TREASURY minister Stephen Timms dropped into a Basingstoke school to support the general election campaign of Labour candidate Paul Harvey.

Mr Harvey, who is seeking to overturn the Conservative majority of 880 in the Basingstoke constituency, accompanied the minister on a tour of Winklebury Junior School conducted by headteacher Eddie Izzard.

Mr Timms - the financial secretary to the Treasury - visited different classes and met with members of the school council, who told him about the ideas they had come up with which had been put into practice.

After the visit, he said: "There have been real improvements in the last eight years. Here, for example, the school has an electronic whiteboard and a good ICT suite.

"If you look at the proportion of 11-year-olds across the country meeting the standard, it has leaped up.

"None of these things would have been possible without the investment from the Government."

Mr Timms, who went to school in Farnborough, said he agreed that more had to be done.

He said: "The headteacher was saying it is a 40-year-old building.

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in March a programme of replacing school buildings and I would hope this school could be part of that."

The minister, part of whose responsibility covers pensions, said Conservative pension plans announced on Monday did not add up.

At the conclusion of the visit, Mr Timms and Mr Harvey also did some canvassing among parents who arrived to collect their children.

First published: Wednesday, April 20, 2005