"The attendance at this debate suggests that many hon. and right hon. Members across the House simply do not understand the logic behind the Government’s decision, and their lack of awareness of the impact on individual institutions...." John Denham - View Speech
"I will be brief, because I had the chance to speak in the main Chamber. What my hon. Friend’s professionals are telling him in Scunthorpe is precisely what professionals are telling me in Southampton. I was, with the current shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of the two architects of …..." John Denham - View Speech
"I urge the Minister to consider this point: the students do not care about the wider debate on examination standards. Something has gone wrong in the assessment of the English language examination this year. It has nothing to do with the debate about wider standards or how things are run, …..." John Denham - View Speech
"In the time that Ministers in this Government had dozens of meetings with Google, one of the few British IT companies to achieve global status, Autonomy, has been taken over and today tragically destroyed. May I suggest to Ministers that instead of spending so much time cosying up to American …..." John Denham - View Speech
"May I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to the £150 million worth of entirely private investment that Associated British Ports wants to spend now to equip Southampton for the next generation of container ships? Instead of creating and supporting 2,000 or more jobs, this project is mired in red …..." John Denham - View Speech
"I welcome the good news from Nissan and BMW, which, despite the Secretary of State’s curmudgeonly response, built on Labour’s support for those companies’ investment in the UK. In 2006, he was very clear when he said:
“The DTI, and its army of Sir Humphreys, should be scrapped.”
"Actually, the old DTI was merged with my Department. The truth is that in the past year the Office for Budget Responsibility has lowered its growth forecast three times, long-term unemployment has been at its highest since 1997, retail sales are down, construction is in the doldrums and consumer confidence …..." John Denham - View Speech
"My hon. Friend has underlined a point that I have already made. Individual institutions have had to make their own choices, but this was a system in which almost every incentive for the vast majority of institutions was to raise fees, and there were almost no incentives to lower them. …..." John Denham - View Speech
"I am flattered by the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. No system of student payment for the cost of higher education makes easy the problem of an 80% cut in teaching grant. The fundamental problem we face is that the Government have decided to make most students pay the entire cost of …..." John Denham - View Speech
"Although this does not apply to the case that my hon. Friend raises, she has touched on an issue that will need to be examined in greater detail on another occasion. It has long been an oddity that the incomes declared to the Student Loans Company by those applying for …..." John Denham - View Speech