John Denham

Welcome to the website of John Denham

John Denham has been representing Southampton Itchen in Parliament since 1992. 

He is currently Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. 

On this website you'll find news about what John's been up to in both Southampton and Westminster. 

You can get in touch with John on constituency issues by following the link below.

 

Our children deserve better

The new government’s decision to scrap Southampton’s secondary school building programme is devastating. It will harm our children’s education and, in the short term, cost hundreds of construction jobs.

Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme gave us the chance to offer all our children 21st century schools. It’s what they deserve. But it was always about more than better buildings. It was an essential part of the effort to improve the city’s school performance. The whole reorganisation of secondary schools which started two years ago depends on this investment.

Now we have schools like Bitterne Park left too small for the number of children hoping to go there. Sholing Technology College could agree to go co-ed because it was promised new buildings. The difficult merger of Grove Park and Woolston was sweetened by the promise of a new school. Chamberlayne Park and St Georges are two of the fastest improving schools in the country. Their rebuild was just reward for all the efforts their teachers had made. Other schools including Woodlands were getting an ICT upgrade. In the election just a few weeks ago, David Cameron told the Echo that Southampton’s BSF programme would go ahead. What a huge promise to break!

There was no need for this. Labour’s plan to halve the deficit left enough money for the BSF programme. Even the Tory chancellor says he won’t cut Labour’s planned capital spending. But the LibDem Tory Coalition wants to spend the money promised to our schools on other things – on academies in prosperous communities, free schools run by profit making companies and things that have nothing to do with education.  

Our children still need the investment. We don’t whether there will still be any money at all for schools. But as long as there is a glimmer of hope the whole city must come together and fight for the largest share of whatever is left. Parents, schools, local employers, councillors and the city council all to make sure that every visiting minister, every visiting civil servant is lobbied hard. We need to leave them in no doubt how badly we’ve been let done and how much our schools still need the investment