'I Can Sing a Rainbow'

11.41.38am GMT Thu 10th Jan 2008

Annette Brooke MP inadvertently caused embarrassment for Ed Balls at his first evidence session with the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee on 9 January 2007.

Wanting to point out that there were vital matters missing from the his 10 year Children's Plan, in particular not enough reference to how the Government will be implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child she prefaced her question with a reference to the rainbow depicted on the cover of the Children's Plan. After pointing out that she could only see 6 colours, Ed Balls rather than answering the question, immediately decided to identify the missing colour and came up with pink rather than indigo:

'Isn't it red, yellow, pink and green, purple and orange and blue?'

The story was picked up by both the Telegraph and the bbc website.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=ZGPLDBPCLCN0DQFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2008/01/10/nballs110.xml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7179977.stm