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Mrs. Taylor : My hon. Friend is right. The 1944 Act could never have been the success that it was if it had not been for the consensus which was developed so carefully at that time.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : If the 1944 Act had the support of Labour, why was the Labour party so energetically opposed to grammar schools, which were part of that legislation?
Mrs. Taylor : The hon. Gentleman should understand education history. The previous Prime Minister abolished more grammar schools than any other Secretary of State.
Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth) : Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mr. Taylor : No, I want to make progress. I want to concentrate most of my remarks on the limited number of new ideas in the Bill rather than run through every clause.
The opening remarks of the Secretary of State show that he has not taken on board the weight of the opposition to his proposals. Not only those who sit on this side of the House oppose the Bill ; the opposition includes the concerted voice of those in local government on both sides of the political fence, and the professionals who are involved in education daily.
The aim of the Bill is to implement the White Paper proposals which were published on 28 July when Parliament was in recess and schools had already started their summer holidays. The consultation period ended on 25 September, which was three weeks into the school term and before most parents, governors and teachers had had time to examine the proposals. This may well be the largest Bill, but it must surely have had the least consultation. However, that does not seem to have mattered a great deal to the Secretary of State, because he has obviously decided that his ideas are near perfect ; hence the Bill says that it aims simply to implement the White Paper.
Mr. Pawsey : The hon. Lady will recall that the Bill will have a protracted Committee stage. It will then have a Third Reading and a Report stage, and be passed to the other place. During that period, representations can be made to Members of Parliament and members of the Standing Committee. In other words, the effective consultation period continues. Does the hon. Lady agree that, despite what she said about the consultation period that was set out, there has been ample time for trade unions and everyone else to make representations to not only my right hon. Friend but every other interested Member of Parliament?
Mrs. Taylor : It adds a new dimension to consultation to suggest that it should take place after the Bill is published and when it is in Committee. I understand that Department for Education officials were drawing up amendments while the Bill was being printed, which shows the haste of the procedure.
The Committee process may be made more meaningful if the Secretary of State serves on the Standing Committee which will consider the Bill. If the Secretary of State wants to tell us that he will sit on the Committee which examines the Education Bill, I shall be happy to give way so that he can make his position clear. However, he thought that he needed his beauty sleep and, therefore, would not serve on the Committee. He can clarify his position and say that he
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will serve on the Committee. In this instance, his silence shows that he will not be with us. If the Education Bill is so important, why will the Secretary of State not be there?The timing of the White Paper and the Bill does not surprise anyone who has watched the Government retreat into talking only to those who agree with their ideas. Indeed, the Secretary of State went so far as to cancel a lunch with The Times after the newspaper's editorial on the White Paper dared to criticise him.
Ministers appoint like-minded advisers and take their advice, which is not advice at all but simply a reinforcement of their prejudices. Not listening has become the hallmark of the Government. As has happened with the miners, the Government will pay a high price for their education mistakes if they do not learn to listen.
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) : Has the hon. Lady listened to the thousands of parents who have voted with their feet so that their children can have the benefit of grant-maintained education? What message does she have for those parents today?
Mrs. Taylor : The hon. Gentleman will do well to remember the vast majority of parents who want nothing to do with grant-maintained status.
The Bill is wrong in principle because more than half of its provisions are aimed simply at pushing more schools to opt for grant-maintained status. If any good comes out of the Bill, it will be the opportunity to explore the fallacies of the opt-out proposals.
In 1988, my colleagues predicted what would happen as a result of the education Bill of that year. At that time they were speculating about the position. However, we now have the facts that bear out what my hon. Friends predicted.
Let me remind the House why so much of the Bill is considered necessary by Ministers. There are more than 25,000 schools in England and Wales. The Secretary of State said earlier that of those, 340 have opted for grant- maintained status and 150 are in the pipeline. That is hardly a success for the Government. So we have this Bill to try to push more schools down the grant-maintained road. The Government have tried hard already. We have had the bribes and the glossy image. I hear that heads of grant-maintained schools have been paid to preach to other schools about the virtues of grant-maintained status.
Occasionally, reality breaks through. An example is the letter that the Minister sent to governors of grant-maintained schools which says :
"Funding across the board will be restrained".
As much of the pressure on schools to become grant maintained has come from the promise of extra funding, perhaps it is not surprising that we are having this debate before the public expenditure announcement on Thursday. The Secretary of State does not seem to have put up much of a fight for any education sector. However, it is probably just as well for the Government that this debate is taking place after last Wednesday, given the Secretary of State's treatment of the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster). The Minister might not have persuaded some hon. Members into his Lobby last Wednesday, if this debate had already happened. [Interruption.] The Minister does not seem to understand that there are some northern Members in the House.
The Government's confusion is not confined to that. The Government have always been confused about the
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expected size of the grant-maintained sector. The former Prime Minister said that she expected half of schools to become grant-maintained by the last election in 1992. The former Secretary of State for Education, the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker), who is not here now, expected opt-out to take off in what he called a few bad Labour councils. The figures for opt-out show that the vast majority of opt outs have taken place in Conservative local education authorities. So if opt-out is a sign of dissatisfaction with the local education authority, there is clearly far more dissatisfaction with Conservative local education authorities than with Labour ones. Tory Kent and Tory Essex have more opt- outs between them than all Labour authorities put together.The Secretary of State has now declared his target.
Dr. Robert Spink (Castle Point) : As an Essex Member, I wish to comment on that. The hon. Lady is wrong. The fact that so many schools are opting out shows how good the local education authorities have been to those schools. They have taken them to a level of maturity, competence and self-reliance whereby they can stand on their own two feet and make decisions for themselves--
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. Interventions should be brief. They are supposed to be questions, not speeches.
Mrs. Taylor : I am glad that I allowed the hon. Gentleman to explain that point. I suggest that he has a word with the right hon. Member for Mole Valley, because I was quoting him earlier when I spoke about bad authorities.
Mr. Anthony Coombs (Wyre Forest) : In attacking grant-maintained schools, the hon. Lady seems to be arguing the case for local authorities, especially Labour-controlled local authorities, and their so-called "excellence at providing good education". Will she also explain why it appears that the 10 authorities with the worst GCSE examination results are all Labour-controlled? Will she also explain why, with one exception, those authorities are all in the top 10 for spending on pupils? Does not that show that Labour local authorities know nothing about educational standards?
Mrs. Taylor : The hon. Gentleman has just proved why league tables and statistical results are of such little value. The Department for Education has sometimes acknowledged that. The hon. Gentleman has been active in trying to promote grant-maintained status. As there are still some 24,500 schools to go, Tory Members will be kept very active on that in future.
Because the opt-out drive has failed so far, the Government are introducing proposals to make opting out easier : no second resolutions for governors ; set limits on the spending of those opposing opting out ; and clauses 72 and 73, which seem to be a licence to bribe for the Secretary of State. We shall oppose all those proposals, because we do not want schools to make decisions without the proposals having been discussed in detail. We are not afraid of discussing the facts.
In Committee, we shall look carefully at some of the activities of grant- maintained schools and we shall want to know whether Ministers share the views that some of grant-maintained schools have of themselves. For example, does the Secretary of State believe that grant-maintained schools should be sold as private education without the fees? Is that the image that he wants
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for grant-maintained schools? I am happy to give way to him if he will tell the House whether he thinks that that is an appropriate description of what grant-maintained schools provide.Mr. Patten indicated dissent.
Mrs. Taylor : The Secretary of State shakes his head. Is that because he disagrees or because he does not wish to intervene?
Mrs. Taylor : I give way to the hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins).
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Blackpool, South) : Would the hon. Lady care to defend the use of charge payers' money for blatant political propaganda against grant-maintained schools? How can she defend that?
Mrs. Taylor : The hon. Gentleman would do well to find some hard evidence before he says such things. He should look carefully at the budget of the grant-maintained trust and of the Department of Education in promoting grant-maintained status.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : Will the hon. Lady give way?
Why are there so many clauses about the liquidation of grant-maintained schools? Is it a recognition of the logical outcome of trusting the Government? Can we expect those schools to run into difficulties?
Mr. Hawkins : Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mr. Hawkins : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Lady challenged me to produce evidence. Is it in order, when I seek to produce that evidence, for her to refuse to allow me to do so?
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Yes, it is in order to do so.
Mrs. Taylor : The Bill's emphasis on grant-maintained status is simply an attempt to save a failed policy. Despite bribes and the escape route for schools that have opted out to avoid closure, less than 2 per cent. of schools have fallen for the Government's trap. As one of my hon. Friends pointed out earlier, last Friday we heard the welcome result of the Prime Minister's old school, Rutlish, voting against opt out.
The Secretary of State has been giving the impression that grant-maintained schools will get preferential treatment on funding, but he does so without admitting that he will be discriminating against the vast majority of schools. I hope, therefore, that the Secretary of State will answer the simple question : will there be a level playing field for funding or, all other things being equal and over and above any administrative expenses, will a grant-maintained school get preferential treatment? Will the Secretary of State tell us whether the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. Carrington) was right to say that a grant-maintained school was likely to be successful? I see
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the Secretary of State telling his junior Minister that he can deal with that when he winds up. The House deserves an answer to that fundamental question now.Mr. Patten : I cannot resist the temptation. Grant-maintained schools will continue to get their fair share of resources, which recognise their additional responsibilities, their independence and freedom. That was there in the past and it will be there in the future. The hon. Lady should draw my remarks to the attention of those of her colleagues who are campaigning around the country on false information to the contrary.
Mrs. Taylor : If that is an answer, we shall wait a long time for clarification. Perhaps the junior Minister will be more forthcoming when he winds up the debate this evening.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : As the hon. Lady comes from my part of the world and has a similar accent to mine, she will be well aware that the Lancashire education authority starved the grammar schools in Lancashire so that their facilities were way behind when they became grant-maintained. Schools in Lancashire will benefit enormously from the fact that, from now on, the Lancashire education authority's funds, which have been massively misdirected, will now go into those schools.
Mrs. Taylor : That does not appear to be what parents in Lancashire think. Not for the first time, I disagree with the hon. Lady.
Mr. Colin Pickthall (Lancashire, West) : Will my hon. Friend accept from me that everything that has just been said by the hon. Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) is untrue?
Much of the discussion about grant-maintained status has been presented as schools escaping from local authority control--that is what, in essence, the hon. Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) was suggesting. The reality is that the grant-maintained schools will be opting into a new, powerful, centralised control system. The creation of the funding agency will not only be expensive, bureaucratic and a waste of scarce resources, but will give unprecedented powers of control to the Secretary of State. The Conservative-controlled Association of County Councils says that the Bill has significant constitutional implications. At times, the Bill is honest about the Secretary of State's intentions. Clause 245 states that there will no longer be any need for a local education authority. I had thought that subsidiarity was in favour with the Government at present, but apparently not with the Secretary of State. He will be appointing funding authorities that are accountable to no one but the Secretary of State. As the ACC said, that must be a loss of democractic accountability.
We must ask ourselves who those in the funding authorities will be. Will they be as representative as all the other quangos from the Department of Education--the great and good of the Centre for Policy Studies? I do not think that the Government's record on the independence of their organisations can lead us to have much hope in the funding agency.
During the passage of the Education Reform Act 1988, the Opposition raised a number of constitutional issues about the result of increasing power being placed in the
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hand of the Secretary of State. They were added to a general warning that once the process of gathering power together starts, it will inevitably continue as it becomes a form of addiction for Conservative Cabinet Ministers.There have been some significant examples in recent years of Secretaries of State becoming hooked to the addiction of power, and the present Secretary of State has taken up the addiction. He adds an extra governor to one school, supposedly as a one-off, but then he carries on and further extends his powers. He allows a school that was part of the reorganisation programme for removing surplus places to opt out. Despite all the fine words about being tough on surplus places, schools have been allowed to opt out. There has been even more interference in the national curriculum, almost daily, by the present Secretary of State.
At the right hon. Gentleman's appearance at the Select Committee, he acknowledged that he would receive 44 new powers as a result of the Education Bill. Given the precedents, I think that we can expect the number to rise during the Bill's passage. Why will that happen? It is because the Bill is a further reckless attack on local government. It builds on past attacks by creating a new experimental system of central control to run grant-maintained schools alongside existing local authorities.
The Secretary of State will create the new Schools Funding Agency which, according to the Bill :
"shall comply with any directions contained in an order made by the Secretary of State."
If there is a new, centrally appointed funding agency with powers that exist in parallel with those of local authorities, there is bound to be conflict between the new quango and the LEAs. That conflict will be created simply because the Secretary of State is giving himself new powers. The right hon. Gentleman recognises that such a conflict will exist. How does he deal with it? By giving himself even more powers. The Bill states :
"any dispute as to whether any functions are exercisable by a funding authority or a local education authority shall be determined by the Secretary of State."
It is not surprising that even Conservative local education authorities feel threatened, and believe that the new system is being rigged from the start.
The Conservative Education Association--not an organisation which I would normally consider quoting--has made a hefty and significant response to the Government's proposals. On the section on funding councils and the increase in the Secretary of State's powers, the association states that it is
"seriously disturbed at a massive and dangerous increase in powers given to central government"
and accused the Secretary of State of
"nationalising our schools".
Dame Angela Rumbold : I hope that the hon. Lady will accept from me that the Conservative Education Association, while containing the word "Conservative" in its overall title, is not an official Conservative party organisation. We in the Conservative party have no pre-emptive right to the word "Conservative". I hope that the hon. Lady understands that the comments attributed to it are in no way associated with the Conservative party.
Mrs. Taylor : I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for making that clear. I have been checking, and understand that the author of the submission to the Secretary of State was one of those who travelled with the Prime Minister on
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the campaign bus during the election, so perhaps some of the comments are significant. It might be worth quoting another of the comments of the Conservative Education Association. It states : "We have been disturbed by what we see as the growth over the past year or so of too ideological an approach to education policy making. We believe that there is too much ideology and not enough practical common sense."Occasionally the Secretary of State would do well to listen to those people --even in the Conservative party--who disagree with him. The centralisation of power does not stop with a new Schools Funding Agency. The Secretary of State is taking a number of direct powers over grant-maintained schools. They are his favoured few, for which he is supposed to believe in the right of self-determination, but he has taken powers so that he
"may modify the instrument of government of any grant-maintained school. He may replace any or all of the first governors of any grant-maintained school."
The Secretary of State controls all the resources of grant-maintained schools through the funding agency--a control which he has already used directly this year by warning those schools that they should not apply for capital grants to spend on libraries, sports halls or sixth-form blocks. He controls not only the money, but every instrument of government. He can replace any governor whenever he chooses. If that is independence from the Government, I am not sure what the Secretary of State would mean by central control.
The Secretary of State repeated today that he intends to be tough on surplus places. He even claimed to have adopted some of our proposals. I wish that he had, because we believe that every authority should have plans to deal with that problem, and that there should always be a public inquiry. The Secretary of State does not establish a duty for all local authorities to deal with surplus places. Not surprisingly, the Bill simply gives him more power to pick and choose when the issue is tackled. There will be a public inquiry only if the Secretary of State uses his increased powers to bring in his own proposals.
Mr. Malcolm Wicks (Croydon, North-West) : Does my hon. Friend agree that opt-outs are bad news at any time but that at a time of economic recession and a public spending squeeze more of them would be especially worrying? The example of universities relying on central Government funding does not augur well for secondary and primary education. Further centralisation of education at a time of recession will surely be bad news for parents and children.
Mrs. Taylor : My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Some people in the grant-maintained sector are beginning to be alarmed about exactly how much funding will be available. As I said earlier, there may be even more bad news in store for them on Thursday.
Does the Minister really think that his Department is capable of dealing with all the decisions that he wants to take on? Can it, for instance, deal with surplus places--of which the Secretary of State has been making much? He demonstrated that he lacks the knowledge to exercise these powers in his recent letter to all LEAs, in which he listed schools that do not exist, schools that had already been closed and, for one authority, he listed grant-maintained schools, which were well beyond the authority's power to deal with.
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Mr. Patten : That phantom list of schools was produced by the local education authorities themselves and sent to us. Does the hon. Lady agree that that shows the need for us and the funding agency to look more robustly at the evidence from local authorities? It seems that they do not even know which schools in their areas do not exist and have not existed for some years. To put it mildly, they should start dealing with their data collection systems.
Mrs. Taylor : I am glad that the Secretary of State sets such store by the information that comes from local authorities. I wish that the Department would put that into practice. The case of Sheffield is instructive. That city has written on more than one occasion to the Department correcting the Department's figures. Sheffield wrote in January correcting the figures, yet in September the Secretary of State and the Department were still using out-of-date, misleading figures. Following one of the right hon. Gentleman's sets of figures, we learn that Sheffield should close seven or eight secondary schools ; following the other, Sheffield apparently needs to build three more secondary schools. So much for the Secretary of State's ability to take over all decision making in education.
Mr. Gyles Brandreth (City of Chester) : I hesitate to prolong the agony, and I salute the hon. Lady's capacity to pack a three-minute speech into three quarters of an hour, but she has given us everyone's view but her own. I should love to know what she thinks about grant-maintained schools. Is she saying that she is not ready to listen to the parents who have voted on this matter? Does she intend to rescind grant-maintained schools? Perhaps she will give us her own views and stop quoting so many other people's.
Mrs. Taylor : There have been two ballots in my constituency since the election. I have listened to a great number of pupils and parents talking about the issue and I know the schools involved very well. The decision to opt out was overwhelmingly rejected because the parents bothered to look at the information and the facts--and I share their concern.
Earlier, the Secretary of State was not willing to be drawn on the extra administrative burden of dealing with surplus places, but he has one clear responsibility in this respect. Many LEAs are worried that the Secretary of State wants them to publish proposals to reorganise schools so that some of their schools will feel under threat and, when under threat, may choose to opt out. Of the schools that have opted out already, no fewer than 63 have done so because they were threatened with closure under a reorganisation. If the right hon. Gentleman is genuinely interested in tackling surplus places, will he say here and now that he will refuse any application for grant-maintained status from a school seeking to opt out to avoid closure?
Mr. Patten : I have said on a number of occasions, including occasions in the House, probably before the hon. Lady took up her present responsibilities for education, that I will not allow grant-maintained status to be used as a bolthole for failing schools or to be applied for by failing independent schools. Grant-maintained schools and local education authority schools must operate on equal terms. We do not want failing schools of any sort : if schools are failing, they should be shut.
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Mrs. Taylor : The right hon. Gentleman has not answered my question, just as he has consistently failed to answer questions throughout this debate. I am sure that the Minister who winds up will want to pursue the matter this evening, as will we in Committee.
Ms. Mildred Gordon (Bow and Poplar) : The Secretary of State has just said that we do not want any failing schools--we would all agree about that--but he went on to say that if they are failing they should be shut. What, then, was the purpose of the education associations, which one assumes existed to help failing schools? I disagreed with that method of helping failing schools, but now the right hon. Gentleman says that they should all be shut.
Mrs. Taylor : That is a good point, but my hon. Friend will understand that under pressure the Secretary of State will say almost anything.
Then we have the right hon. Gentleman's proposals for specialisation. We certainly think that that is a code word for selection. I recognise that there is a lobby in the Conservative party--I suspect that we have already heard from it today--that wants to bring back the grammar schools. We may hear more of that later today--indeed, some Conservative Members seem to be indicating that we will. We never hear from the same lobby about the other side of the case--bringing back the secondary moderns--an inconsistency which I am sure is a mere oversight. I wish that those promoting selection would do so openly rather than hiding behind words such as specialisation. Then parents could know where they stood.
Selection is certainly not what I want for my children ; nor do I want them to specialise too early. I want educational doors to be kept open for each child as long as possible, not a system of education that closes doors in children's faces.
There should be some scope for cross-party agreement on the part of the Bill that deals with special needs. I served on the Committee that examined the education Bill implementing the Warnock report. We recommended that, as far as possible, children with special education needs should be integrated into mainstream education provision. That principle received all-party support. As we predicted, the problem has been that resources have not matched the requirements of that policy. That has a parallel with community care. Integration is right in principle, but it cannot be delivered if it is treated as a cheap option. The integration of children with special needs will not work unless it is done properly, and that requires extra resources. The improvements in the Bill, while welcome, are not a complete answer. We welcome the time limits on statementing, although we hope to clarify some issues in Committee. We accept the need for the new tribunal system which acknowledges the concerns of parents. However, I am afraid that we share some of the worries such as those expressed by the Spastics Society that the new tribunal should not be just another panel of experts who can intimidate the parents of children with special needs.
We also wish to look at the case for a proper attempt to ascertain the wishes of the child in line with the Children Act 1989. As the Secretary of State said, we are all well aware of the different statementing records up and down
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the country. Significantly different proportions of children are being statemented, and the delay in some areas is too great. We hope that the Bill can help improve matters.The Minister must be aware of the resource implications. We cannot offer a new deal to special needs children without more resources. I hope that the Minister is aware that the proportion of children with special needs who require statementing is small, and that the majority of special needs are met in other ways. It was not clear from the Minister's answer to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) whether he was aware of that. There is concern that although the Bill may somewhat improve the provisions for those who require statementing, it may do so at the expense of those who have a significant but lesser degree of special need.
Mr. Patten : The hon. Lady raises an important matter and I am conscious of the fact that I did not answer it properly when her hon. Friend intervened. Grant-maintained schools are not allowed to discriminate among applicants on grounds of ability unless they are selective schools. In addition, they cannot change their admission arrangements without coming to me as Secretary of State. That means that there is a clear guarantee that unless such schools are selective in some way there is no way in which children with special education needs will not be received into them. The matter can be further discussed in Committee.
Mrs. Taylor : I am not sure that the parents of children with special needs would want to rely on that guarantee. The Secretary of State has missed the point. If local education authorities have to spend more time and resources on children who require statementing, where will the extra resources come from? Is there not a real danger that they will come from the special needs pool which will thereby be depleted, to the disadvantage of children with special needs that are not such as to require statementing?
In his intervention, the Secretary of State spoke about grant-maintained schools. I was not dealing with those, but I share the concern of groups such as Mencap which are worried about the proposed division of responsibility between the funding agency and the local authority. As Mencap says, how can a system operate coherently and efficiently if one body retains responsibility for children with special needs while another is responsible for the schools which provide the education? Mencap and others are increasingly worried that if the funding of schools becomes more dependent on league tables that are supposed to demonstrate their success, children with special needs, and especially those with behavioural problems, may prove even more difficult to place in future. Those are some of the issues that we shall explore in great detail in Committee.
I said earlier that the Bill was wrong because it concentrates on the wrong issues and ignores the real problems in education. We should be building on what is good and sound, such as the GCSE, and not undermining the good, as the Secretary of State did in August and September.
Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) rose --
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