Bridget phillipson

Bridget Phillipson: We don’t need to act yet on fuel duty The war in Iran has now gone on for one month and concerns continue to grow over the effect the conflict will have on economies all over the world. On Sky News this morning, Bridget Phillipson played down fears of impending fuel shortages, telling British consumers to ‘continue as you are’. Trevor Phillips noted that more than half of the price of fuel goes to the government and asked the Education Secretary why the government isn’t scrapping the proposed 5p rise to fuel duty in September. Phillipson said the Chancellor is ‘absolutely committed’ to protecting British people from the impacts of the conflict and that the government will ‘take a view closer to the time’ on fuel duty. https://www.youtube.

When Bridget Phillipson arrived at the Department for Education, she knew which issue would define her tenure. Within days, she was facing dozens of new Labour MPs grilling her about how she planned to overhaul the system for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). ‘From the outset we have gone out there to speak to the parliamentary Labour party,’ says an ally. ‘We know that this is a key postbag issue.’ Over the past ten years, the number of claims for special needs has exploded. A fifth of all children in England are now reported to have SEND; in Scotland, 43 per cent of pupils have some sort of additional learning need.

The Palace of Westminster, already beset by crumbling finials, has developed a damp problem. Nothing to do with bricks and mortar. We are talking about moral wetness. Has the elected House ever contained a soggier crew? Hand-wringers abound. They demand ‘apostrophe laws’ named after victims of misfortune and then announce that ‘Mavis’s mum’ – or whoever that week’s unfortunate might be – ‘is with us today’. Everyone scans the galleries to coo. And sometimes even clap. The campaigns they espouse may, per se, be virtuous. What sticks in the gullet is the expropriation of goodness, the pushing of parliamentary debate away from flinty reality toward an emotive gloop better suited to breakfast television. Who are these hankie-clutching Herberts?

Wednesday morning at Labour conference is back to being the graveyard shift, with the delegates who are still there nursing hangovers and sharing videos of the speakers on the stage doing karaoke the night before. But this morning's session covered two of the most important public services from two of the party's rising stars – Wes Streeting and Bridget Phillipson. Streeting was in the gravest of the graveyard slots this morning Streeting is everywhere (including in the karaoke videos), and some of his colleagues are a bit irritated that he seems to have been anointed as the next Labour leader. Phillipson, though, is the one to watch because she unnerves the Conservatives and is applauded for being tough in her education brief.