Update on free laptops for kids

More than 130,000 families have applied for free laptops and broadband internet access for their kids - just three weeks after the Government launched its giveaway scheme.
Gerry is urging Bradford families who qualify for the scheme to get signed up as soon as possible.
To date 131,938 application packs have been requested and 14,671 filled in and returned, with 5,309 applications approved so far.
Each low-income family whose application is given the green light gets a Barclaycard, which can be used for a one-off transaction worth £528 specifically to buy the equipment at an approved supplier.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Schools Secretary Ed Balls launched the Home Access programme last month, and pledged that 270,000 laptops would be distributed by the March 2011 deadline on a first-come-first served basis.
For more information on how parents can apply for a Home Access Grant call 0333 200 1004 or visit the Home Access website to get more information and request an application form.

Cold weather help for pensioners

This winter our Labour Government has paid out more than £200 million in cold weather payments to help pensioners on Pension Credit and vulnerable people cope with the extra cost of heating their homes during the bitter weather.
Each cold weather payment this year is £25 per week, almost three times what it was previously, for every seven day period where the temperature drops below freezing (0°C). So far this winter four cold weather payments have been triggered in this area providing an extra £100 towards the fuel bills of those who need it most. This is in addition to the winter fuel payment of £250 (or £400 for the over 80s) for pensioners.
Labour now spends around 45 times more helping pensioners keep warm than the last Tory government spent. In the 1980s, Tory Minister Edwina Currie told pensioners to wear woolly hats and long johns in cold weather. Do you really want to go back to that?

New schools for Bradford South

On Friday of last week (Oct 2.) I unveiled a plaque to commemorate the official opening of the new Appleton Academy in Wyke.

The new Academy will be a fantastic asset to the local community in Wyke and will provide first-class facilities for pupils and staff. It's going to help drive up standards of attainment and will be yet another brand new secondary school in Bradford South.

Sponsored by Bradford College and named after Bradford-born, Nobel Prize winning physicist Sir Edward Appleton, the through-age school (3 - 16-year-olds) has opened in the existing buildings of the former High Fernley Primary School and Wyke Manor School, but it will move to a new £23 million building on the High Fearnley School site in September 2011.

Funding for the new Academy was agreed by the Government following a campaign that involved me, Labour Councillors, parents, staff and governors of Wyke Manor school.

Thanks to investment by a Labour Government more than 4,000 schools will have been built or modernised by July next year – the biggest sustained period of school building since Victorian times. Bradford South has benefited from Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme with new schools already open at Buttershaw and Tong, building underway at Grange Technology College, and plans for the new Appleton building advancing. Since 1997, every school has benefited from increased investment, but the Tories are committed to cutting £4.5 billion from Labour’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. That is the same strategy that landed us in the dark times characterised by newspaper headlines about "Bradford's crumbling schools".