Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Wes Streeting Excerpts
Monday 26th October 2015

(9 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Baroness Morgan of Cotes Portrait Nicky Morgan
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My hon. Friend, who chairs the Committee, is absolutely right that any solution must be for the long term. I can assure him that, were there to be any changes, there would be an extensive consultation, in which I hope members of the Committee as well as members of the public, including schools, teachers and parents across the country, would be involved.

Wes Streeting Portrait Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
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Redbridge, like many other parts of London, faces an acute shortage of places in primary and secondary provision over the course of this Parliament. Will the Secretary of State or a relevant Minister agree to meet me and representatives from the local authority to discuss this? Will she consider allowing local authorities such as Redbridge with a good track record of local authority maintained schools not only to expand existing local authority schools but to build new ones?

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Portrait Nicky Morgan
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I or one of the Ministers will be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. I remind him that in the previous Parliament we put in an extra £5 billion into the system to build new places, and we have committed another £7 billion for new places across the system. Of course, his own party took out funding for 200,000 places at a time of growing pupil numbers.