Interview: Clive Betts MP

I think it was last year that I interviewed Clive Betts MP for my school magazine with a friend of mine. However, we never actually got the interview in the magazine so I'm going to put it here.

Q. How can we, as a school, improve?

A. "You've already improved so much as a school from the last time I was where, you're in the tom 100 schools in the UK now, before you were in special measures. Attendance is up, exams scores are better and look at the new building and the refurbishments on this one! Overall, you've done well as a school...I'm not sure how you could improve more apart from sticking to whatever it is that you're all doing.

Q. What can we do about bullying? 

A. There are quite a few types of bullying, it all happens at every school, whether that be physical bullying, verbal bullying or on the internet. People need to learn, to do so, there needs to be a clear policy for them to follow.

Q. Tips on being an MP?

A. To be an MP, you need to be interested in current affairs and politics, you need to take notice of problems, not only in the UK, but all over the world. a desire to make things work is essential and to want to make a difference. First, to help know what is happening, read the newspaper, though, they do sometime exaggerate. When you have your qualifications, you need to join a political party, whichever one suits you best.

Q. What is the government doing with the money?

A. Taxes have been raised and the majority of it is being spent on the NHS and schools. This is because money is important for both of these. We do this to give children and young people the best quality of life but some do slip through the gaps I'm afraid.
The money is also going to poor countries, for clean water mostly. However, the money isn't always spent properly.

Q. Are we going to get another tax rise?

A. There will most likely be tax rises on cigarettes and alcohol but pubs are an important community asset so there won't be much of a tax rise on alcohol. There will be a larger tax rise on cigarettes due to them being extremely bad for the health and it will hopefully persuade smokers to cut down or even stop. To help with that, the packets will also be plain as to lower the appeal of buying a packet. Fuel, it's already ridiculously expensive, so should it be taxed further? 

Q. David Cameron or Nick Clegg?

 A. With the two leaders, so to speak, it's like a tennis match. One fires a question to the other and the other replies with a question, like the tennis ball.
When the two question each other, they answer a different question.

It's now that I notice, that Mr. Betts didn't exactly answer my last question...so it must be true, MP's don't answer the question you ask, they answer a different one. This must because either, they don't like the pressure or just don't like the question.

Please take into account that I got the answers from the notes that my headteacher took during the interview so the answers may not be completely correct.

After the interview, John (the other interviewer) and I were invited down to House of Commons by Clive Betts; he said we may have been able to interview other MP's too,  and we were actually organising it. However, it turned out to be too expensive on the train and it would take too long to get down to London by coach so we never got to go down.