Diane Abbott
Main Page: Diane Abbott (Independent - Hackney North and Stoke Newington)Department Debates - View all Diane Abbott's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Duncan Smith
That is a very good question, and the hon. Lady is right to say that universal credit will help enormously. The Government have a massive programme to roll out superfast broadband to every area of the country. I will take the hon. Lady’s question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport so that it can tell her how soon it will arrive in her area. Even if people are unable to do it online, we have made full provision for them to do it, if necessary, by paper exchange, as they would at the moment.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has announced that he will report on measures of worklessness and educational attainment. Will he take care to make sure that those figures are broken down by race and ethnicity, because there are complex factors at work? It is not necessarily the case that all groups of black children do worse than all groups of white children. Although we might disagree on the remedies, without sound data we cannot plan to help all of our children.