Speeches by Hinds.

“What does the hon. Gentleman think should happen with free breakfast clubs in secondary schools?”

“I will help the hon. Gentleman: it was a lot more than 6,500.”

“May I suggest to the Government that this subject really warrants a full-day debate and not just a statement with questions and answers? For now, however, may I ask about one straightforward matter? Will the Minister look carefully at the relatively small number of places, including East Hampshire, with a planning area…”

“The Minister likes to talk about inheritances, but if she checks the record, she will discover that prison overcrowding was higher in 2008, 2009 and 2010 than it was in 2024. It is true that we brought back longer sentences for the worst offenders. That was the right thing to do. It is also true that crime came down. T…”

“When the Minister’s other noble Friend—the distinguished Labour peer Lord Sainsbury—conducted his landmark review of technical and vocational qualifications, he found that they were not only multitudinous and heavily overlapping but had become divorced to a large extent from the very sectors of industry that they were …”

“Of course, there has been a huge increase in the number of teaching assistants over the past 14 years, but the hon. Member is right that there are particular issues for children with special educational needs, which I will come on to. The Government estimate that there will be 37,000 fewer children in private schools a…”

“I rise to speak to new clause 8, and to refer to clauses 47 to 49. Clearly, just six or so months in, we will not have seen the full effects of these measures, but we will have started to see them. We will have heard whether there are concerns from faith leaders, and what the early effects are on the number of applicat…”

“In principle, what is the distinction between full-time private schooling and private tuition, from the point of view of what it is right to tax? Will he guarantee that no tax will be put on private tuition?”

“No, I mean families who send their child once or twice a week for an hour for academic study or something extra-curricular. Why should that be tax exempt, when if it is done for all the hours in the school week, it is not?”

“rose—”

“First, the Minister knows I said no such thing. I spoke about the additional investment that had gone into the high-needs budget under the previous Government, particularly since 2019, and said that there was more to do. Since I am on my feet, can I ask him to expand on what he just said about capital? What he has just…”

“Look, I want every child to have the best education available to them. When I was working at the Department for Education, I regarded it as part of my job to ensure that nobody thought, “I have to send my children to a private school”—but I would not have denied them the choice. State school improvement over that time …”

“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I will come to exactly where the money to meet the costs will come from. We have talked about revenue costs, and the policy paper from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs covers that, but what about capital costs? What if whole new places need to be created? What if entire ne…”

“You need to add the two together, though.”

“Secretary of State, we have already talked about some of the cuts. I will move on to the national youth strategy. You announced this about a month ago, but it was going to be co-created with young people. You announced at the same time that the National Citizen Service would be cut altogether. Did you entertain the pos…”

“Was it just about saving money?”

“What was it about, then?”

“I think many people would agree with that. The challenges and issues for young people are certainly different from what they were when we were young, and in many ways more difficult. At the same time as announcing the co-creation of a national youth strategy the Government also cut funding for the cadets programme. The…”

“So why cut the cadets programme?”

“It is a cadets programme. You are calling a cadets programme a summer camp?”