John Bercow
Main Page: John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)Department Debates - View all John Bercow's debates with the Leader of the House
(14 years ago)
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Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)
Further to that answer, I greatly welcome the proposal for the new school Olympics to improve competition between schools, but does the Minister recognise that for that to be successful it is important that schools receive a wide range of support, which was previously provided by the school sports partnership? Will he confirm that although the ring-fencing for the funding has gone, the money is still available in schools, and therefore will he confirm that he will continue to work with the Secretary of State for Education to ensure there continues to be a partnership into which schools—
Mr Speaker
Order. We have got the drift of the hon. Gentleman’s question, and I am grateful to him for it.
Hugh Robertson
The short answer to that is yes of course I will. The key thing to remember is that the funding has, of course, been handed over to the schools—[Hon. Members: “No, it hasn’t.”] The schools budgets have been handed over to head teachers and it is entirely up to them to make decisions on it as they please. The head teachers of every single secondary school that I have visited during my time as a Member of Parliament have always asked me for greater control of their budgets; they have now got it.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) must not accuse a Minister of misleading the House. I assume that he meant to include the word “inadvertently” and I will insert it for him. I think we are clear about that.
Mr Hunt
I thank the shadow Culture Secretary for his fourth question. Let me answer plainly. School sport partnerships are not being dismantled. We are committed to competitive sport, and the legacy of the previous Government was only one in five children regularly playing inter-school sport. To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question about older children, yes, in year 7, four in five children are not playing sport at all. We want to do something about it. That is what we want our legacy to be, and that means that we have to do things differently.
Mr Speaker
Points of order come after Question Time and statements, so there will be an opportunity for them later.
Mr Doran
As a Scot, I understand the hon. Lady’s problem. We have two systems. One is the television system, the main function of which is to provide annunciator services and the feed from the two Chambers. The second is the internet. The television system has only 23 channels. I am not sure how many regional news programmes there are, but it would not be possible to have them all on the system. However, they are all on the internet, which is part of the House service.