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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson): Where will it come from?
Mr. Welsh: The Minister need not ask where we will get it from. I will be happy to let him read our booklet. We are the only party that has detailed in pounds and pence where we will spend money. If he wants to find a party that runs away from spending commitments, he need only look across to the Labour Front Bench. The SNP has clearly shown where the money will come from.
The £8 billion deficit is a figment of the Minister's imagination. The real tartan tax is the subsidy from Scotland to England. The Minister may not know it, but
I advise him to read the Government's own figures, which show that, in the worst scenario, Scotland, with 8.8 per cent. of the United Kingdom's population, provides9.3 per cent. of all UK taxation. The real tartan tax is the subsidy of £10 per taxpayer per week from Scotland to the London Treasury.
In return, we get the Minister's pocket money.He cannot fund Scotland's education or local authorities, because he is getting a fixed, pocket money budget from the Treasury. His policies are Treasury-dominated.The £8.8 billion deficit exists only in his mind. All he can do is to play down his country and pretend that we are not one of the richest oil-producing countries in the world.
Why, with 7.5 billion tonnes of oil and gas reserves in Scottish territorial waters, is such a country talking about cuts, closures and unemployment? Instead of the problems of poverty that the Minister's pocket money budget imposes on us, Scotland should be dealing with the problems of prosperity. We have the resources, but we can exploit them only through independence. He offers us only the dependency culture--the begging bowl--approach of Unionism. That is the past; Scotland's future, as the people are deciding, is with independence and a Scottish Parliament, so that resources can be used for the things that we want in Scotland.
Our costed budget, in the first four years of a Scots Parliament, would provide more teachers, refurbish schools, and ensure nursery places in the national school system for every three or four-year-old whose parents wish it. With independence, Scotland's further and higher education institutions would meet the strategic needs of the nation and supply the highest-quality educational provision to the wider world.
Mr. Matthew Banks (Southport):
Thank you, Madam Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye in this important debate. I was a little worried earlier that not many hon. Members would attend the debate, but it is better attended than the debate last Wednesday morning on education in England. I congratulate the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh), whom many of us regard more as a housing than as an education spokesman, if he will forgive me for saying so.
I am pleased also to see a full complement of hon. Members from the Scottish National party. There are only four of them at present, and I suspect that there will be fewer still after the next general election. I wish my very good friend John Godfrey, the prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate for Perth, the best of luck. Opposition Members will be pleased to know that, while I am more than capable of making a long speech about Scottish education, I shall not do so, as a number of hon. Members are present and they wish to make their own contributions.
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Banks:
No doubt the hon. Gentleman will seek to catch your eye also, Madam Deputy Speaker.
At a time when the interests of our economy are best served by reducing the public sector borrowing requirement and our overall level of public expenditure, the Government have set out their priorities in both education and health. Despite the fact that the PSBR fell from £35.9 billion to £29 billion this year, spending on education and health are priorities--particularly higher education--in Scotland, where spending will be £621 million in 1995-96, which is an increase of 4.2 per cent. on last year. In the December public expenditure survey statement, the Scottish Office education budget was maintained at a record level of £1,277 million.
However, Conservative Members are not convinced that only increased expenditure will radically improve standards in Scottish education. The education reforms that we have implemented throughout the United Kingdom are founded on our belief in devolving management of schools from Government to the schools, on parental involvement and on traditional teaching methods of instructing children in the subjects set out in the national curriculum. Teaching methods are particularly important, and the Office for Standards in Education has made it clear that their selection and application and the form of class organisation have a greater impact on learning than class sizes.
I welcome the fact that, from 1 April, bad teachers who are sacked by local education authorities will not have their dismissals referred to local education committees. We will abolish that long-winded, time-wasting procedure which makes it almost impossible to get rid of bad teachers.
Mr. Welsh:
It is quite insulting to the Scottish education profession for the hon. Gentleman to talk about bad teachers in that manner. Does he not understand that one of our traditional strengths is a fully qualified, graduate teaching profession? If teachers have problems, they can be solved within the counselling system. They can receive the help they require in order to perform better, or they may decide to change careers. It is wrong merely to blame bad teachers or bad schools. Instead of moaning about teachers, the Government should fix the problems.
Mr. Banks:
I am talking about a tiny minority of teachers. However, I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the remarks of the hon. Member for Monklands, East (Mrs. Liddell) which appeared in The Scotsman earlier this week--perhaps she will expand on them later in the debate. It appears that the Labour party is coming closer to the Government's policies: I welcome the fact that it seems to support some of the actions of Scottish Office Ministers.
The 1981 parents charter began the process of parental involvement, which has progressed through its 1991 and 1995 follow-ups. School boards were created in 1988, and they have given parents a role in running schools. They have now been established in more than 90 per cent. of Scottish secondary schools. The implications for local authorities of the Education Reform Act 1988 and the Education Act 1993 were to extend choice to parents, governors and head teachers, centralise control of the curriculum and pass control of school inspections to Ofsted.
I shall point out how those changes advantage Scotland. Devolved management has encouraged flexibility and responsiveness by allowing decisions to be taken closer
to the Scottish people. Decisions are taken not just in the House and in London, but by local authorities. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes):
Order. I hope that those hon. Members who are engaging in repeated seated interventions do not hope to catch my eye to speak later in the debate.
Mr. Banks:
That is true devolution: powers have been granted to parents without the need to establish alternative institutions and bureaucracy either here or in Edinburgh. Because there are no jobs, titles or sinecures for Opposition Members, it does not mean that their constituents will not benefit from the Government's policies. One has only to look at the success of Dornoch academy in Sutherland and its welcome expansion to six-year status to see the beneficial effects of schools governing themselves.
The Government's objectives--including the devolution to schools of at least 80 per cent. of local spending and schools having the controlling interest in staff selection--should be contrasted with the outdated paternalism of the Labour party. The introduction of nursery vouchers by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is widely welcomed.
Ms Roseanna Cunningham (Perth and Kinross):
By whom?
Mr. Banks:
It is welcomed by parents, but I shall come to that point in a moment--I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will comment on it also.
Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Banks:
If I had plenty of time, I would love to give way to the hon. Lady. However, I promised the House that my remarks would be brief--it must be obvious to hon. Members that I am speaking more quickly than I would like. However, they should take care, because I could speak for much longer than they might wish.
I am pleased that the assisted places scheme will deliver further choice to parents. I emphasise that it has come about as a result of direct expenditure by the Scottish Office. I hope that the number of pupils taking advantage of the assisted places scheme will increase from 3,000 to 6,000. We want to give parents greater choice.
I commend the Scottish authorities that have taken part in the initial nursery voucher schemes. I wish those parents in North Ayrshire, East Renfrewshire, Argyll and Bute, and Highland the best of luck. I hope that vouchers valued at £1,100 or more will be made available to parents throughout Scotland, rather than in only a few authorities. I warmly welcome that measure, which gives parents unprecedented choice.
Unfortunately, education has been caught up in the uproar surrounding the reorganisation of local government. The hon. Member for Angus, East touched on that point, although I did not agree with everything he said--in fact, I think that, in Kilmarnock, he ran foul of the problems to which he alluded.
It is interesting to note that an extra £186 million has been allocated to Scottish councils this year. Current expenditure levels are more than 30 per cent. higher in
Scotland than in England, yet we hear claims about the denigration of Scottish local democracy by central Government. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's announcement on Monday of an extra £96 million for local authorities--including £58 million to safeguard front-line services, such as education--is motivated more by the need to help the oppressed council tax payer than by a desire to feed local authorities' addiction to more central funding.
The spendthrift behaviour of many of the outgoing regional and district authorities resembles that of a national lottery winner with only a few weeks to live. The new unitary authorities will suffer the consequences. Local reorganisation has been used by extremists--epitomised by one or two Opposition Members--simply as an excuse to make mischief. The Scottish National party's high-tax, high-spending agenda for Scotland is matched in its lunacy only by the foolishness of the Labour party, which sniggers in the background at the antics of the nationalists.
The hon. Member for Angus, East waved around a document containing many figures about where his party intends to spend money. However, he did not answer the question posed by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary about where the money would come from. Conservative education policies make a rounded whole. The five-to-14 development programme, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, includes the three interlinked elements of the curriculum, testing and reporting on progress to parents. The five main areas of study seem to have struck the right balance between learning the basics and learning new subjects relevant to the future, such as environmental studies.
The aim of our recent legislation has been to make schools more responsive and accountable to individual choice, and to involve employers and the wider community. It is well known that education in Scotland--as in the rest of the United Kingdom--has been too distant from the needs of industry. The technical and vocational education initiative--which I think was pioneered by the President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, my right hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Lang)--is a fine programme, as is the compacts initiative. I warmly welcome the initiatives, which give students who perform well in Scotland a greater chance of a job when they leave school.
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