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Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) : I hope that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) is not on performance-related pay from the teachers' unions that he represents. If he is, heaven help his income.
Time and again, we hear from the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) about low teacher morale or about how teachers were much better off under the last Labour Government. That is not true. One has only to look at teachers' pay between 1974 and 1979 to see that they were far more poorly paid than they are now.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : I was fascinated by the highly selective statistics given by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg)--I cannot see him in his place now. Like most members of the Labour party, he is behind the times. He drew his conclusions from statistics up to 1990 when the relative pay of teachers compared to non- manual workers was 105. He omitted to mention, not surprisingly, that in 1991 the relative pay was 112 and in 1992 it was 118--as compared with 106 when we took office.
Mr. Evans : That does not surprise me. I am sure that the hon. Member was burning the midnight oil trying to work out some statistics to make the Labour party's shabve. Far too often we look at the input in education as opposed to the output. We have seen GCSE results improve and far more of our youngsters are staying on for A-levels, either in their own school or in further and higher education. Many of them have done extremely well and have gone on to university. The number going to university has risen from one in eight to one in four and the Government are determined that, by the end of the century, we will see one in three of our youngsters going to university. That is superb.
Mr. Don Foster : Is the hon. Gentleman aware that as more and more students go into higher education--and that is worth supporting--one in eight is dropping out because of a lack of funding?
Mr. Evans : All I can say is that we are seeing more of our youngsters going on to further and higher education and benefiting from it. We want to ensure that our youngsters are taking relevant courses that will benefit them. Perhaps in too many cases our youngsters take courses that are not right for them and drop out because of that. We need to pay more attention to that.
Ms Estelle Morris (Birmingham, Yardley) : The hon. Gentleman's speech so far seems to have been about comparative wage rates for teachers between now and some time in the past. Has not the hon. Gentleman realised that we are concerned because of the Government's attitude to the review body and because in three of the past four years the Government have ignored the recommendations from the pay review body? It is the breaking of the pledge that the Government made to accept the recommendations from the review body that is causing a downward trend in morale.
In the rest of his speech, will the hon. Gentleman give us fewer statistics comparing one year with another and address the real concern of Labour Members, which is that
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his Government and Ministers have proved that they are not prepared to accept the recommendations of the review body? It was the Government's pledge to accept such recommendations that enabled teachers to go along with the idea in the first place.Mr. Evans : Of course, I do not accept what the hon. Lady says about morale in our schools.
Before I became a Member of Parliament for Ribble Valley, I was a county councillor in West Glamorgan. I was the chairman of a governing body for a couple of years and a member of many other governing bodies, as was the practice in Labour-controlled county councils in those days. During those six years as a governor, I witnessed an absolute sea change when we, through Government policy, depoliticised those governing bodies. If the Opposition want to talk about low morale in the teaching profession, they need only remember when Labour councillors were sitting on the governing bodies of schools and dictating to them exactly what their policies should be. That is when there was low morale.
The mood has changed since then, because we have taken power away from the politicians on the governing bodies and given it to those to whom it belongs--the parents, teachers and the professionals in the teaching profession. We have taken it away from the politicians, and the Opposition do not like it.
The pay of teachers has increased by 57 per cent. in real terms between 1979 and 1993. The Minister also stated some of the amounts that teachers are currently earning. At one stage, I intervened to say that the average pay of some of our teachers is not what we would call extremely high, but, had the Opposition won the election, teachers would have been in the very sector of society that would be caught by the higher taxes that the Opposition would have introduced.
During the period that the Conservatives have been in government, we have seen the tax on teachers' pay come down remarkably, because, since 1979, the basic rate of tax has dropped from 33 per cent. to 25 per cent., and, in certain sectors, to 20 per cent. Teachers are the very people who would have seen their taxes increase if Labour had won the general election.
Mr. Derek Enright (Hemsworth) : Will the hon. Gentleman speculate on what pay rise the teachers should have if the Chancellor of the Exchequer puts VAT on books? Does he agree that it should be considerable and will he promise to fight for such a rise if VAT is slapped on books?
Mr. Evans : The hon. Gentleman is mistaken if he thinks I will speculate about what will be in the Budget on 30 November. I will speculate about what would happen if there were a return of a Labour Government. I do not really need to speculate, because one has only to remember what the shadow Chancellor said during the general election campaign, when he made the great mistake that many people feel caused Labour to lose the general election. What did the Labour party then do? It promoted him to be its leader. That is what happens in the Labour party ; it promotes failures rather than gets rid of them.
Opposition Members are concentrating on one narrow aspect of teachers' pay and incentives when they should be looking at their gamut. We have seen an increase in
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standards and incentives. We want to drive standards up, and time and again that is what we are seeing in education in our schools. We have seen the introduction of grant-maintained schools, and 1, 000 schools have opted for that status. The Opposition would take the rights of the parents away from those schools and they would be trawled back into local authority control, which would be an absolute disgrace. They should listen to parents on that issue, but they will not do so.Through the local management of schools, governing bodies now have more control over their budgets so that they can spend the money on those items that they think will be of benefit to their youngsters. When Opposition Members talk about performance-related pay and comparisons with the private sector, is not it amazing that they want the teaching profession--which we believe is doing a superb job--to have the rewards of the private sector but not the demands?
Mr. Devlin : My hon. Friend may be aware that I am the governor of a private school in my constituency which is one of the highest performing newly formed private schools in the past few years and gets a high percentage of boys into Oxford, Cambridge and other universities. Is he aware that I find it extraordinary that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) suggested earlier that
performance-related pay is inimical to the co-operative nature of teaching children? In our school, which out-performs nearly all of the state sector, there is performance-related pay and the teachers work extremely well together. The value of the Secretary of State's work is of great benefit to the future of the teaching profession.
Mr. Evans : I can only accept everything that my hon. Friend has said on that subject. I am sure that he makes an extremely good governor who contributes well to that governing body.
The Government have seen many changes over their period in office. During the time that I was a governor of a school in my area, I saw some of those changes coming in and it is right that we are determined to continue with the process of ensuring that youngsters in our schools get the best education.
Money has been invested in the technical and vocational educational initiative to ensure that youngsters with a more vocational aspect of their education will get the sort of education that they deserve. General national vocational qualifications have been introduced alongside those initiatives to ensure that youngsters who are not academic are able to concentrate on those lessons that will be of benefit to them when they leave school.
Mr. Don Foster : I share the hon. Gentleman's pleasure at success of the initiatives to which he has just referred. He will be aware that those initiatives were available for pupils in all state schools. Does he agree that, in the further development of that process through the new technology initiative, it is therefore right for the Secretary of State to make the money available only for children in grant-maintained or voluntary-aided schools?
Mr. Robin Squire : There is now flexibility.
Mr. Evans : As the Minister has said, there is now flexibility and that is what we want to see in our schools.
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Mr. Matthew Banks (Southport) : If I might briefly take my hon. Friend back to something that he mentioned earlier, does he agree that it is of paramount importance, when discussing matters relating to conditions of service and pay, that we constantly state that under this Government teachers' pay has risen dramatically in real terms and that, no matter what Opposition Members say, teachers' pay under the last Labour Government barely rose at all?
Mr. Evans : That is one of the reasons why my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Banks) was elected and why the Liberal Democrats lost that seat.
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Blackpool, South) : My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) has just mentioned the technical and vocational educational initiative. Opposition Members should recognise that many of their colleagues in local government, especially in the Kirklees local authority, bitterly opposed the introduction of TVEI in the teeth of the support for TVEI consistently made clear by many Labour-supporting teachers and head teachers throughout the middle and late 1980s.
I was heavily involved in a number of those battles when I was the parliamentary candidate for Huddersfield. Many socialists in west Yorkshire opposed TVEI tooth and nail and continued to do so against all educational common sense.
Mr. Evans : It would not be the first time that Opposition Members have done a U-turn on a policy that was introduced by the Government and in which they now see some merit.
I shall bring my comments to a close, as many other hon. Members wish to speak. The Government are absolutely committed to the teaching profession and are proud of the work that they are doing and we will ensure that that work carries on in the future.
10.3 pm
Mr. Stephen Byers (Wallsend) : I am grateful to have the opportunity to make a contribution to this debate, because, before my election in April last year, I had the pleasure of serving as chairman of the national employers' organisation for school teachers, which is the body that represents the local authority employers. Before that, I was a member of the Burnham committee which was later abolished by the Conservative Government.
I shall make one comment about the need to restore negotiating rights to the 400,000 teachers in England and Wales and I shall then make some detailed comments about the order. It must be a matter of great regret to the House that we have such a large body of workers who are unable to enjoy the basic democratic right of negotiating their own pay and conditions of service. It is a right which many in the House argued should be enjoyed in other countries when it was denied to people there. I am thinking especially of Solidarity in Poland. Many Conservative Members were keen to extol the virtues of that trade union and to give it the ability to negotiate freely with the Polish Government of the day. Many of us feel that the time has come to give teachers the right to negotiate freely with their local authority employers.
Mr. Devlin : Does the hon. Gentleman consider that the Burnham machinery was successful? It was clear that, year
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after year, the employers and unions agreed a pay increase that they then expected someone else--the Government--to fund. That position was clearly unsatisfactory. Either the Government had to have some role in the negotiating procedure, because they were footing the bill, or the whole machinery had to be changed. That is why the machinery was scrapped.The value of the present system is that the Secretary of State at least has some say in the way in which the negotiations are carried out and he is doing a great deal through the order and the proposals that will come forward for next year to enable good teachers to stay in the classroom.
Mr. Byers : To say that the Secretary of State now has some say in the matter is rather an understatement. He appoints all the members of the review body. He gives them the remit under which they have to operate and, once the report has been received, he modifies it by order so that it cannot be identified as the original submission from the review body.
The Burnham committee had the benefit of, for example, the negotiators being people with practical experience who would know the practical difficulties to which certain proposals would give rise. One of the reasons why teachers had a fair deal throughout the 1980s was precisely that for seven of the 10 years pay was determined by the Burnham committee. The teachers' present difficulty is that in three of the past four years, the Government have changed the review body's recommendations, not for the better, but by reducing or delaying the amount that teachers would have got as a result of the review body's recommendations.
There is a democratic principle at stake when considering free nogotiations. There are also practical reasons why negotiations are important. There are people with expertise and with day-to-day experience who can bring those qualities to bear on the proposals that come forward.
Mr. Heald : Does the hon. Gentleman propose bringing back the Burnham committee? Is it not right to say that in three out of the last four years of its operation it could not agree?
Mr. Byers : I agreed with the Burnham committee's recommendations to the then Secretary of State. It is a matter of regret that the Secretary of State chose to ignore them. The Burnham made two main proposals. The first was that the size of both sides of the committee should be reduced. The second was that there should be a deadline by which the committee would have to make recommendations which it would then put to the Secretary of State. The committee would then not have had the difficulties that it experienced in the previous three to four years. Its proposals to the Secretary of State were practical. If he had looked at them rationally and less dogmatically, he would have been able to agree to them. For political reasons, the then Secretary of State decided that he wanted to remove negotiating rights from teachers. That is a matter of deep regret and that is why we are now dealing with the order.
The order does not reflect the recommendations that came from the schoolteachers' pay review body. It modifies it substantially, as the memorandum before us clearly demonstrates.
The schoolteachers' pay review body, even though it had been given a remit by the Secretary of State, proposed
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an end-loaded settlement that would have cost 1.8 per cent. in a full year on the total pay bill for teachers. That was unacceptable to the Government because they had to bring it within the 1.5 per cent. public pay policy envelope. It is because of the Government's need to achieve that overriding political objective that we have some of the difficulties that are created by the order.What is even worse, though--to add insult to injury--is that even though only 1.5 per cent. is being made available to teachers pay overall, the Government are not even funding the 1.5 per cent. increase. The Minister will be aware that the increase in the education standard spending assessment for local education authorities is only 0.25 per cent. in 1993- 94, compared with the actual spend on education last year.
The Minister may live in a never-never land where actual spend does not mean much. It clearly means that it is money that was spent in the previous financial year. That, of course, is ignored by the Government because they see it as Labour local authorities committing the cardinal sin of overspending on education. The Government ignore that and are only prepared to increase the education standard spending assessment by the amount that they believe should have been spent, which is substantially less than what Labour local authorities are spending.
Mr. Robin Squire : The hon. Gentleman is taking me back to a previous role, which is always a dangerous trip to make. My memory is that the increase year on year--a legitimate comparison for the adjusted services of education--is approximately 3 per cent. If that is not so, I shall make that clear elsewhere. Against the background of inflation conditions that we had, I think that that is a reasonable settlement.
Mr. Byers : Because of his previous portfolio, I think that the Minister knows full well that that does not compare with what is happening in reality. That may be all right as far as the Treasury is concerned--we know that the Treasury dominates exactly what his Department can now do-- but in terms of what is being spent in our schools, which must concern the House, there has been an increase of only 0.25 per cent. year to year as a result of the decisions that the Government have made. Financial difficulties will be experienced by local education authorities and individual schools as a result of the paltry increase that teachers will get. We should have had a reasonable and responsible increase properly funded by the Government.
On the question of structure, the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) said that the document was not published until 15 July, which, in practice, has meant that governing bodies, which will implement many of the structural changes, have simply not had the time to put those changes in place. If we experience the same procedure next year, there will be a strong argument--I suggest this in a constructive way--for the document to be published earlier so that governing bodies in the summer term can consider the modifications to which the order will give rise.
The order allows the Secretary of State to designate individual schools to introduce performance-related pay on a pilot basis. We understand that, originally, 14 schools volunteered. Were they really volunteers or had they merely expressed an interest in a letter at some stage and
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found themselves, in the full glare of publicity, described as having volunteered? Can the Minister confirm that, of those 14, five have indicated that they do not want to proceed? It would be interesting to hear the Minister say whether it is five or fewer. When he chaired the review body, Sir Graham Day heard much evidence about PRP. Because of his industrial background, he was a man of great experience of the benefits, in certain sectors, that can come from the introduction of PRP. Sir Graham Day knew very well that it was almost impossible to introduce performance-related pay into the schools sector. That is why he wanted to proceed with caution, and why the review body was prepared to do no more than start some feasibility studies of how performance-related pay could work ; it was not prepared to go any further than that, because it realised the difficulties that were involved and the need to proceed with caution. There is great concern that, by introducing the order, the Government are moving towards a system under which pilot projects can be set up through designation by the Secretary of State.Many of us disagree fundamentally with the whole idea of performance- related pay in schools. Who is to judge? Who is it to be awarded to? Is it to be awarded to the whole school, an individual department, a group of teachers or individual teachers? Those are difficult issues, which need to be tackled sensibly and sympathetically. As I said, Sir Graham Day, a highly experienced industrialist, was not prepared to embark on pilot projects because of the difficulties that he envisaged. The order represents the triumph of political dogma over education reason.
I have questions about two specific points that arise from the order, the first of which concerns the 18-point pay spine for qualified teachers. As I told the Minister, I should be interested to hear why it is that, in his Department's own evidence, which has now been submitted to the pay review body for next year, a 35-point pay scale is recommended for qualified teachers. The reason given is that, in the Department's view, such a scale will be workable and flexible. By implication, that means that the 18-point spine proposed in the order is unworkable and inflexible. I shall be interested to hear why the Minister's own Department has made such a substantial change.
My second specific point concerning the structure changes before us relates to the windfall earnings that will come to certain individual teachers. I hope that the Minister will consider that matter. The provision affects those teachers who were in service under the old Burnham structure, which was abolished in 1987. The order states that they are to receive one spine point for each year of service, in the same way as all other teachers. But it will give a windfall gain to teachers who have had a break in service since 1987 and have not yet reached the top of the standard scale.
We are not talking about small amounts. The sums will be substantial, and the employers have calculated that, for some local education authorities, the provision will mean an additional 0.25 per cent. on the salary bill. That may not seem much to hon. Members, but it is the equivalent of 1,000 teachers, so the issue is crucial. What does the Minister intend to do about those windfall earnings? They will be random in nature : they will turn up in individual schools--perhaps more than one teacher in a particular school will be eligible for them. What will the Minister do to help schools one or two of whose teachers experience a windfall increase as a result of
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the order? Will there be additional support? How will the arrangements operate under the scheme of delegation under local management of schools, bearing in mind the fact that it is not the actual salary that is covered under the local management arrangements but the average salary for the local authority as a whole? How does the Minister intend to tackle that point?The order represents the worst of all possible worlds. It will create financial difficulties for individual local education authorities and schools because of the chronic underfunding of the education service by this Government. It will do nothing to raise morale among our teachers. It will not retain, recruit and motivate any of our teachers. We need an order that will reward and ensure that we keep high-quality teachers and so invest in high-quality education for our children. It is because the order fails to achieve those objectives that it should be opposed.
10.18 pm
Mr. Win Griffiths : It is worth reminding the Minister of the point with which my hon. Friend the Member for Wallsend (Mr. Byers) finished, because, in setting out the Government's stall, the Minister emphasised what he felt were the positive aspects of the award--the 18-point spine, the opportunities for extra points based on excellence and responsibility, and so on. He gave the impression that any successful school, with teachers diligently carrying out responsibilities and performing excellently in the classroom, would be able to claim up to five extra points for responsibility and up to three points for excellence. He suggested that a headmaster would recommend teachers for points because of the excellence of their performance. The truth is that everything depends on the resources that are made available through the national pay award, which percolate down to local authorities and then to schools.
There is a severe limit on any flexibility in the system. Will any head teacher have total carte blanche to reward a member of staff in exactly the way in which he or she would want? The truth is that the money is not there.
I do not want the Minister to advance well-rehearsed arguments about the history of pay increases since the year dot, but as the pay review body is likely to be in existence for some time, I should like him to consider its independence. Unfortunately, it has been rather supine in accepting the financial limits that have been placed on it by the Government, even though in previous debates Ministers and the Secretary of State made it quite clear that no financial limit would be placed on its consideration of teachers' pay. It has admitted, however, that its recommendations are less than is necessary to ensure a well-motivated profession of teachers who want to stay in schools or to attract others with good qualifications to the profession.
None of those issues has been tackled by the Minister. Is he prepared to say that the pay review body will be directed not to pay heed to any financial limit placed on it by the Government but to respond honestly with the recommendations that it believes to be necessary to ensure a well-paid and well-motivated teaching force, providing our young people with a quality education? One of the great disappointments this year has been the way in which the pay review body has meekly accepted the financial limits that the Government have placed on it.
I hope, too, that the Minister will explain clearly why even the modest recommendations of the pay review body
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have not been accepted, why the special educational needs sector is limited only to teachers who are teaching with statements and exactly when primary schools will get all the allowances that were recommended by the pay review body. We look forward to the answers and hope that there will be a positive response to the needs outlined by the pay review body which were, unfortunately, rejected by the Government.10.26 pm
Mr. Robin Squire : This has been an enjoyable if short debate to which hon. Members from both parties have made important contributions. I am sure that they will accept that if I cannot deal with every issue raised now, I shall write to them about any outstanding matters.
I listened carefully to see whether I could learn why Labour Members think that it would be right to annul the order and create administrative chaos in schools and local education authorities which have made good progress by putting it into effect. I listened, but I confess that I have not found the answer.
A variety of reasons were advanced. I do not think that it is too much of a caricature to summarise them as follows : Labour Members object to the independent review body system ; they object to the Government adjusting the recommendations so that all public sector employees were this year affected in the same way by the Government's approach to pay--in other words, they object to fair treatment ; they object to the notion that good teachers might be paid more than bad ; and they object to schools that have developed their own arrangements for rewarding good performance being permitted to continue to do so. I deal now with specific questions. The background to the 1993-94 settlement was mentioned by the hon. Members for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) and for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg), among others. The Government did not put a financial constraint on the schoolteachers pay review body, which was directed to have regard to the 0 to 1.5 per cent. overall limit. I remind the House that the pay restraint policy applied to all public sector groups without exception. The 0.35 per cent., to which the hon. Member for Bridgend referred, did not affect the salary settlement for 1993-94, but it would have affected the settlement for 1994-95. In fairness to all other public sector workers, the Secretary of State saw no reason to depart from the practice which was affecting every other public sector employee. I think that most hon. Members would agree with that.
In answer to the hon. Members for Bath (Mr. Foster) and for Bridgend, I confirm that there is no specific financial constraint or percentage limit on pay settlements for 1994-95. We have, of course, consistently said that we shall accept the recommendations of the review bodies unless there are clear and compelling reasons to the contrary, but the review bodies will have to be realistic about the context in which they operate, which will not be clear until after the forthcoming Budget statement.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) helpfully wondered about an alternative. I suspect that a number of Labour Members would like to return to what they term "collective bargaining". Many people would argue that the performance of collective bargaining in the 20 years up to the 1986 settlement, which produced only thre negotiated settlements for teachers, has done
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more than almost anything else to downplay teachers' reputations in the eyes of the public. I submit that teachers are better off with the body that they now have.As for performance-related pay, our view is that across all public services, regular and direct links should be established between a person's contribution to the standards of service provided and his or her reward. We are determined to raise standards in the public sector.
On the issue of schools dropping out, I can confirm that two have dropped out and that one further school rumoured to have dropped out is carrying on, as are all the other schools.
Time does not allow me to deal with every issue, but I shall use the balance of the time available to answer the hon. Member for Bridgend. The important comparison to bear in mind is that the Opposition presided over an unparalleled decline in teachers' salaries until 1979. They do not like being reminded of it, but it happens to be true. The average pay of schoolteachers, as my hon. Friends the Members for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) and for Southport (Mr. Banks) reminded us--
It being one and a half hours after commencement of proceedings on the motion, Mr. Deputy Speaker-- put the Question, pursuant to Order [22 October] : --
The House divided : Ayes 175, Noes 237.
Division No. 370] [10.29
AYES
Adams, Mrs Irene
Ainger, Nick
Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)
Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)
Ashton, Joe
Bermingham, Gerald
Berry, Dr. Roger
Betts, Clive
Boyce, Jimmy
Boyes, Roland
Bradley, Keith
Byers, Stephen
Caborn, Richard
Callaghan, Jim
Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Campbell-Savours, D. N.
Canavan, Dennis
Cann, Jamie
Chisholm, Malcolm
Clapham, Michael
Clark, Dr David (South Shields)
Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)
Clelland, David
Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Coffey, Ann
Connarty, Michael
Cook, Frank (Stockton N)
Corbyn, Jeremy
Corston, Ms Jean
Cousins, Jim
Cryer, Bob
Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)
Darling, Alistair
Davidson, Ian
Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)
Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'dge H'l)
Denham, John
Dixon, Don
Donohoe, Brian H.
Dowd, Jim
Dunnachie, Jimmy
Eagle, Ms Angela
Eastham, Ken
Enright, Derek
Etherington, Bill
Evans, John (St Helens N)
Fatchett, Derek
Fisher, Mark
Flynn, Paul
Foster, Rt Hon Derek
Foster, Don (Bath)
Foulkes, George
Fyfe, Maria
Gapes, Mike
Gerrard, Neil
Godman, Dr Norman A.
Godsiff, Roger
Golding, Mrs Llin
Gordon, Mildred
Graham, Thomas
Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)
Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)
Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
Gunnell, John
Hanson, David
Hardy, Peter
Harman, Ms Harriet
Heppell, John
Hill, Keith (Streatham)
Home Robertson, John
Hood, Jimmy
Hoon, Geoffrey
Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Illsley, Eric
Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)
Jamieson, David
Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)
Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)
Jones, Martyn (Clwyd, SW)
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