"It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury North (James Frith) on securing this important debate. I, too, have a musical background, but a classical one; I am a choral conductor and an organist. When I mentioned that before in …..." John Howell - View Speech
"For a moment, I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to invite me to sing, which I promise, Sir George, I will not do in this session. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very kind invitation and I will certainly look closely at that.
"It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I will start with a reference to the all-party parliamentary group on social integration, which correctly provided a statement that, to be successful at getting ESOL taught, we had to recognise that we were up against cultural norms among …..." John Howell - View Speech
"It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I wish to speak about Europa School UK in Culham in my constituency, but this is not an attempt to get one over on the Minister—quite the opposite. The Minister has been incredibly helpful with that school, and …..." John Howell - View Speech
"I agree with my hon. Friend, who has hit on the key word that describes the whole programme—choice. It is about parental choice. What I have described has worked well for my school and I hope it works well for his.
"It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary.
It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), but I will take a slightly different approach to her on this issue. Before I do so, however, I should declare an …..." John Howell - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I have not seen in any of the material any detailed work on that, but I suspect that it is included as part of the thinking that goes on to produce the result. The subject that he identifies is valuable in teaching, in …..." John Howell - View Speech
"I will not pick the hon. Lady up on that point, but has she seen the BBC’s “Born Abroad” pages, which take a fantastic look at diversity in Wembley?..." John Howell - View Speech
"On the Wednesday before the recess, I submitted a petition to the House that had been signed by just under 1,000 residents of Henley. I will not read it out, but I hope the Minister will agree that it is a friendly petition. I am concerned about the gap between …..." John Howell - View Speech