Academies Bill [Lords]

Thank you, Ms Primarolo. [Laughter.] The Government are seeking to save money by cutting the Building Schools for the Future programme, but they say that this expenditure is nothing to do with those cuts. They say that they are economising on low-priority IT projects. That will provide £50 million, and they have already received 38 expressions of interest. I do not think any of us believe that that really adds up. The £50 million is only until March 2011, and because of the comprehensive spending review, no one has any idea what will happen after that. On 20 April 2010—apparently everything has changed since then, but I think it useful to draw attention to this—The Independent quoted the Secretary of State as saying:"““The capital cost””—" of new free schools, that is—"““will come from reducing spending on the government's extremely wasteful Building Schools for the Future programme by 15 per cent.””" I know that when a party gets into power things change a little, but the Secretary of State cannot really have believed that there was not a budget for him to use if he wanted to fund his free school experiment. He did not say that last year; he said it on 20 April 2010.