Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt abandoned yesterday a Labour pledge to let councils take control of free schools and academies.

Labour promised earlier this month to allow thousands of English schools to revert to local authority control and end a Tory ban on new community schools.

Former education spokesman Stephen Twigg made the commitments at a conference of school governors and a Labour spokesman confirmed that it was "agreed policy."

Mr Hunt had described free schools as "a dangerous ideological experiment" after the chaos at the Derby's Al-Madinah school was revealed.

But his party's education policy was plunged into chaos after Mr Hunt reneged on his comments over free schools on BBC's Question Time.

And a spokesman for Mr Hunt insisted yesterday that allowing schools to convert back to council-maintained status is "not our policy."

Anti Academies Alliance's Alastair Smith said he was "deeply concerned" about the U-turn after praising the party's initial pledge.

He told the Star: "The cost, the oversight and the fact they are using unqualified teachers are just some of the issues with free schools.

"There have been some successes but we've wasted a lot of taxpayer's money on these basket-case schools."

Mr Smith labelled Mr Hunt's middle-way proposals for more parent-led free schools and academies as "just fantasies" and said it would do nothing to cure the places crisis.

"The number of parent-led free schools is declining rapidly because it's big business that are setting up free schools," he explained.

"What we need urgently is new schools to meet the demand in places and there's not a shred of evidence that leaving it to the market is cost efficient or value for money.

"The more efficent way is to allow experts, using local authorities, to set up new schools responding to demand."

TV historian Mr Hunt also infuriated teachers after backing Tory plans for performance-related pay on Thursday.

NUT leader Christine Blower pointed out that "there are already provisions for withholding salary progression where teachers are under-performing."