Shadow Education Minister Grant Gibbons called last night for proper debate in the Senate on a law granting new concessions to the Coco Reef Resort.

Premier Ewart Brown shut down discussion on the Hotels Concession (Coco Reef Resort) Order 2008 in the House of Assembly a fortnight ago after Opposition MPs made repeated calls for more information on what led to the order and details of the original lease between Government and hotelier John Jefferis.

The order was passed in the House and is due to be considered by Senators today. Dr. Gibbons said it was an opportunity to reopen the debate and look at where the original deal left Bermuda College, which owns the Coco Reef property.

Government granted former Elbow Beach managing director Mr. Jefferis a 50-year lease to manage the Paget resort — formerly the Stonington Beach Hotel — in 2003 after it became financially untenable as a hospitality training facility.

Auditor General Larry Dennis launched an inquiry into how the contract was tendered and in July 2004 concluded that the tendering process had been compromised.

A Special Development Order in January this year gave the go-ahead for an additional 66 holiday apartments to be built on the property, some of which will be on woodland.

Dr. Gibbons said the Hotels Concession (Coco Reef Resort) Order 2008 perpetuated a situation where Government arranged the handover of public land and hotel assets belonging to Bermuda College to an outside group for private gain.

He accused Dr. Brown and his government of betraying the original vision for the Stonington Beach Hotel.

Dr. Gibbons said Stonington was built "to provide young Bermudian students with a world class hotel school that would give them day-to-day hands-on training experience".

"When the original Stonington property was acquired at considerable effort by the Bermuda College board and the UBP government in the late 1970s, never was it contemplated in any way, shape or form that the hotel training arm of the College would be handed over to a private hotel group," he said.

"Never was it envisioned that Bermuda College would lose control over their own hotel training school.

Never was it envisioned that land originally purchased from property owners specifically for the creation of the Bermuda College campus would be developed and leased off as condos for the benefit of a private business."

He claimed the decline of the campus as a hotel training centre was well advanced. "Under their lease, Coco Reef is required to carry on the training once provided by the Stonington Beach Hotel facility, but answers to parliamentary questions indicate that just ten students were trained there between the summer of 2003 and the end of 2005.

"Dr. Brown has made many promises about a new wave of hotel developments — from Jumeirah at Morgan's Point to the Park Hyatt in St. George's.

"But we have to ask — who is going to train the many Bermudians who will be needed to work in these hotels? If new hotels are really coming, why has his government allowed the hotel college programme at the Stonington campus to decline to a mere shadow of its former self?"

Dr. Brown was off the Island last night.