The government continues to “pledge significant packages of investment” to help pupils catch up on missed learning due to the pandemic, Gavin Williamson has claimed.
Sky News understands the proposal put to the Treasury to help schools recover from lost learning during the COVID crisis was worth around £15bn, with 100 extra hours of teaching per pupil.
A £1.4bn package was unveiled by ministers last Wednesday, with the plans denounced as a “damp squib” by unions.
Image: Sir Kevan Collins quit last week as the PM’s catch-up tsar. Pic: PA/House of Commons
Mr Williamson said on Monday that the total recovery package is now worth more than £3bn, including £1bn that will be spent on tutoring courses particularly for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
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He claimed the fund would help close the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers.
In the Commons, the education secretary promised a “tutoring revolution” that would result in six million 15-hour tutoring courses for schoolchildren and two million 15-hour courses for 16 to 19-year-olds who need additional support to catch up.
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And he said year 13 pupils would have the option for repeating their final year “where this is appropriate”.
He claimed the evidence showed one course of high-quality tutoring had been proven to boost attainment by three to five months so additional tutoring will be “vital” for young people in recovering the teaching hours lost over the past year.
He told MPs: “Helping our children recover from the impact of the pandemic is an absolute priority. Pupils, parents and staff have all experienced disruption and we know that continuous actions are required to help recover lost learning.”
He said 250,000 children would receive tutoring this year who would not have had access to it previously, and more than 500,000 would be able to attend summer schools.
Mr Williamson continued “The evidence we have shows that disadvantaged children and those who live in areas that have been particularly hard hit by high COVID rates such as the North East of England and Yorkshire are among those whose learning is most likely to have been affected.
“We have always been clear and will continue to take the action that is required. This is why we continue to pledge significant packages of investment and targeted intervention to help them make up on their lost learning.”
Mr Williamson also thanked Sir Kevan following his departure for “his contribution to these efforts”.
Labour’s shadow education secretary, Kate Green, told the Commons: “The government failed children and young people.
“They were promised that their education was the prime minister’s number one priority but they’ve been betrayed by a secretary of state who has let them down once again, and by a prime minister who won’t lift a finger for them when it comes to a row with the chancellor about prioritising the investment needed in their future.
“I was frankly embarrassed to hear the Secretary of State proclaim that the funding announced last week would deliver a revolution – from what his government announced it’ll amount to just £50 per pupil for the next three years compared to £1,600 in the USA, £2,500 in the Netherlands.”
Mr Williamson claimed Labour had opposed nearly all of the government’s education reforms, adding that the opposition would “merely parrot what the union paymasters ask it to do”.
The controversial assisted dying bill is still very much alive, having received a second reading in the House of Lords without a vote.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Day two of debate on the bill in the Lords was just as passionate and emotional as the first, a week earlier.
And now comes the hard part for supporters of Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, as opponents attempt to make major changes in the months ahead.
The Lords’ chamber was again packed for the debate, which this time began at 10am and lasted nearly six hours. In all, during 13 hours of debate over two days, nearly 200 peers spoke.
According to one estimate, over both days of the debate only around 50 peers spoke in favour of the bill and considerably more than 100 against, with only a handful neutral.
The bill proposes allowing terminally ill adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death. Scotland’s parliament has already passed a similar law.
Image: Pro-assisted dying campaigners outside parliament earlier this month. Pic: PA
In a safeguard introduced in the Commons, an application would have to be approved by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, senior lawyer and psychiatrist.
The bill’s sponsor in the Lords, Charlie Falconer, said while peers have “a job of work to do”, elected MPs in the Commons should have the final decision on the bill, not unelected peers.
One of the most contentious moments in the first day of debate last Friday was a powerful speech by former Tory prime minister Theresa May, who said the legislation was a “licence to kill” bill.
That claim prompted angry attacks on the former PM when the debate resumed from Labour peers, who said it had left them dismayed and caused distress to many terminally ill people.
The former PM, daughter of a church of England vicar, had claimed in her speech that the proposed law was an “assisted suicide bill” and “effectively says suicide is OK”.
But opening the second day’s debate, Baroness Thornton, a lay preacher and health minister in Tony Blair’s government, said: “People have written to me in the last week, very distressed.
“They say things such as: ‘We are not suicidal – we want to live – but we are dying, and we do not have the choice or ability to change that. Assisted dying is not suicide’.”
Throughout the criticism of her strong opposition to the bill, the former PM sat rooted to her seat, not reacting visibly but looking furious as her critics attacked her.
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3:06
Assisted Dying: Reflections at the end of life
There was opposition to the bill, too, from grandees of the Thatcher and Major cabinets. Lord Deben, formerly John Gummer and an ex-member of the Church of England synod, said the bill “empowers the state to kill”.
And Lord Chris Patten, former Tory chairman, Hong Kong governor and Oxford University chancellor, said it was an “unholy legislative mess” and could lead to death becoming the “default solution to perceived suffering”.
Day two of the debate also saw an unholy clash between Church of England bishops past and present, with former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey claiming opponents led by Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell were out of touch with public opinion.
While a large group of bishops sat in their full robes on their benches, Lord Carey suggested both the Church and the Lords would “risk our legitimacy by claiming that we know better than both the public” and the Commons.
“Do we really want to stand in the way of this bill?” he challenged peers. “It will pass, whether in this session or the next. It has commanding support from the British public and passed the elected House after an unprecedented period of scrutiny.”
But Archbishop Cottrell hit back, declaring he was confident he represented “views held by many, not just Christian leaders, but faith leaders across our nation in whom I’ve been in discussion and written to me”.
And he said the bill was wrong “because it ruptures relationships” and would “turbocharge” the agonising choices facing poor and vulnerable people.
Image: A campaigner in opposition of the bill. Pic: PA
One of the most powerful speeches came from former Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, awarded a peerage by Rishi Sunak after a dramatic Commons comeback after losing his arms and legs after a bout of sepsis.
He shocked peers by revealing that in Belgium, terminally ill children as young as nine had been euthanised. “I’m concerned we want to embed an option for death in the NHS when its modus operandi should be for life,” he said.
And appearing via video link, a self-confessed “severely disabled” Tory peer, Kevin Shinkwin, was listened to in a stunned silence as he said the legislation amounted to the “stuff of nightmares”.
He said it would give the state “a licence to kill the wrong type of people”, adding: “I’m the wrong type. This bill effectively puts a price on my head.”
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2:09
Assisted Dying vote: Both sides react
After the debate, Labour peer and former MP Baroness Luciana Berger, an opponent of the bill, claimed a victory after peers accepted her proposal to introduce a special committee to examine the bill and report by 7 November.
“The introduction of a select committee is a victory for those of us that want proper scrutiny of how these new laws would work, the massive changes they could make to the NHSand how we treat people at the end of their lives,” she told Sky News.
“It’s essential that as we look at these new laws we get a chance to hear from those government ministers and professionals that would be in charge of creating and running any new assisted dying system.”
After the select committee reports, at least four sitting Fridays in the Lords have been set aside for all peers – a Committee of the whole house – to debate the bill and propose amendments.
Report stage and third reading will follow early next year, then the bill goes back to the Commons for debate on any Lords amendments. There’s then every chance of parliamentary ping pong between the two Houses.
Kim Leadbeater’s bill may have cleared an important hurdle in the Lords. But there’s still a long way to go – and no doubt a fierce battle ahead – before it becomes law.
The UK and Irish governments have agreed a new framework to address the legacy of the Northern Ireland Troubles.
The framework, announced by Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn and the Irish deputy prime minister, Simon Harris, at Hillsborough Castle on Friday, replaces the controversial Legacy Act, introduced by the Conservative government.
“I believe that this framework, underpinned by new co-operation from both our governments, represents the best way forward to finally make progress on the unfinished business of the Good Friday Agreement,” said Mr Benn.
He added that it would allow the families of victims killed during violence in Northern Ireland between the 1960s and 1990s, to “find the answers they have long been seeking”.
The proposed framework includes a dedicated Legacy Commission to investigate deaths during the Troubles, a resumption of inquests regarding cases from the conflict which were halted by the Legacy Act.
There will also be a separate truth recovery mechanism, the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval, jointly funded by London and Dublin.
“Dealing with the legacy of the Troubles is hard, and that is why it has been for so long the unfinished business of the Good Friday Agreement,” said Mr Benn.
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Mr Harris described the framework as a “night and day improvement” on the previous act. Scrapping the Legacy Act, introduced in 2023, was a Labour government pledge.
What this means
A section of the Legacy Act offered immunity from prosecution for ex-soldiers and militants who cooperate with a new investigative body. This provision was ruled incompatible with human rights law.
The 2023 law was opposed by all political parties in Northern Ireland, including pro-British and Irish nationalist groups.
Image: The agreement replaces a controversial law. (Pic: PA)
The Irish government, which brought a legal challenge against Britain at the European Court of Human Rights, also opposed it.
Both governments said the new plans will ensure it is possible to refer cases for potential prosecutions.
Image: Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government had pledged to improve relations with Ireland. (Pic: PA)
It will ‘take time’ to win families’ confidence
Irish Foreign Minister, Simon Harris, said in a statement that the framework could deliver on Ireland’s two tests of being human rights-compliant and securing the support of victims’ families, if implemented in good faith.
He added that winning the confidence of victims’ families would take time.
Dublin will revisit its legal challenge against Britain if the tests are met, it said.
Restoring strained relations
The UK’s Labour government had sought to reset relations with Ireland, after they were damaged by the process of Britain leaving the European Union.
The Conservative government had defended its previous approach, arguing prosecutions were unlikely to lead to convictions, and that it wanted to draw a line under the conflict.
A number of trials have collapsed in recent years, but the first former British soldier to be convicted of an offence since the peace deal was given a suspended sentenced in 2023.
The former SEC chair and Paul Atkins, the current head of the agency, both made media appearance this week to address significant policies proposed by US President Donald Trump.