should have been:

Building Safety

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the thoughtful and detailed way in which she has responded to the announcement, and for the support from her and colleagues across the House for the work that we have undertaken.

The hon. Lady asks about contracts and the speed with which they have been signed. Again, just to inform her and the House, we ensured that developers were given a copy of the contract on 30 January, when it was published. A final version was sent to developers with minor alterations on 21 February. The execution version of the contract depended on the developers themselves providing the Department with a list of affected buildings, so it was the work of developers, not of the Department, that led to the late signing of contracts, but I am grateful to all who have now signed.

The hon. Lady asks about the responsible actors scheme, when it will be implemented and the effect it will have. We will lay details of the responsible actors scheme next week. I want to allow some of the 11 who have not yet signed a little leeway to ensure that they live up to their responsibilities. The letters that I have written to the directors of the companies concerned will, I think, help to concentrate their minds to ensure that they have a chance to sign before we lay the responsible actors scheme details next week.

The hon. Lady asks if the powers in the 2022 Act will be used for those who will not have signed by that time. They absolutely will. She asks if we will fix all critical features. All life-critical features in medium and high-rise buildings will be addressed by developers. It is the case that with buildings under 11 metres, there are some fire safety issues, but we have to look at them case by case—some will be life-critical; some will not. Our cladding safety scheme, which addresses mid-rise buildings specifically—those between 11 and 18 metres—should, I hope, deal with the delay, which she rightly points out, in dealing with the fire safety issue for that crucial section of our housing sector.

The hon. Lady makes the point about foreign developers and the need to tackle them, and I quite agree with her. It is important that we use all the tools in our power, and we are exploring sanctions, criminal options and others. The one thing that I would say is that there is one jurisdiction—not a foreign jurisdiction but an adjacent one—where action has not been taken to deal with some of those responsible, and that, of course, is Wales. I ask her to work with me to ensure that the Welsh Labour Government take appropriate steps to deal with the situation in Wales. We stand ready to work with them and with all parties in that regard.

The hon. Lady also asks about the need to abolish the invidious and feudal system of leasehold. As someone who was born in Scotland—mercifully, a country free from that system—I can say only that this is one area where I hope that England at last catches up with one part of the United Kingdom that is, in that respect at least, more progressive.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I declare an interest in having a leasehold property—although I have no problems with it—and I also have minor shares in some building companies so that I can get at their boards when necessary.

I thank the Secretary of State for his continuing work. May I reinforce a question asked from the Labour Front Bench: how many buildings beyond the 1,100 still need a way forward? Can we agree that leaseholders and others want to know that their own homes are safe and saleable? We know that the task is to find the problems, fix them and pay for them.

I put it to the Secretary of State that the one group that seems to be left out of this is that of the insurance companies who covered the developers, the architects, the builders, the component suppliers and, for that matter, those who did building control. I believe that leaseholders’ potential claims need to be put together, and that we need to get the insurance companies round the table and say that the surplus money will come from them, or else they can have expensive litigation backed by a Government agency, which they will lose.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the Father of the House, who has been indefatigable in his efforts on behalf of those affected by this crisis and of leaseholders more broadly. I should say, for his benefit and that of the House and the Opposition, that developers will be updating leaseholders on progress towards remediation quarterly on 31 January, 31 April, 31 July and 31 October each year—that will be public accountability.

I should also say for the benefit of my hon. Friend and the House that 96% of the most dangerous buildings—those with aluminium composite material cladding—have either completed or started remediation work. There are other high-rise buildings with other forms of unsafe cladding—1,208 such buildings. They are in the building safety fund. More than 350 of those buildings have now been addressed, and more than £1.7 billion of Government money has gone towards making those buildings safe. Progress, but not at the pace that either of us would have liked. His point about insurance companies is well made, and I will follow up subsequently.

Building Safety

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her constructive approach today. She has consistently taken such an approach to resolving the building safety crisis. She recognises that responsibility for the crisis must, as I have mentioned, be shouldered collectively by Government and actors—from developers through to freeholders, insurance companies and construction product manufacturers.

The contract that we are publishing is the result of detailed negotiations with developers. Developers made a number of points that seemed fair and to reflect their responsibilities. We also robustly rejected a number of points that they made during the contract negotiation, so as to ensure that we receive payment from them as quickly as possibly for the work required. There is now a clear six-week deadline to sign the contract. The fact that two major developers have already agreed to sign is welcome, as is the fact that some have already undertaken this work, as I mentioned in my statement. It was not necessary for every developer to sign the contract for that work to begin. I welcome that it has begun and that work has been completed or is being undertaken on the overwhelming majority of buildings over the height of 18 metres with aluminium composite material cladding.

The hon. Lady asked about the work to deal with freeholders and, in particular, construction product manufacturers. Again, work will be undertaken by the recovery strategy unit, which has already secured change from freeholders and is pursing construction product manufacturers. Brigadier Graham Cundy is the leader of the RSU. He has a distinguished service career and a commitment to ensuring that there is no hiding place for those responsible for the building crisis. He and his team are united in how they operate. If any Member of this House would like Brigadier Cundy and the recovery strategy unit to work with them and their constituents, they need only contact me and I will ensure that we have action this day.

Foreign developers and those who operate opaque structures that enable individuals to profit and to evade their responsibility, which the hon. Lady referred to, are precisely and squarely within the remit of the RSU. I would be delighted for Graham and his team to brief Opposition Front Benchers and others on our approach. Some of the work undertaken requires a degree of commercial confidentiality, but I would be delighted to share that work.

Finally, the hon. Lady asked if we will maintain our commitment to abolish the feudal system of leasehold. We absolutely will. We will bring forward legislation shortly. But I gently say that the urgency with which she makes the case for change was not an urgency exhibited by the last Labour Government. In 1995—[Hon. Members: “You can’t blame us for this!”] I think we can, actually. In 1995, this brilliant document entitled “An end to feudalism” was published by the Labour party, then during all their years in power, the Labour Government did nothing to end feudalism. We need a Conservative Government to do that, and that is what we will do.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am a leaseholder without any problems. In 2002, 20 years ago, Parliament and the Labour Government passed leasehold and commonhold reform, but the commonhold bit did not work.

I welcome what my right hon. Friend has said and I hope that the House will manage to pass the Law Commission’s proposals on the reform of leasehold and commonhold and that we will be able to make progress. Incidentally, that would make the value of leasehold properties higher and the revenue would in part go to the Treasury, so his colleagues in government should be helping him to get this legislation brought to Parliament, not hindering it.

I also welcome what my right hon. Friend has announced on commissions. Can he find a way of ensuring that leaseholders who pay for buildings insurance become a party to the insurance policy, so that when things go wrong they can appeal to the insurance ombudsman and not be cut out because they are only paying and do not own the bricks?

Those responsible for the defects all had insurers, including the developers, architects, surveyors, component manufacturers, building control and, as my right hon. Friend has said, the Government in setting standards. I suggest that he re-engage with the insurance industry, because if people can take over the claims from those who have had losses—including the leaseholders and, for that matter, some of the landlords—and have a class action, the insurers will have to contribute significantly more than they are at the moment. There is much more progress to be made, so will he and his colleagues ensure that they carry on listening to the leaseholders and their representatives, and hopefully, in time, to the representatives of commonholders too?

Social Housing and Building Safety

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Yes, that is our intention. The hon. Lady’s question gives me an opportunity to restate and underline one or two things, to make them perhaps a little more clear than I had hitherto. To my mind, and this is very much the theme of this debate, there are two big issues that the Grenfell tragedy threw into the starkest relief, which we should have addressed beforehand and which the tragedy makes it imperative that we do not forget.

The first issue is building safety. We have a compromised and weak regime that needs to change. We need to improve regulation, ensure that those buildings that are unsafe are made safe, and ensure that the people in those buildings do not pay for it, but that it is those who were contributors either to the system overall or to the state of those buildings who pay. That is one important set of issues.

There is another parallel and related set of issues. We know, because we can hear on tape the voices of those who were in that tower saying beforehand that they were not being listened to, at a time when changes were being made to their own home, that they were not paid attention to. That symbolises a wider problem of too many people in social housing not having their voices heard or their interests and lives protected. Of course, the two come together.

The tragedy raises other issues, on which I, my Department and others have reflected, and which I hope this House will return to as well. As the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) rightly says, people in the private rented sector need their rights protected. We have some legislation that we will be debating in this House in due course that is intended to better protect the rights of those in the private rented sector by, for example, getting rid of section 21 evictions. I know the very close interest she takes in housing, so I hope we will have an opportunity to look at that Bill; if she has thoughts about how we can ensure that we do an even better job for those in the private rented sector, I look forward to working with her.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s response to the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury). Not today, but will he and his colleagues turn their minds to how to provide greater security and fairness to the quarter of a million park home residents and the 6 million private leaseholders who are affected both by fire safety and by other unfairnesses, where the Government have proposals from the Law Commission to enact?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the Father of the House. I have received hundreds, if not thousands, of letters and postcards highlighting the plight of park home residents and referencing the work that he has led. There is much more that can be done there; I will not say more from the Dispatch Box today, but I look forward to working with him on that.

On the question of enfranchising leaseholders, the Father of the House is right, and so is the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), my shadow, that we need to legislate to enfranchise them. We are going to do so in the next parliamentary Session—within this year, as it were. It is important that we do. That is a commitment we must uphold. There are urgent measures, which we debated yesterday, about housing supply, but it is absolutely right that we end the absurd, feudal system of leasehold, which restricts people’s rights in a way that is indefensible in the 21st century.

Levelling Up

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that those in the south-east hope this will be successful, giving individuals opportunity and changing the economic geography of the parts of this country that need to be connected to the thriving country we hope to create together. Will he heed council leaders such as Councillor Kevin Jenkins in Worthing, who wants Ministers to pay attention to things that they could do that would help and to stop doing things that do not help, because all over the country we need Ministers to pay more attention to local leaders?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and in the levelling-up White Paper there is a commitment to ensure greater devolution all round. I signalled the county deals we are green-lighting for Derbyshire and Durham, but we are also devolving more power to local authorities across the country, including through the new UK shared prosperity fund. He is also right to remind us that, while deprivation is concentrated disproportionately in the north and midlands, there are pockets of genuine poverty in communities such as Worthing and Hastings that we need to pay close attention to.

Building Safety

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I will co-operate, Mr Speaker, and may I say, through you, to the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), that the tributes to her husband Jack Dromey for his work on people’s interests at work and at home will be long remembered, together with that of David Amess, who for 20 years worked on the all-party group on fire safety and rescue with Ronnie King and others?

I believe that this is another step forward that is greatly welcomed and greatly needed, but I think the extension of the liability to 30 years is wrong for those who knew that what they were doing was wrong: 30 years may be fine for those who did it by mistake, but for those who knew what they were doing, there should be unlimited liability both in time and in money.

I hope that the Secretary of State will have a roundtable. If he wants to take over the all-party group roundtable for a summit on this, he can pick up some of the other issues that no doubt he has been working on, but which, to keep his statement reasonable, he may not have covered today.

One problem is the insurance premiums paid by leaseholders for a property they do not own, which may have gone up from an illustrative £300 a year to £3,000 a year. I believe that the Association of British Insurers should be told that the Competition and Markets Authority will look to see whether there is price gouging, in simple terms, and, that if there is some kind of catastrophic reinsurance needed, the Government should help them to make communal arrangements to deal with that, because insurance premiums should come down to the £300 they were before.

The last point of very many I would like to make is that the Treasury will expect to get the benefit of the levy and tax towards the £5 billion already announced, and the contributions that will come in from developers will relieve burdens on residential leaseholders, but the Government should also get the VAT on money that is spent, which is 20% of the total cost. If the total cost comes down from £15 billion to, say, £12 billion, my right hon. Friend can calculate and discuss with the Treasury how much extra the Treasury is getting. The Treasury should not be making a profit out of all this catastrophe.

[Michael Gove]

I thank the Father of the House for his questions. He is quite right that Sir David Amess, before his sad death, was one of the most prescient and most effective campaigners for improved building safety. His memory is very much in my mind.

The Father of the House makes a point about the need to potentially look at unlimited liability for those who consciously and deliberately operated in a reckless fashion. I will consider that and I am sure it will be considered during the passage of the Bill. On his point that we should work with others, particularly the broad leasehold community who have done so much to identify the way forward, we absolutely intend to do that. The point he makes about insurance premiums is absolutely right. That is why my noble Friend Lord Greenhalgh will be talking to Baroness Morgan of Cotes and others in the Association of British Insurers to ensure that more insurers, like Aviva, do the right thing. I very much note his point about VAT and Treasury contributions. In the ongoing conversations we have with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I will reflect on the very important point that he made.

Exam Reform

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Michael Gove

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I read with interest the work that was done looking at some of the weaknesses in the current English GCSE, and the controlled assessment of speaking and listening was one of the areas in which there were the greatest problems in ensuring effective marking by teachers assessing their own students. I agree that effective speaking and listening is essential to a broad curriculum, but when it comes to ensuring that speaking, listening and every other skill is assessed properly, we need to move away from the model of the past.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend can expect some representations on the expression “baccalaureate”, which originally came from an English degree at age 21 and a university course, is now a European system for 18 or 19-year-olds and will in future be provided to 16-year-olds who qualify in the core subjects.

As well as the public examination and certification system, we ought to encourage people to pass standards and get grades in their academic and other school subjects in the same way as they can in music and sport, to allow those who are achieving things to have that recognised. They can then get add-on tuition and develop.

As a last point, may I say that my right hon. Friend ought to look at the sub-editors of his article in the Evening Standard? The first four times he used the word “both”—meaning the coalition, presumably—were unnecessary, and the fifth time, the word “We” would have substituted for the first four words of the sentence.