Bridget Phillipson’s childhood poverty claims challenged by former neighbours

Bridget Phillipson has been accused by a former neighbour of ’exaggerating’ her claims of a poverty-stricken upbringing.

The intervention comes after the Education Secretary described The Mail on Sunday’s revelation that her family made a 900 per cent profit selling their council house, as a ’manufactured smear’.

Ms Phillipson, 42, told Times Radio their property in Washington, Tyne and Wear, was in a ’terrible state,’ with no upstairs heating and rotten windows when her mother bought it under right-to-buy in 1990.

She added: ’There was no prospect of there being any improvement in our living conditions unless [my mother Clare] took that decision to buy our home because of a sustained failure to invest in that house.’

But others who lived on the street at the time have disputed Ms Phillipson’s account, insisting the council houses were properly heated and well maintained.

Tracey Morgan, 61, has lived a few doors from the former Phillipson home since 1989, a year before the family bought their council house. 

’The upstairs rooms had electric bar heaters, and downstairs rooms had radiators heated by back boilers,’ she said.

Coal-fired back boilers provided hot water for washing and central heating. Ms Morgan also said she could not recall rotting windows on the street, saying there were sash windows at the time.

However, she said the local Sunderland Council did maintain the properties, and in 1996, all council tenants were moved out of their homes for four months so that the houses could be renovated.

Ms Morgan added: ’I remember seeing Clare and her daughter, I thought they looked comfortable, and not poor.’

One neighbour, who did not want to be named, said she was sceptical of the minister’s claims.

’I think a lot of this stuff is being fabricated. These are old houses, but as long as I’ve lived here it’s been fine,’ she said.

Clare Phillipson is believed to have moved to the street in the early 1980s, with her daughter living there since her birth in 1983. 

Ms Phillipson bought a former council house three doors away in 2006 with her then partner, now husband, Lawrence Dimery, before the couple sold it in 2016.

Her mother sold the family home in 2023 and is thought to live eight miles away, close to her daughter’s constituency home.

Last night, a source close to Ms Phillipson said that the recollections of other neighbours vary and agree with that of the Education Secretary.

The source added: ’This is a desperate attempt at mud slinging that’s clearly motivated by a dislike of Bridget’s politics and her taking on of vested interests.

’Claims by apparent neighbours as to the state of their homes in the 90s have no bearing on the state of Bridget’s mum’s home in the 1980s. She is proud to be in a government lifting over half a million children out of poverty and these ridiculous attacks won’t change that.’