Labour has hit back angrily after Conservative Leader Andrew Cumpsty repeated on the Reading East Conservatives website a smear about Labour's funding for schools that Labour demonstrated to be wrong almost a month earlier.
The Conservative claim leaflet launching their Manifesto that 'it is Labour that has failed to properly fund local schools' fell apart when Jon Hartley pointed out that in the last eleven years Labour had invested £125 million in rebuilding the crumbling schools left by the Tories, and that per pupil funding had increased in real terms by 56.8% for primary pupils and 39.1% for secondary.
Now the Conservative leader has republished exactly the same words on his website, which Cllr. Hartley says shows just a total contempt for the truth. "We posted a preliminary figure on our website for Labour's capital investment in our schools on 19 October 2009 and a final figure, plus details of per pupil funding was posted on 24 March, which is when we issued our press release. And yet on 16 April, Cllr. Cumpsty makes a brazen attach on Labour and repeats the very same smear."
"There are other spurious Tory claims too. Like the claim that the Tories will protect Sure Start when it has been attacked by Cllr. Mark Ralph, Cllr. Cumpsty's own spokesman on education, and everybody knows George Osborne has refused to ring-fence the Sure Start budget. Cllr. Cumpsty, like David Cameron, is just making it up as he goes along. He ought to be ashamed of himself."
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