UK Foreign Secretary calls on Enfield voters to support Conservative candidate at next election
Nick de Bois’s campaign for Turkish GCSE and A level exams is why people in Enfield North should vote for him next month, Boris Johnson has said.
The Foreign Secretary said during a campaign visit to Enfield town centre that Mr de Bois had been a “passionate MP” doing a “fantastic” job when he was Conservative MP for the constituency between 2010 and 2015.
“I remember seeing him campaign for Turkish modern languages in our schools, he won that campaign,” Mr Johnson told Haber on Tuesday morning.
“Secondly, this a guy who pioneered the idea of jobs clubs and jobs fairs for young people.
“And the third thing is that Nick de Bois is the guy who’s tried to make their lives safer by campaigning for the Enfield law so if you’re caught twice going equipped with a bladed weapon then you will face a custodial sentence. He successfully got that through parliament.”
Secondary school exams in the Turkish language faced being abolished in early 2015 when the OCR examination board decided low student numbers meant they were too expensive to run.
The decision, which came weeks before the 2015 general election, forced candidates from Turkish-speaking areas to lobby for the GCSE and A level exams to be retained.
Mr de Bois lobbied Nicky Morgan, then the education secretary, to guarantee the status of the exams in the event of a Conservative victory.
A similar guarantee was issued by Labour.
The Enfield North constituency is home to large numbers of Turkish and Kurdish-speaking people and will be a key battleground between Labour and the Conservatives in the 8 June general election.
Joan Ryan has been the MP since 1997 except for a five-year spell after 2010, when she lost the seat to Nick de Bois. She regained it from him in 2015 and is standing for Labour again in this election.
