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Orders of the Day

School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

3.31 pm

Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, of which I have given you notice. This Bill was published a political lifetime ago, on 15 November. Since then, the Prime Minister has resigned and each of the candidates for the Conservative party leadership has announced policies, including the central funding of teachers' pay, that are wholly inconsistent with the scheme of this Bill.

Is it in the interests of the good administration of Bills in this House for the House to proceed with this Bill when there is no guarantee that the policies contained in it will not be overturned by a new Administration?

Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) : Further to that point of order——

Mr. Speaker : Order. it is not a point of order at all—[Interruption.] It is very much a point of argument. I must tell the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) that he has tabled a reasoned amendment to the Bill. Had he wanted to do so, he could have put down an amendment in the terms of the argument that he has advanced—but his point of order to me now is not a point of order at all.

Mr. Allen : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Leader of the House is with us. Can he be prevailed upon to make a brief statement, given that none of the potential Prime Ministers will support the provisions of the Bill and that in four hours' time——

Mr. Speaker : Order. All these are matters of argument which can be advanced during the debate. They are not points of order for me.

Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro) : Further to that point of order——

Mr. Speaker : Order. I hope that it is not the same one.

Mr. Taylor : On a different point related to the point of order, Mr. Speaker. There is an amendment on the Order Paper in the terms that have just been discussed. Will it be possible for the House to vote on the amendment tabled in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) and his hon. Friends?

Mr. Speaker : I have selected one amendment, in the name of the leader of the Opposition—I have not yet had an opportunity to say that—but I cannot select two. I have not selected the amendment in the name of the Liberal Democrats.

Mr. Geoffrey Dickens (Littleborough and Saddleworth) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Has it not been nice to read the Prime Minister's obituary while she is still alive?

Mr. Speaker : Can I have a real point of order, please?

Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West) : On a real point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you observed that, in this week's

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business, two days are devoted to an entirely non-controversial Bill which affects Wales and that there will be further consideration of the Statutory Sick Pay Bill which both sides of the House had difficulty in finding speakers to speak to last night? Because of the light load of this week's business, will you give further reconsideration to your decision yesterday on the bid by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) for a debate on the all-important, crucial issue of the Gulf war?

Mr. Speaker : That is hypothetical at the moment. I give consideration to important matters every day.

Several Hon. Members rose——

Mr. Speaker : Order. I call Mr. Flannery although I think we should get on with the debate.

Several Hon. Members rose——

Mr. Speaker : Order. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) is seeking to speak in the debate, so I will hear his point of order.

Mr. Martin Flannery (Sheffield, Hillsborough) : My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) raised a point of order about the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Bill, and I want to raise a completely different point of order about it. This Bill has been condemned as a violation of international law with regard to the teaching profession by the International Labour Organisation of the United Nations. During the debate, it will emerge that the Bill is not lawful in accord with international law and it is time——

Mr. Speaker : Order. Those are matters which the hon. Gentleman can rightly advance during the debate. If it is of any comfort to him, I propose to call him very early.

Mr. Flannery : Sir, I will shut up immediately.

Ms. Dawn Primarolo (Bristol, South) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and his application under Standing Order No. 20, you said in column 620——

Mr. Speaker : Order. That was yesterday.

Ms. Primarolo : In replying to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow about this very important debate about the possibility of war in the Gulf, Mr. Speaker, you said :

Can you indicate whether the Foreign Secretary intends to make an emergency statement to the House before the United Nations meets on Thursday about the likelihood of war in the Gulf?

Mr. Speaker : The hon. Lady correctly quotes me from Hansard. I certainly said that. However, I have not had an application today under Standing Order No. 20 on that matter, and I have no knowledge of whether the Government propose to make a statement about it. I hope perhaps they may.

Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax) : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Opposition are amazed that the Foreign Secretary is not offering to make a statement, given that the five permanent members of the Security

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Council are to set a date for war. Surely it is more important to talk about that than for the Foreign Secretary to worry about a career as Prime Minister.

Mr. Speaker : That is not a matter for me. We will get on with the debate. I must announce to the House that I have selected the reasoned amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.

3.38 pm

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Kenneth Clarke) : I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second Time.

The Bill contains the agreed policy of this Government. I can certainly speak for two of the candidates for the position of Prime Minister who are committed to the Bill, and I believe that I know the third candidate well enough and have followed his proposals rather more carefully to know that he will endorse it and will probably vote for the Bill's provisions this evening.

The Bill comes before the House in a very different climate from that which surrounded the Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act 1987, which it is intended to replace. The House will recall that, before the 1987 Act, there was a history of progressive breakdown in the so-called Burnham machinery and increasing disruption and bitterness in our schools, which had come to a very bad head shortly before the Bill.

Since we passed the 1987 Act, there have been four years of industrial peace in our schools, and a succession of fair settlements for teachers on the basis of the excellent and well received reports produced by the interim advisory committee have served teachers well. That committee has clearly demonstrated its independence and fitness for the job. As a result, over the past few years teachers have had a clear framework for pay, duties and working time. Employers and governing bodies have been able to reward good performance and the acceptance of responsibility. That has coincided with the Government's education reforms, which are giving a much clearer focus and direction to the work of teaching.

If one looks back to 1987, one can see that the result has been four years of achievement in our schools and real improvements in the way in which children are being educated. I recognise the amount of hard work that the teachers, whose pay is the subject of the Bill, have put into what is happening in schools today. I applaud the professionalism of teachers and the achievements of the teaching profession. I believe that teachers' status is well on the way to recovery from the damage done to it during that unfortunate period in the mid-1980s. As we proceed to implement our reforms, parents will gain a greater understanding of what teachers are trying to do and regain their trust in teachers' professional commitment to the education of their children.

The 1987 Act was always recognised as a short-term solution to immediate and pressing problems. As I have said, it has fulfilled its purpose admirably, but it is time now to put more permanent arrangements into place. That is what this Bill is designed to do. It gives effect to the decisions which my predecessor, now sitting beside me in his capacity as Leader of the House, announced in the House on 23 July when he was Secretary of State for Education and Science.

The decisions that my right hon. Friend and the Government took followed prolonged and careful

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consultations with all the interested parties. I am afraid that it was always clear that it would not be easy to reach agreement on difficulty and sensitive issues on which widely differing views were held. Nobody regretted the demise of the Burnham committee, which was soon behind us, but it was difficult to achieve consensus on what should follow. Different and incompatible views were expressed during the consultations—most favouring the restoration of negotiating rights for teachers, while others preferred some kind of independent review. It became clear that it was not possible to find an acceptable solution which commanded universal agreement. The Government's decision has been to restore teachers' negotiating rights. That has been welcomed by the employers and most of the major teacher unions.

The main features of the new machinery which the Bill will establish are very different from the ill-fated Burnham machinery. First, the Bill provides for direct national negotiations between employers and unions. There will be a separate sub-committee for heads and deputies. The Bill brings together in one negotiating forum both pay and conditions. It has a deadline for the completion of negotiations and provides a clear means of resolving deadlock. It also provides reserve powers for the Government to refer back to the negotiating body, with reasons, any aspect of agreed settlements with which they are unhappy and, in the last resort, to impose their own views.

The Bill also provides for reference of matters to an advisory committee if the negotiating body fails to reach agreement by the deadline and for individual local education authorities and grant-maintained schools to opt out of the national arrangements and determine the pay and conditions of their teachers locally. That is the Bill's outline, and I shall deal with each feature, but first I give way to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North) : I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker : Order.

Mr. Greenway : All teachers are crucial, but heads and deputies are centrally crucial in schools. Therefore, will my right hon. and learned Friend consider the worries of heads and deputies that their sub-committee on pay and conditions is to report to the main committee and, presumably, will be subject to overruling by it? Can my right hon. and learned Friend reassure me that safeguards exist to ensure that the sub-committee will not be overruled, save in the most serious circumstances?

Mr. Clarke : The Bill provides just such safeguards—it is not possible for the main committee so to override the sub-committee's recommendations that it makes it impossible for the Secretary of State to allow the head teachers and deputies to have what they want. I assure my hon. Friend that the Bill provides for the problem that he fears might otherwise arise.

The Bill's first clause, together with schedule 1, provides for the establishment of the new national negotiating committee and a separate sub-committee to take the initiative on matters involving heads and deputies. It also distinguishes between the statutory and non-statutory conditions of employment : it is only the former, the statutory conditions—pay, duties and teachers' working time—that will be dealt with under the procedures set out

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in the rest of the Bill. On other matters, the committee will be able to strike such agreements as it wishes, subject only to a requirement in clause 6 to notify me of what it has agreed.

Clause 2 is concerned with how negotiations get started, what the negotiating deadline will be, and what recommendations can be made as a result of different negotiations. Clause 3 and schedule 2 establish the procedures to be followed when negotiations result in recommendations, and clause 4 establishes what should happen if there are no recommendations by the relevant deadline.

I should say a little more about these provisions. First, negotiations—the initiative for negotiations will rest with the committees, not with the Secretary of State. The committees will be able to give themselves as long as they like to negotiate, the only constraint being that they must finish on time because teachers' negotiations have a history of being far too protracted. There will be no constraints on the negotiations and, in particular, no pre-set financial limits. The main aim of the negotiations will be a return to normal working, and it will be for the local authority employers to decide what they can afford and to reflect that in their negotiations.

Secondly, I referred briefly to the Government's powers to refer back and to override. I hope that we will not hear sanctimonious humbug about this because the need for the Government to have such powers is perfectly obvious and has always been accepted. Since 1944, Governments of all parties have been able to influence teachers' pay structure and contain pay costs. Only a particularly irresponsible Labour Government would not feel obliged to exercise an influence on teachers' pay structure and the total pay bill.

I should like to quote from one of my distinguished predecessors. During the passage of the Remuneration of Teachers Act 1965, the late Lord Stewart of Fulham, then Michael Stewart, the Secretary of State for Education and Science said :

From 1965, the Government's interests were secured by a concordat that operated alongside the legal provisions of the 1965 Act. I shall not go back over the full 20 years----

Mr. Straw : Why not? We have lots of time.

Mr. Clarke : I suspect that the number of hon. Members who will wish to speak in the debate will be smaller than might have been the case on another day.

As I say I shall not go back over the full 20 years, but most people are agreed that the concordat worked reasonably satisfactorily. It provided the Government with a weighted vote inside the management panel and a veto over proposed offers on grounds of total cost. That veto was conceded by the local authority employers and was not backed by any statutory provision. In 1985, the employers' side, the local authority side, then led by the Labour party, unilaterally scrapped the concordat, leaving the Government with a much diminished and quite inadequate influence on the outcome of the negotiations. That could not be tolerated by any Government.

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The Government provide about two thirds of the money that is necessary to pay the teachers as a result of any settlement. There is room for argument, and I am sure that there will be much debate in Committee about the precise form of negotiations, but all negotiations must have reflected on one side of the table the legitimate interests of employees, and on the other side the legitimate interests of the employers and those who will be called upon to finance them.

Negotiations are between the recipients of finance and those who provide that finance. It would be quite absurd to devise a system whereby the local authority employers who provide the minority of the money for the settlement could reach whatever settlement they pleased without the Government, who have to use taxpayers' money and the business rate to provide the bulk of the finance, having any say and influence. In the consultations that proceeded my right hon. Friend's statement to the House in July, both employers and trade unions agreed that the Government must be able to have the last word on affordability in any new permanent machinery. The Bill therefore gives the Government a sensible and necessary role in determining teachers' statutory conditions of employment.

Mr. Straw : As will emerge in greater detail in my speech, I broadly accept what the Secretary of State has said about the Government's position. However, may I press him on the accountability of the Government and Ministers to Parliament, because one important defect of this Bill, as compared even with the Teachers Pay and Conditions Act 1987, is that decisions which the Secretary of State may make under his reserved powers under this Bill can be checked by this House only under the negative resolution procedure even when those decisions are contrary to the recommendations of the teachers' pay committee, whereas decisions under the 1987 Act had to be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, which was beneficial, certainly for accountability?

Mr. Clarke : I shall look at that point again, but there are precedents for the negative resolution procedure, as set out in the Bill. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary has similar override powers in respect of certain pay settlements, which are also covered by negative resolution. If the Government were in conflict with the negotiated solution that they were overriding, a Prayer would be tabled, which the House would expect to debate. In practice, however, that is unlikely to be a matter of great significance to the House.

One snag with using the positive procedure is that the House of Lords would also have a vote and there are those with reservations about whether their Lordships should have the power to take decisions involving large sums of public expenditure. I cannot believe that this House would lose the opportunity of having a vote on the expenditure and on the Secretary of State's use of the override for teachers' pay settlements. There would be adequate opportunities for the House to have such a vote under the negative resolution procedure.

Mr. Matthew Taylor : We are given to understand that, where the settlements are within the inter-quartile range, they will not normally be referred back on the basis of the cost of the settlement. Why is it only "normally"? Surely that provision in itself would allow the Secretary of State

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to say that, for financial reasons, the Government would never refer back a settlement that was within the inter-quartile range, where it has been agreed.

Mr. Clarke : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for referring to the undertaking that was given by my predecessor. The Government do not intend to act unfairly or arbitrarily.

Before turning to the basis on which the Government would not normally seek to exercise the override, I should first explain that the Bill provides some statutory procedures that would stop any Secretary of State of any Government behaving in an unfair or arbitrary fashion. Where the Secretary of State is unhappy with what has been proposed, he does not immediately move and refer that matter to the advisory committee. The Secretary of State's first step would be to refer that matter back to the negotiators for their reconsideration, stating his reasons for asking them to look at it again. Only if that process has been exhausted, if the two sides are still at loggerheads and differences remain, would the question of overriding the negotiators' recommendations arise.

When it comes to exercising those powers as a member of the Government, my predecessor gave the undertaking to which the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) has just referred, which is that normally the Government would not intend to refer back recommendations on cost grounds if the overall cost was within the inter-quartile range of the private sector settlements for non-manual employees. That does not mean that we will always refer back settlements that fall outside that range, but we shall expect the negotiators to justify them and to explain how they intend to afford the settlements without having adverse effects on other schools' expenditure if such settlements are reached. That means that teachers can be confident of fair treatment compared with the work force in general, and that they will have scope to improve their pay relative to others over time. The inter-quartile range is also the range that we have chosen for civil service pay, and it has greatly improved the arrangements for civil servants.

Having got to that point, the hon. Member for Truro may ask why we do not make the provisions absolutely clear. He may even want to put them on the face of the Bill. The Government will remain bound by the undertaking that was given by my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Education and Science, and which has been repeated by me today on behalf of the Government. The only reason for not making that undertaking statutory is that if, in future—perhaps by general consent—the Government were to give a different guideline which gave flexibility, it would be a pity if that required primary legislation.

The teaching profession may welcome the possibility of seeing what happens in the next few years, given the Government's commitment that we shall not normally interfere with settlements that fall within the inter-quartile range. The House should not make it too difficult for a Secretary of State to suggest a different Government guideline. Our policy is one that I think the hon. Gentleman would want, and we would not usually interfere provided that a settlement was within the inter-quartile range.

The Government's objectives for teachers' pay have been stated clearly on many occasions, and I am glad to repeat them today. We want teachers' pay to be sufficient to recruit, retain and motivate enough teachers of the right

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quality within what can reasonably be afforded. Having set down that principle, it is important that the pay arrangements should contain sufficient flexibility. I want there to be many well-paid, successful, professional teachers, but it is right that the money and any improved payments should go where they are needed most. Pay and negotiations should be used by employers, in this case influenced by the Government, in ways that serve managerial purposes and, in this service, that above all serve educational purposes.

Money should be used especially to reward excellence in performance, to recognise responsibility and to tackle recruitment problems. I and the Government would prefer the large sums of money involved in teachers' pay settlements to be used in that way rather than in the undifferentiated way of agreeing on one settlement figure for the profession as a whole.

Mr. Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) : Last weekend, I visited the South Beach first school in my constituency. I was given a copy of an assessment form covering science, English and arithmetic. The chart must be filled in because of the new assessment procedure. It takes a school teacher at least three quarters of an hour to do that for each child, and there are at least 30 pupils in each class. It is obvious that teachers cannot both be filling in forms and teaching their pupils, so they must take the forms home. Will the Government pay teachers extra money for taking home that work? I shall give the Minister the assessment form, as he may like to look at it.

Mr. Clarke : I thank the hon. Gentleman for handing me the assessment form for levels one and two used by South Beach school. I shall put myself to the test later and I hope that I can reach the necessary attainment level. However, the form was not created by the Government. South Beach school is under no legal obligation to use such a form and it is not part of the present reforms. I have not seen such a form previously, but it is possible that it relates to some earlier pilot projects on the tests that we propose to introduce in schools. The testing system for seven, 11, 14 and 16-year-olds is not yet legally in force, and it certainly will not follow the format of the hon. Gentleman's assessment form. We are contemplating a very much simpler form for seven-year-old tests. Of course, I am interested to know that an assessment form is being used sensibly, but I am sure that the Government can devise a simpler one.

It is important to have an assessment system for pupils and also to ensure that it is set out in a way that can be readily understood by parents. That is our aim. I think that most teachers accept that assessment of pupils and reporting the results to parents are an ordinary part of a teacher's occupation. Most teachers will welcome the framework that we will provide for them to do that. We held pilot projects in English schools last July on a particular method of testing seven-year-olds. A number of its features were not satisfactory and we have withdrawn that proposal. We are now working on what will be the statutory procedures for testing the English, maths and basic scientific knowledge of seven-year-olds in the summer of next year.

As I said, I believe that teachers' pay should be used to reward excellence of performance, to attract particular skills, and to be flexible in other ways. If negotiations fail to reach a conclusion on either that or any other basis

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when the deadline is reached, the Bill provides for what will then happen. It would be unsatisfactory if a deadlock were reached in the main annual negotiations and teachers were then left for a year without a settlement.

Clause 4 provides for the Secretary of State automatically to seek recommendations from the advisory committee to be established under clause 5 and schedule 3. I make no apology for the fact that that committee is closely modelled on the interim advisory committee. It has operated successfully over the past three years, and it has earned general respect for its independence and the quality of its reports. It will not provide arbitration, but will work to a clear Government remit. However, I stress that that body will only come into play where negotiations end in disagreement. It is plainly necessary that, if the parties to the new negotiations fail to agree, the Secretary of State must look to other means of resolving them.

Mr. Derek Fatchett (Leeds, Central) : Over the weekend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to commit himself to a review of teachers' pay. If one takes place, how does the Secretary of State envisage that it will fit into the appropriate machinery? Would such a review be the responsibility of the interim advisory committee or of a separate, ad hoc committee? Will it supplement negotiations, and has the right hon. and learned Gentleman discussed that idea with the Chancellor?

Mr. Clarke : As an elector in the leadership contest, I am following the statements of the three candidates with interest. I do not believe that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has committed himself, as a putative Prime Minister, to a review of teachers' pay. However, the hon. Gentleman will find that all three contenders for the premiership are united in a desire to see the status of teachers restored to the level of a few years ago. We all want to see their self-esteem restored, and have in place proper provisions for negotiating sensible pay arrangements.

My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has expressed his concerns about the status of teachers in this country, and I share his views. However, I do not believe that we shall embark on a fresh review of pay arrangements, when the Bill contains excellent arrangements that should be enacted and put into force.

Mr. Fatchett : The Chancellor was talking not about detailed arrangements and machinery but of improving teachers' salaries and conditions. If the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) came along in the new capacity of Prime Minister, would the Secretary of State agree to a new review of pay and conditions? Would he think that was a worthwhile step forward?

Mr. Clarke : So far, at this late stage in the contest, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has not committed himself to any specific enhancements in teachers' pay and conditions. Like me, my right hon. Friend has served as a member of a Government who have seen a steady improvement in pay and conditions. Teachers are on average 30 per cent. better off in real terms—that is, their spending power has increased by 30 per cent. over the past 10 years. Today's teachers are much better off than previous generations.

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We are devising machinery—my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and I will vote for it this evening—that is designed to pave the way for negotiations, which will no doubt continue to be funded in such a way that teachers' pay will certainly keep in line with movements elsewhere. We have said that we will not interfere if the settlements are within the inter-quartile range. In that way, teachers' pay will keep in step with that of other professions, and might even improve by comparison with them. Perhaps those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are more closely allied with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor than I am at this time in the leadership contest, and who are present in the Chamber, know otherwise—but I do not believe that he has committed a Government under his leadership to a specific review of teachers' pay and conditions—[Interruption.] I believe that authoritative comments are being offered from the Benches behind me.

Mr. John Marshall (Hendon, South) : Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, such has been the improvement in teachers' pay, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) might be enticed back into the profession?

Mr. Clarke : Many right hon. and hon. Members might want the hon. Gentleman to return to his former profession, but I am not sure that would be in line with the Government's policy of enhancing standards in our schools. In case that remark is taken literally outside, I would not dream of traducing the hon. Gentleman's professional status as a teacher. However, there are times when I wish that he were back in the classroom.

Mr. Gerry Steinberg (City of Birmingham) : The Secretary of State claims that teachers are 30 per cent. better off in real terms than they have ever been. How does he explain the fact that, in the four years since the interim advisory committee has been in operation, teachers' pay has not even kept up with inflation?

Mr. Clarke : It may not have done so every year, but it has over the whole four years. The IAC was established on the back of a very large settlement. It is true that, thereafter, the settlement did not keep in line with inflation every year. That is no answer to the basic point that I made—the intervention by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) is no answer to that, either—which was that, during the period that the Government have been in office, they have shown that they recognise the need for the real income of teachers to rise in line with the improved prosperity of the country. Today's teachers have 30 per cent. more purchasing power than they had 10 years ago, when the Conservative Government came to power.

This is a good day for talking about the achievements of the past 11 years. Teachers who have been in the profession throughout the 11 years of my right hon. Friend's premiership will find that they are much better off today than they were when she came to office.

Mr. Alistair Burt (Bury, North) : Could my right hon. and learned Friend remind the House—Opposition Members sometimes seem to be suffering from collective amnesia—that teachers' pay rose by 6 per cent. only during their term of office? I wonder why they seem to forget that, when they put so many questions to him about teachers' pay?

Mr. Clarke : That is certainly the case. It is an irony that, under the last Labour Government, the pay of white collar workers, those in the professions and in the public services hardly improved at all. Blue collar industrial workers appeared to do much better than them but, in the end, no one thrived—especially in the face of the inflation over which the last Labour Government presided.

For a long time, our record on teachers' pay has been much better than that of the Government from which we took over. That record gives credibility to the Bill.

Mr. Steinberg rose——

Mr. Clarke : Hon. Members are encouraging me to give way because we have a lot of time. I shall give way once more, and then we shall have a change of subject.

Mr. Steinberg : I appreciate the fact that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is giving way. Rather than teachers being 30 per cent. better off in real terms, since 1974 and the Houghton award, teachers are 40 per cent. worse off. So the right hon. Gentleman's figures are not accurate. In the past 16 years, teachers have generally had a bad deal, and they are now a lot worse off than they ever were.

Mr. Clarke : Houghton was one of those sudden peaks. Thereafter, teachers' pay sharply declined.

Mr. Steinberg : No.

Mr. Clarke : Yes, it was. The then Labour Government, implemented Houghton to win an election, and thereafter, teachers' pay dropped away. Returning to the present, I believe that the hon. Gentleman is wrong. I shall check, but it is my belief that, in real terms, teachers' incomes today are higher than they were at the time of the Houghton report recommendations.

Mr. Steinberg indicated dissent.

Mr. Clarke : The hon. Member for City of Durham shakes his head. No doubt, if I am wrong, my hon. Friend will be able to correct me when he replies to the debate.

Mr. Harry Greenway : Speaking as one who received the Houghton award of 34 per cent. in 1974, I think that the House should remember that there was 27 per cent. inflation a year later—[Hon. Members : "There was not."] Yes—in 1976, there was. The value of Houghton's award was totally eroded by 1979. When the Labour Government left office, we were worse off than when we were paid the Houghton award.

Mr. Clarke : We are reminiscing. I fought the 1974 election. The then Labour party bought the teachers by promising to implement Houghton, and bought nurses by promising to implement Halsbury. Once they got into office, the value of those awards in real terms was allowed to erode almost immediately.

The Bill is a much more sensible way to proceed. I am advised that, in the opinion of those who advise me, I was correct in our recent exchanges. Teachers are now 12 per cent. better off in real terms than they were after the Houghton settlement.

Let us return to the new arrangements. Clause 7 of the Bill provides for the making of orders to give effect to the changes in teachers' pay, duties and working time which emerge from the various processes that I was describing a few moments ago.

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Clauses 8 and 9 provide for local education authorities and governing bodies of grant-maintained schools—who judged that they could respond better to local needs and circumstances by themselves settling the pay and conditions of their teachers—to apply to be allowed to opt out of the nationally determined framework. That builds upon the local flexibility which we have already achieved in the national arrangements in the past three years, and in my opinion is a natural extension of it.

I strongly approve of the development of more local pay bargaining and more local settlements on terms and conditions in the great public services. It would be especially advantageous for the teaching profession, many local education authorities and many grant-maintained schools.

I do not envisage that huge variations from national rates will be introduced rapidly, or at all in many cases, but the ability to tackle particular problems of local recruitment, to recognise particular skills that a school needs to offer, to reward particular performance, and to enter into agreements between the school and its staff, or the local education authority and its staff, about changes that staff want and agree to deliver in their part of the service, should all be permitted. I believe firmly that, steadily over the years, more and more local education authorities and schools and those who represent the teachers in those authorities and schools will see the advantages of moving out of national negotiating machinery and towards local pay bargaining.

Mr. Matthew Taylor : On the basis of his comments, will the Secretary of State clarify whether he believes that it is preferable for most local authorities and schools to opt out of the national arrangements that he has been describing? Is it his desire that most should opt out? Can he elaborate a little on whether any research has been undertaken within the Department to assess the likely impact of such opting out? He has suggested that the impact might not be very great. What research has taken place, and will it be presented to the House.?

Mr. Clarke : As a matter of broad principle but not immediate policy, I would welcome it if the majority of local education authorities and grant-maintained schools were operating some degree of local pay bargaining. That is not an imminent possibility, and it might be undesirable to move to that quite so quickly. When local pay bargaining begins to be developed within a giant service that is accustomed to only national pay bargaining, it is wise for all parties to proceed cautiously. People become accustomed to their pay, terms and conditions being handed down from on high by the Burnham committee or, in this case, its successor, and the skills do not always exist locally to move straight to local pay bargaining. It is not as easy as it sounds or looks to start negotiating as a county with all the staff outside the national limits, or for a grant-maintained school to start negotiating with its staff.

There is scope for some research and for people to develop the skills they require. I believe that, as the opportunity is provided by the Bill for employers to leave the national negotiating arrangements, some will take advantage of it. People will get used to the new arrangements and I should like to see it become much more the norm inside the education service. As I have said,

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people should move slowly, because negotiations at local level are difficult when nobody locally has experience of pay bargaining.

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