Jack Straw doesn't know where West Lancashire is

Jack Straw listed successful community payback schemes in Northamptonshire when answering a question from local MP, Rosie Cooper about schemes in West Lancashire on Tuesday this week.

Adrian Owens, Conservative General Election candidate today expressed his amazement about the blunder. “Jack Straw represents a Lancashire constituency. I would have thought that he would have had an elementary grasp of geography, but to hail community payback projects from hundreds of miles away underlines in an amusing way how detached from governing effectively the Labour party have become. What’s equally worrying is that Rosie Cooper, didn’t challenge the minister on his inaccurate answer at the time.”

Adrian pointed out that this was not the first time that government ministers had blundered in parliamentary answers concerning West Lancashire. In June 2007, Education minister, Jim Knight was left red-faced after claiming that half of West Lancashire’s school children don’t speak English! See the coverage here.

Adrian concluded, “Ultimately it is the incompetence of this Labour government which should sweep them out of office. It’s not surprising that they have failed to address adequately the many issues we face when the MP is obviously struggling to put West Lancashire on the map and her ministers seem to have little understanding of West Lancashire.”

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