The Chief Secretary said: “If you look to the future and you look to the agenda that they’re setting out I think that you do see serious risks — particularly around the early years and 16 to 19 age groups.
“Those are areas where the Conservatives, if they were left to their own devices, would do serious damage.”
He added: “You would see a lot of young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, denied the opportunity in life that as a society we should be providing.”
Tory Chancellor George Osborne has said the next government will have to make billions of pounds worth of cuts to reduce the UK’s deficit. But the Tories have also set out tax cut plans for middle-income earners, leaving critics fearing deep reductions in departmental spending.
The Prime Minister said he would protect England’s schools budget in cash terms, but per pupil funding would not keep pace with inflation.
Labour’s Tristram Hunt said the Tory pledge to protect funding actually represented a “real-terms cut”.
