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Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): Having cut them last year.
Mr. Clarke: None of them was cut last year. That was an ill-thought-out and inaccurate interjection.
I shall turn to what we are doing to the national health service. This Government are committed to the national health service. I am proud that since 1979 spending on the NHS has increased by more than 70 per cent. in real terms. We are continuing to deliver our commitment to increase spending on the NHS in real terms. That is what we said that we would do, and we are doing it.
Public spending on the national health service will increase by over £l billion next year. In addition, patients will benefit from improvements in efficiency, including reductions in NHS management costs. All those savings-- around £650 million next year--will be ploughed back into patient care. Privately financed projects will bring nearly £700 million of extra investment over the next three years without in any way undermining the fundamental principle that health care should be free at the point of service. It is no good the word "private" producing curls on the lips of Labour Members. The money is on top of the additional £1 billion of public expenditure, and it all represents additional resources for our free national health service.
The Budget allows for spending on schools to rise next year. We have already increased spending per pupil by some 50 per cent. in real terms since 1979. We devote a higher proportion of our public spending to education than Japan, Germany or France.
Our achievements have been impressive. Post-16 staying-on rates have risen dramatically, from 42 per cent. in 1979 to 72 per cent. now. Almost one in three young people go on to higher education, up from one in eight in 1979. We have a higher graduation rate than any other major European country. We have achieved many improvements in our schools: introduction of the national curriculum, more rigorous schools inspection, measures to tackle failing schools, greater choice for parents, better vocational education and extension of free nursery education. That is not just good for our children; it is good for our future and good for our economy.
Our reforms have delivered better standards of education for each pound that we spend--but we are also spending more pounds. The plans that I am publishing today allow for an increase in spending on schools of
£878 million. Within that, over £770 million will be channelled through the local authority settlement. Parents will rightly expect local authorities to carry that funding through to school budgets, and they should ask their local authorities how the extra money for schools will be spent on their children.
Since 1979, spending on our police has almost doubled even after allowing for inflation. Next year, the resources available to fight crime will be increased again. Money is being provided for an extra 5,000 police officers over the next three years. That is on top of the 32,000 increase in the police service since 1979. The plans also allow for an extra 10,000 closed circuit television cameras in town centres and elsewhere.
I have found those extra resources for important programmes because we are changing government to ensure that it meets the needs of people today, not those of 20, 30 or 40 years ago. We are cutting Government bureaucracy, cracking down on fraud, getting Government out of activities in which they need not be involved and using private sector skills and finance to provide better public services. That is the hallmark of a Government who are looking to the future needs of a modern industrial state.
We are now making spectacular efficiency gains as a result of our civil service reforms of recent years. I remind the House that in my last Budget I cut provision for central Government running costs by 10 per cent. in real terms over three years. This year, I will go much further on top of that. The cash cost of Whitehall will be
£860 million lower in three years' time than it is today. In real terms, that represents total savings of 12 per cent., which is equivalent to a saving of nearly £2 billion a year. But we must never delude ourselves that more resources for schools, hospitals and police as well as tax cuts can be paid for just by eliminating waste in the public sector. Life is not that simple. We have also had to look elsewhere.
Three years ago, before my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security very skilfully put in place a programme for long-term reform, we were expecting social security spending to grow by more than 3 per cent. each year in real terms. We now expect real
growth in planned spending of around 1 per cent. per year over the next three years. That reduction in growth will build up year on year to a cash saving of huge proportions. The changes that we have made and that we are making are an assurance for future generations. We are going to leave our children a welfare state that works and a welfare system that they can afford.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security will announce the details of this year's settlement to the House tomorrow. I shall set out just the main points. Increases in social security spending next year will be well within the growth of the economy. We will ensure that all that spending represents legitimate spending on people in genuine need. That is why my right hon. Friend will give details of a further intensive campaign against fraud. He will also announce measures that will mean that people who apply for asylum on arrival in the country will cease to receive benefits after an unfavourable adjudication.
My right hon. Friend will announce steps to close the gap between single parents benefit and those paid to other families. The right approach to single parents is neither to penalise them nor to favour them. The costs and responsibilities of having children are the same for couples as they are for single people.
We intend to build at the same time on our previous measures to help more mothers move from benefit dependency into work. My right hon. Friend will announce a package of measures to encourage work, including a further increase in the child care allowance in family credit from £40 to £60 each week.
Next is housing benefit. The housing benefit system should not be an inducement for young people to leave their families before they need to. My right hon. Friend will announce measures to restrict the amount of housing benefit paid to single people under the age of 25 to a maximum that more sensibly reflects their circumstances. The benefit system should offer a real incentive to young people to rent within their means, improving their incentives to work rather than dependency on the social security system. [Hon. Members: "Nonsense."]
Opposition Members are so predictable. It is by restricting spending in those areas that we can protect people in greatest need and stand by our pledges on pensions and child benefit. Others apparently claim to be thinking the unthinkable. I have yet to see evidence of their thinking at all.
This Government have acted decisively to put in place policies to bring social security spending under better control. Let no one underestimate what we have achieved. The measures that I have announced in my three Budgets will reduce planned social security expenditure by
£5 billion each year by the end of the century.
Social security is a good example of how more money can be found to be spent on areas that we care most about, by trimming back elsewhere. We have applied that principle to most other programmes. When hon. Members examine the full details of our spending plans, they will find that, in practically every Department of Government, we have found significant savings while protecting the front line of public service delivery.
Let me give two examples. We have found further efficiency savings in defence, but we maintain fully our commitment to a strong front line and, in a tight public spending round in the Foreign Office, the planned
allocation for bilateral aid is likely to be little changed from that set out in last year's departmental report. British bilateral aid is internationally recognised for its high quality and for the substantial share going to the poorest countries in Africa and Asia, and that will continue.
We are also doing more to get the Government out of activities that they simply need not be involved in. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence is today announcing his intention to transfer ownership of the Ministry of Defence married quarters estate to the private sector. That will improve the management of the estate, which will be good for the services, and good for service families. We plan to privatise the Housing Corporation loan book, and to encourage the banks to provide student loans.
There are many services that the Government have a duty to ensure are provided as public services, but where private sector management skills and expertise can improve delivery to the public. That is where the private finance initiative comes in.
Under the private finance initiative, the public sector does not simply sign a contract to buy a prison, a train or a computer system. It pays to have specific services supplied at guaranteed levels of performance--available prison places, trains running reliably on the Northern line, national insurance records kept up to date. [Interruption.]
The Opposition had better make up their mind whether they agree with that policy or not. It rather depends which day of the week it is or which spokesman is speaking, as far as I have been able to see. The Government choose the quality services that the public require, and then go out and acquire those services from private companies with the finance and expertise to deliver.
The key point is that the initiative delivers infrastructure projects of higher quality at a lower overall cost to the British taxpayer. That is because the private sector puts its own money at risk and brings its own management skills to bear.
The initiative means that better public services will be provided by better private means. The service remains a public service and the taxpayers get a better deal. No wonder some of our critics have decided to copy our innovative policy. [Interruption.] We are now, as the deputy leader of the Labour party demands, far beyond the stage of simply identifying projects. The money is starting to flow. We expect actual capital spending under the private finance initiative to be around £2 billion per year and rising over the next three years. We expect to have agreed contracts worth at least £14 billion by the end of 1998-99.
That money is replacing old-style public sector capital spending and it can deliver big gains in value for money for the taxpayer. In the past, cost overruns and delays were typical of public sector capital projects. The private finance initiative is delivering better-quality projects. To take two well-known examples, the PFI contract for Northern line trains specifies reliability levels that are nearly four times above the best fleet currently operating on London Underground. The service that we shall get from the new national insurance records system could have cost up to twice what we shall pay under the privately financed deal that we have struck. As a result of those flows of private finance, we have been able to find
savings in publicly financed capital while maintaining overall high levels of investment activity and high-quality investment.
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