Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-09-07
Topic: Education
Questions: Will the Chancellor provide an update on the follow-up to the discussions we have had on maintained nursery schools, and will he urgently bring forward a long-term funding settlement for these brilliant schools?; The levelling-up fund is about improving a region. In Bosworth, we are putting forward the Twycross zoo for its national centre of conservation and education. It will be a world-leading scientific, education and conservation centre, driving tourism and the local economy. It is backed by the borough council, the county council, the local enterprise partnership and the midlands engine. Would the Chancellor like to come and visit it and, failing that, would he like to meet me to discuss how we can make this a symbol of the levelling up of the nation?; Scottish communities, other than those in Shetland, failed to benefit from the North sea oil and gas bounty landing on their shores. Now that the North sea’s offshore wind is casting ashore on East Lothian, will the Treasury ensure that East Lothian will actually benefit, as opposed to it all simply being transmission-stationed down south? Or will it go the same way as Scotland’s oil and gas: down to the Treasury?; The Government should lead by example with their spending power and with the design of public contracts to buy more from Great Britain, as Labour would, but the UK strategic steel sector has been neglected by this Conservative Government. Highly skilled jobs have been lost because a huge proportion of our steel, including for HS2, is purchased from other nations. Will the Chancellor explain why his Government do not even have a non-binding target for the use of our own steel in our national public infrastructure projects?; Research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership has revealed that nearly three quarters of disabled children have regressed in managing their conditions during the pandemic as vital services have been delayed. Ahead of the forthcoming spending review, will the Chancellor consider offering a lifeline to families and funding dedicated recovery to help disabled children and their families to catch up on missed services?; At the last Budget, the Chancellor gave a £25 billion tax break to the top 1% of businesses in the form of the super deduction, but when the school catch-up tsar came to him asking for £15 billion over a three-year period, he said that he could not fund“everybody who comes knocking on my door.”Why is it that when an Amazon-style business comes knocking, the door is wide open, but when students come knocking, asking for money to get over the challenges of the past few years, the door is slammed in their face?
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): That is absolutely not right. When it comes to the super deduction, what the Labour party will never understand is that we want to support businesses to create jobs. That is what the super deduction does. I just gave the hon. Gentleman the example of BT creating thousands of new jobs because of the super deduction. When it comes to education, this Govt have invested £3 billion—£800 per pupil—in helping children to catch up with lost education, on top of a record increase in schools funding, which means that per-pupil funding in real terms at the end of this Parliament will be the highest it has been in over a decade.