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Mr. Matthew Taylor : I agree with the Secretary of State about the need to move slowly. He said that there is scope for some research. I asked what research the Department has undertaken into the likely impact of opting out. We have not seen any. If there has been research, will it be made available to hon. Members during the debates on the Bill?

Mr. Clarke : I do not think that we have had any and, without prejudging it, I do not think that I would take much notice of it if we had. Hypothetical research about the impact of local pay bargaining in a service that has not had any is not, in my experience, very valuable. The main thing is not to have research into what might happen but to ensure that sufficient guidance and advice is available so, that what does happen is in the interests of the local education service and those who work for it. I shall inquire as to whether there has been research, but I am not instantly converted to the desirability of too much of it.

Mr. Straw : One of the unquestioned consequences of dismembering a national pay arrangement and handing it over to local negotiations is wage drift. What view does the Treasury take of the prospect of 75 per cent. of local authorities running their own negotiations?

Mr. Clarke : Under this Government, the Treasury has always been supportive of moves towards local pay bargaining and greater pay flexibility, because it means that the management have the ability to get more out of the work force and to use the increased expenditure on its payroll in a way that produces improvements in service. There has been no resistance from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer or his predecessors to moving towards local pay bargaining.

It is true that there is a danger of pay drift in just moving towards local pay bargaining. A relaxed employer may decide that he will show what an enlightened local authority he represents by paying 20 per cent. more to all the teachers and that authority is then quoted by all the other authorities involved in pay bargaining. I see that Opposition Front-Bench Members are nodding enthusiastically at that. I am sorry that they share the low opinion of local government as employers that is sometimes held by Conservative Members. That is the danger, but it is up to employers to be more sophisticated and to guard against it. The pay argument could be applied to many other industries—to every company in the engineering industry and to all other large employers.

The Opposition have to consider whether they really fear the fact that employers should be allowed to opt out. They say that they do not see much more scope for variations to reflect the local pay market, or different skills, or agreements between governors, headmasters and headmistresses and staff about enhanced payment for recognisable and measurable improvements in performance. The Opposition take too nervous a view. Pay drift is a danger, but it can be avoided by sensible managers.

Local authorities must remember, especially now that their negotiating powers are being returned to them, that everything they do must be within the limit of what is

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reasonably affordable. If they do not agree on that, they will simply pay the teachers more and at the same time damage other parts of the education service.

Mr. Steve Norris (Epping Forest) : My right hon. and learned Friend is right to say that progress ought to be steady rather than hasty in this important area, but I know that he will accept that clauses 8 and 9 are looked forward to by those of us who represent extremely high cost areas, such as the county of Essex, with much greater enthusiasm than any other part of the Bill. It is a wonderful breakthrough for us. It will allow us to overcome a considerable problem, upon which I hope later to be able to expand.

Caution is no doubt desirable, but no message ought to go out from the House today that responsible local authorities should not take full advantage of clause 8 when there is a demonstrable need, as there is in west Essex, to improve teachers' pay, whatever the absolute rate is throughout the country. Housing in west Essex is so expensive that teachers' pay must be improved there.

Mr. Clarke : My hon. Friend will be reassured to hear that clause 8 does not inhibit the right of Essex county council to enter into local negotiations, if it so wishes. My personal advice, however, is that Essex ought to be careful how it proceeds. Nevertheless, Essex knows exactly what it wishes to do. I know that there are very real problems in Essex that must be addressed. They can be addressed only by the county council entering into proper local pay bargaining arrangements.

Mr. Harry Greenway : Did my right hon. and learned Friend have the pleasure of reading the minority report that I appended to the Select Committee's April report on the pay and remuneration of teachers? If he did, I wonder whether he saw that I suggested that teachers ought to be paid on an individual basis. That could be brought about by means of the Bill. If that were done, teachers would feel much happier. They would see that their contribution to the school—the task of teaching their subject and whatever other responsibilities they may have—had been taken into account by the school authorities. If teachers felt that their services were more valued, they would be much happier and would feel more settled.

Mr. Clarke : At that time, I was reading other Select Committee reports, but I remember reading newspaper reports about the minority report that my hon. Friend had appended to the Select Committee's report. I remind my hon. Friend that a great deal of flexibility has emerged as a result of the advisory committee's recommendations.

Individual rewards for teachers are already much more of a possibility as a result of what has been negotiated. If local authorities have ideas of their own, clause 8 will allow them to decide what, for them, are better arrangements for the individual reward of teachers. The more flexibility there is in the system, the more people will see that that is a valuable way to improve rewards to the profession and thereby to raise teaching standards.

The new negotiating machinery to which the Bill gives effect amounts to a carefully balanced package that gives proper recognition to the legitimate interests of teachers, their employers and the Government. It is fair to teachers, parents, taxpayers and community charge payers. It is the best proposition available at a time when we must return to restoring negotiating machinery. It will be a valuable

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addition to present efforts to recruit teachers and will, I hope, lead to further improvement in the good level of recruitment and retention in the teaching profession.

The Department carries out a survey every October of recruitment to teacher training courses in all universities, polytechnics and colleges in England and Wales. The figures are much better this year than last year. Nearly 24,000 students started initial teacher training this year. That is a quite spectacular increase of more than 2,000 compared with last year. Recruitment to primary courses is nearly 12 per cent. higher than a year ago, which is a spectacular increase. Recruitment to secondary courses is nearly 6 per cent. higher. Recruitment to the main secondary shortage subjects, except mathematics, was higher than last year. There has been an increase of 30 per cent. in the intake of modern language specialists.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Michael Fallon) : Hear, hear.

Mr. Clarke : I repeat that, as I got a "Hear, hear". There has been an increase of almost a third in the recruitment of modern language specialists. Overall, recruitment was almost half as high again as in 1983, and was the highest since 1977. The House must agree that that is good news. It shows how effective our programme of action on teacher supply measures has been and that, contrary to all the myths, teaching is an attractive career and is becoming increasingly so. But we cannot rest on that—we must do better still.

Not only is recruitment suddenly up, but retention is satisfactory as well. I have been considering, for the first time, wastage in the profession. Wastage—people leaving teaching for other occupations—runs at only about 1 per cent. per year. That is a spectacularly low figure and reflects job satisfaction as well as satisfaction with pay. The general vacancy rate in our schools, contrary to constant campaigning, has not risen in the past 10 years, but I accept that there are problems in one or two places. My Department's survey earlier this year showed that vacancies this year were particularly down in September, compared with a year ago.

Recruitment and retention is satisfactory, and the new machinery will have a good starting point in the current teachers' pay and conditions document. That already covers pay, duties and working time ; it provides attractive pay levels and scope for desirable differentiation ; and it provides wide-ranging local flexibility.

That is the background on which we must build. I share the views which I think my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was expressing at the weekend—that we should build on it by putting the machinery in place for the proper negotiation of pay and by continuing to build up the morale of the profession yet further. It is the key deliverer of the service, and as we restore its self-esteem and job satisfaction, the beneficiaries will be pupils, who will find a motivated teaching force applying themselves with even more dedication to teaching them.

Mrs. Sylvia Heal (Mid-Staffordshire) : Despite what the Minister has said, the view from the chalk face is different. Staff do not agree with his interpretation of recruitment and retention. Teachers in my constituency, with whom I have been speaking in the past few weeks, believe that only an attractive increase in salaries will recruit and retain teachers.

Mr. Clarke : I am sure that teachers always aspire to higher pay and, quite properly, they always have a pay claim in prospect. As I have said in repeated exchanges, not only is their pay much better but we are attracting more people to the profession, the wastage rate is low and vacancies are down.

Mr. Straw : Not true.

Mr. Clarke : It is true. I quite understand why unions keep up a constant stream of propaganda that seeks to undermine that position. The Labour party should occasionally, as a responsible Opposition, address itself to the facts which I described.

Mr. Norris : Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

Mr. Clarke : I have given way for the last time. I apologise to my hon. Friend, but I am in danger of talking out my own Bill if I give way more frequently.

The machinery can only be as good as the people who operate it. If those who are negotiating are not prepared to operate the new machinery sensibly and are not prepared to recognise realities, no machinery will be able to compensate for that. If the leaders of the teachers' unions are genuine in their claims to have the interests of education at heart—I have no reason to doubt it—and demonstrate that by approaching negotiations responsibly, I believe that the new machinery set up by the Bill will serve them well. If they return to the unrealistic claims backed up by irresponsible actions against the pupils which we have seen in the past, they are doomed to disappointment. Most importantly, they will do the education service and the teaching profession no good by returning to such an approach. I hope that they will not do that and that they will be attracted by the working of the new arrangements. I therefore commend the Bill to the House.

4.25 pm

Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn) : I beg to move,

As our reasoned amendment makes clear, we decline to give the Bill our endorsement. In our view, it has three major defects. First, it establishes a complex scheme for settling teachers' pay, with too much power being given to the Secretary of State for which he is not properly accountable to Parliament. Secondly, the provisions for local education authorities and for grant-maintained schools to opt out of a national pay framework will, in our judgment, still further divide the education service, to the detriment of our children's education. Thirdly, we believe that the Government have no clear strategy for dealing with the serious and increasing problems of teacher shortages, the difficulty of recruitment and retention and the problems of low morale.

The Secretary of State spoke of "sanctimonious humbug". Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen some fine examples of sanctimonious humbug among Conservative Members—[Interruption.] I am glad that Conservative Members appreciate that that certainly occurred.

Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth) : We have not said anything.

Mr. Straw : The hon. Gentleman does not need to say anything—one has only to look at him.

All three candidates for the Conservative leadership have suddenly discovered that morale in the teaching service is low and that education matters and should be improved. That tells us principally two things about those candidates—that they can read opinion polls and that they have no shame. The polls show that there has been rising discontent with the Government's education policies, dating almost exactly from the introduction nearly three years ago of the Education Reform Bill and, coinciding with that discontent, rising and positive support for Labour's alternatives.

The responsibility for this sorry state is shared by the whole Government, not just the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). Each candidate for the Conservative leadership voted for the Education Reform Act 1988 and the Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act 1987. That legislation removed all negotiating rights from teachers and instead left teachers, alone among any pay bargaining group, with their pay subject to imposition by fiat of the Secretary of State.

On Sunday, I read in The Observer a statement made by the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) as part of his platform to obtain the votes of Conservative Members. It is notable that he has failed to obtain the support or vote of any of the Education Ministers—they are backing the gentlemen's candidate. The right hon. Gentleman said :

We would all drink to that. Why is there now a problem after 11 years of Conservative Administration? Why do teachers' self-respect, authority and respect in the community need to be restored? Teachers' morale is certainly not what it should be.

That point was made powerfully in the excellent last report, published in January this year, by the Interim Advisory Committee on School Teachers' Pay and Conditions. The committee said :

One of the factors, the committee said, was identified by Her Majesty's senior chief inspector of schools, who said that teachers felt that they were not properly valued, and were used as

The senior inspector is a courageous man, whom I applaud. He did not say precisely who he thought was treating teachers in that way, but the message in the report was clear—that among those who had misused and mistreated teachers were a succession of Conservative Ministers and Back Benchers who, in the early and mid-1980s, dined out on abuse of what teachers were seeking to do.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : Who and when?

Mr. Straw : If the Secretary of State goes to the Library and looks up a certain speech made by the present Secretary of State for the Environment—the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Patten)—he will find, put together very cleverly, the insinuation that teachers' current

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attitudes would lead to the creation of a yob society. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman then looks up the cuttings relating to that speech, he will discover that his right hon. Friend achieved exactly what he set out to achieve : he managed to imply that teachers, rather than those with a great deal more power—namely, the Government—were to blame for the creation of such a society.

Mr. Pawsey : I am certain that that accusation has been levelled across the Chamber before. Last time, it was refuted by my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for the Environment. Incidentally, the quotation from my right hon. Friend which sticks in my mind is a very simple one—his observation that the nearest thing to a magic wand in education is a head teacher.

Mr. Straw : I know that the hon. Gentleman follows these matters with care. I am happy to send him a copy of the speech made by the current Secretary of State for the Environment—who then held the post of Minister of State, Department of Education and Science, which is now held by the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Eggar)—and the cuttings associated with it. The right hon. Gentleman wrote to me about the speech, and I wrote back ; but I never received a reply, which I think makes my point. I sent him the cuttings too.

One of the reasons for teachers' low morale, then, is the suggestion that they are responsible for the ills of society. The second reason——

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : This is preposterous. I do not want to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but it lowers teachers' morale to be told so often by Labour spokesmen that they are being abused by Conservative Ministers. Is it seriously suggested that one unremembered speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten)—and the hon. Gentleman's interpretation of it has been strongly disputed by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey)—is responsible for the present low morale? It is absurd to suggest that this is the Government's responsibility. What damaged the teaching profession was the public's reaction during the protracted industrial dispute. Unfortunately, the Labour party gave mindless support to that action, and certainly played its part in the lowering of the esteem in which the profession was held by the general public.

Mr. Straw : I am not surprised that the Secretary of State does not remember what happened—at the time, he was engaged full time in lowering the morale of members of the health professions.

Of course, one Minister alone was not responsible—a succession of Ministers were responsible. The Secretary of State should read all the speeches made to Conservative party conferences by the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker) when he was Secretary of State—particularly his 1986 speech, which took a sideswipe at one section of the teaching profession. He should also read the report of his own senior chief inspector. I quote from that report at greater length :

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The reason why teachers' morale fell so greatly was partly the abuse that was heaped on them, but it was also the continuous round of change upon change which was imposed on teachers as a consequence of the ill-thought-out agenda in the Education Reform Act 1988. Conservative Members cannot gainsay that because they know that much of that agenda was badly thought out and has subsequently had to be unpicked and changed.

Thirdly, teachers' self-respect and authority was greatly undermined by the removal of negotiating rights. Fourthly, as the Secretary of State must acknowledge, teachers' pay—especially since the settlement in 1986—has lagged behind that of comparable pay groups. The Secretary of State swapped statistics about what had happened to teachers' pay in the past 15 years. Over 15 years of any Government—even the present Government, who have a lower record of growth year on year than previous Governments—real living standards are likely to rise. The graph in the Select Committee report makes it clear that there has been a real rise in teachers' pay since 1974. I am not arguing about that and it is sensible that we should agree on known facts.

However, teachers' pay—this point is of critical importance—has lagged behind that of comparable groups. That is shown clearly by the other graph in the Select Committee report.

Mr. Pawsey indicated assent.

Mr. Straw : I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) acknowledges that fact on this occasion. The slide down from the high point of Houghton has been great relative to other non-manual earnings. Conservative Members believe, more than we do, in untrammelled markets. Whether people take a job depends partly on the relative pay available for that job compared with other jobs. It is not surprising that teacher shortages have arisen, given that the pay of teachers has so declined relative to that of other groups.

Mr. Frank Haynes (Ashfield) : My hon. Friend will be aware—the Secretary of State will also be aware because I shall tell him—that I have two daughters and a son-in-law in teaching. I get my ear bashed regularly about how the Government have treated the teaching profession. Whenever I have had the opportunity, I have asked the Government to get their noses out of negotiations between the employers and the trade unions on wage increases for the teaching profession. Let there be no mistake about it—the present Secretary of State will poke his nose in, too. He upset the health service and he will do the same with education.

Mr. Straw : I do not wish to comment on the personal anatomy of the Secretary of State, which is actually rather fine, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) that the Secretary of State will seek unnecessarily to interfere in the outcome of the negotiations. Like my hon. Friend, I have many family members who are teachers and I know just how difficult it is——

Mr. Pawsey : It cannot be so bad then, can it?

Mr. Straw : It is bad. I know just how difficult it is for those members of my family to make ends meet.

The Library briefing document which, as ever, is extremely helpful, contains on its penultimate page

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information on what has happened to the salaries of graduate teachers. It shows that, in real, terms the starting salary of graduate teachers will have gone down from £10,330 in October 1987 to £9,990 at the beginning of next year. The final salary that a career classroom graduate teacher with incentive allowance B can expect has gone down by even more—from £17,390 to £16,660. That is a significant drop, so it is not surprising to learn of the great difficulties that many authorities have had not only in recruiting teachers, but in retaining them.

We must also take into account the fact that the Government, through all the reports of the interim advisory committee, have consistently failed fully to fund any of the awards. I pay tribute to the IAC because its reports have been good, but I cannot pay tribute to the Government, who have failed at any stage to back the recommendations fully with cash. As a consequence of that, since the 1986 award, teachers' pay has declined rather than increased in real terms. That was made clear in the charter on pay of the latest interim advisory committee report, which states of inflation in paragraph 4.3 :

Inflation has been higher than anticipated. Teachers are worse off than they were a year ago——

Mr. Norris : Since we are discussing members of the hon. Gentleman's family, he will know that I have the honour to represent his mother, who ploughs a lonely furrow as a Labour councillor in my constituency. The hon. Gentleman will therefore know from personal experience that, if the public are asked to judge between the words of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State and the hon. Gentleman on recruitment, they will know whom to believe.

In my constituency, a dreadful letter promising dire consequences for September 1989 was issued to parents at the beginning of the summer term of that year. Understandably, it worried them and many of them wrote to me. In fact, at the beginning of September, all but a handful of posts were filled and that handful represented no more posts than are usually vacant at any time of year. This year, the same process was repeated—the same scaremongering, the same stories and the same anxiety among parents—following which exactly the same happened in September. All vacancies were filled, barring a mere half dozen which represented the usual vacancy factor. Does that not show that my right hon. and learned Friend's statistics are much more valid than the hon. Gentleman's qualitative observations?

Mr. Straw : I am glad to know that the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris) is accusing Mr. Paul White, the Conservative chairman of Essex county council, of scaremongering. Mr. White is also chairman of the Conservative group on the Association of County Councils, and now chairman of the Convention of Local Education Authorities. He is a responsible man, and he has said what everyone involved in education knows—that there are increasing difficulties in recruiting and retaining teachers.

It is perfectly likely that there are people in front of classes, but the hon. Gentleman should know that the proportion of people who are not qualified to teach the subjects that they are having to teach increased between

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1984 and 1988 and in certain subjects now stands at more than 50 per cent. If the hon. Gentleman were to speak to anyone running a school in his constituency or elsewhere, he would find that the numbers of recruits for any vacancy and the quality of recruits for that vacancy are lower and will get worse.

Mr. Steinberg : In the north, where I come from, there is a phrase known as "arguing the cheat". I am afraid that the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris) is arguing the cheat now. He said earlier that he was delighted that his local authority would be able to opt out and negotiate privately, because of the problems that it faced in recruiting teachers. He now says that there are no problems in Essexs and no vacancies—teachers are easy to come by. He cannot argue both ends of the stick.

Mr. Norris : Yes, I can.

Mr. Straw : Knowing the hon. Gentleman's previous occupation, I am sure that he will argue each end of the stick. If he cannot find the engine in the front, he will tell us that it is in the back. But he serves neither himself nor his constituents well if he goes on peddling this sort of nonsense. He should go around a few schools. I know the position in west Essex rather better than he does ; teacher shortages there are as severe now as in the early 1960s.

Opening the debate, the Secretary of State said that two of the candidates in the leadership struggle were behind the policies in the Bill. He suggested that the other candidate, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), might also be behind them, with the implication that he might not be.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : The other two were in the Government who devised the Bill. The right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) is not in the Government, but so far as I am aware he intends to vote for the Bill.

Mr. Straw : It is useful to know that the right hon. Member for Henley will not be in the Government. I advise the Secretary of State to keep his options open.

The right hon. Member for Henley said two weekends ago that he wanted to move towards central payment of teachers' salaries by the Exchequer. When that was put to the Prime Minister by the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor), the Prime Minister replied on 13 November that the effect would be to add 4p or 5p to income tax. That is the calculation arrived at, taking account of the present local authority contribution to teachers' salaries.

Yesterday, I asked the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the impact of such a move would be. I appreciate that both have other things on their minds, but I am sorry to say that the Secretary of State dodged the question and refused to tell me the present size of the local authority contribution to teachers' pay. I have yet to receive an answer from the Chancellor. May we take it that what the Prime Minister said on 13 November was correct—that if, as the right hon. Member for Henley suggested, we move to full payment of teachers' salaries by the Exchequer, it would add 4p or 5p to income tax?

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : If that was all that was done and no money was clawed back from local government, that would indeed be true.

Mr. Straw : That is a useful point of reference for future discussions.

Mr. Clarke : Is such a move Opposition policy? I do not think that any Conservatives have suggested that we do that.

Mr. Straw : The right hon. Member for Henley has suggested it. He has also suggested that it is possible to do it without raising income tax. He even held out the prospect of cuts in income tax—Conservative Members with a late vote to cast may wish to take that into account. The right hon. Gentleman certainly did not convince me or anyone else. It is not the policy of the Opposition and it will not be the policy of the Labour Government to move in that direction.

It is always my belief that the formal structure of any negotiating arrangements should as far as possible reflect the reality of the interests involved. The reality of teachers' employment and pay is that there are three groups of interests—teachers and head teachers who are represented by six associations, the employers who in practice are the local authority associations, and the Government. It is important to be clear as to how and why the Government's interest arises. As with any public sector pay settlement of this size, it arises partly out of the Government's interest in the total size of public spending and their interest to ensure that inflation is kept as low as possible. If that were the whole of the Government's interest in teachers' pay, it could be coped with through the usual arrangements relating to the revenue support grant settlement. That is the only mechanism for registering the Government's interest in, say, local authority manual workers' pay settlements and the APC and T settlement—and it works satisfactorily.

It has long been accepted, however, that the Government have a wider interest in teachers' pay, arising from the Secretary of State's statutory responsibility for the supply and training of teachers and for other aspects of the education service, and from the political fact of life that any Government will be held partly responsible for the performance of the education service.

With that in mind, there are three ways of representing the Government's interest—directly in negotiations, which was the approach taken by Burnham ; by the review body to which the Government give evidence and then enter the caveat that they will accept its conclusions save when there are clear and compelling reasons for changing the view of the review body ; and thirdly, the Government can be the final arbiter and take reserve powers over negotiations.

The Bill reflects the third approach. It gives wide powers to the Secretary of State to override the outcome of negotiations and to establish a teachers' pay committee when negotiations have failed or when their conclusion is unsatisfactory to the Secretary of State. The committee's conclusions can then be overriden by the Secretary of State and his overriding of its conclusions or his endorsement of them would not be the subject of automatic discussion and approval by the House under the affirmative resolution procedure. The Secretary of State is taking wide and unnecessary powers, for which he is not accountable. By the by, in taking those powers, he is also in breach of the International Labour Organisation convention.

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As I read the Bill, and having listened to the Secretary of State, there seems to be no stage until the completion of negotiations or their breakdown at which the Secretary of State is obliged to state his priorities and constraints for the teachers' pay settlement for the following year. If that is so, it injects a wholly unnecessary element of chance into the negotiations. The Secretary of State may well have a bottom line—for example, on the global sum available or on something that he regards as very important in terms of the structure of salary scales or conditions. If he keeps quiet, the local authorities and trade unions could enter into negotiations in good faith, reach an agreement which was outwith the Secretary of State's view and only then would the negotiators discover that what they had negotiated in good faith and without notice to the contrary from the Secretary of State was actually unacceptable to him.

If the Secretary of State believes that certain issues are important, it is far better that the negotiators are aware of those interests at an early stage. The Secretary of State should not be able at a later stage to raise issues which require him to overturn the outcome of negotiations if he has not given notice of those issues. I am not claiming that the Secretary of State should be a secret party to the negotiations or that he must dot every last comma——

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : The committee can refer back.

Mr. Straw : —but it seems to me that the negotiators should have a rough idea of the global sum available or of the likely ball park in terms of finance. That is covered by what the Secretary of State said about inter-quartile settlements.

If the Secretary of State had a particular view about the need to retain new teachers in the service—something that I believe is important—and regarded that as a sticking point in the outcome of negotiations, it would be important for the negotiators to be aware of that. It should not be an imposition on the negotiators, but they should have notice of the Secretary of State's opinion. It would be open to the negotiators to negotiate knowing the Secretary of State's view, or for them to try to change the Secretary of State's mind. I hope that the Secretary of State will take that point on board.

I said a moment ago that the Bill's provisions appear to be in breach of the requirements of the International Labour Organisation, a point that was made powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery). In the Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts, the Secretary of State was scornful of the ILO. That is part of his stock in trade when he is in difficulty, but the ILO needs to be treated with more respect because we are a signatory to it and at no stage have the Government sought to resile from their commitment to it.

The ILO's comments about the structure are serious. It has stated that the Government, through

I have spelt out what I believe to be the entirely legitimate interests of any Government in teachers' pay. We all accept that there must be a final arbiter in what can

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sometimes be difficult negotiations, but there is no doubt that these arrangements go too far and are in breach of the ILO convention.

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