John Pugh: I cannot help feeling that the Minister is being a little bit complacent. Some 76% of cars produced at Ellesmere Port are exported, but many of them are left-hand drive cars for Europe. Would it really make sense to Peugeot to continue left-hand drive production outside the EU, and not in Poland or Germany?
John Pugh: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is also a myth about deregulation meaning the introduction of the private sector? There were many splendid private sector operators in Liverpool prior to deregulation, such as Crosville and Ribble, which existed alongside the municipal sector.
John Pugh: In London, a lot more schoolchildren use buses. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that more could be done in the context of this Bill to encourage youth to use buses?
John Pugh: rose—
John Pugh: The Bill will do all sorts of good things, but it conspicuously fails to do anything for young people’s travel or mandate local authorities to consider it. Why not?
John Pugh: Will the Government support the UN special rapporteur’s call for a full UN inquiry into abuses against the Rohingya Muslims by the Burmese army at the UN Human Rights Council this month? This is a specific question.
John Pugh: Will the Minister update the House about NHS litigations, which rocketed to £1.4 billion last year? Are they anything like under control?
John Pugh: I thank the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who introduced the debate, for the opportunity to talk about something apart from Brexit for once. When we talk about this subject in Transport questions, I often intervene. I do not know whether the Minister has noticed, but I sound a slightly sceptical note, simply because I am not wholly convinced of the case for...
John Pugh: This week, the Public Accounts Committee reviewed the National Audit Office report on the financial sustainability of school funding, and the most helpful thing I can do now is to give the Chamber some flavour of how that went. Present were officials from the DFE, including the permanent secretary, Jonathan Slater, but the session with them was preceded by a panel made up of headteachers and...
John Pugh: In response to a written question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), the Foreign Office revealed that it had spent £300,000 and more on training the Burmese army. Would that money not be better spent on exposing and verifying human rights violations?
John Pugh: I probably made my point quite imperfectly. Can the Minister assure me that if a secondary school—those are the worst-affected schools in this respect—is in an area in which primary schools have made good progress, and the children who are handed on to them are therefore attaining the expected level and do not enter the secondary school with poor prior attainment, that secondary school...
John Pugh: I beg to move, That this House has considered the school funding formula and Northern schools. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter—it is a first for me. The circumstances of the debate are strange in so far as I originally put in for a one-hour or 90-minute debate, knowing that many parliamentary colleagues were exercised about this topic. I did not win the...
John Pugh: Yes; they are mandated to make further efficiency savings. Interestingly, on page 14 of the document, the NAO states that schools “have not experienced this level of reduction in spending power since the mid 1990s.” It may be pure coincidence, Mr Streeter, that there was a Conservative majority Government in the mid-1990s, but I draw your attention to that. Impacts will be worse on...
John Pugh: What progress has been made in the review of business rates.
John Pugh: I thank the Minister, but has he done any serious analysis of the process in order to give any comfort to the hard-pressed average high street currently competing against the internet and trading in very, very difficult circumstances?
John Pugh: Despite all the inducements, only 3% of new car sales are of electric cars. Should the Minister be doing more to encourage liquefied petroleum gas switching or hydrogen fuel cell cars?
John Pugh: First the prison was taken over by G4S, and then it was taken over by the prisoners. The report on the prison by the Independent Monitoring Boards states explicitly that staff shortages are a major issue, observing that “on too many occasions, in many areas, the service was reduced by there being insufficient staff”. That was the very theme of the report. Brutally, whose fault is this,...
John Pugh: The Education Policy Institute found that academy trusts are no better at raising standards than local authorities, so why does Nick Weller’s report say that expanding multi-academy trusts is “key to driving up standards in the North”? Is it because he is very well paid by a multi-academy trust, or is there perchance any evidence for what he suggests?
John Pugh: Regardless of this statement, which is by no means all bad, it is indisputable that school overheads are going up and that more and more secondary schools will go into debt. Why are we continuing to squander money on pointless pet projects and restructuring? Surely that is a huge diversion now.
John Pugh: When I look online, I find it is almost impossible to get a physical address to write to from a Government website. Is that deliberate?