Former Labour MP for West Lancashire
Does the hon. Lady suspect that, if the new clause were included in the Bill and the Act, as it will eventually become, when the Secretary of State comes each year to lay before Parliament his or her report, he or she will send a circular to all schools and ask them to report in detail on the administrative burdens that they face and how they would like to see them reduced?
I want to add to what the hon. Member for Southport, my next-door neighbour, has said. The appeals panels make some potty decisions from time to time, and that is almost inevitable, but their one advantage is that they can see across an area the different thresholds for exclusion that schools have. I have seven large secondary schools in my constituency. They are all very good and I have no...
That does not surprise me. What worried me about the hon. Lady’s remarks was that she said that head teachers in general would not make catastrophic errors. Some heads do. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) told me a story about a school he knows where the head excluded a child for throwing the hat of another child out the window. The governors upheld the exclusion,...
It may be my misunderstanding, but paragraph 5 states that “The Agency ... must pay to their members such salaries or fees, and such travelling, subsistence and other allowances, as the Secretary of State may determine”. I take it that “members” means board members. Am I right? Paragraph 6(2) states: “The Agency may pay to their employees such remuneration and allowances as the...
May I ask for confirmation of whether my analysis of the meaning of the word “members” was right?
I have some sympathy with what the hon. Lady is aiming at, but the list set out in the amendment seems to me a very limited one. I know that the phrase “desirability of including” is used, but it is nevertheless limited, particularly taking into account the expansion of the responsibilities of the agency, which we discussed a few moments ago. The provision also seems a bit incestuous, in...
I have a few queries on clause stand part, which I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to clear up. First, on the relationship between clauses 74 and 75, it is clear in the supporting notes that clause 75(2) extends the objectives of the Training and Development Agency for Schools listed in section 1(2) of the Education Act 1994 to include matters relating to all members of the...
We are debating the chief inspector’s duty to be responsible for inspection and reports. Although the present chief inspector is clearly irreproachable, that was not always the case, and it might not be in future. What assurance is there in the Bill, and in the Acts from which it has taken parts, that no maverick future chief inspector will be able to make substantial and arbitrary changes...
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what steps she is taking to ensure that the involvement of parents in children's centres builds on the experience of parents' involvement in Sure Start.
To ask the Solicitor-General how many complaints were received by her Department about decisions of the Crown Prosecution Service in 2004.
To ask the Solicitor-General what records are kept of the proportion of cases submitted by the police to the Crown Prosecution Service that are deemed not to have a realistic prospect of successful prosecution.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what estimate she has made of the number of midwives required for the Sure Start programme in the North West.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the number of unfilled midwifery posts in the North West.
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has to raise the threshold at which tax is paid on redundancy payments.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what estimate she has made of the number of qualified primary school teachers at present unable to secure a job in teaching in (a) Lancashire, (b) the North West and (c) England.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the percentage of incapacity benefit claims that subsequently proved to be unsubstantiated in the last year for which figures are available.
