The education and childcare minister Elizabeth Truss revealed during Parliamentary questions that the figures have been deleted as part of a ‘data cleanse’ exercise.
However, the Labour party claims that the Government is trying to hide the truth about the number of Sure Start centres that have closed since it came into power in 2010.
In answer to a question posed by Labour MP Harriet Harman in which she asked for recent figures on the number of children’s centres in each local authority area, Ms Truss replied, ‘My department has carried out a data-cleansing and survey exercise to assure me of the level of confidence in figures provided by local authorities on the Sure Start database.’
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