Burnham says ‘fairness premium’ is Clegg trying to save face

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 this morning, shadow education secretary Andy Burnham suggested that Nick Clegg’s “fairness premium” announcement was designed to save face after another difficult week for the Liberal Democrats:

“There is no disagreement here about the importance of investing in young children. But I fear this is another rushed out announcement….this is a rushed out announcement on a Friday, to help Mr Clegg out of a political hole.”

“It comes out of nowhere after a hard week for the Lib Dems. He can’t talk about fairness when on a Friday when on Tuesday he was backing cuts to university budgets and increases in tuition fees.”

Burnham also defended Labour’s record, saying that he is proud of what Labour did on education in government:

“We fixed the leaky roofs, we invested in new IT for schools, we put additional money in education. We set ourselves really challenging targets and lifted hundreds of children out of poverty….We didn’t achieve everything we wanted, but by god I am proud of what we did do.”