Sir Keir Starmer’s ex-ethics adviser is under parliamentary investigation after being accused of lying in a Lords debate about Labour’s proposed VAT on private school fees. The Mail has the story.
In an emotionally charged speech earlier this month, Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath claimed that pupils at her daughter’s “hard-pressed” state school were banned from running in their playground because there was too little space.
This, she said, was because some of its land had been sold to a neighbouring private school in a “desperate” bid to raise “extra cash”.
“My daughter pressed her face up to the wire fence, gazing at the endless fields stretched out in front of her for the benefit of the one in 15, and thought that that was not fair,” she told the Lords.
But last night Baroness Ramsey… was facing questions over whether she had “concocted a story” to mislead her fellow peers.
In a hard-hitting complaint to the House of Lords Commissioners, seen by the MoS, another parent from Dulwich in South London, near where Baroness Ramsey lives, claims the peer’s account was “fundamentally untrue”.
The complainant, a father of two who wants to remain anonymous, says he has “confirmed” there had been no such sale of land and “certainly not between the only state and independent schools which do border each other in the area”.
The complainant says Baroness Ramsey… could only have been referring to Charter School North Dulwich and the neighbouring private James Allen’s Girls’ School (JAGS).
The parent says there has been “no land transfer between the schools, and JAGS has owned its site since 1886”. A JAGS spokesman confirmed that no sale of land had taken place.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.