| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Robin Squire: As this matter has been raised outside the House several times, I want to make the purely arithmetical point that, to the extent that any LEA caters for precisely the same number of four-year-olds as it did in the previous year, whatever its level of provision, the scheme will be neutral.
Mr. Pickthall: It will not be neutral between one LEA and another. If an LEA is a large provider, it will have a
large amount of its revenue support grant taken away and dissipated among good, bad or indifferent providers. If an LEA is a small provider, it has little to lose.
Mr. Squire: Perhaps I was not clear enough. A large provider, by definition, currently has a large number of places for four-year-olds, and that is the basis of the calculation. To that extent, it is in exactly the same position as a small provider--if it gets one more four-year-old in year two than it had in year one, it will be in pocket.
Mr. Pickthall: I take that point, but we are, in this case, talking about economies of scale.
Mr. Spearing: I am not convinced by what the Minister just said. If a large provider such as the London borough of Newham or, indeed, Solihull has a large number of nursery places in the voucher system and has competition from other providers, who may provide more time in school per voucher or unit of cash, would it not be undercut in terms of apparent value to parents, and would not the quality of what the local authority is doing therefore be imperilled?
Mr. Pickthall: My hon. Friend is right and he brings us to the quality of local authority provision, which one or two hon. Members have criticised. In this area of education, I have never heard a serious attack, even from the Government, on the quality that is provided throughout the country by a variety of LEAs, which, for the most part, have managed to put together a first-class service against a background of dwindling resources and a non-statutory basis for provision. They have done an extremely good job. Many of us--we might be accused of being supporters of local authorities--value what is provided in our towns and do not want it to be dissipated as a result of the poorer quality, cheaper provision that we have heard about this evening.
As has been said, a horrendous increase in bureaucracy would be involved in the voucher scheme. At present, using as an example the system that I support, the local education authority receives its revenue support grant and allocates resources to nursery schools. It is a fairly simple operation. In the voucher system, the Department for Education and Employment will withdraw a proportion of RSG, the LEA will withhold from school budgets a calculated sum per pupil equivalent to the voucher for each child, taking into account termly attendance, a private company will issue vouchers to parents, the parents will exchange the vouchers at the schools or institutions, and the schools or institutions will exchange the vouchers for cash from a private company.
It all equals more frequent and more detailed monitoring and auditing of pupils, cash and numbers, and it involves an additional burden for the schools concerned. The Minister will probably make the point that some of that will change after the pilot scheme if it proves to be as burdensome as it sounds. On the surface, one is bound to say, "So much for the Government's drive against bureaucracy." It is strange how that drive always seems to create more bureaucracy than it gets rid of.
I shall mention briefly the policies on priorities. Where places are short--in most places--local education authorities have somehow to target their resources in the
nursery sector. Many of them, especially Lancashire, have put in place a system to ensure that the most disadvantaged children--the disabled, those from single-parent families or from homes where English is not the first language, for example--have some priority in gaining a place in nursery school
Lancashire has, in the fairly recent past, been assured by the Minister that its social priority criteria are right. The Minister approved of them yet, in the latter part of 1995, the attempts of Church schools in Longridge, Lancashire and Lytham St. Anne's, supported by the LEA, to create nursery classes, were turned down by the Secretary of State specifically because
At least that was a credible response, but how does the reliance on social and family needs criteria square with a voucher system that has no such criteria in an area of education where there will continue to be a shortage for some time? That leads me to the conclusion that the criterion for judging the Bill--how it will increase and improve provision for nursery education--is not being met, nor will it be.
Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth):
Just about the only thing with which I agreed in the speech of the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) was his comment that parents are not daft. He is right. I and my hon. Friends believe that we should trust parents to use the voucher. It gives them a real stake in education and certainly makes them, as the Leader of the Opposition says, stakeholders.
I was disappointed that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) would not--or could not--answer the question that was posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson). Hon. Members will recall that my hon. Friend reminded the hon. Member for Brightside that he once said that he would have no truck with middle-class, left-wing parents who preach one thing and send their children to another school outside the area. I was disappointed that the hon. Gentleman could not respond to that question. I understand the difficulty that he had, but I should have thought that at least he might have tried. I was also disappointed that he did not respond to the question that was put to him by thehon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), who asked a question relating to costs. The hon. Gentleman failed to respond, in the same way as he failed to respond to the question that was put to him by my hon. Friend. Thehon. Gentleman's technique is simply to brush aside any difficult questions.
I have to tell Opposition Members that those questions will not go away. They will stay to haunt thehon. Gentleman and Opposition Members in the House and outside. They will haunt them today, tomorrow and throughout the years.
The hon. Member for Bath asked a question about fraud. My mind was working on the same lines as his, so I contacted my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary who will
respond to the debate. My hon. Friend was kind enough to write to me on 18 January. I shall paraphrase his letter. He said that there would be three checks. First, all applications will be checked against the child benefit centre database. Secondly, each voucher will carry the child's name and a unique serial number. The third control will be the requirement that all private and voluntary providers be registered under the Children Act 1989, which would prevent bogus providers from joining the scheme.
I have to tell Opposition Members that I would have been a great deal more impressed by the strength and sincerity of their opposition to the Bill if I believed it to be genuine. Sadly, I doubt that it is. I believe that it is synthetic. I say that because Opposition Members have opposed all the Government's education reforms without exception. They opposed them, not for good educational reasons but for cheap political expediency. They opposed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley(Mr. Baker) said, the national curriculum and testing, local management of schools, the introduction of grant-maintained status, the introduction of Ofsted, improved teacher training and league tables. To that catalogue we can now add another--nursery provision.
Mr. Don Foster:
The hon. Gentleman is always extremely courteous, but it would be wholly wrong of him to mislead the House into believing that Opposition Members have in any way opposed the expansion of high-quality early-years or nursery education. The opposition has been to the methodology proposed by the Government--a methodology that we believe will hinder the expansion of high-quality early-years education.
Mr. Pawsey:
The hon. Gentleman is logic-chopping. His Liberal character has been entirely exposed. I believe that the main reason for Opposition Members' objection to the Bill is the fact that its proposals do not focus on local education authorities. I suspect that had they done so, Labour and Liberal spokesmen might have discovered some virtue in them. Opposition Members appear to believe that the only good education is local authority education, but they are wrong about that, as they are about so many other things.
Conservative Members believe in maximum diversity and choice. That choice is best provided by grant-maintained schools, which are opposed by both Labour and Liberals--although the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. Member for Peckham(Ms Harman) send their children to grant-maintained schools, exercising the very choice that Opposition Members would deny other parents.
I do not criticise either the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) or his hon. Friend the Member for Peckham for doing what I would do: sending their children to the best schools, and giving them the best education that can be found. That is entirely laudable. What I do not find laudable is the way in which Opposition Members criticise grant-maintained schools and selection, while taking advantage of grant-maintained schools and selection to ensure that their children do well. I consider that disgraceful, and I hope that we shall hear a reasoned explanation of that dichotomy.
The principle of choice and diversity runs like a golden thread through all the Government's education policies, and can be seen again in the Bill. When my right
hon. Friend the Secretary of State introduced the Bill, she referred to funding. The legislation will cost taxpayers some £730 million, of which about £165 million is new money. It places in the hands of parents a voucher worth £1,100, which may be spent at a private or voluntary institution or, indeed, at a state school; it can also be exchanged for a nursery school place.
The legislation builds on the concept of pilot schemes, and I welcome that. The vouchers represent a major new initiative in education. I have no doubt that, as with any new initiative, there will be teething troubles--that, after all, is what pilot schemes are for--but I hope that myhon. Friend the Minister will be able to assure me that the lessons that are learnt will be incorporated in the main scheme when it starts in April 1997. Some of those lessons may prove unpalatable and expensive, and they will undoubtedly require careful implementation.
The new scheme will provide a pre-school place for all four-year-olds whose parents want one. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley that it should be extended to three-year-olds, but--here I return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire--I want parents to visit schools and compare schemes. I want them to talk to providers, and ask the questions that they consider important to them.
"the social needs of the area did not warrant it."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |