UK Parliament / Open data

Debate on the Address

Proceeding contribution from Nigel Evans (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 6 November 2007. It occurred during Queen's speech debate on Debate on the Address.
I wish that there was a stronger lead, because confusion leads to people not being absolutely certain about their intake. The best thing is for the system to be as simple as possible but to give the most accurate information. Personally, I am quite surprised at how high the calorific level of some products on supermarket shelves happens to be, including even fruit. However, if we have the information, at least we can make a start. A related issue is that of sport in schools. The Government have made £100 million available so that youngsters can have up to five hours of sport in schools. I stress ““up to”” five hours because I would prefer youngsters to have exactly five hours, which is an hour an day. They spend more than that in front of the television or the computer, on the couch doing nothing. If they had the one hour of sport a day in school, that structure would be perfect. I am sure that we are all involved with voluntary sporting organisations in our constituencies. They are great, but they are all self-selecting. Those youngsters will always be able to look after themselves, but there are some people who simply need the help through sport within a structure, which they can get in schools but nowhere else. I would ask the Government to consider again whether the £100 million, which is about £12 per pupil per school, is sufficient to spread the programme throughout the whole of the country. Finally, on immigration—I am glad to see that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), the shadow Home Secretary is here—there are so many misleading statistics that it is worrying. Nobody really knows what the level of illegal immigration is. Nobody knows which people are coming in and which are going out, because neither is being properly checked. We all know that there is a problem with legal immigration, too. The statistics that the Government gave us early on said that when the 10 countries from eastern Europe joined the European Union, we would have about 13,000 immigrants. That figure then became 600,000, and now we have been told that it more than a million. Such levels of immigration are unsustainable. The Government are talking about building 3 million extra homes. I suspect that some of them must be for the extra people in our population, which is now more than 60 million.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

467 c93 

Session

2007-08

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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