Gove uses urgent question on free schools to trumpet his achievements

Even though the row over free schools has nothing to do with the Labour party, it took a reasonable bet that it would benefit from joining the fray by asking an urgent question on the allegation that Michael Gove diverted £400 million from basic need funding to the free schools project.

In the Commons this afternoon, Tristram Hunt accused the Education Secretary of lacking ‘self-control and focus’ and paying for ‘pet political projects in expensive, half-empty, underperforming free schools’. He demanded that Gove confirm that he did indeed re-allocate this funding, asked him to accept the National Audit Office figures showing free school places had been allocated outside of areas of need, asked why the free school programme had been so heavily weighted towards secondary schools when there was a shortage of primary places, and argued that Gove’s leadership of his department was ‘spiralling out of control’.