Anne Main holds Minster responsible for LSC funding fiasco

During a debate on the funding fiasco in post-16 education yesterday Anne Main challenged the Minister over his Department's failure to recognise the problems in the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

During a debate on the funding fiasco in post-16 education yesterday, Anne Main, MP for St Albans, challenged the Minister over his Department's failure to recognise the problems in the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

During the debate, Anne said:"To say that the Government have no role in this is totally wrong. The Minister may remember his response to my inquiry as to why on earth we were in this state. His answer was that the shortfall was caused by more people taking up the post-16 education than had been budgeted for. When was that budget deficit recognised? The budget was set on 2 March; why did no one notice then that there were far more pupils than funding had been provided for? Has the Minister done anything to investigate why we are in this position?"

Upon leaving the chamber, Anne said:"It was very interesting that, during the debate, the Minister admitted that his officials had known about the deficit in funding, but said he had not known until after the schools had been informed of the budget.

Frankly, I find it staggering and difficult to believe that a Minister did not know what is going on in his own Department and that officials are being allowed to act independently in this way.

Talking to colleagues after the debate, we all agreed that this didn't stack up, and that we will keep pursuing this matter to try to get to the bottom of it as somebody needs to be held responsible. With that in mind, I made a request following Prime Minister's Questions for a further debate and a statement to the house on this matter.""