- guardian.co.uk, Monday 13 March 2000 17.54 GMT
Labour has fielded two defences against Nick Davies's captivating articles. Jeff Hanna (Letters, March 9) admitted that the calculations behind the government's record on education spending are electoral not mathematical. He accuses Nick Davies of failing "to acknowledge [the government's] in-built restraint on spending [based on] the electorate's desire for low taxes".
The secretary of state's defence (Comment, March 10) was notable for its omissions. Given every opportunity to confirm that spending will be £19bn higher in 2002 than it was in 1998, he failed to do so. I hope the government will never again repeat that now-discredited number.
We are discovering ever more glaring discrepancies between government expenditure plans and spending outcomes. As this parliament moves into its latter stages, parents, pupils and teachers are entitled to some explanation of the present grim reality, rather than being given more visions of a future that never seems to arrive.
I won't revisit the telling statistics in Nick Davies's article, many of which were based on Liberal Democrat parliamentary questions. But it is a lie that our election pledge would have delivered less than Labour has done. If revenues from 1p on income tax had been added to current spending, £900m more would be invested in education in 2002 than under Labour's plans. If we were to join in Labour's mathematical conjuring we would call it £6.6bn higher - but that's a mistake we do not intend to make.
Phil Willis MP
Lib Dem education spokesman
