Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Bray of Coln Excerpts
Monday 16th January 2012

(12 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Michael Gove Portrait Michael Gove
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I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s point. Let me pay tribute to my predecessor, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls). His decision to increase funding for the Holocaust Education Trust was one of many good things that he did, and I was honoured to be able to honour a pledge I made before the election to secure its funding. The trips that it offers to schools of all kinds help to ensure that we remember, and that that indescribable evil is never repeated. Let me take this opportunity to affirm the importance of all MPs meeting Holocaust denial and relativisation head on. Any attempt to undermine the singular historic evil of that crime is utterly wrong, and we should unite in condemning it.

Baroness Bray of Coln Portrait Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
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T7. Having opened just last September, the West London free school has had more than 5,000 visits from interested parents, its places are now heavily over-subscribed and it has just applied to set up a new, free primary school. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that all goes to demonstrate just how enthusiastic parents are about these new free schools?

Michael Gove Portrait Michael Gove
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My hon. Friend makes a brilliant case. The West London free school was attacked and criticised by many on the left of the political spectrum. Fiona Millar said that the idea would never take place. Now it is the single most popular and over-subscribed school in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, providing a superb education of a comprehensive kind for all children. I recommend it to you, Mr Speaker, for the future.