Lizzi Collinge MP: speeches

Speeches

• 6 May 2025 · Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary · Hansard source

  More

  As I reflect on VE day and the celebration of victory over fascism in Europe, it strikes me that the war effort was one of common endeavour by ordinary people such as my grandad, who was a translator at Bletchley Park, and Richard Brock, who, when I met him last year, was 100 years young. Richard was one of the men who liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. To sit with someone who had known that horror at first hand truly was a privilege, and it was a privilege to pass on my personal thanks on behalf of a survivor’s family. That is because my friend Krysh had a Polish grandma, and she survived Belsen. After her liberation, she came to Britain and settled here. The rest, as they say, is history. Except it is not just history, is it? It is not something that we can bring out to look at on special occasions and congratulate ourselves on beating fascism before putting it away until the next anniversary. It did not start with the camps, did it? It never does. No, it was more insidious than that. It was a slow and constant poisoning of minds by people intent only on power. It was a setting up of different groups as scapegoats. It was the use of pseudoscience to back up an ideology of racism and eugenics. It was the use of propaganda to turn people into caricatures and the use of the press to create a narrative of blame. It was the turning of ordinary people on their neighbours. It was taking the propensity of humans to group together and turning that into a sinister tribalism. Why look to the difficult solutions to complex problems when people can simply blame the groups, over there, that they have been taught over many years to hate and fear? In the ’20s and ’30s, it was the Jews, the Gypsies, the gays and the disabled. It was the intellectuals and the trade unionists. It was anyone who challenged that narrative of hate. So who is it today? Fascism did not start with the camps, and the ideas underpinning fascism are not artefacts of history. I end with the plea that we do not treat fascism and tyranny as an historical artefact, and that we remember that they are a living possibility—even now, even here. The overthrow of fascism is not a bauble to admire once a year. Rather, it is a reminder that we should never let it get that far ever again, that we must be on our guard and that we should never let it flourish.

• 6 May 2025 · Middle East Update · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister for his statement. I appreciate that the Minister cannot comment directly on sanctions, but he knows that I have privately urged him to consider further sanctions and further measurable action. Given the ongoing horror and the statement from the Israeli Government, please will the Minister consider further concrete action?

• 28 Apr 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  In my constituency, we are and will always be proud of our club, Morecambe FC. Just one week ago, Morecambe lost a match and, unfortunately, confirmed our relegation. I was gutted, but I know that we will come back fighting, because resilience runs through our town, our fans and our club. In Morecambe, we have the best fans in the country. When we went to Chelsea, we overwhelmed the home fans a little bit. I do not think they were expecting that level of noise, energy and passion from a club that went on to get beaten 5-0. The truth is that Morecambe FC and its fans have been badly let down by poor ownership, which has damaged our club. Throughout the difficulties, the Shrimps fans’ trust and the board have done an incredible job of holding the club together. They have shown what it really means to care about a club. Despite their efforts, they have been kept at arm’s length while ownership talks drag on, leaving the club stuck in limbo and going from transfer window to transfer window. That is why the Secretary of State and I directly promised Morecambe before the election that we would deliver an independent football regulator. This Bill, which delivers the regulator, will strengthen suitability tests for owners and directors. It will introduce a licensing system to make sure that clubs are run responsibly. It will give fans a proper voice in how their clubs are managed. These are crucial steps to fix English football. This Bill started in the last Parliament and was brought forward by a Conservative MP, Dame Tracey Crouch. It had cross-party support but, surprisingly, the Conservatives seemed to have spun on a dime. Their leader said that introducing a football regulator would be “a waste of money”, but one only has to look at the wider social, cultural and economic benefits of football to know that this is simply not true. Grassroots football gets people into the game. On matchdays, football brings people to pubs, cafés and shops in the area. Clubs often provide facilities for schools, youth teams and community groups. In my constituency, we have the Morecambe FC Community Foundation, which works with young people, elders, veterans and others. It is a really important local organisation. Clubs such as Morecambe are part of the fabric of our towns, and part of what gives us our identity. They bring pride, passion and unbeatable matchday traditions, and in Morecambe we bring the best pies to football. Let us back this Bill’s sensible, light-touch regulation, and back clubs and their fans, who mean so much to so many towns.

• 23 Apr 2025 · Intellectual Property: Artificial Intelligence · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) for securing this important debate. The question about machine learning tools—AI—and their use in intellectual property is a key test of our time. What we decide to do now will have ramifications culturally, socially and economically long into the future. Large language models, a form of machine learning such as ChatGPT, have already used pirated and copyrighted material without the consent of the people who created it to train their models. It should be self-evident that that is a problem. It is a well-established right that people retain ownership of their work, with limited exceptions for education or critique. We have clear copyright laws. We have collective licensing schemes, yet those have been ridden over roughshod by machine learning developers. I am not a luddite. I am very excited about the potential for machine learning to make our lives better, just as other technology has done before. The potential for large datasets to identify health concerns and make diagnostics more accurate—with a programme able to predict the folds of proteins, saving scientists time that they can spend on the next thorny issue—is exciting stuff. It is important to remember that technology is morally neutral. The technology itself is not good or bad. It is a tool—nothing more, nothing less—and we as humanity get to decide how we use that tool. To use that tool, we need to understand it, at least in terms of how we interact with it. For example, we need to know that AI can lie. It will invent things. One of the best examples I have heard was when a large language model tool was asked by a huge “Doctor Who” fan to tell him about “Doctor Who” episodes and it simply made some up—perfectly plausible episodes that did not exist and have never existed. If anyone here is ever tempted to ask ChatGPT, be warned: it might not tell you the truth. As well as understanding the potential and limitations of the technology itself, it is also important that we create frameworks that align with our values and do not roll over for mega-corporations that really do not care for our values. Meta, which owns Facebook, has argued that individual creative works have no value in themselves as they individually barely affect the performance of large language models. As a Vanity Fair article pointed out, it is a bit like an orchestra arguing that it should not pay an individual musician because the solo bassoon cannot play the whole piece by itself. If large language model tech as a whole relies on creative works, and it does, then some form of respect for the rights of creatives must be found. We have existing copyright laws. We could simply enforce them and ensure that the tools are there to do so. I urge the Government to treat machine learning for what it is: a tool to be used well or used badly. Let us choose well.

• 8 Apr 2025 · Persecution of Christians · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship for the first time today, Ms Butler. As I have two minutes, I will be very brief. The persecution of Christians was brought to my attention by one of my constituents, a member of the Heysham Free Methodist Church . I was appalled to learn of the threat of violence from so-called social media influencers and Hindu nationalist leaders; people have been displaced, with their homes and businesses destroyed, and that is absolutely abhorrent. I wish us to speak with one voice on this matter, and to speak against the state enforcement of religion and state tolerance of religious persecution; that is absolutely unacceptable. I want to call particular attention to the persecution of those who hold no faith, a reality that too often goes unrecognised. In 2022, the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, Mubarak Bala, was sentenced to 24 years in prison for a supposedly blasphemous Facebook post. As of January this year, we have blasphemy laws in 91 countries in the world, including in Northern Ireland. Blasphemy laws lead to the harassment and persecution that Mr Bala suffered, as well as that faced by people of all faiths and none. That must end. Mr Bala will be coming to the all-party parliamentary group Humanist Group on 14 May, and I invite hon. Members to join us and hear more of his story. This debate shows us that people of faith and no faith can have a powerful connection and can find common cause. No one should be persecuted for their faith or lack thereof. Religious freedom, freedom of thought and freedom of belief must be actively protected and are worth fighting for.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Transport Connectivity: North-west England · Hansard source

  More

  Does my hon. Friend agree that some of the benefits of HS2 have been masked by the name High Speed 2 and that one of the main benefits of HS2 is actually capacity, which we desperately need on the railways?

• 19 Mar 2025 · Transport Connectivity: North-west England · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) for securing this important debate. My constituency is semi-urban and semi-rural. Without good public transport, my constituents cannot get around, and the visitors we so enjoy having in our area cannot get in. A lot of people in my community struggle with access to services such as GPs and hospital appointments and with getting to work. That creates more pressure on services such as patient transport services and GP home visits. It also affects the nature of my constituency, in that we have an ageing population, with fewer young families able to move in. My rural businesses and organisations that represent them, such as the Sedbergh Economic Partnership, also tell me that transport connectivity in rural areas is a massive bar to growth, because businesses cannot get the staff they need to expand. Sedbergh itself is struggling at the minute. There has been a bus service change, so the service is now less accessible and frequent. At my suggestion, Sedbergh set up a bus users’ group—I am a big fan of buses and bus users’ groups. In Lancashire we have a fantastic bus users’ group, the Lancaster Bus Users’ Group, of which I am a proud member. I thank the Government for their investment in bus services—£27 million in Lancashire and £4.2 million in Westmorland and Furness. I hope to see my local authorities take on the new powers that the Government will give them, so that we ensure we have rural bus services that serve my constituents, work together, fit together and fit in with people’s lives. I am also a big fan of trains. My constituency has the highest main line train station in England, in Dent. It is beautiful, although it is not actually in Dent village, which causes some confusion. We have some other fantastic stations, such as Garsdale, which is also beautiful, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) will know, and Arnside. However, we have real problems with accessibility, so older people and people with disabilities cannot get the train—when the train turns up. Because these are not areas with huge populations, they struggle to access grant services, such as the Access for All fund. There is real inequity in how some of the funds for station improvements are allocated. Finally, I want to talk a little about active travel, which is important. Active travel means moving ourselves around, whether by wheeling in a wheelchair, cycling on a bike or walking. It is good for our health, and spending more time in London, with its fantastic public transport service, I have walked a lot more. I have actually lost weight since the election—I think that is unheard of—because I am walking so much. That shows the health benefits of an integrated public transport system and proper transport connectivity. I want to highlight a visionary project in my constituency, the Lune Valley Greenway, which is a path that people can walk, wheel or cycle on from the coast at Morecambe right into the Yorkshire Dales national park. It currently goes from Morecambe, via Lancaster, up to Bull Beck near Caton. The ambition is for it not only to go from the coast to the national park, but to link up with public transport systems, so that people visiting our area, as well as people living and working in my constituency, can access the countryside and good public transport. I would love to invite the Minister to visit.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Welfare Reform · Hansard source

  More

  We know that helping people to stay well and manage long-term conditions or disabilities is almost always cheaper in the long term. Can the Secretary of State tell me how she will account for the potential wider system costs of changing the amount of money that is available to people with disabilities or long-term conditions?

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I acknowledge the complexity of that case and that the absolutely unacceptable failings before Sara’s death were abject across many organisations. However, she was removed from school partly so that her parents could prevent the detection of the abuse. I have recognised, and will continue to recognise, that that obviously does not speak to the vast majority of people who home-educate their children. However, as parliamentarians, we have a duty to protect the most vulnerable, and sometimes that includes regulating the majority, who are decent, honest people. I want to reassure parents that the new regulations, such as registers for children not in school and the capacity to compel school attendance in certain cases, are not aimed at limiting home education as a whole or about policing how people choose to educate.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  As a member of the Bill Committee, I have had detailed oversight of the measures in the Bill. They are vital for safeguarding children across the country, as well as supporting children and families with measures such as free breakfast clubs, reduced school uniform costs and extra support for kinship carers. I am thrilled that three schools in my constituency have been chosen to pilot free school breakfast clubs. They will put more money back in parents’ pockets and ensure that all children start the day right with a healthy meal. The Bill has been subject to healthy debate, both in this place and in Committee. It is a strong piece of legislation and one that has been strengthened through the parliamentary process. Looking through the amendment paper, I was interested to read new clause 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), on auto-enrolment for free school meals. Parents have contacted me who are eligible for free school meals but are finding the application process difficult and are being passed between the school and the council. Auto-enrolment would help those children and families get the support that they are entitled to from day one. It is important that children from all backgrounds have the same opportunities in life. I welcome measures aimed at tackling inequalities. I have spoken about the inequalities that arise from faith-based admissions to schools, where children are allocated school places based on the professed faith of their parents. I am pleased that the Government have confirmed the 50% cap on faith-based selection criteria for new academies and free schools. Faith-based schools are shown to be less diverse than their peers on a range of measures, including deprivation levels—measured by free school meals—the number of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and diversity of race and ethnicity compared with their local areas. The evidence shows clearly that faith selection is social selection by proxy. In my opinion, selection by faith has no place in taxpayer-funded schools at all. The 50% cap on faith selection was brought in the previous Labour Government to address inequality, and at least ensures some regulation of that. However, I am still concerned that new schools opened by local authorities are not subject to the same cap. In cases of oversubscription, they could allow 100% faith-based admission. I have raised concerns about this directly with the Minister, and I thank her for taking the time to discuss it with me. I am pleased that the Bill takes long-overdue action to tackle illegal schools. At least 7,000 children attend illegal settings—for obvious reasons, that is an estimate. Ofsted has been raising this problem for many years, because it does not have sufficient powers of entry and investigation into illegal schools. The Bill fixes that, granting Ofsted increased powers of entry and providing more powers to bring criminal cases against those schools and the people who run them. Members may not be aware of illegal schools. They tend to be concentrated in specific local authority areas. Usually, they are run by religious groups, which tend to be fundamentalist, extreme, highly controlling or isolationist in their outlook. We know from former pupils of these schools that in many cases they only study religious texts and receive no other form of education. Instead of having a broad and balanced education, children are subjected to indoctrination. Children attending illegal schools have also been subjected to abuse, both physical and sexual. That is unacceptable and such settings must be regulated. If they are unwilling to be regulated and offer a proper education, they must be shut down. I refer members to the contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) in last week’s Crime and Policing Bill debate for a flavour of the attitude of high-control religious groups towards reporting abuse within their own communities. I also lay on record my thanks to Humanists UK for its work exposing the dreadful practices in illegal schools over the past decade. I welcome this Labour Government’s recognition of the severity of those problems and the swift action taken to safeguard those vulnerable children. I also welcome future discussions on how to manage the problem of part-time settings.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I accept wholeheartedly the amount of parents of children, particularly with SEND, who have been absolutely failed by our system and by 14 years of Conservative Government. What I do not accept is that the proposal is somehow a major imposition. I do not believe that checking that children are receiving a decent education and are safe and well cared for is a major imposition on parents, and I think all good parents would welcome that. These measures are being put in place to protect and safeguard vulnerable children. Having no oversight of children not in school is an unacceptable risk to children’s welfare. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is crucial, and cannot come too soon to protect our most vulnerable children and to support families up and down the country with rising costs. It has the welfare of children at its heart, and I am proud to have served on the Bill Committee and to have played a role in shaping this vital legislation.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Does the hon. Gentleman accept that my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr, to whom he referred and who has actually worked in schools as a teacher, might have a really good grasp of what happens in schools?

• 10 Mar 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The measures in this Bill are very much needed by my constituents. One of the first pieces of casework I dealt with as an MP was of young children riding recklessly around on small motorbikes with no helmets. My constituent Helen was at her wits’ end with the dreadful noise and the fear that one of the children or a passing pedestrian might get hurt. I recently asked for an update, and her husband Malcolm told me that although there has been some relief recently, they are concerned that the lighter nights will bring more problems. What frustrates them is the wait for a police response. Recently in Morecambe we had a gang of lads causing havoc on the Branksome estate. Following reports of them threatening people and causing damage, the police gave chase and seized one of the bikes. Earlier that day, a town centre playground was taken over by people on bikes, with reports that they were being “purposefully menacing” and that their bikes had damaged the grassy area near the playground. It was simply luck that no one was hurt. In Morecambe, local organisations are coming together to tackle the menace of antisocial behaviour. The Safe Morecambe initiative—which brings together Morecambe police, the Morecambe business improvement district, the city council, the town council and other key stakeholders—was formed last November. Its members collaborate to ensure a safe and welcoming environment for residents, businesses and visitors. I met one of them, Tim Barbary, to discuss the coalition, and I will continue to support them, including by supporting the continuation of Operation Centurion, for which I am glad to say that funding has continued. Our high street in Morecambe has also been badly affected by theft. The Conservatives wrote off a lot of this as low-level, but it is not. Certain parts of Morecambe and some rural areas have suffered terribly with fly-tipping. I am glad to see all these issues covered in the Bill, and that the Labour Government are focused on the issues that matter to my constituents. The Bill will make it easier to seize bikes and scooters that are being used antisocially. It will enable stronger action on all types of antisocial behaviour. It will provide for statutory guidance on fly-tipping and an extra 13,000 police officers on the ground. Finally, I would like to flag the decimation of youth services under the last Conservative Government, which has meant that so many young people, especially those struggling without strong family role models, have been left not only to be sucked into the grip of antisocial behaviour but in many cases to be groomed into far more serious criminality. I have already expressed interest in my constituency becoming a pilot area for the national youth strategy programme, as I believe that good youth services not only ensure that young people are able to reach their potential, but have a wider knock-on effect on our constituencies. All in all, I am very pleased that this Labour Government are taking the concerns of my constituents in Morecambe and Lunesdale seriously, taking strong action to tackle the blight of the misuse of bikes and scooters, taking theft on our high streets seriously again, getting tough on fly-tippers and clamping down on the wider antisocial behaviour that we see in our constituencies.

• 6 Mar 2025 · English Football: Financial Sustainability and Governance · Hansard source

  More

  rose—

• 6 Mar 2025 · English Football: Financial Sustainability and Governance · Hansard source

  More

  I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. In Morecambe, the football club is a community hub that we cannot afford to lose. We have the Shrimps Trust, which is a democratic and representative voice for the fans. The board of Morecambe really want us to survive and thrive and is doing everything it can to make that happen. It is passionate about our success. The Shrimps have been under a lot of pressure in recent years due to a combination of ownership issues, financial instability and the threat of relegation. My hon. Friends have laid out coherently the challenges with financial flow, ownership and governance, so I will not go through them again. In my first speech in Parliament, I reiterated my promise to the Shrimps to deliver an independent football regulator, a stronger owners and directors test, better fan representation and much better measures on financial sustainability. I only hope that it does not come too late for Morecambe FC.

• 6 Mar 2025 · English Football: Financial Sustainability and Governance · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. In Morecambe, the Shrimps are an integral part of our community. They bring together people from all backgrounds who share in our love of the Shrimps. The Morecambe FC Community Foundation runs a range of programmes that support education, health, social inclusion and sports participation. I am not the only parent from Morecambe who has had a child come back chattering about the professional footballers who came to help out that day.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Antisocial Behaviour and Illegal Bikes · Hansard source

  More

  In Morecambe, local organisations have come together to try to tackle antisocial behaviour. I met with Safe Morecambe to give my support and to find out more about what they are doing. Does the Minister agree that bringing local organisations together is an effective way to tackle antisocial behaviour and these bikes, and that all police forces should be working with other local organisations?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Affordable Rural Housing · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Mr Twigg. In my constituency we have some villages, such as Dent, where 40% of the homes are second homes or Airbnb-type short-term lets. I also have concerns for Morecambe, with the Eden Project coming there. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should look at the licensing and regulation of short-term lets as part of the solution to the rural housing crisis?

• 11 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Does my hon. Friend share my puzzlement that, given that the independent national inquiry covered so many types of child sexual exploitation—so many horrors that have been visited upon our young people—only one aspect of it has become the focus of political debate? We should focus on all the children and young people who have been violated, abused and hurt, mostly by men, but they seem to be forgotten even though the national inquiry covered a whole range of child sexual exploitation.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the question of schools having a faith element, being run by a Church or by any faith group, is different from the question of whether, in their admissions policy, a school may discriminate against one child and in favour of another based on the professed faith of their parents? Does he agree that those are two separate issues?

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I do not wish to correct the right hon. Gentleman. I believe he is correct that the two get confused. I have both of those beliefs.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I rise to speak to clause 51, because there are some points I wish to raise about this part of the Bill allowing new schools to have 100% faith selection. Clause 51 allows new schools to be opened without ideological restrictions on their type; they could be academies, community schools or voluntary aided schools, which in my view is extremely welcome; but it also creates the ability to open new 100% faith-selective schools, which worries me. The current 50% cap on faith selection for academies was introduced by the Labour Government in 2007, and further embedded into free schools in 2010 by the coalition Government. The Education Act 2011 mandated that all new schools must be free schools, extending the cap’s reach. That 50% limit was supported by all three main parties. A scheme of local authority competitions similar to the one proposed in the clause operated from 2007 to 2012, in which we saw 100% faith-selective schools open. For example, Cambridgeshire county council ran a competition for a new school in which a 100% selective Church of England school won out over a proposal for a school with no religious character; the resultant school opened in 2017 and is still 100% faith selective. Another 100% religiously selective school was approved in the Peterborough council area. This has happened when the legislation has allowed for it. We heard in the first evidence session that the Catholic Education Service would seek, in areas of oversubscription, to use 100% faith selection. We heard from the Church of England that nationally its policy is to stick to 50%, but its structure means that dioceses can put forward proposals for new schools, and they are not bound by that national policy. Members might be sitting here thinking, “So what? What is the problem with 100% faith-selective schools?” The problem is that 100% faith-selective schools are less socioeconomically diverse than might be expected for their catchment area, and less socioeconomically diverse than schools that are subject to the 50% cap. Compared with their 50% selective peers, 100% faith-selective schools are also less ethnically diverse than would be expected. Faith selective schools remain less inclusive across multiple factors. In my view, 100% faith selective admissions only exacerbate inequalities in the school system. The Sutton Trust found that faith schools are less inclusive of disadvantaged children. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator found that faith-selective schools are less inclusive of children in care. The London School of Economics found that faith-selective schools are less inclusive of children with special educational needs and disabilities. Faith-selective admissions also disproportionately favour wealthier families, because they are socioeconomically more selective than other types of school. Compared with other schools, faith-selective schools admit fewer children eligible for free school meals than would be expected for their catchment area. Many faith-selective schools operate a system of scoring for religious attendance and volunteering. In my view, this activity is simply easier for those with more economic or social capital—those who do not work weekends, nights or shifts, and who have a professional background where one is very happy and comfortable going into a new environment; perhaps one went to church as a child. At least since the 1950s, data shows that church attendance is higher among wealthier people. This religious activity is less easy to take part in for those who work shifts or weekends and those who do not have the cultural or social capital to enter confidently a situation that is new or perhaps culturally alien. I am focusing on church attendance because the religious majority in our country is Christian, even though actual religious belief is low. Faith-selective schools encourage and embed educational inequalities, and that is why I am concerned about lifting the 50% faith-selection cap. I merely ask Ministers to consider this.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  The right hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. It is not a belief that the profile of faith schools is different from other schools: it is true. If we look at the rates of free school meals and the wealth profile of parents and compare them with peers—if we compare apples with apples—the data shows that. Does he recognise that?