Building Schools for the Future
Debate between Mary Macleod and Derek Twigg(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Derek Twigg
I do not try to pretend that the BSF programme was perfect. If the hon. Lady is patient, I shall deal with some of those issues later in my speech. She raises an important point.
It seems abundantly clear that many of the assertions made by the Secretary of State in his announcement of 5 July are plain wrong. First, his boast about the Government’s determination
“to make opportunity more equal”
and
“to help the most disadvantaged pupils”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 47.]
is laughable—well, it would be laughable if the consequences of his policies were not so tragically devastating to communities such as those in Halton that I represent. I fail to see how targeting the second smallest unitary authority in England, which serves the country’s 30th most deprived area, with the worst cuts to the BSF programme in the north-west will bring any benefit to the disadvantaged. Will the Minister explain how the cull of 100 BSF projects, with a further 21 under discussion, in the relatively deprived region of the north-west—over half the projects affected are in Cheshire and Merseyside—constitutes proportionate, fair and decent action by the Government?
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the Labour party had returned to government, it would have cut BSF funding?
Derek Twigg
We were committed to the programme as it stood, but a myth has been put around by the Government. With the loss of five new schools in Wigan, 10 in Blackpool, 25 in Liverpool and 27 across Greater Manchester, the only aspect of equality in the policies of the Secretary of State is the collective discrimination against the schools and colleges of the north-west. I also wish to challenge the Secretary of State’s implicit view that the BSF programme is incompatible with prioritising the raising of school standards in pupil attainment and behaviour through the quality of teaching and learning.