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Lord Sentamu (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 25 November 2024

Debate

G20 and COP 29 Summits

Contribution

My Lords, I would like to follow the injunction of the Chief Whip by asking a question but, before I do so, perhaps I may join in the wonderful words that have been said about John Prescott. He was an MP in Hull, when Hull was facing terrible education. I remember him persuading us that Archbishop Thurstan School, which was a secondary school, should be renamed—believe it or not—Archbishop Sentamu Academy. He said, “The Government may lose the election, so make sure you get your £45 million ahead of this”, so we applied and we got it. Within a week, the coalition Government came into place and stopped all the school-building programmes that had been planned. The people of Hull want to say to John Prescott, “You have lifted us out of poverty and out of poor education”. For the first time, the Sentamu Academy has pupils leaving Hull to go to different universities and continue education. In paying tribute to John Prescott’s work on COP, my question to the Leader of the House is: what more lessons could be learned from the way that he tackled poverty, particularly that of children?

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