Tony Baldry
Main Page: Tony Baldry (Conservative - Banbury)Department Debates - View all Tony Baldry's debates with the Department for Education
(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Michael Gove
I am grateful for that question, because it gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to Frankie Sulke, the director of children’s services and leading local official in charge of schools in Lewisham, who has been doing a great job in helping to raise standards in the local authority. However, I also think it fair to point out that whereas the last Labour Government spent £25 million on new school places in Lewisham, the present Government are spending £78 million, triple that amount. I hope that the hon. Lady will acknowledge that that has been the result of the careful economic management in which this coalition Government have engaged.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend understand the confusion felt by working parents who have striven so hard to establish a free school for five-to-18-year-olds at Heyford Park in my constituency when they hear the shadow Secretary of State for Education describe free schools as a
“vanity project for yummy mummies”?
Indeed, is not the very phrase “yummy mummy” the sort of patronising terminology that we now expect from so many members of the metropolitan elite that currently occupies the Labour Front Bench?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend has made a very good point. Last week I had an opportunity to talk to a group of parents in Ealing, thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray). Those parents were dedicated individuals from every social background and ethnicity who wanted to improve their children’s education. They were not “yummy mummies”; they were parents who cared, and we on this side of the House stand up for them.