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Mr. Gummer: My right hon. Friend is perfectly right. His county council will have an increase of 3 per cent. It has been going around, as my county council has--it has been a nationally run operation--telling people that it would suffer a 5 per cent. cut. If I may use my own county council as an example, in Suffolk there will be an increase of 5.7 per cent. for education. The county council has been scaremongering and saying that there will be a cut of 5 per cent., which shows how the Opposition parties will use anything to try to get party political support.
Mr. Terry Davis (Birmingham, Hodge Hill): On the question of schools and the area cost adjustment, does the Secretary of State intend to continue the distribution of money on the basis that Birmingham should spend 20 per cent. less than Westminster on the education of a child?
Mr. Gummer: The area cost adjustment is something about which we argue with the local authorities. Of course, the hon. Gentleman could have used Tower Hamlets or any other inner London borough as an example because the position is the same for all the inner London boroughs and, indeed, the south-east in general. That is how the system works. There is a real argument between Labour, Conservative and Liberal authorities which get money from the area cost adjustment and the similar authorities which do not get the money. That is why, having tried with their help--they also tried, together and separately--we decided that the only way to proceed is to have an independent inquiry to see whether we can find a better method. But there is a fundamental difference: those who receive from the present system like it and those who do not receive do not like it. The trouble is that even the independent group will find that difficult to square.
Sir Dudley Smith (Warwick and Leamington): Is my right hon. Friend aware that the socialist and soggy Liberal councils will almost certainly say that that is not enough money? Does my right hon. Friend realise that anyone who studies the figures will welcome the 4.5 per cent. increase on the SSA for education? Will he encourage recalcitrant county councils such as Warwickshire to release more of their financial assets to
which they still cling on in difficult times? Will he tell such councils that they should live within the inflation figure like everyone else has to?
Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend makes a good point. If local authorities wanted to help people on the basis of inflation--if they tried to push inflation down--which would help them in future years, they would seek to live at least within the inflation figure, if not try to make savings. In my hon. Friend's case--in Warwickshire-- there is a permitted increase of budget of 3.2 per cent., which will feed through into education more significantly. The concerns that both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) have pressed on me so often have been met this year by that change and will be met in the future by the agreement for an independent review of the area cost adjustment which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir D. Smith) has often told me, is particularly difficult for Warwickshire.
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South): The Secretary of State has made great play of local authorities' ability to pass on the money that he says is being provided for education, presumably by way of the SSA. Does he agree that the SSA does not provide the money, which comes through the revenue support grant? For the past few years, with the best will in the world, Newham has been unable to pay its SSA in education because £6 million had to be spent on the homeless and another large sum had to be spent in respect of capital receipts, which it is impossible to pay out of the revenue support grant provided by the Secretary of State. How can Newham, with an increase of 2.5 per cent. in permitted budget--compared with Westminster's permitted increase of 11 per cent. for next year--afford the increase in the figure for education?
Mr. Gummer: The answer is simple. Newham has been overspending right at the top of the level and Westminster has kept its costs low. According to the independent assessment published in the Independent only a few weeks ago--
Ms Hilary Armstrong (North-West Durham): It is yours.
Mr. Gummer: It is an independent assessment and has nothing to do with me. According to that assessment, Westminster is the fourth most deprived borough in London. [Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras will read the Independent newspaper to see where the statistic came from. That newspaper does not support, nor is it written by, my officials. The hon. Gentleman seems to want to discount those independent figures. Is he honestly saying that, in future, if there were ever a Labour Government, he would hand out money on the basis of his own--bottom--ideas?
If he does that, he will be returning to the old Labour system which gave Westminster significantly more than the present system.
Mr. Barry Field (Isle of Wight):
As my right hon. Friend has said that the review of district councils is nearly complete, will he promise the House that there will be an early review so that the people of East Cowes can have the parish council to which they have been looking forward? Is he aware that the Liberal Democrat-controlled Isle of Wight council published a leaflet only last week, on the front of which it said that there would be
Mr. Gummer:
The people of the Isle of Wight have a very good advocate in my hon. Friend. It is a great sadness that they have a Liberal county council, because that county council will, no doubt, having promised the people cuts, want to deliver on that Liberal promise. It will be the only promise that the Liberals ever made that they will deliver on, but that is the one that they will want to deliver on.
I hope that my hon. Friend and local governors and teachers will insist that the Liberal county council on the Isle of Wight passes back money that has been given to it by the Government from the taxpayers, to every school in the Isle of Wight. I am sure that my hon. Friend will ensure that we soon know if it does not.
Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton):
Will the Secretary of State comment on the proposal to withdraw large amounts from the SSAs for the operation of the nursery voucher system?
Are not the proposals that the Government are considering unfair, in that the withdrawals from SSAs would be on a per pupil basis, whereas the SSA is allocated on a needs basis? Will not that lead to those authorities with relatively little nursery provision having large amounts of SSA and those with a large nursery provision having very little SSA--perhaps even a negative SSA?
Mr. Gummer:
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has not noticed that the only people to whom that applies are the four volunteer councils, which do not include his local council. He should not be worried at all.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire):
In thanking my right hon. Friend for concentrating on education, may I ask him whether Staffordshire will have its very significant problems solved? May I also ask him whether he will try to make the whole business of local government finance a little more intelligible to the ordinary man? Is he aware that the doctrine of the Trinity and the Schleswig-Holstein question are positively kindergarten subjects by comparison with:
Mr. Gummer:
The matter is simple for my hon. Friend. His local council will be able to increase its budget by about 3.2 per cent. It should be able to get a significant amount of money through to the schools, and I am sure that he will ensure that it gets that money through to the schools. If the money does not go to the schools, it will be the Labour-controlled Staffordshire county council that will have failed.
Mr. John Heppell (Nottingham, East):
Does the Secretary of State remember that last year, Nottinghamshire county council predicted a cut of £20 million and was told that it was scaremongering? In
Mr. Gummer:
No, because there are no such cuts. The only way in which the council can produce those cuts is by deciding how much it would like to have spent in the best of all possible worlds, placing that figure before the public and then saying that it is not receiving that full amount and therefore the bit in between is called a cut. That council could ensure that its local schools had more money, and no doubt the hon. Gentleman will ensure that it does.
"B+C+M-O+V, where B, C, M and O and V have the same meaning in subparagraph (1) above"?
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