Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will indeed join my hon. Friend in thanking St John Ambulance for everything it has done. The volunteers have been fantastic and I have met many of them over the past 18 months who have done an absolutely astonishing job. I do not think that I can come to his reception, but I am sure it will be very well attended. May I also take this opportunity to urge everybody in the country who has not yet had a vaccination and who is eligible for one to get it as soon as they can?

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Q5.   Given the Education Secretary’s net approval rating among Tory supporters of minus 53, can the Prime Minister get to his feet, put his hand on his heart and promise the country, this House and his own supporters that his Education Secretary is the right person for the job and is up to the job?

[The Prime Minister]

I think the whole House will recognise that the Education Secretary has done a heroic job in dealing with very difficult circumstances in which we had to close schools during the pandemic. Never forget that the job of teachers and parents up and down the land would have been made much easier if Labour, and the Labour leadership in particular, had had the guts—and if the hon. Gentleman had had the guts—to say that schools were safe.