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Adjournment (Whitsun)

Yes, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the chance to reinforce his message. I praise the work of the Trades Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry in driving the skills agenda forward in the work place and encouraging people to ensure that they have the skills and personal confidence necessary. I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw for raising the initiative of schools twinning with Africa. James Gillespie’s high school in my constituency has done so successfully, and I commend the experience that my hon. Friend and we in south Edinburgh have had. More experienced hon. Members raised other issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) talked about school closures. She will join me in wondering how, when providing 28,000 extra teachers, one is faced with unnecessary school closures—some of course are necessary—during an election period. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills will note her points. In all honesty, I am not sure that any moratorium of the type she suggested is practical or could be enforced. If she has further thoughts on that, I know that she will communicate them as effectively as she always does. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) spoke with detailed knowledge of the ports authority issue. She will know that the Department for Transport announced the Future of Transport White Paper. Its intention is to examine carefully the national framework of ports policy once decisions have been taken on outstanding applications for major container port development. She will track that with considerable interest. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) raised the issues of housing investment and of the economy. I know he will welcome the fact that we have tripled investment in housing capital from £1.65 billion in 1997 to £5 billion now, and that that has helped reduce the number of non-decent houses by 1 million in that time frame. None the less, it is clear that he has some advice for the Chancellor on how to run the economy. The Chancellor always welcomes such advice and I am sure that my hon. Friend will find a way during debates and Treasury questions to raise his views with the Chancellor, and have the Treasury specialists pore over them and see what might be gleaned and gained from them. My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Patrick Hall) raised the issue of local government funding. Having lived through several local government funding crises as well as the revaluations—indeed, my maiden speech was on that very subject, which allowed me to take a seat from the Conservatives for the first time in 100 years. That was, of course, the council tax, more popularly known as the poll tax—