MINISTERS face accusations of rigging their new flagship school-building programme to benefit key Labour seats and help the party at election time.

Figures compiled by the Tories show most of the schools built so far have been in Labour-held areas or marginal councils it is fighting to win.

 

The research comes after Labour was accused last year of plotting to protect its MPs’ seats from hospital cuts by secretly drawing up “heat mapsâ€.

The figures show that the majority of schools selected to take part in the first phase of the government’s Building Schools for the Future programme are based in local education authority areas where Labour has the greatest number of councillors.

As a result, there have been suggestions that the government is “gerrymandering†education services in both Labour-dominated and marginal seats.

 

70% of the projects have gone to Labour councils, although the party controls only 40% of local education authorities.

 

David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, said the money allocated by the government looked suspiciously as though it was deliberately targeted at Labour areas.

“We have already seen in the health service evidence of Labour special advisers trying to protect Labour areas. Now it looks as though something similar is going on in education,†said Willetts.

“This programme should be driven by the needs of our schools. It shouldn’t be driven by the needs of the Labour party.

“Gordon Brown can’t have a rhetoric that it is for all schools, when in practice they just put it into Labour areas.â€

 

its nothing new m8, i found that even at local level the ruling party looked adfter 'its own kind'... and marginals at the expense of the oposition

its nothing new m8, i found that even at local level the ruling party looked adfter 'its own kind'... and marginals at the expense of the oposition

 

Doesn't make it right for a so-called "Labour" Govt to do it though does it... As far as I'm concerned it's every bit as bad as that Bloody Tory bint who relocated people who were potential Labour voters out of Westminster (remember the Westminster Housing scandal of the 80s..?) back in the days of Thatcher... <_<

 

Wasn't this "New Labour" Govt supposed to be 'better' than the 18 years of Tory misrule we had to endure for the 80s and most of the 90s...? That's what the c/unts told us in '97 at any rate.. "Things can only get better".... Like fukk they have....

i dont dispute that scott :)

they can build all the schools they like ......... shame they wont fund the teachers to go in them!!!

Edited January 18, 200718 yr by ICR

Don't you think this may be because, after 18 years of Tory rule, many of the schools in Labour strongholds were close to collapse? I know from experience that when Thatcher and her vile lot were in.... NOTHING was spent in Wales... because she knew full well that Wales wouldn't vote her in if she was the sole candidate - simple as.

 

I think the reason for these schools being built is that they were deliberately neglected under Conservative rule... and desperately needed rebuilding.

Don't you think this may be because, after 18 years of Tory rule, many of the schools in Labour strongholds were close to collapse? I know from experience that when Thatcher and her vile lot were in.... NOTHING was spent in Wales... because she knew full well that Wales wouldn't vote her in if she was the sole candidate - simple as.

 

I think the reason for these schools being built is that they were deliberately neglected under Conservative rule... and desperately needed rebuilding.

 

 

i can support that also from first hand experience..

 

blair inherited a completely run down school infrastructure here in derby, rotting 'pre-fabs' that leaked, were being propped up with supports INSIDE the classrooms.. now every school that i am/have worked in in the last ten years have ALL had major spending on them. all the rotting pre-fabs are gone, and new brick built buildings have replaced them. also some schools have at last expanded.

 

like him or not, blair certainly has spent alot of money repairing the run down schools thatcher/major left them thats after no building work in 18 years under the tories..