MP desperately “scraping the barrel” to claim religious discrimination against Catholic schools because they didn’t get cash

Worcester MP Mike Foster has claimed that the local education department has discriminated against Catholic schools in the area by leaving them out of fund allocations. Mr Foster had obtained figures showing that the 17 Catholic schools in his constituency had not received any of the Section 106 funding allocated to schools in the past five years. This is money given by building developers to compensate for the adverse impact their developments have on local facilities.

Since 2004, the council has spent £1.8m of such money on schools in Worcestershire but none of them were Catholic schools.

But the Council points out that there are 226 schools in the area and only 30 of them have received any Section 106 funding. It was pure coincidence that the Catholic schools weren’t included – neither were 196 non-Catholic schools.

The council pointed out that which schools get the Section 106 cash was entirely determined by whether they were affected by the developments that were being compensated for.

Mr Foster pointed out that some Church of England schools had benefited from the money. He said “Either there is blatant religious discrimination being undertaken by the county council, or there is a very unlikely coincidence. What has the county council got against these schools?”

Mr Foster failed to mention that last year the Council had paid £1.5m for a new sports hall at a Catholic High School in Hagley.

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, said: “Mr Foster’s accusation of religious discrimination is scraping the barrel. Catholic schools are no more entitled to this money than any other school that is not affected by adverse building development. He should substantiate his claims by pointing to specific schools denied compensation to which he thinks they should have been entitled.”