Part of Petitions – in the House of Commons am 1:42 pm ar 20 Rhagfyr 1991.
Mr Alan Howarth
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Education and Science)
1:42,
20 Rhagfyr 1991
I think that my hon. Friend accepts that, in the case affecting the school in his Constituency, full evidence has been put before us and that we have considered it with the utmost care. Of course, if any new evidence were presented, we would look at the circumstances again. On the wider issue of principle and policy, we are most anxious to make the enhancement of parental choice and the policy of more open enrolment a most effective reality. I hope that my hon. Friends will recognise, however, that it is a time-honoured and integral part of our education system that there should be local education authorities which have discretion to manage affairs within their own areas, and we have to consider carefully what balance we should strike between the pursuit of the Government's strategy of enhancing parental choice—something to which the overwhelming Majority of local education authorities are committed—and the preservation of proper authority for LEAs in their own areas.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
In a general election, each Constituency chooses an MP to represent them. MPs have a responsibility to represnt the views of the Constituency in the House of Commons. There are 650 Constituencies, and thus 650 MPs. A citizen of a Constituency is known as a Constituent