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Cabinet pays visit (From The Advertiser Series)
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Cabinet pays visit
9:00am Friday 26th February 2010
HISTORY was made as Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his senior ministers held a Cabinet meeting in Durham.
The meeting – the first time the Cabinet has met in the North-East and one of just a handful of times it has met outside of London – took place in the unlikely setting of a locker room at Durham Johnston School.
The Prime Minister visited its new building in Crossgate Moor following a £24m rebuilding programme. Then, after spending the morning taking part in a series of ministerial visits across the North- East, the politicians returned to the city for the historic meeting.
Mr Brown said: “It is a real privilege for us to be here.”
The Prime Minister and senior colleagues met invited members of the public for a question-and-answer session at the school, before getting down to business behind closed doors.
The meeting was timed to coincide with the staging of the annual conference of the North-East Economic Forum across the city at Ramside Hall Hotel.
Durham MP Roberta Blackman-Woods, herself a governor at Durham Johnston School, described the news as a real coup for the city.
She said: “This is a great and historic day for Durham regardless of your political standpoint. I am delighted the Cabinet chose our city to hold the meeting.
She added: “The Cabinet’s North-East visit shows how committed Labour is to this region.
However, the decision to take the Cabinet on the road was criticised by the Conservatives.
Last week’s visit is estimated to have directly cost taxpayers around £80,000 and perhaps twice as much again in additional policing.
Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said: “People will wonder exactly what they got for that money and probably in Durham people will wish that the city had been given the money rather than the cabinet meeting.
“It is important cabinet ministers are out and about, but as it is carried out by the current Government, this will be an expensive stunt.”
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Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the science labs of Durham Johnston School with pupils Lucy Henderson, left, and Shentong Wang
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