Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. One of the dreadful problems we inherited from the previous Government was a failure adequately to prioritise capital to ensure that there were new school places in areas of population growth. As we know, population growth is exceeding all expectations, which is why we need to do everything possible to reform planning rules and building regulations to ensure there are more new schools.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I should like to thank the Secretary of State for following up on the grant we got from the previous Government to create extra primary school places in Slough with another grant to create more of the primary school places we need. Shortly, my constituency will face a serious shortage of secondary school places, but many children who live nowhere near Slough are educated in our secondary and grammar schools. Will he consider looking, in the school admissions code, at places that educate children from a long way away but that do not provide places for local children?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for essentially advocating that we subsidise the expansion of grammar schools. I look forward to that becoming the policy of Labour Front Benchers.