Schools minister 'requested move'

Former schools minister Lord Adonis has insisted it was his choice to be moved to the Department for Transport in Gordon Brown's reshuffle.

The peer has been closely involved with Labour's education policy since 1997 and is regarded as a mastermind of the academy schools programme.

The decision to move him was interpreted by opposition parties as a sign that academies, a flagship reform of former prime minister Tony Blair, was under threat.

But Lord Adonis told Sky News' Sunday Live programme it was his decision "to move on" and tackle the "big strategic issues" in transport.

"I have been an education minister or an adviser for 10 years and all of the big reforms I've been pioneering were either implemented, or, in the case of academies - which is the biggest of them all - now deeply embedded," he said.

"Ten years with academies, which were my passion as a reformer, now deeply embedded, I thought it was time to move on.

"I was actually presumptuous enough to say to Gordon Brown that if there was an opening in the transport department that was a particular interest of mine because of big strategic issues that were coming up in transport."

Lord Adonis said the most significant issue was a potential high speed rail line linking London and the north.

He said: "The art of doing these jobs, if you are doing them in the public interest, is to identify those big things which need to be done for the country and address them squarely, even if they are controversial and that will be the case, I know, with the rail reforms."