Business of the House

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Slightly warming to my earlier theme, I am not entirely sure why a retired footballer is paid more than Vic Marks, a distinguished Somerset cricketer who regularly appears as an expert summariser on “Test Match Special”. I would have thought that he was deserving of much more money than a retired association footballer.

I do think that the BBC has been unfair on pensioners in requiring them to pay the licence fee. The hope was that it would not do that. It is basically stealing the Ovaltine from pensioners’ night-time drink by charging them the licence fee, and it is losing licence fee payers: it has lost a quarter of a million licence fee payers in the last year, as people vote with their feet. I think the BBC needs to pay attention to what my hon. Friend says. When it charges some of the least well-off in our society and gives the money to some of the most well-off in our society, there are people who will rightly question that—especially when it is not giving it to cricketers.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

In my constituency in the last week, we have been desperately trying to avoid a local lockdown—to be honest, with little help from the Government. Last week, I took it upon myself to work with a local charity, Sindh Doctors Association UK, to deliver some IT equipment to my lovely old primary school, which was gratefully received for distribution to disadvantaged students.

Just last year, the Office for National Statistics said that around 700,000 young people, including those at secondary school but not those at primary school, do not have proper access to the internet, or a tablet or computer. May we therefore have a debate in Government time on the provision of IT equipment, including tablets, routers and all the other equipment that young people will need if our country is heading into further localised lockdowns or even, as rumoured today, a potential national lockdown? Our pupils have already suffered enough in the last year, and we want the Government to take every opportunity to ensure that they do not fail again to deliver such technology, which they said they would deliver but then did not, to so many young people.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point about ensuring that there is support for young people who do not have access to the necessary technology. There is a £350 million national tutoring programme, which is a package of targeted funding for the most disadvantaged pupils to try to ensure that they can catch up on anything that they have missed, in addition to a £100 million fund to boost remote education, which is obviously helping with the technology. The hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point; I think it is worth asking for an Adjournment debate on this issue, but the Government are taking steps in a direction that I hope he will approve of.