Oral Answers to Questions

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

At year 6, children on free school meals are nine months behind their better-off classmates. By GCSE year, that has extended to 18 months. Some 700,000 children have had no access to the internet for schoolwork during the lockdown. If the Prime Minister is sincere about wanting to level up and make this country good for everyone, will he give Government time to pass a cross-party Bill giving internet access and devices to all children on free school meals?

[The Prime Minister]

I passionately support the objective of making sure that there is IT fairness and that all kids have access to the technology that they need. We have rolled out huge numbers of laptops across the country to pupils on free school meals. But the most important thing that I think should happen now is that all pupils in year 6 should now be back in school, and it is still very disappointing that we have not had an unequivocal declaration of support for the safety of schools from the Labour party.