Building Schools for the Future Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Education
Robert Halfon
Main Page: Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)Department Debates - View all Robert Halfon's debates with the Department for Education
(13 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the BSF scheme spent £20 million on a school in Essex that closed a few years later? A local authority official said that all the money had been spent, but that they had no idea where it had gone. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that shows the failures of the BSF scheme?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend underlines the fact that under Building Schools for the Future, the capacity of local authorities to spend money as they saw fit took second place to the diktats of a centralised bureaucracy. As a result, there was inefficiency, which meant that public money was not spent as effectively as it should have been on raising standards.