Business of the House

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of how children with special educational needs are supported through their early years, and I am sure that, in his usual way, he will find the opportunity to raise the issue directly with Ministers, perhaps through an Adjournment debate. Some 86% of schools in this country are now classed as good or outstanding, compared with only 68% in 2010, and 1.9 million more pupils are now in good or outstanding schools. That is incredibly important, and it demonstrates the Government’s commitment to ensuring that every child gets a good education.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I am glad to learn that Christmas has not been cancelled, and I and the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) are very much looking forward to meeting the Leader of the House next Tuesday to discuss the hiatus in Backbench Business Committee debates in the House. As I said last week, by next Thursday it will have been eight weeks since we had any Backbench Business in the House, and I am pretty sure that when the Committee was established, the Standing Orders were written with the intention that the 27 days of parliamentary time would be over a one-year Session, not over two years. I remain disappointed that we are not getting any additional time, or notification of additional time, and I have written to the Chair of the Procedure Committee to ask the Committee to look into that, and into the Government’s interpretation of the Standing Orders.

Members may have noticed that the O2 phone network was down this morning, which also affected customers of Sky, Tesco, Giffgaff and Lycamobile. Thirty-two million subscribers have been without mobile telephone coverage since 5.30 this morning, which has also affected emergency services and bus networks. Will the Leader of the House ask the relevant Department to investigate the issue and consider what implications there might be, particularly for coverage of those emergency services?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate, I am sure, that it was not possible to find time for the Backbench Business Committee in next week’s business, but as I said last week, I look forward to meeting him to discuss the issue.

The hon. Gentleman raised an important point about phone networks, and I urge him to raise that matter directly with Ministers next week during questions to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.