Football Clubs

I live in Exeter and my local labour MP is Ben Bradshaw. Now then Exeter schools were in a terrible state and Ben made representations to get all five rebuilt under the PFI scheme and the contracts were given to Mowlem, who subsequently went out of business. The capital cost was about GBP98 million, but the cost over the the twenty five years will be GBPabout 310 million.

We also had a football club, Exeter City, which went into administration with massive debts. Now then our Ben also made representation to the Inland Revenue to have the club's debt either massively reduced or written off completely. This is an appalling state of affairs. The inland revenue should not have allowed this debt to accumulate and it should not have been treated in the way that it was. It was done to give our MP a good feel to the electorate.

We have always to look at what an MP does in his constituency. I regard this type of affair as what I would call pork barrel politics.