House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Nov 1991

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special educational needs, and so on. Nevertheless, it would be a perfectly sensible study. That study can be made now. One can compare GCSE results with A-level results to judge the progress made by sixth forms. No other form of value added comparison is possible. Until the parents charter, adequate information was not likely to be available about schools.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with analysing the tables in that way. I have no doubt that it will be done by intelligent commentators, such as the Audit Commission, and local newspapers. If it is suggested that the Bill should require the publication of such detailed analyses in the first place--before anything can be published--members of the Audit Commission and Members of Parliament may find the document familiar and accessible, but many parents may first of all prefer to see the actual information on performance and tables.

Mr. Straw : Who is patronising now?

Mr. Clarke : We are not patronising. All I am saying is that, once we produce the material, these judgments can be made. The Labour party is coming reluctantly to the conclusion that these data must be made available, so it will come up with as many complicating amendments as possible to ensure that as few members of the public as possible get access to straightforward information.

Mr. Straw : Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Clarke : I shall finish my allegations and then give way. At times Labour Members are guilty of allying themselves with that section of opinion in the educational world that wants to make so many qualifications about results that, in effect, it is trying to prove that there is no such thing as one school being better than another. If one thinks of enough footnotes, qualifications, reasons and explanations, one can demonstrate that there is no difference between one school and another.

The Government's duty is to ensure that straightforward information is published, and that is what the Bill provides. People are entitled to analyse and make use of that information to the best extent they can.

Mr. Straw : Yet again, the Secretary of State has shown that he has not done his homework on this issue or, indeed, on the Opposition's position. Our position during the past month is the same one that we have taken for three years. Again and again, we have argued the need for Ministers and local authorities to concentrate on the value added by schools. If one simply relies on the raw data, and not school effectiveness data, it may show the strength of the pupils at the school, not the strength of the school. It is the Secretary of State who, thank God, is now making a deathbed conversion towards school effectiveness, not us.

Mr. Clarke : The hon. Gentleman has two reactions every time we produce a policy. Usually, he agrees with it rapidly, but sometimes he claims that he thought of it first. However, when one re-reads his previous statements, one finds nothing that resembles the parents charter. If the hon. Gentleman is claiming that, had he been in office, a Labour Government would have taken on the educational world and produced, out of the hands of the local education authorities and the testing system, the information that we will acquire, he is asking us to believe in cloud cuckoo land.

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The Labour party has no essential policy on this issue. It would not drive through any of our changes against the interests of the educational world, which is strongly represented in it. Normally, the Opposition tow along until the end and then produce footnote detail to try to distinguish their policy from our own.

As a result of the Bill, a much fuller picture of how our schools are performing will be presented. Some newspapers have already produced data according to what information is available--largely, the A-level results for individual schools. That was interesting, but I did not agree with the way in which some of the newspapers presented those data. However, they were perfectly entitled to analyse the results from what they regarded as the 300 best schools, or as many of those schools as would take part in the project.

I believe that such results are almost the least interesting part of what is eventually produced by a school, not least because the schools on that list do not represent a problem. I do not lie awake at night worrying about the performance of those extremely good schools. Those data related to their performance with high-flying pupils.

When we have the full information as a result of the parents charter and the Bill, the public and the House will discover which state schools offer the worst performance. Wait until we see the recorded truancy rates in some of our more difficult schools. Wait until we see the staying-on rates and how they vary from place to place. We will then discover that we have some problem schools. We will also realise that, until the parents charter, the public were not given any straightforward information about the performance of schools.

A much-repeated criticism about the tables is that, once published, all the parents will want to go to the better schools. Some educationists argue that that is a sinful desire on the part of those parents, which will cause considerable problems for the schools that are not regarded as the better ones. However, that will provide those schools with an incentive to improve their performance.

The argument against the information that will be provided as a result of the Bill and the parents charter is sometimes reduced to one that claims that parents should not be allowed to know such information. Therefore, they will send their children to poorly performing schools without realising that, in key aspects, those schools fall below the level of performance that is attained nationally or in their specific locality.

The performance tables that will be published as a result of the Bill will- -I apologise to the House for the jargon--empower parents, particularly from deprived backgrounds, to make more informed choices. They will have real influence over schools, because they will be given the information of which they should never have been deprived for so long.

Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro) : I believe that the Secretary of State will find that the House is united in trying to give parents the information that will make them more informed in their choice of school. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has rightly referred to the work of the Audit Commission on value-added information. As I understand it, the right hon. and learned Gentleman objected to the publication of such information because it takes longer to compile than the other information that he wants to publish and might therefore hold up the

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publication of that other information. However, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman seek to have that value- added information published when it is available? He may publish other information first, but will he at least commit himself to ensuring that value-added information is made available as quickly as possible?

Mr. Clarke : That can be worked out. We are producing data that will, for the first time, make it possible for those value-added tables to be produced. I do not want all the data that is required statutorily by the Bill to be produced in such a way that, instead of a few columns and a few heads of information, we have countless columns with countless footnotes. That would make it difficult to tackle all the information.

I am not being patronising when I say that I prefer, when seeing tables of figures, to see first the key tables and graphs, if one is using graphs, on which one intends to base one's decisions. That is far preferable to going through pages of analyses without the key items being highlighted. I have conceded that value added is a perfectly reasonable analysis to make of a school. The Bill will enable the data to be published so that those value- added calculations can be made.

I was intrigued to hear the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats otherwise say that there is no difference between the parties about giving information to parents. Will the hon. Gentleman deal with the problem to which my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham was referring with Richmond borough council? It is one thing for Liberals to sit powerless on the Back Benches of this House expressing their belief in virtue. Will they, in those rare cases where they have control of the local bureaucracy, take steps to ensure that it is put into practice?

Mr. Matthew Taylor : The issue which Richmond and other councils are addressing centres on the fact that the Government passed legislation saying that local authority employees should not distribute information that is politically contentious. The parents charter is unusual in that respect, in that it sets out in red type information which has not been agreed by the House, which is politically contentious and which may not be introduced this side of the next general election. The advice circulated to those local authorities is that the information may infringe the Government's legal restrictions-- [Interruption.] Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman will get his officials to clarify the matter.

Mr. Clarke : I join the chorus of "Weasel words" to that intervention. The method of distributing that information has been used by Government for a considerable time and is well precedented. It is not party political information. It has been vetted for that purpose by the processes we have, it has been cleared as suitable information and it is expressed devoid of political bias. Indeed, the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) said that it was not politically contentious. Although he gives that as his opinion, where we have a borough council in which his party is in control, fatuous political arguments are raised for this information not to be distributed to parents. That is because what Liberals say in the House frequently does not accord with what they do when they take power. Liberals in Richmond are as bad as socialists

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in Nottinghamshire in believing that parents should not be given this information about their schools, information which they prefer to control through their influence in the town hall.

Mr. Derek Fatchett (Leeds, Central) rose --

Mrs. Maureen Hicks (Wolverhampton, North-East) rose --

Mr. Clarke : I am anxious to move to the next part of the Bill, having given way probably a dozen times.

Mr. Fatchett : The Secretary of State has based most of his case on the rights of parents to know information. Will he explain why the report on the future of Her Majesty's inspectorate has not been made available either to parents or the House of Commons? Why did the right hon. and learned Gentleman, this so-called champion of freedom of information, give only one instruction to his civil servants, which was to shred the report?

Mr. Clarke : I am about to come to the next part of the Bill. The review that was carried out was advice from my officials to Ministers. I appreciate that Opposition Members have no ideas of their own, but I do not see why they should have access to advice from my officials to give them some. I have not invented the rule that advice from officials to Ministers is not publicly available. It is time-honoured. If Opposition Members are saying that, should they gain power, they would cause the publication of all written advice given to them by their officials, I shall listen with interest to what would be a novel description of the process of government that they propose to carry out.

The hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett) is not rising to his usual standards if that is the best he can do on commenting on the first part of the Bill. It will give parents more information about what matters to them--the performance of their children's schools--than anyone would have contemplated before we published the parents charter.

Mrs. Hicks : Will my right hon. and learned Friend consider publishing details of the resources that go to local authorities? We have found in the past that, when they run out of excuses for giving information to parents, they revert to the excuse of inadequate resources. We have found in many areas, including mine, that some of the worst results often come from the highest-spending authorities.

Mr. Clarke : My hon. Friend is right. I am surprised that that demand has not been made by some Opposition Members, because they usually blame all shortcomings in the education service on lack of resources. We are now spending 50 per cent. more per pupil than when we came to power. We are also in a year in which standard spending assessments for councils have gone up by 16 per cent., whereas inflation has just gone down to below 4 per cent.

Therefore, not only are more resources going in, but there is no direct correlation between spending and performance. Some of the highest-spending Labour authorities in the country produce some of the worst results in their schools. The parents charter will help to bring that point out and make it more evident. Clearly, we need to spend more money on our children's education--we do so each year--but, as we continually point out, how it is spent and how effectively it is deployed in schools affect the standards attained in those schools, which is

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what really matters. The late lamented--or not lamented--ILEA was a classic example of a ludicrously overspending council that produced deplorable results for the pupils in its schools.

The other important provision in the Bill is the inspection proposal, which has the same basic purpose as the performance tables. The Bill will produce a dramatic increase in the number of inspections of schools. For the first time, it will produce open reporting to every parent of the results of the inspection of each school, and direct reporting to parents of the governors' plans, explaining how they intend to build up the strengths and tackle the weaknesses in the school in the light of the inspector's report. The Bill proposes a system with two levels of school inspection : first, Her Majesty's inspectorate, which will be given more independence of the Government and the Department of Education and Science, as well as a more public voice ; secondly, a choice of teams of independent local inspectors who will meet standards set by HMI. That is a huge improvement in public information and quality control of our schools.

In the past, HMI's main role has been to advise the Government on policy, which was the main reason for its inspections. It has tended to produce about 150 public reports a year on individual schools. Indeed, HMI's school -by-school inspection was proceeding at such a slow pace that it would have taken about 200 years before every primary school in the country had had an individual inspection and report. Where HMI produced a report, I have so far found no ordinary, "lay" parent who recalls ever having seen one. Most parents never knew that an HMI report had been produced on their school. The present system entails local authority inspections and is extremely variable in its effectiveness and coverage. In at least 10 local authorities, it is completely non-existent, because they have no inspection policy. Moreover, local authorities never allow reports on individual schools to be seen by parents. Therefore, the old system, which the Labour party would never have challenged, was seen as inspection by professionals for professionals, with parents left out in the cold.

The Bill sets up a new office of Her Majesty's chief inspector.

Ms. Mildred Gordon (Bow and Poplar) : Will the Minister give way?

Mrs. Sylvia Heal (Mid-Staffordshire) : Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Clarke : No. I shall give way in a moment, but I wish to make some progress.

Most of the Bill deals with the important statutory functions of Her Majesty's chief inspector and the system that that new office will oversee. In contrast to the Bill, the Education Act 1944 devoted only two subsections to inspection of denominational religious education and one subsection to the appointment of Her Majesty's inspector, who had no function other than to inspect schools at the request of the Secretary of State of the day.

Her Majesty's chief inspector will have increased independence, a formal role and the power to publish as he or she wishes. He will not be detached from decision making and will have a statutory role of offering advice to the Secretary of State. He will advise as he thinks fit, as well as when requested.

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The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) has been extremely critical of the new inspectorate's authority, independence and role, because he is obsessed by the numbers employed in HMI. In a wholly typical fashion, the union objects to the reduction in numbers that I am proposing. If the union objects, the hon. Member for Blackburn objects ; he makes his judgment based on the number of employees. The numbers of staff that we shall employ in the new office will be those needed to discharge the duties set out in clause 2. The numbers that I have given publicly hitherto are the best estimate that the senior chief inspector and I can make--about 175 at the end of the transitional period. I have given that estimate before, and the hon. Member for Blackburn is reported to have said on the strength of a newspaper article that we both read :

"the Secretary of State has come close to misleading the House of Commons over the numbers required."

I utterly refute that. I repeat what I have always said : 175 is the best estimate that the senior chief inspector and I could make of the number required after the transitional period to carry out the duties that I have described.

Mr. Straw rose --

Mr. Clarke : I hope that the hon. Gentleman is rising to withdraw that allegation, because it was totally groundless and misleading.

Mr. Straw : The comparison that I made in The Independent newspaper was based on what the Secretary of State's own review had recommended as the number required to run the system.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Tim Eggar) : How does the hon. Gentleman know

Mr. Straw : The Minister of State asks me how I know. I know from a statement made by the Secretary of State in response to the Independent article, a copy of which I have here. The Secretary of State said that the review team had concluded that a maximum of 380 to 390 HMI inspectors would be needed. That was based on certain stated assumptions and the review team's recommended package. The Secretary of State must explain how the assumptions of the review team differ from the assumptions that he now makes. What did the review team say that the Secretary of State disagrees with?

Mr. Clarke : The hon. Gentleman made a totally false comparison before he made the totally false allegation that I had misled the House. He had read the article in The Independent and my response to it. The figures in the article were not those that I have ever given to the House. My figures were the best estimates that the senior chief inspector and I could make of the numbers required to carry out the policy that I have laid before the House. It is most unfortunate that the hon. Gentleman does not have the courtesy or good sense to withdraw an allegation based on his misreading of a newspaper article.

Hon. Members : Withdraw.

Mr. Straw : The Secretary of State made the statement once outside the House. Will he now agree that the figure of 380 was that recommended by the review?

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Mr. Clarke : Last week, the hon. Gentleman was trying to be a lawyer and attempting to make me read out on the floor of the House a document that he wanted me to table. The hon. Gentleman has no ideas and is desperate for the advice of my officials. He thinks that he can lure me into making a statement that will have him attempting to give a poor man's reading of "Erskine May" and saying that he wants me to lay the document before the House. I shall not do so. The figure that the hon. Gentleman is quoting from the newspaper article bears no relation to the figures that I used, which constituted the best estimate that the senior chief inspector and I could give of the numbers required to carry out the policy. The hon. Gentleman had no basis for saying that I misled the House, and he has no basis for declining to withdraw his allegation. He should stop fooling about and making the barrack-room lawyer performances that are starting to creep into his approach to the HMI review. Two key assumptions lie behind the senior chief inspector and myself arriving at the figure of 175. Responsibility for the inspection of further education and sixth form colleges will transfer to the Further Education Funding Council under a Bill now before another place. I suspect that it will involve largely the same personnel, but they will no longer be on the strength of Her Majesty's inspectorate and will work for the funding council responsible for further education and sixth form colleges. The senior chief inspector and I have made the best estimate we can of the savings that can be made in the complement of Her Majesty's inspectorate based in local offices and engaged in the inspection of schools in liaison with local education authorities. Many of those activities will be displaced by the substantial increase in the evidence available from 6,000 reports each year by inspectors registered with Her Majesty's inspectorate.

Dr. Dafydd Elis Thomas (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) : I want to be helpful, although I shall not stand as a referee between the two Front Bench teams. When the figure of 175 was given, was that simply the clause 2 figure for England, or was the clause 5 figure for the Welsh inspectorate also included?

Mr. Clarke : They are English figures. The Welsh inspectorate is not my responsibility. The Secretary of State for Wales will form his own estimate with his own chief inspector.

The inspections will be carried out at local level by independent inspectors who will be registered with Her Majesty's Inspectorate, which will withdraw the registration of inspectors who are not up to standard. That means that inspectors will be supervised and monitored by Her Majesty's inspectorate and will not be allowed to carry out inspections unless they are up to standard.

Ms. Gordon : Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Clarke : No. I have given way many times, and I should like to proceed.

The independent teams and Her Majesty's inspectorate will contain some people who are not members of the teaching profession. I make no apology for that. Of course the vast majority of inspectors will have professional qualifications in teaching, but inspectors should not be exclusively drawn from that stable. Many perfectly sensible and intelligent people could be trained to make a

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contribution to inspection. People would value lay judgment alongside the professional judgment of information about the inspection of a school.

I shall now deal with how that proposed system is being challenged. The issue between the Government and the Opposition--if there is an issue on the Bill--is that the hon. Member for Blackburn advocates a policy of patsy, unquestioning inspections of schools by people who are well known to those schools. The hon. Gentleman accuses me of doing that, but it is his mechanism. My understanding of his proposal is that inspections should be carried out only by local government inspectors.

The hon. Gentleman also takes the view that only local government should be allowed to run schools. Therefore, Labour's policy, as I understand it, is that only local councils should be allowed to run schools and that those schools should be inspected only by local government inspectors. I cannot think of a more patsy, unquestioning system better designed to produce the cosy relationship about which the hon. Gentleman so frequently speaks.

Some head teachers--a minority, I am glad to say--ask why their schools cannot be inspected by inspectors they know. There are even those who ask why they cannot be inspected by those who advise them. That would not be a desirable system. Under the registration of inspectors advocated by the Bill, local government inspection will be universally up to the standard which at the moment only the very best attain.

I am not the only one criticising local government inspection. The Secondary Heads Association shares my view of the system that the Labour party seems to defend. The general secretary of the association, Mr. John Sutton, in a letter to the Prime Minister on 23 September, said :

"That some reform is necessary is not in dispute. Schools are very rarely inspected in depth by HMI and there is a need for a more regular and systematic coverage. LEA inspection has not provided an adequate substitute or back-up for HMI. This is because :

1. They have not been co-ordinated with HMI.

2. The practice and provision has varied very widely across the country.

3. There have been no agreed criteria or standards.

4. The overall calibre of inspectors has been poor.

5. The functions of inspection and advice have been mixed. 6. Inspectors have been able to control elements of expenditure, although LMS will largely stop this.

7. Their procedures have not been seen as being as open and impartial as those of HMI.

8. With individual exceptions, they have lacked the qualities which have been judged praiseworthy in HMI."

Labour's reaction to that is that local authority inspection should be made the universal norm, with local authorities inspecting the schools which only they are allowed to run. I cannot think of a recipe for diminution of standards that is more likely to succeed. The association and others criticise what I describe as independent inspectors, but we can reassure them in the Bill and elsewhere by showing how powerful HMI will be in ensuring that standards are up to the required level. [Interruption.] I do not know whether the hon. Member for Durham, North-West (Ms. Armstrong) on the Opposition Front Bench agrees with such systematic inspection, but if she does, the Labour party is instantly converted to such inspection and reports to parents.

There are choices. The choices are either that local

Mr. Straw : We have already proposed that.

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Mr. Clarke : The hon. Gentleman must have proposed it so sotto voce that neither I nor any member of the public has heard his proposal. His method of expressing himself often has its imperfections. Ever since I produced my proposals about three months ago, I have thought that he was opposing them. It is absurd, every time we introduce another element of our policy, for him to leap on to the populist pitch and then, as he no doubt will in a few minutes' time, find some detailed reasons for being opposed to it.

If there is to be local inspection of 6,000 schools a year, there are several choices. The first is to have it done by local government. The second is to increase the establishment of HMI so that it employs thousands of people, but I do not believe that a centralised civil service approach is desirable. The third is the one that we are providing--giving the governors of schools the choice of teams of inspectors, who will be up to the standards required by HMI at the centre.

The most important product of this will be the reports to the parents. They will get from the inspectors straightforward summaries saying what the strengths and weaknesses of each school are. They will then get the governors' action plans, which will be the results of all this.

When I say that parents will receive this information, I must make it clear that it will not be available on application to those parents who realise that they can obtain it. It will be sent unsolicited to all parents, so that there will be a great increase in the information available to them about the school.

Teachers will be praised for their achievements and be given incentives and guidance to improve their performance. We will build up pride in individual schools on the back of the influence of parents in what those schools are doing. The Bill will allow for reports, comparative tables and inspectors' reports. It will increase, as all our policies do, parental influence and parental choice in education on a scale on which we have never previously embarked in state education.

I disregard Labour's attempts to agree with part of this. As I have said before, I do not believe that a Labour Government would have embarked on any of this. They would not have challenged any of the interest groups that wish to maintain the status quo. The Bill will let light into the education world. Given the reaction that we are getting, it is probably not for us to defend our policy--it is more for the Opposition to tell us how darkness, secrecy and the protection of a closed professional world will serve the public good in education.

I commend the Bill to the House.

4.37 pm

Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn) : We have listened to the Secretary of State speak for an hour and a minute, and during those 61 minutes never once did he utter a word about the central feature of the Bill--the doctrinaire destruction of Her Majesty's inspectorate of schools and the privatisation of the national and local schools inspectorates.

The Conservative party has no mandate for the Bill, which will undermine standards in schools, demoralise the teaching profession and, through the privatisation of the schools inspectorate, deny parents independent information about the education of their children. It will prevent the taking of prompt action to improve failing schools.

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In three successive general election campaigns, the Conservative party has promised higher standards in education. After 12 years of Tory government, anxiety about standards in schools has never been greater. Britain lags behind its competitors in every measure and is bottom of the league table. For four years running, the Government's teachers' pay committee has reported that teachers' morale has never been lower. Investment in education as a share of national wealth has slumped. Parents are being forced to pay more and more out of their own pockets for their children's education.

What is the Secretary of State's response to the overwhelming lack of public confidence shown in every test of public opinion about the Government's education policy and his stewardship of it? It is not to change the policy or feel some humility about 12 years of failure. Instead, it is to send for the advertising man to produce yet another glossy pamphlet--this time, a parents charter which is allegedly embodied in the Bill.

There is nothing new in the idea of a parents charter. It is a device which Conservative central office has used twice before when it was in a hole with its education policy. The spokesman for the Opposition, the then Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas, had one in 1974. The then Secretary of State, Mr. Mark Carlisle, had another in 1980, but both sank without trace.

The idea of a parents charter is not new ; what is new is the brazenness with which the Government play fast and loose, spending taxpayers' money on party political propaganda. While teachers are underpaid, schools are crying out for repair and children for books, Ministers' standard answer is to say, "You can't solve problems by throwing money at them." However, when it comes to the central problem faced by the Secretary of State and his colleagues--that of being re-elected--their only solution is to throw money at it, providing that it is not their money or that of their supporters but taxpayers' money.

Although the share of national wealth invested in education as a whole has gone down, taxpayer spending on publicity by the Department of Education and Science has risen in real terms since 1979 by no less than 28 times. This year's spending of £6.5 million is four and a half times the level of two years ago. The parents charter does not merely inform people of the rights that they already have and which are approved by Parliament, but contains a list of proposals on the privatisation of the inspectorate. They are highly controversial and cannot come into force until after the next election, even if the Bill is passed, and then only in the unlikely event of the Conservatives' being returned. In other words, it is a manifesto ; the use of taxpayers' money for such propaganda is an utter disgrace and the Secretary of State knows it.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : I had not intended to intervene so early, because I gave way several times and we need to make progress. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the figure he quoted for our publicity budget is largely a combination of our staff recruiting campaigns, coupled with increased publishing and printing costs since 1979? If he is attacking the parents charter for being party

political--although in his interventions he appeared to claim that he had thought of it first--does he accept that it does not mention privatisation? If he is claiming that it does, what existing public body is he claiming that we intend to put into the private sector, either in the Bill or in the leaflet to which he objects?

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Mr. Straw : The document explains about the Government's proposals.

Mr. Clarke : Privatisation?

Mr. Straw : Of course, in terribly careful language because the last word that the Secretary of State wishes to utter is "privatisation". These days, it never falls from his mouth, but even The Daily Telegraph used the word about the proposals. As I shall show, the Secretary of State is privatising the work of Her Majesty's inspectorate and of the local schools inspectorate. As he knows, the leaflet contains weasel words about how the new system of inspection of schools will work. The document is not even an accurate representation of the Bill, so it is not an accurate manifesto of what would happen to schools and to parents' rights if the Tories were to be re-elected. Therefore, the Government can be charged on two accounts-- first, of spending money on a manifesto and, secondly, of issuing a manifesto that is wholly inaccurate.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : The hon. Gentleman is talking passionately, but he was in the middle of a denunciation of my spending money on political leaflets advocating privatisation. Where are the political words in the leaflet to which he objects and, in particular, which public body does the leaflet say that we shall privatise or transfer to the private sector?

Mr. Straw : I have dealt with exactly that point. [ Hon. Members :-- "No."] Yes. Every newspaper understands that the Secretary of State does not wish to admit that he is privatising the schools inspectorate, which is precisely what he is doing. He knows that, and he also knows that the privatisation of public services--of which he was the architect in the health service--is very unpopular with the public. He does not wish to admit the consequences of his actions. There is no way in which anyone considering the fantastic increase in expenditure on publicity and on public relations in the past two years can come to any other conclusion than that the Government--as in 1987 and in 1983--are spending taxpayers' money on party political propaganda in a desperate attempt to be re- elected.

We cannot judge exactly what educational standards are today because of the Government's inadequate monitoring of those standards. In each manifesto since 1979, the Government have promised higher standards. In 1979, they said :

"We shall promote higher standards of achievement in basic skills. The Government's Assessment of Performance Unit will set national standards in reading, writing and arithmetic, monitored by tests worked out with teachers and others and applied locally by education authorities."

That was what the Conservatives said in 1979, but they did absolutely nothing to implement that manifesto between 1979-83 or 1983-87. They said that the assessment of performance unit would set national standards and would monitor them. Shall I tell the House what they have done with that unit? In 1989, they abolished it. As a consequence, as the Secretary of State's predecessor told the House on 25 July 1990, no national data about standards of reading at seven currently exist. The Labour Government monitored reading standards. The Conservative Government started to do so, but then abandoned the process.

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