Last week four local authorities decided to seek a judicial review over Gove’s decision in July to cut funding for 700 schools not signed off on 1 January.

The councils – Sandwell Council, Nottingham City Council, Luton Borough Council and Waltham Forest Council – said they had no choice but to initiate expensive legal challenges.

Gove warned the Government would fight the legal action to expose to everybody how BSF had failed to deliver.

In heated Commons question time exchanges, he said: “Unfortunately, in 2008, instead of 200 schools being built fewer than 50 had been built.

“Under the Building Schools for the Future programme, £11m was wasted on consultants – one consultant secured the equivalent of £1.35m while there were schools in my constituency, your constituency, almost every honourable member’s constituency, that needed that resource.

“We will make no apology for ensuring that in the education budget, money goes to not lawyers, not to consultants, but to the frontline, and that 13 years of Labour failure is at last reversed by a coalition Government committed to aspiration.”