Oral Answers to Questions

John Bercow Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I have seen enough of the right hon. Gentleman in action to know that weak jokes clearly mean he is in trouble. I think we can now safely give him his end-of-year report card. On Building Schools for the Future, school sports and now the education maintenance allowance he has shown poor attention to detail and a failure to do his homework. On the big decisions, things that people care about, he is cavalier—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The right hon. Gentleman will resume his seat. This is Question Time. We must have short questions and short answers, so may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to conclude his question?

[Andy Burnham]

Let me quote briefly from the Secretary of State’s White Paper. It states:

“No-one is helped when poor performance remains unaddressed.”

Will he make a new year’s resolution today to live by the same exacting standards as he expects schools to apply to their teachers?

[Michael Gove]

I am afraid that that performance fell below even the right hon. Gentleman’s flawed standards. The truth is that the shadow Education Secretary needs to learn that, instead of simply providing a draft of an op-ed piece as a question, he needs to come up with policies that will convince people that he has learned the lesson of his Government’s defeat. He cannot simply say that the answer to every problem is more money. He cannot simply say, as he said during the leadership election, that he wants

“closer ties to the trade union movement”

at the same time as that trade union movement is calling for an all-out assault against this Government. He cannot consistently move to the left, opportunistically—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Secretary of State will resume his seat. That response—I use the word response, rather than answer, advisedly—has nothing to do with the subject matter on the Order Paper.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

4. What plans he has to review the curriculum for science and mathematics A-levels.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

We welcome the Secretary of State’s humiliating climbdown on the school sport partnerships. It is hard to know what is most disgraceful: the refusal to meet Baroness Campbell or the way the Government badmouthed the Youth Sport Trust, the hundreds of school sports co-ordinators and the thousands of volunteers. The Secretary of State said that school sport partnerships had failed, another Minister slammed them and even the Prime Minister said they had a terrible record. Now, in the face of a storm of protest, the Government claim to be leaving them in place until shortly after the Olympics, albeit with dramatically less funding. We hope that the Secretary of State learns a lesson from this, which is just the latest shambles he has presided over. Will he acknowledge that school sports partnerships have not failed and have not got a terrible record, and will he promise to back them up to the Olympics and beyond?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. In future, questions must be briefer, and I know that the Secretary of State will now provide an example of a brief reply.

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s pre-written question, which was so old that it could have been a primary source in a GCSE history paper and so long that one could have used it instead of the Bayeux tapestry. Anyway, I am very happy to say that the money is now there from the budget that we had already allocated for sport. If only he had been paying attention during the Opposition day debate that we had four weeks ago, he would have known that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I encourage the Minister to address the House. It is no good his looking behind him, because hon. Members cannot hear him.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

18. What assessment he has made of the effect on school budgets of funding allocations to local authority education services for 2011-12.