A Penrith school has been accused of being politically partisan by a General Election candidate.
Conservative Mark Jenkinson, who is vying for the Penrith and Solway seat, made the comment as he claimed he had not been invited to a hustings at the town’s Queen Elizabeth Grammar School yesterday, Thursday June 27.
He was invited to an event for pupils and parents — and he said when the decision was made to change it to a public event, he was not notified by the school and was not invited.
However, he declined the original invitation on May 26.
The email said: “I’m afraid it’s simply too close to the election for me to be able to commit — the campaign is short enough as it is.”
Mr Jenkinson released a statement on his page on social media platform Facebook, saying he had not been asked to attend and accusing the school of “partisan political activity”.
He told the Herald: “For absolute clarity I have never been invited to, or declined an invitation to, a public hustings. They made a later decision to make the hustings public, an email thread provided to me by a potential constituent makes that clear.
“They had no further discussion with me, and did not invite me to a public hustings. Had they chosen to do so, we could have discussed security arrangements.”
His statement on Facebook said: “Unfortunately, my attendance at other in-person hustings has not been possible because of the organisers’ inability to guarantee my safety. On this occasion I haven’t even been given the chance to have the discussion.”
A QEGS spokesman added that the school emailed Mr Jenkinson yesterday morning, after his statement had been issued on social media platform Facebook.
He said: “His view is that the event was misadvertised to him, despite it being described as ‘to both students during school hours and parents at an after-school hustings’.
“While initially the event had been planned for our parents, we subsequently received a request from Churches Together in Penrith to share the event more widely and, as we had not received many requests for tickets, this felt entirely sensible as we are all part of the same Penrith community.”
Mr Jenkinson has not attended any other in-person hustings events due to security concerns — he said “organisers had not been able to guarantee his safety” and he had no access to protection officers as Parliament has been dissolved.
He added there had been a specific Penrith hustings threat from a now convicted criminal. Mr Jenkinson’s statement added that he prided himself on being accessible, visible and proactive.
He provided the statement he posted on social media to be read out at the hustings. He said: “It is with deep regret that I wasn’t invited to this hustings, and I’m disappointed to see the school involve itself in partisan political activity in this way.
“Public hustings are an important forum in which candidates are given the opportunity to air the policies and views.”
The school said: “We are well aware of our statutory responsibilities to be politically neutral and take this very seriously. We have a long-held stance of political neutrality.
“When Mark declined our invitation, we reached out to the candidate in a neighbouring constituency to ensure all views were represented and we are grateful that John Stevenson, candidate for Carlisle, agreed to attend the student session for the Conservative Party, to ensure we have the full spectrum of political views.
“Unfortunately, none of the Conservative representatives we have contacted were able to attend the public event after school.
“Political education is vital in schools and it is something we take very seriously at QEGS, both in ensuring our students are informed and in ensuring they are exposed to a range of views in order to arrive at their own informed decisions.”
Mr Jenkinson said people in the constituency could ask him questions directly via email at [email protected]
Last week, the Rev Charles Hope, of St John’s Church in Keswick, criticised Mr Jenkinson for declining to attend hustings in the town.
Mr Hope said that he had offered Mr Jenkinson other means of participating in the hustings other than face-to-face but he had heard nothing in reply. He said that he had offered to shift the meeting online and had also asked Mr Jenkinson if he could nominate another person to stand in his place.
Pollsters project that Labour will win the new Penrith and Solway seat. YouGov say Labour is likely to take 36% of the vote; Conservatives 32%: Reform UK 16.4%; Liberal Democrats 7.6%; the Green Party 7.1% and other 0.6%. Electoral Calculus predicts that Labour has a 90% chance of winning the seat, and Conservatives 4%. Reform UK has a 5% chance and other candidates 1%.
