HE is used to being grilled by politicians in the House of Commons and the press, but Wyre Forest’s MP was given a tough time by a group of schoolchildren at a question time-style event.

Conservative Mark Garnier attended St George’s Primary School, Birmingham Road, as part of a session organised by Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust’s speech and language team to help develop pupils’ speaking and English skills.

Youngsters submitted their questions, with a number chosen to be put to Mr Garnier, including “How do you collect census data from the homeless and travelling community?” and “Why do we live on Earth and not on other planets?”

Mr Garnier said: “It was good fun. The good news is I had a bit of advance warning at some of the questions – such as ‘why is the sea blue?’ – so did some homework. Other questions were insightful and searching and were around things about being an MP and what we do.

“To me, it is incredibly important schoolst get a chance to understand what we do in Parliament. As a father of three young children, I fully appreciate the importance of speech and language in communication.”

The event was organised to help raise awareness of the work the speech and language team does, supporting children who have difficulty with those skills.