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Building Schools for the Future

My Lords, first, I should express a possible conflict of interest as the vice-chairman of an educational foundation that underwrites two schools, or at least collaborates with the Government in that, in the East End of London. The Minister may remember that almost before he had drawn his first breath as a Minister, before the Recess last summer, I asked questions about the status of one of those schools in the borough of Tower Hamlets that had made a great deal of effort to get itself into the right position to have its Better Schools for the Future programme agreed. At that time, despite my asking him on two separate occasions, the Minister was not able to answer my questions because, as he honestly said—he is a man who always says what he honestly feels—he did not know the answer. That was last summer. I expressed on that occasion anxiety that the foundation of which I am vice-chair had already incurred £5 million-worth of expenditure to acquire a piece of land and was incurring significant legal costs as it sought to process the application. Everything was on hold; everything went into abeyance; nobody knew what was happening through the autumn. We worked through the Christmas holidays with lawyers—our legal fees have now accumulated to nearly £500,000—and, just last week, I signed off an agreement with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for it to hold £7.4 million on behalf of our trust against the day when, or if, the Government allow the £13 million that we still hope to get from the Building Schools for the Future programme because we were one of the schools that was in the end spared last summer. Is the Minister able at this stage to enlighten me as to whether we can go ahead, because we still do not know? Will he agree that the word used of the BSF by the Government to describe it, inefficient, happens to be exactly the word that the trust of which I am vice-chair thinks applies to the Government to describe the way in which they have handled this matter?