Labour scaremongering over schools' closure

Stockton Labour’s cynical scaremongering plumbed new depths this week with Labour MP, Alex Cunningham, attempting to goad Michael Gove with the suggestion that a decision to proceed with the Ingleby Manor Free School would result in surplus secondary school places across the borough and the closure of some schools (read the Northern Echo's report here).

Alex Cunningham MP scaremongering in the Commons

The suggestion that a new secondary school within the borough, a school which will ultimately, but not for a number of years, accommodate 900 pupils will result in school closures is demonstrably absurd.

Perhaps Alex Cunningham and Labour are oblivious to the fact that the Labour-dominated planning committee has already granted approvals to a number of planning applications that will see thousands of new homes (some presumably housing children) built across the borough?

Perhaps they are oblivious to a number of current and anticipated planning applications which, following the usual rubber-stamping process by Stockton's Labour council, could see hundreds, if not thousands, more homes gifted planning approval?

Or perhaps, in Alex’s craven desire to secure cheap headlines, he has overlooked the fact that the borough’s primary schools are bursting at the seams already and Stockton’s Labour council is rapidly running out of ideas and options as to how we can accommodate an ever increasing number of primary school age children?

A Labour MP’s ignorance of facts, either unintentionally or deliberately, is not news. Indeed, it is par for the course.

However, to deliberately try to frighten residents, not just in Yarm and Eaglescliffe but across the entire borough, with unfounded talk of school closures is nothing short of outrageous. That he is referred to in Parliament as the ‘honourable member’ is the most laughable misnomer I have come across in a very long time.

If there is one crumb of consolation to come from this sorry episode it is the fact that outstanding schools such as Conyers will continue to go from strength to strength for decades after opportunists like Alex Cunningham MP have been long forgotten.