Howard attacked for choosing Eton

Michael Howard came under fire today after declaring that the lack of decent state schools in London forced him to send his son to Eton.

The Tory leader stressed that he had attended a state grammar school, whereas Tony Blair had been a public schoolboy. But asked why parents should listen to him when he had sent his son Nicholas to Eton College in the early Nineties, he said: "I believe in choice. At the time I had to make that kind of choice for my children we were spending most of our time in London. If there had been a state school in London that I would have had the confidence in that would have given the kind of education that I had at Llanelli Grammar School, I might have made a different choice," Mr Howard said.

The Tory leader lived in Pimlico and was a minister at the time.

The nearest state school would have been Pimlico School, where Jack Straw sent his son Will. Will went on to Oxford.

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats claimed Mr Howard's remarks were a gaffe on a par with remarks by shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin. Mr Letwin elicited storm of protests when he said he would "go out on the streets and beg" rather than send his children to the local school.Liberal Democrat education spokesman Phil Willis said: "It seems Michael Howard had a bit of an Oliver Letwin moment. He must have forgotten that at the time we had had 10 years of a Tory government."

Labour's Barry Sheerman said: "This is a dreadful slur on the number and variety of good schools in London. It is also an indictment of the Tories' management of education."