If anybody was in any doubt about the damage to local frontline services of the Con Dem coalition’s cuts, then this week’s announcement to scrap Ealing’s “Building Schools for the future” (BSF) programme has revealed the true horror of the Con Dem axe.

All their duplicity about cutting out waste has been laid bare for all to see. These cuts are deep and they will have a real impact on frontline delivery of education services to our children.

It is also important to be clear that these cuts were not unavoidable as the ConDem coalition is arguing. The deficit has to be reduced but not at the rate and to the level the coalition is working towards. The current cuts are too deep and too fast and will at best cause economic stagnation and at worst a double dip recession. They are driven by the Tory anti state, anti public service ideology. Labour on the other hand had a credible plan to reduce the deficit by half during the next four years and to protect projects like BSF.

Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education has with a stroke of his pen snatched away from Ealing’s children 15 new school builds, refurbishments and improvements. It is a shameful decision that will condemn a generation of local children to inadequate school buildings, temporary classrooms and overcrowded classes.

Ealing was just weeks away from reaching “financial close” on its £305m BSF programme, having selected a development partner, Balfour Beatty and invested significant time and money on the scheme but has now seen it cruelly scrapped. The only hope left is that our two sample schools, Cardinal Wiseman and Dormers Wells High School in my constituency get a reprieve from the ConDem axe. I have contacted the Secretary of State but at the moment it is unclear whether Dormers Wells and Cardinal Wiseman will survive.   

The ConDem coalition claim that the BSF scheme is bureaucratic and flawed but their alternative of allowing schools to be built in office blocks is an insult to our children. BSF would have transformed the majority of our High Schools with state of the art 21 st century buildings, new ICT facilities, extra classrooms and Special Educational Needs provision. They have now been snatched away from us. Don’t tell me that all Political Parties are the same. This is a deeply depressing decision for Ealing’s schools and our children that need them for their futures.