THE Labour candidate for Harlow at the next General Election is still demanding answers from Harlow MP and minister of state for education over Harlow’s crumbling schools.

Chris Vince said: “It is now over a month since parents were shocked to hear that pupils would not start school on time as the newly built Sir Fredrick Gibberd College (SFG) building was too dangerous to enter.

In a separate scandal we have since heard that four additional schools in Harlow, with over a hundred more across the UK, have been forced to close or partially close due to crumbling concrete (RAAC) yet we’ve still had no answers from the town’s education minister on either subject. So, let’s try again and see if Mr Halfon will shoulder his responsibility as Harlow’s current MP and a government minister and answer some questions.

Who contracted the now bankrupt company which was commissioned to build SFG and the business who signed off the project?

Why did the Conservative Government cancel Labour’s school rebuilding program in 2010?

Why did the Conservative Government refuse to give Essex additional funding to tackle the problem of RAAC in schools in 2012?

What we do know is this Conservative schools scandal is going to cost the British tax payer hundreds of millions. SFG cost £27m to build and could cost even more to demolish and rebuild. The cost of RAAC replacement is unknown. Mr Halfon is trying to distance himself from the debacle by promising to ask questions himself.  Once again, he seems to forget he is a minister in the Department of Education and in the centre of the scandal.

“It shouldn’t take him weeks, let alone months, to get the answers from his own department that the people of Harlow not only expect but deserve”.