Speeches by Martin.

“Will the hon. Member take an intervention?”

“We were asked for examples of where schools have been closed. We have not even thought about small rural schools that are affected by expansion. Local authorities that represent rural communities must be able to ensure that there are schools across the county, because that is good for everybody. Specifically on London,…”

“It seems to have been implied—[Interruption.]”

“Will the Minister confirm that the power to set place numbers includes all schools in local authority areas? It is not just academies but maintained schools. There seems to have been an idea throughout the whole of this debate that maintained schools are somehow a lower echelon of education—”

“I am grateful for the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. While we were in Bill Committee on Tuesday, the Education Committee was meeting—there are many people with a lot of interest in the Bill, and rightly so—to hear from three panels of witnesses. I draw the Committee’s attention to the second …”

“I thank the Government for the additional moneys to my council, which have gone some way to address the horrendous cuts from the previous Government. I love my city and the people in it, but we have been failed by Governments and councils, leaving us with inadequate housing, job opportunities, transport, education and …”

“I hope you are enjoying the debate, Sir Christopher. Although national curriculum reform is not mentioned in the Bill, it is going forward. The previous Government introduced a number of curriculum changes. Those were often implemented quickly and not considerate of the profession. In 2010, one or two years were given …”

“I want to comment on judicial reviews. Opposition Members will be aware that the previous Government’s long-standing policy of issuing academisation orders to schools with two RIs was not in fact a duty, but can they set out on how many occasions those would have been challenged through a judicial review? Rather than t…”

“It is good to follow the hon. Member for North Herefordshire. A lot of this argument has just been about pay, but we are actually considering schoolteachers’ pay and conditions. We need to take into account all elements of schoolteachers’ pay and conditions. The hon. Member spoke about executive pay of CEOs. There is a…”

“And a cracking football team, I will add. Absolutely, those sportsmen and sportswomen can inspire, but actually many of those at the elite of their game would not understand the difficulties for those children who may not be as good at that sport, so therefore it is about their learning of pedagogy and differentiation.…”

“The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston talked about bottom lines and evidence. At the moment, the attainment gap between those who achieve and those who do not is widening across our country. For a number of years, and since the previous Government—the right hon. Member for East Hampshire was in fact—”

“Not at the moment, no. The gap is widening.”

“The attainment gap has widened.”

“The right hon. Member was a Secretary of State, and under his leadership the teachers’ recruitment crisis was worse than it had ever been. Recruitment targets for core subjects such as maths, physics and modern languages were missed, and retention rates were poor. That was when we were allowing people with qualified te…”

“No, I had finished—I do not know why the hon. Member intervened.”

“I would like to understand whether the classes that are covered by teaching assistants and cover supervisors are included in the ratio of qualified or unqualified teachers, because things happen on a daily basis in our classrooms, and teachers are not always registered as the registered teacher—they might be covering a…”

“rose—”

“Will the right hon. Gentleman take a question?”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“The previous Government did take steps on uniform, but they are obviously not working, because parents are paying extortionate amounts of money for uniform. We need to look at what is going wrong. This is a way to help support parents.”