Talking Balls | 3 May 2010

The parties’ education spokesmen are debating on the Daily Politics shortly and so Ed Balls will be singing his favourite tune, investment versus cuts. In a classic Balls move, he is alleging that the Tories plan to make £6 billion of efficiency savings across government would lead to 14,000 teachers losing their jobs. Balls gets to this figure by assuming that £1.1 billion of these savings would come from the schools’ budget and that £860 million of this would come from staff redundancies. This is very odd as Balls himself says there are £950 million of efficiency savings that can be made in schools and presumably these savings don’t include laying off teachers.

Balls is also claiming that the Tories plan for free schools would cost an extra £1.8 billion. But seeing as under the Tory plan the money would follow the pupil, it wouldn’t cost the taxpayer more.