Business of the House

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She will know that one of the commitments we made was to increase the number of health visitors, which we are doing by redeploying resources. With regard to social mobility and giving people a good start in life, health visitors and what we are doing with free nursery care and the pupil premium are all part of a process of enabling people from disadvantaged families to break through and achieve their full potential.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), may we have a debate on university applications? Today, applications are down 15% on average, compared with this time last year, but in Middlesbrough they are down 40%. Does the Leader of the House agree with the chair of South Tees Conservative Future when he said that he “can see the benefits of lower applications”?

[Sir George Young]

I am in favour of more applications but, as I said to the hon. Member for Huddersfield, it is too soon to draw the conclusion that I think the hon. Gentleman is drawing—[Interruption.] It makes sense to wait until applications close before drawing conclusions on whether they are up or down on last year. As I said, where applications have closed the reduction is 0.9%, so I think that he is being unduly alarmist.