House of Commons Hansard Debates for 3 Jul 1995

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bands have been uprated in line with the 2.4 per cent. movement in the retail prices index over the 12 months to October last year. The income threshold at or below which parents pay nothing towards fees is raised from £9,352 to £9,572 a year. There are corresponding increases in the thresholds for the higher income bands. The effect is that parents whose relevant income has risen by no more than inflation will continue to contribute the same proportion of that income, and indeed the same amount in real terms. Parents whose incomes have risen by less than inflation will pay less. All those adjustments help to achieve the objective of targeting assistance on those who need it most.

The provisions of the remaining parts of the draft regulations cover the administrative arrangements and miscellaneous requirements of the scheme. They remain essentially unchanged. Draft regulation 19, for example, lies at the heart of the scheme and requires participating schools to recruit at least 60 per cent. of their assisted pupils from publicly maintained schools.

Mr. Nick Hawkins (Blackpool, South): Does my hon. Friend agree that what he has just said reinforces yet again the fact that the only remaining people who disapprove of the assisted places scheme, which has already benefited 70,000 children over the years since its introduction, are Opposition Members who are still peddling the politics of envy? Does he agree that it is noticeable that people, such as a gentleman in my constituency, are resigning from the Labour party when their children have benefited from assisted places because they recognise the poverty and hypocrisy of the Opposition's ideology, which is based on, "We're all right Jack, knock away the ladder"? No fewer than seven members of the shadow Cabinet have benefited.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman knows full well my view that interventions should be short. That was getting very long.

Mr. Squire: The intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins) was enjoyable, however, at least from where I was sitting. I congratulate him on what he said, which is well known not just in the House, but, I am pleased to hear from his comments, among a growing number of erstwhile supporters of the Labour party.

The scheme is not intended for those who would have sent their children to independent schools in any event, but a small number of assisted place holders were attending private preparatory schools before taking up their secondary school place and have been awarded assisted places on the ground of hardship.

Mr. Win Griffiths (Bridgend): Will the Minister tell me how many pupils in Wales are currently on an assisted places scheme and what percentage that is of the overall school population in Wales?

Mr. Squire: I have that information, but I do not have it immediately to hand. Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to cope with that in my concluding comments rather than give him an estimate and then, in a sense, have to correct that estimate?

Mr. Brian H. Donohoe (Cunninghame, South): I ask the same question in relation to Scotland. Will the Minister give us the figures for Scotland?

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Mr. Squire: The regulations do not affect Scotland. They cover purely England and Wales, so whether or not I can find the figures for Wales, those for Scotland are not affected by the regulations. Finally, the technical arrangements for the computation of parents' income in schedule 1 to the draft regulations have been updated and amended, mainly as a result of various Finance Acts brought into force in the intervening years since 1989.

Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge): Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Squire: I am anxious to make progress, but I shall give way to the hon. Lady.

Mrs. Campbell: There is of course a great deal of alarm and concern among parents about the falling school budget. What would the Minister say to the head teacher of my local sixth form college, who has written to me and recently published a press release saying: "Governors, staff, students and parents therefore want to know why recent parliamentary answers suggest that the Government allocates up to twice as much per student to buy an assisted place in an independent school"

as that head teacher has been allocated to teach his pupils?

Mr. Squire: Several answers would accurately sum up the position and give useful information to the head teacher to whom the hon. Lady referred. The first and most obvious point is that the fees paid under assisted places to private independent schools cover not merely revenue expenditure, but capital, whereas the allocation under the standard spending assessment covers only revenue items. Secondly, although I hope that she would not expect me to run through the figures on 109 SSAs, she will find that, even taking that into account, the amount allocated to some local education authorities per pupil under the SSA for the current year is greater than the average allocated in relation to the scheme.

Mrs. Campbell: I have some figures here. In 1994-95, funding for 16 to 19-year-old students, including capital, at my local colleges in Cambridge--funded of course through the Further Education Funding Council-- was £2,823 per year. I have not had the exact figures, but I know that the sum at a school such as Leys school in Cambridge approaches £5,000 a year. As I said earlier, the figure is almost double for such schools.

Mr. Squire: The hon. Lady has made her local point. I repeat that, considering the full range of schools within the assisted places scheme, and, separately, the amount advanced by the standard spending assessment annually, there is an enormous range of figures. In particular, the other thing the hon. Lady will know is that the whole funding of sixth forms, be it sixth form colleges or sixth forms as part of schools, displays significant variances as well.

Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth): I congratulate my hon. Friend on the admirable answers that he has given to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell), which I am certain will entirely satisfy her. Some disquiet is being expressed about the assisted places scheme. The disquiet that I have heard is that the Government may not be firmly committed to it. I would

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therefore be grateful if my hon. Friend would put those rumours to rest and nail the Government's colours firmly to the mast of the scheme.

Mr. Squire: I am delighted to give my hon. Friend the utter and complete assurance that the Government are committed to the assisted places scheme. We see its continuing advantages and we have no plans to cut it, let alone to abolish it.

I hope that I have explained to the satisfaction of the House the purpose behind the laying of these draft consolidated regulations, and that I have covered the main areas where some minor changes have been made. Whatever Opposition Members may feel about the assisted places scheme as a whole, I am confident that the House will welcome both the tidying-up that we have undertaken in the regulations and, of course, the annual uprating to preserve its value. I commend the regulations to the House.

8.17 pm

Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton): We will vote tonight against the regulations and we will do so simply because we are against the whole scheme in principle. I shall explain why, but before I do, may I enlighten the Under-Secretary and tell him that in Wales approximately 720 pupils are on the assisted places scheme? There are three principal reasons for opposing the assisted places scheme. First, it is unfair and inefficient to penalise the many to advantage the few, yet that, effectively, is what the scheme does. Secondly, in the main, schools select the most academically able through the scheme, distorting the academic profile of children in the maintained sector and inflating the image of academic excellence projected by many independent schools. Finally, it is a totally unwarranted subsidy by the state of the private sector.

The Government would have us believe that the scheme is an unqualified success, but they regularly refuse to make more detailed information available. My hon. Friends have regularly tabled questions to the Department for Education so that a clearer picture might emerge, but it has all been to no avail. On 17 January, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) sought information as to which local education authorities had a concentration of assisted places, but he was told that the data were not broken down by local education authority.

Later that year, on 2 March, my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Donohoe) attempted to find out how many families using the scheme could have afforded private education anyway--something to which the Under-Secretary referred earlier. He was told that that would apply to very few. How can the Government possibly know that without the relevant data-- which, from their own evidence, they do not collect?

The Scottish Office told my hon. Friend:

"The number of such pupils is impossible to assess accurately but they must be very few."--[ Official Report , 7 March 1994; Vol. 239, c. 54. ]

At least the Welsh Office was honest when, on 4 March last year, it told my hon. Friend:

"No such assessment has been made."--[ Official Report , 4 March 1994; Vol. 238, c. 906. ]

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The truth is that the Government neither know nor care because the scheme is motivated by ideology and they do not want it to be scrutinised too closely.

Mr. Hawkins: While on the subject of provision of information, does the hon. Gentleman agree that no fewer than seven of his Front-Bench colleagues have been beneficiaries of the sort of schools that his opposition to the regulations would damage?

Mr. Kilfoyle: I would not have a clue about to whom the hon. Gentleman is referring. Perhaps I am one of them because I went to a direct grant school that eventually opted for the independent sector. There is hardly a case to be made against hon. Members who, at the age of 11, were arbitrarily selected by a system that they neither understood nor in which they participated.

The Under-Secretary has been party to the smokescreen around the assisted places scheme. When my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mrs. Jackson) asked how many households with children on the assisted places scheme were in the bottom tenth of disposable income levels under Department of Social Security statistics, he obfuscated by saying that the information was not available in the form requested.

That lack of information and clarity does not, in any shape or form, prevent the Department for Education from making odd claims about the scheme. Last week, at my request, it faxed me its view of the scheme and made four principal claims, which have been echoed tonight by the Under- Secretary--that it widens opportunity to the poor; it extends choice to those who would not have it; it justifies the intake as otherwise not choosing the private sector; and it claims "295 good independent schools in the scheme (in England)." The argument that the scheme widens opportunity lacks any conviction. Despite 100 per cent. take-up of first-year places, it consistently involves between 0.8 and 0.9 per cent. of the total number of secondary pupils. That obviously implies that more than 99 per cent. of our pupils do not cut the mustard academically to qualify for the scheme.

The second argument, of extension of choice to those who otherwise would not have it, again denies choice to 99 per cent. of the population by virtue of the narrowness of the take-up. It reinforces our view that the whole notion of choice in education is chimerical, at least for the vast majority of people. At best, preference is exercised, not choice.

The third argument is a very odd claim as it is predicated on the statement that almost 70 per cent. of assisted pupils have come from maintained primary schools. Given that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor both sent their children to state primary schools and then on to independent schools- -as have thousands of parents--that appears to be a spurious deduction to make. On the contrary, I would be more concerned with the 30 per cent. plus who have gone from independent primary schools to independent secondary schools at the taxpayers' expense.

The Department for Education will continue to laud the achievement of children on the scheme, as the Under-Secretary has done this evening. Of course those children will do well academically--that is why they are

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creamed off from the maintained sector to inflate the otherwise dubious academic records of many of the schools in the scheme--295 in England alone.

Mr. Robin Squire rose --

Mr. Kilfoyle: Before the hon. Gentleman intervenes I will accept that many of those schools are good schools and have always been good schools in their own right. I argue against the assertion that all of them are good schools that could stand alone without the infusion of fresh blood --fresh academic talent--being brought in from the maintained sector.

Is it any wonder that organisations such as the Independent Schools Information Service use the scheme as propaganda for their own promotion? For example, is it a coincidence that in the autumn edition of its publication, under a banner headline about Labour party policy and the assisted places scheme, it makes great play of the academic success of independent schools? The implication was clear--that independent schools add value to the fewer than 1 per cent. of pupils who are creamed off. Is not it the 1 per cent. who add value to the schools, not only academically but by propping them up financially? In an open market, many of those schools would have collapsed long ago.

The Department for Education claims the scheme is good value for money and that the total cost is justified by a significant increase in opportunities and an extension of choice. I am afraid that such outlandish statements are far from the truth.

Mr. Robin Squire: The hon. Gentleman suggested that some schools would have collapsed long ago without the benefit of the assisted places scheme. Will he improve on the example given a year ago by the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), speaking for the Liberal Democrats, who could submit only the name of Dulwich college as a school that would have collapsed? Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could give a better example.

Mr. Kilfoyle: The four schools out of the top 50 which the DFE says take more than £1 million a year from the public purse in subsidy, and may even have in excess of 40 per cent. of their pupils on the assisted places scheme, could hardly find it easy to exist without the material support of the students or the huge sums of money that they are given.

Between 1989 and 1995, the cost of the scheme rose from £50.9 million to £102 million--a 100 per cent. increase. Can the Under-Secretary explain why, during the same period, the number of places increased by only 2.6 per cent., from 33,280 to 34,139? Where did the money go? Obviously, the Under-Secretary either does not wish or is unable to tell us where it has gone.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) referred to the position in Wales, where the average budget per pupil in the maintained sector is £2,373. In the independent sector, the grant per head for the assisted places scheme is £3,790 for the 720 pupils to whom I referred. In England, the position is even worse. According to the House of Commons Library, the average per head in the maintained sector is £2,250, but for places under the APS the average grant per place is £4,110. Where is the value for money between the two? In my county of Merseyside, five schools are in the top 50 recipients of money under the scheme. Between them, they receive £3.5 million a year. Other schools in the

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county also take money under the scheme. If we assess the cost of a teacher at £20,000--a figure off the top of my head--that £3.5 million would pay for an additional 175 teachers for schools in the county. What would that do to raise standards for all our pupils in all our schools? How many other savings could be made--for example, filling surplus places that we are busy taking out of the system, which is costing a fortune both centrally and locally?

Mrs. Anne Campbell: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are buying something that is, perhaps, not very good value for money? The college that I mentioned earlier--Hills road sixth form college, which is just outside my constituency--gets £2,800 per year per pupil. However, it consistently comes in the top 10 schools, including the public schools. It is the one state school that gets on to that list and consistently gets a high proportion of its pupils into Oxford and Cambridge. Schools that get twice as much money do not come anywhere near it in their results.

Mr. Kilfoyle: It is absolutely true to say that the Government are using and abusing the maintained sector to maintain an ideological position on the assisted places scheme. The school, that takes in more pupils under the assisted places scheme than any other, is, as I recall, not a million miles from Cambridge: Wisbech grammar school. Several schools take nearly as many pupils on the scheme. The Minister might argue that the scheme is an egalitarian measure, pointing out that around 40 per cent. of pupils pay nothing, going entirely free to these grand schools. But what of the 60 per cent. who are being subsidised in one way or another together with the schools? I note that the schools chosen by other members of the Cabinet, such as the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary--the Etons, the Harrows and the Marlboroughs--do not figure at all in any of the parliamentary answers.

Winchester is an exception, creeping into the list of schools taking up the scheme, but it is certainly not one of the top 50 schools. If anything, it has a token involvement in the scheme. Perhaps its sense of noblesse oblige does not quite square with the parvenu erstwhile direct grant schools, which are trying to gain status from the scheme rather than anything else.

Mr. Robin Squire: I shall try not to interrupt the hon. Gentleman excessively, but he partly answers his own point. As he knows, the origins of the scheme lay in the old direct grant schools and their efforts. It would be surprising if a significant number of other schools were brought in--not least since there is a waiting list of other schools trying to get on the assisted places scheme.

Mr. Kilfoyle: In fact the Under-Secretary reinforces my point. The scheme is ideologically driven to enable the old direct grant schools to continue a selective, elitist approach to education by creaming off the best from the maintained sector. In government, the Labour party will without doubt abolish this scheme.

Mr. Pawsey: Like grant-maintained schools?

Mr. Kilfoyle: The hon. Gentleman refers to grant-maintained schools. Although they are not particularly relevant to this debate, his intervention warrants an answer. We propose to narrow down six

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categories of schools into three. He will not be surprised to find that that proposal is receiving an increasingly favourable response from head teachers, governors and parents involved in all areas of the maintained sector.

Mr. Pawsey: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for rising like a particularly plump fish to my intervention.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Further and Higher Education (Mr. Tim Boswell): A plump trout

Mr. Pawsey: All right, rising like a trout. Is the hon. Gentleman able to say that his party, if elected to government, would abolish the grant-maintained sector in its entirety?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. I must remind the House that we are debating the assisted places scheme. We must return to that subject.

Mr. Kilfoyle: I may be able to answer within the remit of this debate by saying that when the Labour party goes into government, Labour Members intend to look after the interests of all our children, in all our schools, regardless of the school they may attend. The Labour party in government will abolish the scheme--not in any way which will damage the progress of the pupils currently studying under the scheme, but by halting new places under it. I hasten to add that Labour Members recognise that there are--as there have always been--cases which require support.

Only last week I met the admirable Mr. Tom Juckes, the chairman of the Lord Wandsworth Foundation, which, as the Minister may know, is an umbrella charity for a number of other worthy causes and deals with children in particular educational, social, psychiatric and financial need. We believe that, where appropriate, help can be offered to people who, like those helped by the foundation, use the assisted places scheme. At one time, in local government circles, such help was known as the Martin Rules, which were certainly catered for in section 81B of the Education Act 1944, if the Minister cares to check it out. I fail to see why the assisted places scheme has been subverted to provide places which are already catered for-- unless it is for ideological reasons.

We will not perpetuate the wholly unacceptable practice of hiving off a few to the disadvantage of the many, to prop up schools which wish to remain elitist and which ignore their wider educational responsibilities to their communities. The Minister's alarm bells ought to be ringing because our new structure, catering for all schools, is looking increasingly attractive to former direct grant schools, which are aware that the future Labour Government will remove any advantages under the assisted places scheme. Indeed, they have already suffered under the pressures of the second great recession since the Conservative party took office since 1979. Labour Members will most certainly and happily vote against the regulations.

8.34 pm

Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth): I was a little surprised to discover that this draft statutory instrument is being opposed. I say that quite deliberately,

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notwithstanding what the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) has said, because Labour Members are now coming around to the wholesale adoption of Conservative education policies. For example, they are coming around to the acceptance of league tables. They have discovered virtue in them. They have discovered virtue in the national curriculum and even in testing. In short, they are beginning to adopt many Government policies. They have found excellence, and it is excellence that this motion is all about. The motion makes a contribution to parental choice. It enables parents to select schools and it broadens children's horizons. It enables a child from an ordinary family to share in some of the benefits and the advantages which spring from the independent sector. The scheme helps those parents who, while appreciating the benefits of independent schools, would simply not be able to afford them. It enhances available diversity and choice, which Labour Members are coming around to accepting.

If Labour Members believe in diversity and choice, let them tonight withdraw their ill-founded and spiteful opposition to the assisted places scheme. The scheme positively helps children who may be socially disadvantaged; it helps children from single-parent families; it helps children who come from the inner cities. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Walton want me to give way? I thought that he wanted to intervene. Since he does not, I shall continue.

All those laudable objectives should not receive the spiteful attention of Labour Members. We are seeing the old egalitarian enmity of Labour: old Labour dressed up as new. It takes more than a smiling leader to change the mind of the hard-nosed municipal socialist. The popularity of the assisted places scheme can be seen from the fact that about 30,000 pupils hold assisted places at almost 300 participating schools. That is an overall take-up of about 90 per cent. and I have to remind the hon. Member for Walton that 100 per cent. of the new places made available each year are now being taken up.

The hon. Member for Walton referred to polls. Interestingly, a MORI poll undertaken on behalf of the Independent Schools Information Service shows that the number of parents coming from the C2 group amounts to almost 40 per cent. That is the answer to the question that the hon. Gentleman put to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. Almost 40 per cent. is about 12,000 children. Among APS parents, 80 per cent. have relevant incomes below the average household income of about £12,750. Even more to the point, 40 per cent. of parents have incomes below the scheme's school's threshold of £9,352 per year, which will be uprated to £9,570 in the coming year.

Children from those families qualify for free places at APS schools. I need hardly remind Opposition Members that many of those parents voted Labour in the past, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins) said. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Walton wish me to give way this time?

Mr. Kilfoyle: The hon. Gentleman has quoted figures. Are they for income before it is adjusted or afterwards? Can he tell us what elements are taken out before the base figure of £9,000-plus is reached?

Mr. Pawsey: I am sure that those detailed figures will be given by my hon. Friend the Minister when he winds up the debate. I can, however, quote from an admirable

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document given to me by the Department for Education. Indeed, I will quote it in full for the benefit of the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues. The document says:

"80 per cent. of APS parents have relevant incomes of less than the national average household income of £18,760 . . . over 40 per cent. of parents have incomes below the scheme's threshold of £9,352 pa (to be uprated)"--

as I have mentioned already--

"and their children qualify for free places at these schools". Does that satisfy the hon. Gentleman? I take it from his silence that it does, and I am delighted.

The House will recall that the scheme has been in operation for about 15 years. Indeed, I served on the Standing Committee which considered the Bill that became the Education Act 1980. I have to compare the debates which took place at that time with our recent debates. Fifteen years ago, Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen would speak with passion and commitment, but that has all dissolved and drained away. Increasingly, Opposition Members are coming to accept the education reforms that we have introduced, at times painfully and always in the teeth of ill-considered opposition from Labour Members.

The assisted places scheme is now an accepted and integral part of the education scene. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South said, it provides an admirable ladder of opportunity for a great many children. However, I must tell my hon. Friend the Minister that my cheerful demeanour is qualified. There is at least one aspect of the scheme that genuinely disappoints me--the small percentage of APS parents of African, Asian and Caribbean origin. The figure is only 7 per cent. I say to my hon. Friend in all seriousness that we should do a great deal more to promote the scheme to those parents. I should like to see many more parents from ethnic communities taking advantage of the scheme. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister, therefore, to introduce measures specifically designed to encourage more children from those groups to apply for assisted places. I do not believe that the scheme should be seen as being intended principally for the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant child. It has a much wider appeal and I should like many more children from ethnic groups to take advantage of the scheme. As I said earlier, I believe that the scheme should reach out to all parts and all members of our national community. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister, when he winds up the debate, to advise the House of more measures which might be taken to widen the assisted places scheme to bring in more children from the ethnic minorities.

Mrs. Anne Campbell: Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that the assisted places scheme currently costs us £102 million a year? If the scheme were abolished, the money could be used to benefit all members of society--ethnic minorities, children from working-class backgrounds, and so on. My authority would benefit by an extra £1 million a year, which would do a great deal to make good the appalling cuts imposed by the Government this year.

Mr. Pawsey: Unlike the hon. Lady, I come from a working-class background. I was born in the working class and educated in the working class, and I am proud of that. I say to her gently that I need no lectures from her on what she believes the working class requires. I want the maximum choice and diversity. It might be

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argued that grammar schools, for example, cost more. Is that why the hon. Lady would like to see them abolished? Is that why Labour Members would like to see grant-maintained schools abolished? Are we bringing everything down to mere money? [Interruption.] The reaction of Labour Members is to laugh. For them, the education of our children is something to laugh about. Those of us who have our children educated within the state sector do not share that light-hearted view. We take the matter seriously.

Mr. Kilfoyle: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Pawsey: It is a great pleasure to give way to the hon. Gentleman, whom I regard as a cheerful friend.

Mr. Kilfoyle: The hon. Gentleman is trying to ruin my reputation with my hon. Friends. I have a simple question for him. If the answer is mere money, why is the same amount of mere money not given to children in the maintained sector as is given under the assisted places scheme?

Mr. Pawsey: I have no doubt that as the economy strengthens, more funds will be made available for education. I see my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education sitting in her place in this debate. Where is the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), the hon. Gentleman's leading education spokesman? He is not in the Chamber listening to what is being said. The fact that my right hon. Friend is present to hear this debate is a clear sign of her commitment to education discussions generally.

Mr. Kilfoyle: Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) has more faith.

Mr. Pawsey: I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has faith. Under her guidance, the education of the nation's children will continue to flourish.

Criticism has also been levelled at the geographical spread of the assisted places scheme. Again, that matter should be urgently addressed. If the participating school is some distance away from the family home, parents will be deterred from applying for an assisted place. Conservative Members at least know how expensive it is to get children to school and we know of the importance of school transport. That point is not lost on Opposition Members whose colleagues in Essex are taking away free transport for children who attend grammar schools. In those remarks, I include the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), who occasionally leads for the Liberal Democrats on Education.

Earlier, we listened with a sense of de ja vu to what the hon. Member for Walton said. His speech was entirely predictable. In some ways, it reminded me of the earlier comments made by him and his colleagues about grant- maintained schools. I suspect that it will probably take an application by the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) for an assisted place for his son to make this measure acceptable to his colleagues.

The Secretary of State for Education (Mrs. Gillian Shephard): It might help.

Mr. Pawsey: My right hon. Friend makes an interesting intervention. She is right; clearly it would help. If the right hon. Member for Sedgefield applied, it would

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immediately stamp the scheme with the seal of new Labour. At a stroke, Labour Members would fall into line and would immediately see virtue in the APS that had previously eluded them. Like St. Paul on the way to Damascus, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield sees a blinding light which illuminates Conservative education policies and he seeks at once to make them his own. He believes that the light will show him the way to Downing street. Opposition Members will need to do a lot more than simply pinch our policies to get themselves into Downing street.

I commend the regulations, especially to Opposition Members and particularly to the right hon. Member for Sedgefield. I very much hope that Labour's ill-considered opposition will be withdrawn. 8.48 pm

Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey): Unlike the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey), I was not here for the first year of this debate and I was not a member of the Committee that considered the Bill which became the Education Act 1980, although I have been here for 12 such debates and have taken part in several of them. Fundamentally, the arguments have not changed. Some of the evidence has changed, but the arguments have not. My party's position has also been consistent throughout, and it will remain consistent tonight. We shall oppose the regulations because they are not justified, and the Minister tonight--as with other Ministers in the past--has not made a case to justify them. The case for assisted places has never been made in a way that justifies it as a logical way of spending the relevant amount of public money. The Minister accepts that the assisted places scheme provides opportunities for a few. There is no debate about that, as we are talking about around 30,000 assisted places pupils. If one argues that the few should be treated in a particular way, one must ask whether that way is justified.

Let me make two preliminary points clear. First, there are some cases for treating a few in a particular way and for particular reasons, the most obvious of which is special needs. If special needs provision, for example, is not arranged locally through county or borough schools, it is often purchased elsewhere. That is perfectly justifiable.

Secondly, we must ask if the debate about the scheme is to do with the validity of independent schools per se. I do not oppose the existence of independent schools, and I would regard as very unsatisfactory a nation in which there were only public authority schools. If one is trying to have diversity in education, it is very important that there is diversity in the school providers. I am not arguing for one species of schooling, as a case could not be made for maintained schools or Church schools if that were so.

If we ask the principal question--whether the assisted places scheme is justified--we must then ask the following five questions. First, does the scheme fundamentally change things? I would argue that it does not, because it brings assisted places to so few pupils. Therefore, it does not make a fundamental difference to the educational provision of the nation. Secondly, is it good value for money? We have heard the regular debate tonight, and the figures vary from year to year. They are far from conclusive.

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Thirdly, does the scheme provide a better product for public money than we could get elsewhere? That is at least arguable, and it has never been proven. The research has never concluded that the scheme is the best way of spending a limited amount of public money. The scheme clearly has implications of the type which were alluded to by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) in her intervention. If we take a certain amount of money to buy places for a few and we spend roughly twice as much on doing that as we would need to spend to educate the same number of pupils in the maintained or public sector--the capital costs having already been paid in those sectors--the number of people we are assisting is therefore fewer. In doing that, we are at the same time depriving others of the advantages that they would have received from the extra money. That is a very obvious point.

In an age when there is a general complaint--the Secretary of State knows this as well as anybody--from nearly all local education authorities that their real terms cash is being cut and class sizes are going up, it is clearly not to their advantage or to the advantage of the much larger number of children in those schools that such a funding system applies. If the money were used for a different purpose, more money would go to the other schools and the class sizes would not be so big. The education of others is being hindered by that money going elsewhere.

Fourthly, does the scheme reach the parts that it is intended to reach? The hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth referred to an undisputed piece of survey research about what percentage of assisted places goes to which category in terms of population, economic and social categories. The hon. Gentleman made a criticism in passing that very few places go to ethnic minority children. The research has made it clear that, in the 15 years of the scheme, assisted places have not gone mainly to the sort of children for whom they were intended. They have gone to some of those children and they may now go to more, but the evidence suggests that it is the children of parents who would otherwise have benefited the most from the education system who have been the beneficiaries. They, of course, have an interest in the scheme continuing, as the lottery has come up with a good result for them. It would be difficult to abolish the scheme as far as they are concerned, but it is not providing a fundamentally large social change. We are not identifying only the most needy families and taking them out of a system which gives them the worst schools.

Fifthly, is the scheme consistent? The Secretary of State and the Minister are right to say that educational standards have gone up in recent years. So they should, and they still need to go up hugely in many parts of the country. If educational standards in county and borough schools and the maintained sector are going up, do we not need the assisted places scheme less? Surely now we do not have such a great need to take pupils out of the normal education system and to place them elsewhere.

I wish to deal with two other matters which were raised. The Minister referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), and I want to put on record in my hon. Friend's defence the context in which he referred to Dulwich college. My hon. Friend cannot be here this evening because he is on his way to Littleborough and Saddleworth. He referred in a previous debate to an article that had appeared in The Sunday Times which pointed

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