I repeat the point which I was making before, and that is that Kemi has got a young family and so it’s less likely that she’s going to be able to spend as much time as is required as somebody who hasn’t got the commitments of a young family.
Now, that’s not suggesting she’s unsuited or anything like that to be the leader of the opposition …
All I’m saying is that one of the candidates has got a younger family than the other one, and has also got a record of wanting to spend more time with her family than engage in going to far-flung constituencies.
Chope also said that, when he was a junior minister in the early 1990s, he was the father of a young baby.
he was critical of Beijing over its hostility towards Taiwan, its suppression of rights in Hong Kong and its links with Russia.
David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is due to visit China from tomorrow and Amnesty International UK has issued a statement saying it hopes Lammy is just as robust in private. Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty’s chief executive, said:
This visit is a crucial opportunity for the foreign secretary to demonstrate the government’s true commitment to challenging publicly and privately Beijing’s brutal suppression of human rights in China and Hong Kong.
Behind closed doors but also in public, David Lammy needs to tackle the Chinese government over its systematic, industrial-scale repression of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet, its widespread imprisonment of peaceful activists and its completely unacceptable intimidation of students and campaigners here in the UK.
The prime minister’s statement that the immediate release of the unjustly-imprisoned UK businessman Jimmy Lai is a UK priority is welcome, and Mr Lammy should also seek to secure the immediate release of fellow prisoners of conscience Hong Kong lawyer-activist Chow Hang-tung and Chinese human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi, as well as the long-held Uighur economist Ilham Tohti and #MeToo activists Sophia Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing.
Throughout this trip, the Government should ensure that talks on trade and security relations with China aren’t pursued at the expense of human rights.
12.57pm) in a subsequent interview with Andrew Neil on Times Radio. Chope said that Badenoch and Robert Jenrick could both be “excellent party leaders”. And he said that there was “a lot of mischief-making going on” and that he was being misprepresented.
I repeat the point which I was making before, and that is that Kemi has got a young family and so it’s less likely that she’s going to be able to spend as much time as is required as somebody who hasn’t got the commitments of a young family.
Now, that’s not suggesting she’s unsuited or anything like that to be the leader of the opposition …
All I’m saying is that one of the candidates has got a younger family than the other one, and has also got a record of wanting to spend more time with her family than engage in going to far-flung constituencies.
Chope also said that, when he was a junior minister in the early 1990s, he was the father of a young baby.
12.57pm.)
This is from Helena Dollimore, the Labour MP for Hastings and Rye.
I thought nothing could shock me about the state of the Conservative Party, but that was before I had to sit through Christopher Chope MP opining about whether mothers can lead political parties. 🦖
I hope Robert Jenrick distances himself from these unhinged comments.
This is from Tom Hayes, the Labour MP for Bournemouth East.
Christopher Chope represents the seat beside mine. I wish I didn’t have to say this, but as he takes this view, I’d urge him to talk with mothers and find out what they achieve every day.
We shouldn’t be debating whether mothers can lead political parties. It’s that simple.
And these are from Liz Jarvis, the Lib Dem MP for Eastleigh.
Outrageous but predictable comments from Christopher Chope. The idea that women can’t hold positions with huge responsibility and still manage to be brilliant mums is antiquated, insulting and chauvinistic, to say the least.
Even by Christopher Chope’s standards, these comments are staggeringly ignorant and offensive. Diminishing women’s ability to play leading roles in public life because they have young families is an attitude that should be in the distant past.
Robert Jenrick should immediately condemn his remarks and Rishi Sunak must suspend the whip. If they do not, it is clear that they see these views as acceptable in the modern Conservative party.
Jenrick’s campaign has disowned Chope’s remarks. (See 2.31pm.)
Robert Jenrick nor Kemi Badenoch will be able to win the next election, and a significant minority said they did not plan to vote in the leadership contest, Jessica Elgot reports.
12.57pm.) A campaign source said:
Rob doesn’t agree with this. He’s raising three young daughters himself.
9.47am.)
Now the Jenrick campaign has hit back. A spokesperson for Jenrick said:
Michael Gove and his acolytes have been responsible for so much of the infighting and drama that has led our party to where it is.
Rob’s going to end that drama and the excuses that followed and just deliver for our country.
figures out from the Department for Education.
The overall absence rate in the autumn and spring terms of 2023-24 was 6.9%, down from 7.3% the previous year, the DfE says. That figure covers primary schools, secondary schools and special schools. Pre-pandemic, the comparable figures were below 5%.
Today’s figures also show that 19.2% of pupils were persistent absentees, meaning they missed 10% or more of school sessions. The equivalent figure for 2022-23 was 21.2%
Commenting on the figures, Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said:
Schools are working incredibly hard to boost attendance, and it is positive that these figures have improved overall year on year. However, the reasons for absence often lie beyond the school gates, and it is clear schools need more support to tackle unauthorised absence and the often deep-rooted issues facing children and families.
These include everything from sickness and mental health problems, to poverty and other social challenges. Previous governments failed to properly fund vital services like social care and CAMHS, while important roles like education welfare officers were cut.
12.21pm). It is a change it has been calling for. But it says the criminal justice system also needs more investement.
Tom Franklin, the association’s chief executive, said in a statement:
Extending the range of cases that magistrates can hear to include those which carry a maximum sentence of 12 months, is something we had long campaigned for as a vital means of ensuring speedier justice for victims, witnesses and defendants …
But such a change is not problem-free. There are serious bottlenecks in magistrates’ courts too, particularly with the lack of availability of legal advisers and probation officers needed to support magistrates, which often leads to delays and cancellations.
So, to be most effective, this change would need to go together with more court resources. There must be a long-term, sustainable and considered investment in the whole criminal justice system, which we and many others have long called for.
Robert Jenrick for Tory leader, not Kemi Badenoch, partly because he thinks having three young children will distract her.
In an interview with ITV Meridian, Chope said:
I myself am supporting Robert Jenrick because I think he’s brought more energy and commitment to the campaign, and being leader of the opposition is a really demanding job.
And, much as I like Kemi, I think she’s preoccupied with her own children, quite understandably. I think Robert’s children are a bit older, and I think that it’s important that whoever leads the opposition has got an immense amount of time and energy.
When it was put to him that he was saying a woman with young children could not lead a political party, Chope denied that. He said that he was one of Margaret Thatcher’s strongest supporters (although both Thatcher’s two children were in their 20s when she became Tory leader.)
He also said that he understood “talking to colleagues that Kemi spends a lot of time with her family”. That was not possible to combine with being opposition leader, he claimed.
Badenoch and Jenrick both have three children. Jenrick’s are 13, 11 and nine. Badenoch’s are younger, but not by much. They are 12, seven and five.
Speaking on the same ITV Meridien programme, the Labour MP Helena Dollimore said:
I think many women will be shocked by those comments.
I’m really proud that we live in a country where we’ve had women who have become prime minister, we’ve got the first woman chancellor at the moment, I think there should be no barrier to women standing in public life.
Source: theguardian.com
