House of Lords
Parliament

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At question time in the Lords, Conservative Lord Naseby asks about policies to assist high street retailers to prevent further closures and job losses.

He describes the business rates review as "a singular tragedy" and the rates appeal system as "shambolic", and wants to know how the government will remedy this.

Business Minister Lord Henley acknowledges "some retailers are facing difficulties retail sector council".

He says 70% of retailers will see no change or a reduction following the rates review.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Tory MP Robert Halfon, who chairs the Education Committee, says he is "sure" that teaching standards in Maths and English have improved in the UK.

Despite "rising cost pressures", he says it is right ministers have "chosen to protect overall education funding", adding that education needs similar funding protections to the NHS.

He says the National Audit Office has found the government has not put enough money into teacher retention compared to recruitment.

There are still ""great injustices" in the education system, he says, with only 1.3% of children taught outside of mainstream education getting five good GCSEs.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Education Secretary Damian Hinds tells MPs there is "more money going into our schools than ever before", with £43.5bn going into schools by next year.

This has been made possible by reprioritising funds given to the Department for Education by central government, he adds.

The UK spends more on schools than key competitors, he says, although spending on technical education compares "less favourably", he says.

A new "fair" funding formula will ensure school funding is targeted where it is needed and stop geographical discrepancies in school funding, he says.

He adds that schools will see an increase of 0.5% in per pupil funding by next year.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner says the government "lost hundreds of thousands of votes due to school budget cuts" in the 2017 General Election, and that today the motion tabled by Labour "extends an olive branch" to the government just before the local government elections next month.

She says the IFS have stated that previous claims on school budgets "are not true" and the UK Statistics Authority has also criticised claims made.

The national funding formula "actually permits a cut" in school funding, she says.

She says that parents up and down the country are saying that "enough is enough" when it comes to school funding cuts.

"The environment which schools increasingly face is unacceptable in a country like ours," she says.

The government still does not have a chair of its Social Mobility Commission after six months, she adds.

House of Commons
Parliament

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In the first of two Opposition Day debates, Labour have tabled a motion on school funding, which welcomes the government's manifesto commitment to increase the budget for schools, but states that the UK Statistics Authority says that the national funding formula does not "guarantee" an increase for schools.

The motion calls on the government to increase cash increase in per pupil funding in every year of the 2017 Parliament.

Analysis by the independent Education Policy Institute think tank found that the number of secondary schools in deficit has 'trebled'.

At the end of March, the largest teaching union in the UK said that school funding was turning into a 'catastrophe', with some schools covering lessons with teaching assistants rather than teachers.

The government has said that core school funding will rise to £43.5bn by 2020.

Mark D'Arcy
Parliamentary Correspondent

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When you call for a resignation and your opponents break into a grin, you’ve overplayed your hand.

Jeremy Corbyn had posed a succession of effective questions to the PM on the Windrush fiasco. The PM, predictably, was well prepared for cross questioning on this issue, but sounded increasingly under pressure – until the moment when Mr Corbyn called for the home secretary to go.

Maybe the nuances of these exchanges don’t matter too much, but it was a weak ending, after an effective build-up.

He had heaped blame on the PM – and then called for, not her, but the home secretary to go.

The PM’s tactic was to talk about illegal immigration, when the issue was the threatened deportation of legal migrants, and she seemed on shaky ground.

Plenty of other opposition MPs joined in the attack, with Home Affairs Committee Chair Yvette Cooper delivering a biting attack on Theresa May, not only denouncing the policy but accusing her of hiding behind others when the going got tough.

It was wounding stuff, and you wonder what might have happened if she had had six questions to put.

Detailed question

The Lib Dems’ Vince Cable got in on the act, too, with a detailed question which accused the government of attempting to use data protection law to restrict access to individual immigration records.

Unusually, the PM sounded uncertain about a point of detail – but the incident suggested that Dr Cable has a touch of ex-ministers syndrome, a tendency to focus on micro-detail.

It had the merit of not being the same attack that had been rehearsed several times over, but it risked seeming bureaucratic.

Elsewhere, as predicted, there were several opportunities for Theresa May to reaffirm her position opposing the idea of the UK joining a post-Brexit customs union with the EU, because that would foreclose the opportunity to reach new trade deals across the world.

Brexiteers Richard Drax and Julian Lewis will have received the reassurances they sought – but for me the most interesting answer was the one the PM gave to the SNP’s Ian Blackford.

She conspicuously failed to answer his question about whether the government would accept a Commons vote which told it to negotiate to join a customs union – ministers will only confront that issue if it actually arises.

At the moment they hope they can avoid that contingency.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Labour's Luciana Berger is introducing her Health Impacts (Public Sector Duty) Bill under the ten minute rule motion.

It would require the government to publish a physical and mental health impact assessment when laws are proposed.

She says the UK mental health system deals with people when they are very sick or unwell, rather than focussing on prevention of mental health crises.

Poor people suffer poorer health and live shorter lives than affluent people, she says, and the health gap between the rich and poor is widening.

House of Commons
Parliament

Conservative MP Damian Green - former immigration minister - rises to say that Labour MP David Lammy mentioned him by name - and he had no notice that was going to happen.

It's a convention in the House of Commons that MPs notify another MP they are going to name while making a point.

Speaker John Bercow says that the criticism came of Mr Green in his role as a minister, and was not directed at him personally.

Mr Bercow says the clerk advises that Mr Lammy was not guilty of an impropriety.

House of Commons
Parliament

Conservative John Baron says he has attended a meeting which urged NHS England to release £200m of their cancer treatment fund, but which still has not come to the frontline to help cancer patients. He asks her to "unblock the logjam" for these cancer patients.

Mrs May says she is sorry for the "slowness" in this matter and will look into it.

Mark D'Arcy points out:

John Baron chairs the all-party Parliamentary group on cancer – their latest report on the state of NHS cancer services raised concerns that promised extra money is not finding its way to the front line.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Labour MP David Lammy asks for details of compensation for one of his constituents from the Windrush generation, whom, he says, has been unable to work for seven years.

This constituent came to the UK aged four in 1956, but was told in 2011 that he could no longer work and did not have British citizenship, he says.

He adds that when he raised his case with then-immigration minister Damian Green at the time, he was given a reply that "basically said: 'tough'".

He also asks for a pledge that Home Office officials will not take "enforcement action" against people ringing the department's hotline.

Theresa May replies that details of the compensation scheme will be set out "shortly".

The hotline is there to help people to document their status, she says. The home secretary has already said there is "no question" of taking action against people who ring, she adds.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Conservative Dr Julian Lewis asks if the UK still is of the opinion that "no deal is better than a bad deal", and that locking the UK into a customs union would be bad for the UK.

Mrs May says that she has always said that no deal is better than a bad deal, and that a customs union would prevent the UK from negotiating its own trade deals.

Mark D'Arcy
Parliamentary Correspondent

Savage stuff from Yvette Cooper – that’s how to do an attack.

She seeks to pin the Windrush debacle directly on the PM and accuses her of hiding behind others – Labour, civil servants and the current home secretary - to avoid the blame.

She gets a measured response, repeating previous lines, from the PM – but it was effective stuff from the Home Affairs Select Committee Chair.

And Labour’s David Lammy joins the fray, quoting a case from his Tottenham constituency.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Labour MP Yvette Cooper tells Mrs May not to hide behind her or the Labour party when she was "warned repeatedly about the damage about her obsession with her net migration policy was doing".

Mrs May replies that nobody is trying to blame anyone else.

"The question of the Windrush generation arises from the fact that when they came here, they were not documented.

"Over the year there have been individual cases of people who have had to regularise their documentation and have done so.

"For governments of every colour, action has been taken against illegal immigrants. This does not apply to the Windrush generation.

"I have apologised... and I do so again. We are doing everything we can to ensure that they are reassured."

House of Commons
Parliament

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Lib Dem Leader Sir Vince Cable says that "if the Home Office cannot deal humanely and efficiently" with 50,000 UK residents of Caribbean origin then they will struggle to process EU applications to live in the UK.

He says the Home Office is now using data protection rules to cover up mistakes by the department so people cannot access their own case files.

Mrs May says that this accusation is "not correct" and that people still have access to their case files by the Home Office. She says that the issue for the Windrush generation is more to do with their lack of documentary evidence.

She says that EU citizens are being asked and encouraged to apply for settled status, which will make sure it doesn't apply to EU citizens.

House of Commons
Parliament

Conservative Will Quince welcomes the announcement of funding for the roll-out of the national bereavement pathway nationally.

Mrs May says that he has "championed and campaigned" on the issue, and recognises the importance of supporting parents in the most "difficult of circumstances".

House of Commons
Parliament

Labour MP Dan Carden says one of his constituents has recently had to hand back his mobility vehicle after his mobility allowance was cut after being moved onto Personal Independence Payments (PIPs).

He says he will now have to wait nine months for his appeal against the decision, which he describes shows the "total injustice of the system".

In reply, Theresa May says she is "sorry to hear of the case he has made".

She pledges to make sure the Department for Work and Pensions is made aware of the case.