Minister, education is devolved. You peddle out the same old excuses when you have levers at your own disposal. Even though the aims of the suggested new supply teacher central portal are the right ones—and I will credit you on that—even people like the Education Workforce Council have said, in practice, it's just not going to work, given there's no incentive, no driver, to make them move over to the central system, because they're not competitive financially with the private sector offerings, and it's purely dependent on local authorities and staff signing up for it; it's just not mandatory. It's yet another sticking-plaster solution, isn't it, that will not solve the critical problem of your own making that we're facing. 

Quite frankly, it stinks of 25 years of a stale old Government that has run out of ideas and is shooting in the dark and hoping for the best. You're not attracting core subject teachers. You are not retaining support staff, and your party, the party of the unions, can't even avert teaching strikes with levers at your own disposal.

Minister, I want to know what exactly you are doing to solve this urgent, self-made, teaching staff crisis.