10:30am Monday 26th July 2010
By Andrew Ffrench
ABOUT 500 people packed into Abingdon Guildhall to quiz Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg in an hour-long question-and-answer se-ssion on Saturday.
Mr Clegg said he understood the disappointment of parents after the town’s Larkmead School, in Faringdon Road, missed out on a £30m revamp when the Government scrap-ped the Building Schools for the Future programme.
He said: “The programme was £10bn over budget, took three years for a single brick to be laid, and was very consultant-heavy.
“We need to take a pause but we will carry on investing in school buildings.
“I think people knew in their hearts of hearts that we could not carry on spending money we did not have.
“I would have loved to come into power with the coffers overflowing.”
He added: “I have been getting Whitehall cabin fever. I have not had the opportunity to get out and about to hear what we are doing right and what many people think we are doing wrong.
“These kind of meetings show that it is genuinely a different kind of Government, however difficult the decisions we are having to make.
“We constantly want to hear from you and learn from you about how we could do things better or differently.”
Mr Clegg added that there had been “no vetting” of the audience and reminded people that he was not a “walking encyclopaedia”.
The questions came thick and fast on a variety of subjects, but Mr Clegg was able to give detailed responses to the vast majority of the town’s inquisitors.
One woman surprised Mr Clegg by asking when the cuts were going to start, so she could budget for a reduction in housing benefit, which could affect her third trip to China.
The Lib Dem leader got everyone laughing when he replied: “Nobody in Government wants to stand in the way of your third trip to China.”
He added that the coalition government was trying to produce a budget for the long-term, as opposed to those produced by Labour which were designed to capture headlines.
“There has been an economic firestorm in Europe and if we did not make announcements early the markets could force us to make cuts,” Mr Clegg added.
Other hot topics covered included a review of higher education and the number of unemployed young people.
Dr Evan Harris, former Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon and the new constituency’s MP, Conservative Nicola Blackwood, both attended.
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