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Christmas Adjournment

I thank the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) for highlighting the incompetence of Essex county council. It spreads across the whole of Essex. The issue is of national significance because it highlights how a deceitful local authority can ride roughshod over the views of the overwhelming majority—96 per cent. of respondents to the county's own consultation were against the proposals, which the county Tories dismissed as being irrelevant. President Mugabe would love to have had 96 per cent. With such arrogance, it is perhaps not surprising that the Conservatives have a minimal electoral mandate in Colchester. With the school closures a major issue, the Tories lost five seats—and control of the borough council—in May last year; and in this year's county elections they managed to hold only one seat in my constituency, seeing a majority of more than 1,000 slashed to just 19 votes. Colchester is not only the fastest-growing borough in the country, but the second largest shire district in England. Many smaller places have a unitary council, and if Colchester were a unitary authority, neither of the two threatened schools, Thomas Lord Audley at Monkwick, and Alderman Blaxill at Shrub End, would close. There is growing support in Colchester for the unitary status that Southend already has. A survey that is currently under way reveals that 80 per cent. of the population want to get away from the control of Essex county council. Such a high figure for county council distrust comes as no surprise—a report this week, to be debated by the council on Monday next week, shows that Colchester is less satisfied with the county council than any other part of Essex, except Harlow. The so-called "Overall Satisfaction with Essex County Council" survey shows that in Colchester, only 39.5 per cent. of people said that they were satisfied—and that comes from the county council's own survey. Colchester borough council wants both schools to be kept open. Tory-run Essex county council has ignored the borough council, and the huge opposition from residents within the borough, and proceeded with the closure process, but it is not too late for the Government to intervene. After all, Essex county council promised the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families that it would not shut either school. On 19 May 2008, the Secretary of State told the Commons:""Essex county council has explained that its preferred approach is to build on the existing partnership with Stanway school and to pursue a trust. We will support the council in its decision".—[ Official Report, 19 May 2008; Vol. 476, c. 3.]" Within weeks the county council broke that solemn pledge—given to the Government and given on the Floor of the House. The Secretary of State gave a genuine observation and statement, but the pledge was wilfully broken by the county council within weeks, so I hope that the Government will insist that it sticks to its original promise. The Secretary of State did not deliberately mislead the House; rather, he and his officials were misled by Essex county council. I urge him to prevail upon the county council to fulfil the promise that it gave last year and to drop the closure proposals for Alderman Blaxill and Thomas Lord Audley schools. There is clearly a problem of democratic accountability, with the passing of Government control to quangos, such as the Office of the Schools Adjudicator and Partnerships for Schools, the latter being responsible for Building Schools for the Future. Local residents and even Colchester borough council cannot get the schools adjudicator or Partnerships for Schools to look at what is clearly a miscarriage of the truth by Essex county council, so the Secretary of State and his officials must surely exercise powers of intervention. We are talking about politically motivated discrimination by the Tory-run county council, and that will be to the detriment of future children of secondary school age throughout my constituency. It will be a costly blunder, leaving others in a few years' time to pick up the consequences of the Chelmsford-based, Tory county hall vendetta against Colchester. I do not object to investment in schools in my constituency. I am, however, opposed to wasteful expenditure. Essex county council says that £130 million will be invested from Building Schools for the Future. During the consultation, however, the council quoted a figure of £100 million, and as recently as August this year official council minutes referred to £150 million. The county council has failed to give a breakdown of how it arrived at any of those figures, and Partnerships for Schools has not been given a breakdown, either. Can anyone really trust anything that Essex county council says? The people of Colchester do not. There is no guarantee that what the county council has promised the head teachers will actually materialise. The Government have spoken about super-heads, but that is meaningless unless they take action. In Colchester, we have just such a person—the inspirational Mr. Jonathan Tippett, who has transformed Stanway school into one of the best in Essex and removed Thomas Lord Audley and Alderman Blaxill schools from special measures. Last summer he led Thomas Lord Audley to its best exam results in its history, with September's year 7 intake being the largest it has seen in several years, making nonsense of the county council's claims that it is a failing school with falling numbers. One man is running those three schools in such an inspirational way that the county council should let him get on with it, and the Government should insist that he be allowed to continue this overwhelming success story at minimal cost to the public purse. In May last year, the Secretary of State informed the House that the three schools under Mr. Tippett's executive headship should go forward as a trust or a federation. Let us have happen what the Government were led to believe by Essex county council would happen as recently as last year. That would be the most cost-effective resolution to secondary school provision in Colchester. It would allow the communities of Shrub End and Monkwick to retain their local secondary schools while allowing a much better value-for-money injection of funds into secondary school education across Colchester, notably a new building for Sir Charles Lucas arts college at Greenstead, in preference to the county council's wasteful and otherwise unwanted proposals.