Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood. Follow Chris on Twitter. This week saw the publication of the Government’s response to the consultation on its special educational needs and disability Green Paper. The headlines so far have focused on the rigorous screening methods that could potentially remove hundreds of thousands of children from […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. 4pm update: People's Pledge sources tells me that Anne Marie Morris, the MP for Newton Abbot has come out in support of a referendum. Mike Freer, the MP for Finchley and Golders Green, has also backed a referendum. This is significant because Freer was not one of the 81 rebels, […]
Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood. Follow Chris on Twitter. Today sees the publication of the latest Free Enterprise Group report, The Social Care Market: Fixing a Broken System. We know that long-term care for the elderly will present one of the greatest challenges for the future: the number of over-85s will double by […]
Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood. At a time when the government is still carrying out its review of the National Curriculum, this is the perfect opportunity to stand up for History in schools – with a particular emphasis on making the subject compulsory to 16. In December 2011, I published a […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter The Forty. The 301. The 2020. These are some of the groups formed by Conservative MPs after the last general election. Most are largely made up of, or driven by, 2010-intake MPs. Over the next few weeks, I'll be profiling some of these groups. Today, we kick off with the […]
Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a Member of the Health Select Committee. Several months ago, I wrote how Andy Burnham would seek to make Labour the party of anti-reform, placing party politics above the need to find genuine solutions to reforming the NHS. This prediction has proved correct: to listen to […]
Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood. No-one would deny that in recent years far too much of the NHS budget has been wasted, leading to a poor deal for taxpayers. One particular area that has recently attracted attention is the amount of unpaid bills by foreign nationals, who are required to pay for NHS […]
By Joseph Willits Follow Joseph on Twitter In yesterday's Adjournment debate before the start of the Christmas recess, a mix of topics were raised by MPs. Chris Skidmore MP (Kingswood), who also wrote on ConservativeHome yesterday about making history a compulsory subject for under-16s, spoke of the study of history reaching a record low. Skidmore said that […]
Chris Skidmore MP is the MP for Kingswood If the purpose of education is not merely to provide us with the skills, knowledge and awareness to progress into whichever career we choose, but to instil also in each pupil a common shared body of knowledge and values which we pass on to each generation, then […]
Chris Skidmore MP is the MP for Kingswood It has been long-standing custom and practice that MPs are elected as individual representatives to serve a full term, and that their mandate is an individual one. However, it cannot be denied that for the most part, voters cast their ballots with party identity firmly in mind, […]
Chris Skidmore MP is the MP for Kingswood Yesterday Labour called a debate on the NHS, with Andy Burnham promising on twitter that “The PM's bad week just got worse. Labour has secured a debate tomorrow to expose Cameron's Great NHS Betrayal.” This was regrettable, since during most of the debate fewer than 10 Labour MPs […]
Chris Skidmore MP is the MP for Kingswood and a member of the Health Select Committee. Several commentators have already picked up that Ed Milliband’s decision to reshuffle Andy Burnham from education points towards an admission that Labour had dropped the baton on school reform, moving away from an agenda of raising school standards through the […]
Chris Skidmore MP is the MP for Kingswood Party conference is often a time of reflection, to consider what has been achieved over the past year. But it should also be a platform for a restatement of what still needs to be done. At Manchester this week, the Conservative Party will consider the many achievements […]
Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood. Follow Chris on Twitter. How we should tackle the issue of "health tourism" is one which has recently been raised on ConservativeHome, while stories of foreign nationals, ineligible for free NHS care still obtaining operations and treatment appear frequently in newspapers and the media? The background […]