Gove was ‘repeatedly’ warned over school cuts list
At the Education Select Committee and another quango on death row is in the spotlight – Tim Byles, head of Partnership for Schools.
He has said repeatedly that he advised the secretary of state not to go ahead with publishing the (as it turned out error-strewn) list of schools whose building programmes were being axed.
The lists needed “validating” he says. There were legal worries – he says he knows of a number of local authorities now considering legal action.
Michael Gove’s special adviser is keeping a beady eye on the evidence … so is Ed Balls, who seems to have been very well-informed when he repeatedly accused Mr Gove of ignoring officials’ advice in publishing the lists precipitously.
Mr Byles says he wasn’t the source for those claims. Mr Gove, at the time, said he hadn’t over-ridden official advice but I seem to recall he never actually repeated those words in the Commons.
There are 7 comments on this post
Mr Gove seems to have an arrogance that makes me fear for the future of state education. He is so determined that he knows best that I get the impression this is not the only piece of advice he has ignored and certainly not the first policy that hasn’t been fully thought through.
There is a gleam in tory eyes that they can sweep aside a load of social policies on the back of labour’s unpopularity and with the help of lib dems, whose 30 pieces of silver appears to have been nothing more than a vote on a referendum.
I fear the neediest in this country are in for a very grim time
This anti-Lib Dem feeling is baseless. If they had formed a govt with Labour, it would have been a ‘coallition of the losers’. The public would have rejected them as illegimate – and rightly so, the govt would have fallen, and the most likely result following a second election would have been a Tory majority govt.
Better for the Lib Dems to ride this storm – five years is a long time from now. The Labour leadership are so interested in the grass roots that they are rushing to the far left – much as the Tories rushed to the right when Major was ousted. In this environment, the Lib Dems have a very good chance of being the party of the centre in 2015. Far, far too early to call it Saltaire.
Your language needs tempering. Accusing the Lib Dems of being some kind of collective Judas – thereby implying an act so vile they should hang themselves for the shame of it is typical of the died in the wool socialist.
Why is that right wingers think socialists are wrong, and socialists think right wingers are evil?
Saltaire- excellent summation there!
” Far, far too early to call it Saltaire”
Their record so far in tempering the Tories is certainly unimpressive and there is nothing to make me think that a grittier front will be presented anytime soon.
Gary
Different, but related, point about the government’s addled thinking.
This from today’s Guardian: ‘A radical police reform white paper published by the home secretary, Theresa May, says that she wants to explore new ideas including creating a reserve army of volunteers prepared to act as community crime fighters along similar lines to fire reservists who help staff some neighbourhood fire stations.’
I think we should take this to its logical conclusion. I am willing to become a volunteer MP
Ministers do strategy, not detail – why does the media insist that ministers master every tiny detail? What’s the point of the civil service if ministers have to do their own admin!
As for the legal action, Tim Byle’s argument is preposterous – there were always going to be legal challenges from the disappointed. If he’d delayed, he’d just be facing a different legal challenge, not avoiding it.
How can the official in charge not know what state the school building projects were at?
If PfS had been doing its job competently they would have spreadsheet with all the school projects and their progress. It would then be straight-forward to determine which were able to be easily cancelled and which were already far enough advanced that it was worth carrying on. Any good project manager would have been able to do this.
During the election campaign, I made several comments here to the effect that if cuts were to be competently managed, a new government would need to spend six months or so understanding the situation in various departments and quangos before it could start taking action. Rather looks as if I was correct. It will be interesting to see just how much we now end up paying for legal action as various parties seek redress.
One point I didn’t pick up before, however, was the likely response of those public servants selected for culling – we can look forward to a succession of revelations as various disgruntled former employees make their way to the JobCentre. Good times for journalists?