IN A pre-election blow due to be delivered by a Tory-controlled Commons committee, John Major finds his flagship nursery vouchers education policy being seriously holed.

For just as the scheme is set to go nationwide, the MPs say that, rather than expanding the provision of nursery provision for four-year-olds, the issuing of the £1,100 vouchers to parents to buy places for their children is undermining it.

Why? Because parents are using the vouchers to send their children to primary school reception classes, not private nurseries and voluntary playgroups, many of which could be forced to close.

This was inevitable. For while the principle putting all four-year-olds on the first rung of the learning ladder was worthy, doing it with shop-around vouchers was full of flaws.

To begin with, the scheme would not encourage all parents to send their children to nurseries because those on low incomes could not afford the full fees of private nurseries even with the vouchers' subsidy.

And instead many have used them as parental-choice tokens - in order to get their children into the primary schools they prefer. And eager for revenue, many primaries have been happy to exploit the new market by setting up reception classes.

All of this was foreseeable and the embarrassment of the Select Committee's criticism looks like leaving Mr Major, whose pet policy the vouchers scheme was, with the need to find a new flagship idea in just weeks as the election looms.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.