House of Commons Hansard Debates for 18 Jun 1991

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Teachers' Pay and Conditions

10.11 pm

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Kenneth Clarke) : I beg to move

That the draft Education (School Teachers' Pay and Conditions) Order 1991, which was laid before this House on 9th May, be approved.

The order will give effect to the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document 1991. Once the House has given effect to the order, as I hope that it will, local education authorities and governors of grant-maintained schools will be required to pay teachers at the new rates.

All this goes back to September last year, when my right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State asked the interim advisory committee to advise on teachers' pay in 1991-92. He asked it to look at ways of further increasing flexibility within the pay system in order to improve recruitment and retention--paying particular attention to measures to help LEAs tackle teacher shortages in key subjects or in particular areas such as London-- and to reward excellence in classroom teaching. He also asked it to review the pay of heads and deputies.

The committee carried out its remit admirably, and produced the fourth in what has been a series of excellent reports. It recommended a number of improvements to extend local discretion and flexibility. The report emphasised the importance of using pay flexibilities imaginatively and purposefully to meet local priorities, to provide an attractive career structure, to reward responsibility and good performance and to attract high quality entrants to the profession. I received the report on 18 January, and announced on 31 January that I proposed to accept its recommendations but to stage their introduction in the same way as for the review body groups that the Government were considering at the same time. I explained that, in view of the size of the proposed pay award, and for wider economic reasons, the recommendations would be implemented in full only by 1 December 1991. That meant that teachers would receive equal treatment with the groups--such as the clinical professions covered by the review bodies that had reported at the same time.

The Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act 1987 requires consultation with interested parties before the proposals can be implemented. My ministerial colleagues and I carried out those consultations. I carefully considered the points that were made by teachers' unions and employers both in meetings and in writing. I have concluded, however, that the Government proposal to accept the recommendations in full, but to stage their introduction in the period up to 1 December, should be given effect.

Implementation of the committee's recommendations will mean substantial rises for all teachers, particularly heads, deputy heads and teachers who have more responsibility. When fully implemented, the heads' and deputies' pay spine will increase by 12.75 per cent., and all ranges on that spine will be extended by two points. The standard scale for classroom teachers will increase by 9.5 per cent., and incremental enhancements will be uprated by a similar amount. London allowances and the discretionary inner London supplement will increase by 9.38 per cent., backdated to 1 July 1990.

In addition to those recommendations, which we have accepted, the interim advisory committee reaffirmed its belief that incentive allowances have a key role to play in

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recruiting, retaining and motivating teachers. It therefore recommended a 30 per cent. increase in the value of the five rates of allowance--a substantial increase indeed--taking the value of the highest incentive allowance to more than £7,100. It also proposed that an extra 9,100 incentive allowances should be introduced in the 1991-92 academic year, bringing the total number of allowances in primary and secondary schools to almost 200,000.

In making its generous recommendations, the committee rightly drew particular attention to the importance of awarding more incentive allowances to teachers in smaller primary schools, who feel that they have not been properly treated in the past.

I am pleased that in all its generous recommendations the IAC drew particular attention to the importance of rewarding good classroom performance. Compared with others, the teacher who dedicates himself or herself to a lifelong career in teaching, and who discovers that his or her gifts lie in teaching children in classrooms in an inspirational way, has been least well treated in our pay arrangements.

The IAC recommended that from 1 September discretionary scale points above the standard scale should be awarded solely against the criterion of a teacher's performance across all aspects of their professional duties, having particular regard to their classroom teaching. The upper limit of the discretionary scale will rise to £3, 000. Most important, the discretion to put in place additional scale points will be devolved to the governing bodies of schools with delegated budgets. Some governing bodies who wanted to use the discretionary scale points but found that, for some reason, their local authority discouraged them from doing so will now be able to reward their staff appropriately.

In calculating the size and deployment of education spending in 1991-92, the Government assumed that about £150 million will be available to be spent on those and other new pay discretions. I hope, therefore, that governing bodies and local education authorities will use them to the full to motivate their teachers and to reward achievement, particular effort and good classroom performance.

Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North) : I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on accepting the important additions to the scale, but how will good performance in the classroom be measured? Will it be measured independently of school authorities to ensure that there is no favouritism from the head teacher?

Mr. Clarke : In all jobs where an element of pay is based on performance somebody has to judge the performance. A head teacher must have some authority, and we are giving additional responsibility to school governors. I accept that that is a big move, but I see no reason why a good governing body, which will soon have the results of the appraisal arrangements that we have introduced, should not consult head teachers and make its own judgment about a particularly valued member of staff who, according to all the information available, is an effective classroom teacher. When one tries to move over in the public sector to performance- related payments, it is a great mistake to get too bogged down in all the arguments about setting up great institutional arrangements, endless appeals, and so on, which tend to come into public sector debates. In most walks of life, people's performance in

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their jobs in judged by those to whom they are responsible. I see no reason why most heads and most governors should not be given that responsibility.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) : There is a problem in state schools, such as in my constituency, where teachers remain on the staff for some years. Many are at the top of the scale and, under the present funding arrangements, they are finding life difficult. I understood from my right hon. and learned Friend's office that this matter was under consideration. May I take it that that is still the case?

Mr. Clarke : We are moving from a system under which everyone was tied to the scale and, once one reached the top, no additional payments were available. I am glad to say that one of the most effective results of having had an advisory committee for the past two or three years has been the move to incentive allowances, discretionary scale payments, and so on. I do not approve of the traditional trade union view of public sector pay, whereby one moves in increments according to years of service, stops, and waits to move on. When one concentrates on good performance, someone must judge that performance. I see no reason why that should not be the head teacher and the governors.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich) : Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that even in Cabinet kissing goes by favour? Schools do not differ from any other organisation in that sense. The right hon. and learned Gentleman told us that he wants to give greater freedom to good governors. What will happen if there is a bad head and a bad governor and decisions are taken on this highly partial basis?

Mr. Clarke : I do not believe that one can pay a professional on the basis that no one should be allowed to judge his or her performance. We now require much greater exercise of responsibility by the governing body and head teachers. I am not against giving them the authority to contemplate rewarding good classroom performance or someone who carries particularly heavy responsibility. In recruiting their staff, they must also have regard to the need to recruit someone with specialist skills in a subject where they cannot otherwise get someone of the right quality. There are parts of the country where they must have regard to the cost of getting a good teacher, given the local labour market. We have been building those essential flexibilities into the system for the past three or four years.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman rose --

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South) rose --

Mr. Clarke : We have agreed that this should be a fairly short debate. I shall move around and give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack).

Mr. Cormack : I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. I think that I am on the same point as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman). With great respect, my right hon. and learned Friend missed the point. There are a number of schools where many teachers have been on the staff for many years and therefore, rightly, are at the top of the scale. The new funding system militates against those

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schools, which are faced with a difficult dilemma : either they shed people who have served faithfully and well for many years or they face the fact that their schools are in jeopardy. Will my right hon. and learned Friend address that point?

Mr. Clarke : I shall do so, if you will allow me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as it does not have much to do with the order. The point now being raised relates to the effect of local management of schools where a local authority decides on an objective formula by which it distributes money to the schools in its area. The argument is that the formula is based on pupils and not on the make-up of the staff and that some schools find that their staff costs are high because all their teachers are at the top of the scale.

It is important to have a formula distribution of the money based on pupils and that we do not just accept the existing costs of schools. I agree that when one starts doing that, anomalies of the kind that I described are revealed. Usually, for the first time, people realise the funding variations between schools which occurred in the past and which no one previously noticed. One may find that in the past a school had particularly heavy staff costs and that such costs will take a high proportion of its former allocation. I agree that difficult decisions will eventually have to be taken. The school must decide whether it can justify spending such a high proportion of its allocation on staff--

Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) : Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

Mr. Clarke : Let me answer before giving way again. Some schools have difficult choices to make about the value of experienced staff vis-a- vis costs. Of course other schools gain because they discover that they have been underfunded in the past. When money is distributed fairly by formula, one or two schools will find that they are better financed than some of their neighbours and may decide to release a teacher. If he is a good teacher, many other schools with money to spare will find the addition of an experienced member of staff to their payroll worth while.

We should not shrink from adopting a formula for the allocation of funds based on the number of pupils because it means that the future growth of money depends on the ability of a school to attract funds. The formula must be based on the number of pupils rather than on the salary scale or the historic staff costs of the school. However, this off-the-cuff discussion on local management of schools has nothing whatever to do with the order.

Mr. Allason rose --

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) : Order. The Secretary of State is quite right. I was rather anxious about the fact that we seem to be straying from the order.

Mr. Allason : Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that primary schools are in a particularly difficult position? Does he also accept that it is tempting for governors to release a highly paid and experienced teacher at the top of the salary scale and replace him with two inexperienced teachers?

Mr. Clarke : I agree with my hon. Friend about smaller schools in which it is difficult to decide whether to have three or four teachers. The scheme's transitional arrangements will ease that difficulty. It is open to each

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county council to decide how to draw up a formula for distributing the money, and each council will decide how to give additional weight to pupil numbers in small schools. In a county such as the one that my hon. Friend helps to represent there are many rural schools and it will be for the county council to decide how heavily to weight the distribution of funds in favour of small primary schools so as to avoid the difficulties that my hon. Friend describes.

The order contributes to a solution of the problems in that it gives generous pay increases to all teachers and extends yet further the ability of governing bodies with spare money in their budgets to use incentive allowances and discretionary scale payments to reward teachers for good performance, whether or not they are at the top of the scale. We have added to the standard spending assessments for local authorities the extra resources that they require to meet these large increases in future salaries. However, the problems of distribution remain and are not affected by the order.

The outside world and most teachers will want to know exactly what the order means in terms of teachers' pay. There is widespread public concern about teachers' pay and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I have repeatedly expressed the sentiment of our right hon. and hon. Friends that good teachers must be properly rewarded if we are to have a good education system.

These increases in salary points and allowances mean that by December the maximum possible salary for a classroom teacher will be almost £28,000, or more than £30,000 in inner London. That is an increase of more than £4,000 on the maximum that a classroom teacher could have earned before. The average classroom teacher will earn more than £17,000, which is an increase of almost 11 per cent. Average earnings for a primary school teacher at the top of the standard scale will be some £18,300. For a secondary school teacher at the top of the scale the average salary will be about £20,200, which is £2,700 above the scale maximum of £17,500. People will say that that is not excessive pay for teachers. I do not think that there is widespread understanding of the fact that that is the pay level to which they have been moved during the lifetime of this Government--especially by these latest increases.

I disapprove of the practice--although I understand it--followed by teachers unions of never using the figures that I have just given. Like all good trade unionists I have ever encountered, they use the scale as though it bore some direct relation to earnings. The NUT frequently implies that £17,500 is the most that an average classroom teacher can hope to earn. It is using the value of the top point of the scale. I have touched on the generosity and the extension of the incentive allowance and discretionary scale payments, so that the NUT figures bear no relation to what teachers earn "on the ground"--and that can be extremely misleading for those considering entering the profession.

The scale figure takes no account of incentive allowances, despite the fact that this September the Government's plans assume that some 50 per cent of primary teachers and 70 per cent of all secondary teachers will receive allowances, and that their value will rise by 30 per cent. The IAC itself pointed out that the effect of its recommendations will mean that the average earnings for

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a primary school teacher at the top of the standard scale would be about £18,300 and for a secondary school teacher at the top of the scale would be about £20,200. It urged all concerned to give these figures wide circulation and to dispel the mistaken impression that the top of the standard scale is the most that classroom teachers can earn. Even these figures take no account of discretionary scale points which can be awarded by LEAs and governing bodies to teachers on the top of the scale--as I said when I originally misunderstood the interruption by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett- Bowman)

These extra payments at the top of the scale can be very substantial. Discretionary scale points, which are to be awarded on the basis of good performance, can add up to £2,000 to a teacher's salary, and this will rise to £3,000 in September. The value of incentive allowances has increased dramatically since they were introduced in 1987--in the case of the A allowance by nearly 150 per cent. From 1 December the E allowance will be worth more than £7,000 per year. Used imaginatively, these allowances can be a very powerful recruitment and retention incentive, and a substantial reward for excellence in the classroom.

I believe that this is a generous package. It has been much criticised to me privately, not so much by teachers complaining about its adequacy as by people in other walks of life complaining about how the Government can give these high increases in salary to public sector employees at a time of recession. I make no apologies for doing so. The demands that we are making of teachers and the commitment that we are giving to improving educational standards require that we motivate the best of our teachers and reward them properly. By any standards, these will be exceptional pay increases compared with any that those in other walks of life may expect in the coming year--and rightly so.

The IAC also stressed the importance of effective, positive management by heads and deputies, and of seizing the opportunities provided by the local management of schools. I am sure that it is right to do so. I have been encouraged by the committee's comments about the changes that it observed in schools which have delegated budgets under LMS arrangements. The committee said that it saw indications of an increase in morale among teachers, partly as a result of the new freedoms available under LMS. It noted in its report that, in schools where LMS was in place,

"the freedom associated with delegated budgeting was warmly welcomed, and was being used by the head teacher to achieve ends which benefited teachers and pupils : employing additional non-teaching staff to relieve teachers of clerical and other time-consuming tasks ; ensuring adequate cover with supply teachers ; and undertaking programmes of redecoration and minor building works".

I quote that endorsement by an independent body of the move to LMS, which has been such a widespread success in this country. The Opposition parties now support LMS, but it has been their custom in the past to defend the centralisation of most budgeting and control in the hands of local authorities. I see the Opposition spokesmen shaking their heads at that--I am sure that they now warmly endorse our LMS proposals.

I well understand that head teachers and deputies increasingly have heavy responsibilities being loaded upon them by the Government's reforms. The IAC's recommendations mean that the head teacher of a large

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secondary school outside London will be able to earn £47,000 or more each year. The head of a typical primary school will receive almost £2,400 extra, taking his or her pay to £23,500 each year. The head of a typical secondary school will see his or her pay rise by more than £3,600 to more than £32,000.

Mr. Christopher Hawkins (High Peak) : I think that they can earn more than that.

Mr. Clarke : I think that the highest paid head teacher that I have ever heard of in the state sector is earning £55,000 each year. Those are responsible positions and they deserve responsible rewards. It should be an attraction to those contemplating teaching to realise that rewards of that kind are now available in the profession.

The changes recommended by the committee and accepted by the Government will help to recruit, retain and motivate sufficient teachers of the quality that the country needs. They give governing bodies and local education authorities more discretion to make selective payments in the light of local circumstances. They will greatly increase the capacity for local management to manage their own schools.

As the House is aware, the Government's intention is that next year's pay settlement should be determined by an independent review body. We have defeated the Labour party's opposition to that and the Bill is now in another place. This is therefore the right time to pay tribute to the work of the IAC during the past four years. Its clear analyses and constructive recommendations for change have won support across a broad spectrum of opinion. The IAC's reports have provided an admirable basis for the future development of the teachers' pay structure and, by highlighting and encouraging teacher

professionalism, have played an important part in preparing the way for the award to teachers of review body status that we now propose. The recommendations of the IAC for 1991-92 are embodied in the order which is needed to ensure that teachers receive their pay increases. If the House by any chance votes against it, all the pay increases that I have described will not normally be payable for the year ahead. On that ground, because I approve strongly of the increases, I commend the order to the House and ask that it be approved.

10.36 pm

Mr. Derek Fatchett (Leeds, Central) : I agree with one or two of the comments made by the Secretary of State, but I preface my remarks by offering to the House the apologies of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw). He has given his apologies to the Secretary of State, but he would like to give them to the House as well. Unfortunately, he cannot be with us tonight, for good reasons. I agree with the Secretary of State's final comments in praise of the work of the IAC. It is appropriate for the House to thank all those who have been involved in the work of the IAC for their reports and for the analysis and information contained in them. There has been some disagreement among those directly affected in terms of the mechanism--there was a strong argument repeated in the IAC final report in favour of the restoration of collective bargaining and that was the view among teachers and

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teachers' organisations--but it is to the IAC's credit that it has succeeded in winning the confidence of those who may well have been opposed to the mechanism. It is of even greater credit to work on that basis and gain the support of one's opponents. We should like to put on the record the Opposition's thanks to those directly involved in the IAC and its work.

Mr. Cormack : The hon. Gentleman will not vote against it, will he?

Mr. Fatchett : The hon. Gentleman asks that more with public transport in mind than teachers' pay, but I shall return to that point.

We strongly agree with some areas of the report that I shall highlight. First, the report makes a strong case, as I think the Secretary of State recognised, for teacher appraisal. That is important in terms of professional development. If we are to improve the overall performance of education, it is crucial to have a teacher force which has self-confidence and the ability to build on its strengths and to remove the weaknesses that may exist in its performance.

As somebody who taught for a number of years in a university, I think that the process of appraisal may also be appropriate to higher education and teacher performance there. Having said that, I recognise that I was one of the best teachers in the institution and, therefore, had no need of appraisal! I understand, however, that there was a strong objective case for appraisal.

The Opposition agree strongly with the principle of appraisal, but we share the disappointment that was expressed implicitly in the report that the Government are not making available for that process the money that has been considered necessary, especially for training. There is a substantial task, and I think that the Government could have made more resources available. If they had done so, there would be more confidence in the system of appraisal that has been adopted and in the objectivity of that system.

We agree with the IAC's report on local pay bargaining. Those who have followed the debates on school teachers' pay will understand that the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Bill--the No. 1 Bill contained support for the possibility that individual schools and local education authorities should be able to opt out of national procedures. However, the report states extremely effectively that there is substantial flexibility in the system already and that there is no need for the opt-out that was proposed in the Bill. If the Government listened to the committee and dropped the proposal from the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill, I am glad that they did so.

We approve of the IAC's comments on non-contact hours for primary school teachers. That raises an issue that the Government need to consider, and it was addressed in the annual reports of Her Majesty's inspectorate this year and last year. Primary school teachers have been subjected to extensive change and an increase in stress over the past two or three years. The process of introducing the national curriculum has been a greater burden on primary schools, I think, than on schools in the secondary sector. The notions of introducing primary science and primary technology are real changes on which we must build. They introduce an area of real development. It is important, however, to understand that if a primary school teacher is to deliver at the level that we would wish, there is a strong

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argument for non-contact hours. That is a recommendation of the IAC's report, and of the annual report of Her Majesty's inspectorate. It would be useful if the Government accepted the need to take up the recommendation.

We agree with the IAC's general comments about teachers, and it is worth putting them on the record again. The committee makes a strong report that in the schools that its representatives visited it was found that teachers were working hard, that they were performing well and that they were committed to the system and the children they were teaching. It is worthwhile always to state that part of the report and to get it on the record.

Perhaps the crucial issue is whether the IAC has raised the profile and status of teaching and its professionalism over the years. It is sad to find at paragraph 3.44 of its report the following comment : "Pay continues to be a key factor in determining morale. Teachers told us that although their starting salaries have been comparable with those of their contemporaries who graduated with them, in a very few years the salary gap had widened. Few teachers had expected that their chosen profession would bring the financial rewards which are available in other sectors of the economy. Many commented on the satisfaction teaching brought them, but there were still bills to be paid."

The paragraph ended :

"Some teachers had second jobs in order to make ends meet." Mr. Hawkins : On £28,000 a year.

Mr. Fatchett : The hon. Gentleman talks about £28,000 a year. As the Secretary of State said, the average salary is £17,000. We must consider the problem of teachers' salaries when they are five years into teaching. It is important that that is considered by the review body that deals with next year's pay settlement. There is a haemorrhage from the profession of those who are in their first five years. The IAC has found that at that point of comparability there is a disparity between teaching and other professions. Teaching looks less attractive than other professions. If the Secretary of State is right--and I believe that he is-- to say that if we are to have a highly qualified and highly motivated teaching profession, it must have salaries commensurate with--

Mrs. Dunwoody rose --

Mr. Peter Thurnham (Bolton, North-East) rose --

Mr. Fatchett : It is important that we have a salary scale at a career point that is attractive and which relates to that of other professions. The interim advisory committee has not yet dealt sufficiently with that problem. I shall make one further point before giving way to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) and to the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham).

The hon. Members for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) and for High Peak (Mr. Hawkins) mentioned the local management of schools, which is important. One way to improve the career prospects of individual teachers is to use the incentive allowance and the discretionary payments. There is a genuine problem for those schools that have a particular difficulty with their budgets. Both hon. Members were right, and the Secretary of State did

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not deal adequately with that issue. If the budget is tight, however good the teacher it will be impossible to pay him the incentive allowance or the discretionary award.

Mrs. Dunwoody : In that case, what advice would my hon. Friend give to those teachers who have excellent, proven records and very good qualifications but who, in their early 50s, are being made redundant merely because schools cannot afford them? That is not happening just once--it is happening across the country. There is a haemorrhage of graduate teachers at the top of the scale.

Mr. Hawkins rose --

Mrs. Dunwoody : What about the formula?

Mr. Fatchett : I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, and I also heard the sedentary intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich who makes an important point. There is a problem. The hon. Member for High Peak agreed by saying that some teachers are just too expensive for a particular school and are therefore faced with the threat of compulsory redundancy.

Mr. Hawkins : I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State will also hear what I have to say. If the simplistic and absurd formula, which is currently used for the costing of schools, used the average cost of a teacher instead of the actual cost of a teacher, the cost would average out over the nation--or the county--as a whole. There would not then be the problem of an individual school having--as some small schools in my constituency have--four senior teachers who are too expensive because they are older, higher up the scale or have merit awards. But the schools have to shed teachers and have large classes solely because the formula stupidly builds in the actual, rather than the average, cost of a teacher.

Mr. Fatchett : Let me answer the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich by saying that the hon. Member for High Peak got it the wrong way round, although the principle behind what he said was absolutely correct. The formula should involve average teacher salaries rather than actual teacher salaries.

Mr. Hawkins : That was what I thought I said.

Mr. Fatchett : I know what the hon. Gentleman meant and I appreciate the point that he was making. My advice to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich is that the formula for local management of schools needs to be changed. Otherwise, there will be the continued nonsense that senior, well-respected, important members of staff will be penalised and, in some cases, threatened with redundancy. That does not make sense--

Mrs. Dunwoody : They are being made redundant.

Mr. Fatchett : --and are being made redundant. I accept that, which is why there is a need for additional funding, but also for a change in the formula. I hope that the Secretary of State will listen not just to the representations from the Opposition, but to those being made forcefully by Conservative Members. The formula must be changed.

Mr. Thurnham : The hon. Gentleman talks about the importance of incentives for teachers, but what incentive would there be for a head teacher who found his pay slashed under Labour's plans to increase the top rate of tax?

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Mr. Fatchett : I shall ignore the hon. Gentleman's point

Mr. Neil Hamilton (Tatton) : It is true.

Mr. Fatchett : The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) is well suited to the role of Whip because silence is the best virtue for him.

It would be more useful to move the debate in the direction suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, and by the hon. Members for High Peak and for Lancaster. We need to reconsider the formula so that teachers are not penalised in the way that we have discussed. I was trying to make the point to the Secretary of State that it is no good saying that, within the system, we can top up the standard scale for teachers by incentive allowances and discretionary payments if the money is not there and the school is under financial pressure.

There seems to be a long-term and worrying pattern. Post-Houghton and post- Clegg, we had substantial immediate increases. In both cases, there was then a deterioration in the real level of teachers' pay. Teachers moved down the pay and salaries ladder. I fear that the same process has happened under the interim advisory committee. There has been, we accept, a large initial increase--the Baker increase, if I may call it that--but in subsequent years there has been a movement down the salary ladder. That may send a signal to teachers that the profession has occasional good years, but then a number of lean years. We need an approach to teachers' pay that gives the impression, year after year, that teachers are valued and important.

Mr. Patrick Thompson (Norwich, North) : I am one of the hon. Members who were enthusiastic about the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill which will bring in a pay review body for teachers. The Opposition's position was not clear. Will the hon. Gentleman accept that a new teachers' pay review body will help to overcome the very problem which he has just described?

Mr. Fatchett : That depends on the conditions under which that pay review body works. If the pay review body is totally free and is able to come up with the recommendations that, I suspect, the hon. Gentleman supports, it may work in that way. However, the evidence on the face of the Bill is that conditions are attached to the pay review body which may stop it working in the way to which the hon. Gentleman refers.

Mr. Gerry Steinberg (City of Durham) : Does my hon. Friend agree that this evening we have heard the Secretary of State give the reason why the pay review body will be no different from the interim advisory committee ? The powers that the Secretary of State has used are identical to the powers that he will be able to use for the pay review body. The interim advisory committee recommended an increase that the Secretary of State decided to phase in. The settlement has not been implemented in one go. The Secretary of State will be able to do the same to the pay review body, so his powers will override the pay review body and he will be able to implement what he thinks fit.

Mr. Fatchett : As always, my hon. Friend makes a constructive intervention. He takes me on to the next part of my speech and he has also answered the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson). The reason why we

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shall vote against the order tonight is that the interim advisory committee's report was changed in one key area--the phasing of the increase. As my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich said, that is an element of the conditions in the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill. It is important and will be noted by teachers that this year's interim advisory committee report's recommendations have been phased. There is an inconsistency in that position.

It does not help teacher morale, recruitment and retention for a so-called "independent" body to come forward with a set of recommendations and then for the Secretary of State with a stroke of a pen to change those recommendations. There is a deeper inconsistency which teachers will find worrying and which they will judge alongside the proposal for a pay review body. Two weeks ago, we were told by the Secretary of State that this year's standard spending assessments for local government were sufficient to cover an increase for teachers in the interquartile range--the area in which the interim advisory committee made its recommendations. The committee's recommendations were, exactly as asked, within the interquartile range of non-manual increases. The committee suggested a formula that meant that the implementation costs for 1991-92 were within the limit, yet again, of the interquartile non-manual range of salary increases.

The interim advisory committee delivered what the Secretary of State asked and the right hon. and learned Gentleman claims that the standard spending assessments are sufficient and that local government has the money to pay for the increase.

The two sides of the equation are that, according to the Secretary of State, local government has the resources and the interim advisory committee is carrying out its remit according to the terms set out by the Secretary of State. Having got both sides of the equation, the Secretary of State then decided that the teachers' salary increase should be phased. There is no justification for that in terms of the positions taken previously in relation to both local government and the interim advisory committee. That is the point that my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) was making and it answers the point raised by the hon. Member for Norwich, North. The signal going out to teachers is that a so-called "independent" body has produced a set of recommendations that it considers important for teacher morale, recruitment and retention, yet the Secretary of State has overturned those recommendations. Those are the conditions to which we referred during debates on the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill, and they are conditions about which teachers will be extremely worried. It is no good the Secretary of State saying that there is an independent body if, when it reports, the right hon. Gentleman overturns its report. That does not build confidence in the system. That is why we shall vote against the order. It undermines the work of the interim advisory committee, gives too much power to the Secretary of State to operate it illogically, and is a bad signal for the future and for the pay review body.

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