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10.29 am
Mrs. Margaret Ewing (Moray): I shall be brief, because I realise that other hon. Members wish to speak. We will be interested to hear the response of the Minister with responsibility for education in Scotland. Hon. Members have made valuable points in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh), as our parliamentary spokesperson on education, on having secured it.
I suspect that I am not the only hon. Member who has received a substantial amount of mail from constituents--I have also, in the past few weeks, met representatives in my surgery--about the prospects for our education system. I do not think that the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Banks) really understands the financial crisis that is affecting our local councils, which are responsible for delivering this vital service. All hon. Members should share the concern that has been expressed in the past few weeks as our councils have been going through the process of setting their budgets.
Moray council, like other councils, has been asked to make substantial cuts in its service. In our case, for a population of about 70,000 people, we have been asked to cut £7.8 million. Despite everything that the Secretary of State told the Scottish Grand Committee in Kilmarnock, there has not been one iota of change for many councils, because the transfer of some of the money to which the hon. Member for Southport referred had already been made by many councils, including mine.No additional money will therefore be given to those councils.
The education budget for Moray council was faxed to me yesterday, at my request, by the newly appointed director of education. In a small area such as Moray, the
required staff reduction will, I hope, result from voluntary severance. The reality is that we will lose 19 teaching posts and three to four of our specialist music instructors, who are a vital part of the Moray community. Other issues that have been highlighted are the loss of specialist language teaching and the reduction in special educational needs, which are front-line services that are vital to our education system.
In that context, I should like to put these questions to the Minister about education budgeting. The Secretary of State has claimed to have protected education in his financial statements. In Moray, we have kept above the grant-aided expenditure level, by only 0.5 per cent., yet we are facing cuts like every other authority, including the loss of those vital teaching posts. Any further cuts in education next year will have a very severe impact on front-line services, which will entail going below GAE, and schools will certainly be forced to opt out.
Is that the political agenda that has been set by Scottish Office Ministers? Are they determined to force our schools to opt out of our state education system, of which we are justifiably proud?
In the light of the cuts' impact, will the Secretary of State explain how the agenda and the timetable for new national developments can be fulfilled unless the Government deliver additional resources to our authorities? I should like to have very straight answers to those questions, and no obfuscation.
I should briefly like to examine higher education. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) has already told us what the Association of University Teachers said about university funding, and I will therefore not rehearse that argument but only endorse it. Let us talk about funding our students in the further and higher education sector.
All hon. Members must be well aware of the difficulties that people of all ages who wish to enter further or higher education face in ensuring that they have a decent standard of living while undertaking their course. They do not want to be millionaires; they merely want to keep body and soul together. That is particularly true of mature students, many of whom are women, who want to enter the education system after their families have been raised.
I have written to the Scottish Office, time after time, about individual cases. The response has been, "Tell the person to go and look through the register of trusts. Find a sponsor." There is no evidence that Scottish Office Ministers believe that people should be entitled to reasonable funding during their education. Last month,I took up the issue of student funding, Student Loans Company funding and the fact that new financial institutions will be involved, with the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson). He said in his letter to me:
Anyone one who has talked to a student knows that the loans offered by the SLC are inappropriate to students' needs. He went on to say:
I will say only that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I suspect that there will be a great deal of cherry-picking by those private organisations.
My final point is about the prospect of the development of a university of the highlands and islands. I understand that meetings have taken place with Sir Graham Hills and with the chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and that the director of the highlands and islands project has met representatives of colleges throughout the highlands and islands for preliminary discussions.
Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) on his success in the raffle for this debate, and on his speech.I cannot say the same for the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Banks). It is a measure of the Government's attitude to education that the one Conservative Member who could be persuaded to attend throughout this debate and to speak in it has not done his homework. I counted at least three errors of fact about Scottish education before he was many minutes into his speech.
I should like to concentrate my remarks on a few points about under-fives, because, a few weeks ago, when we had our debate on under-fives in Stirling, we were told that it would be quite appropriate to use village halls to accommodate under-fives. Why should young children be the only people in society who are so disregarded that they are expected to make do with accommodation in which everything is locked away at night, and which has no outdoor play space? That illustrates the Government's attitude to the education of ordinary people.
Once again, we have been told that local government schools are having great difficulties because of their incompetence and squandering of money. Only this morning, we heard about the Ministry of Defence losing or having had stolen millions of pounds' worth of pictures.I wonder if the hon. Member for Southport--who, I believe, went to Sandhurst--will join me in telling the MOD that it will get more money when it finds those pictures.
I was recently a member of the Committee that debated the Education (Student Loans) Bill, and the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire(Mr. Forth), told us--believe it or not--that students are not poor, that the citizens advice bureaux' survey of students in Scotland was profoundly in error because students were not poor, and that they could not be poor because he had met them in student beer bars. That was the level of his interest in and knowledge of students in further and higher education.
I once again want to pursue the issue of proper funding for students in further and higher education. We must have a system that ensures that students are not deterred from entering further and higher education on financial grounds--they are clearly being deterred at present. They are, in fact, leaving further and higher education in numbers that the Minister would not admit. He simply refuses to recognise that any student would leave education on the grounds of not being able to carry on financially, yet all hon. Members know from constituency experience that that happens.
Mrs. Helen Liddell (Monklands, East):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) on securing this debate on an extremely topical subject. The Labour party recognises the very real concern about Scottish education, which led to 40,000 people taking to the streets in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. Only one sneering voice was raised against that demonstration--that of the Minister responsible for education in Scotland, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson).
I shall take up some of the points made by the hon. Member for Angus, East and agree with almost everything that he said. There have now been five years of Government attacks on Scottish education. We have to contend not only with spending cuts but with the impact of local government reorganisation. We now see coming to fruition everything that my hon. Friends predicted during the Committee stage of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. The Government were warned by parents, teachers, the Churches and others of the chaos that would be brought to Scottish local government as a consequence of their untimely and ill-thought-out reorganisation.
It is significant that only one Conservative Member has spoken today--the hon. Member for Southport(Mr. Banks). I pay tribute to a distinguished war pensioner for having the nerve to confront the anger felt by Scottish Members about what is happening to Scottish education.It is disgraceful that the crib notes provided by his party misled him so badly. He said, for example, that there was universal support for nursery vouchers. Clearly the Government Whips failed to inform him that 84 per cent. of the people consulted about the scheme opposed it.
A number of hon. Members have spoken about pre-five education, and it is apposite that we should discuss it this week. On Monday, under the cover of moving from crisis to chaos in local government, the Secretary of State for Scotland again told us that the views of the Scottish people were to be ignored on the subject of nursery vouchers. He said that the pilot schemes, which any sane and rational person would have regarded as an opportunity to see whether the project would work, were not to go ahead. We have been told that nursery vouchers will be introduced, no matter what. That figures, with a Government who have consistently failed to listen.
The Government have been told by representatives of parents and teachers that nursery vouchers were not wanted in Scotland and that £1,100 was too little to guarantee a nursery place. They were also told that playgroups were inadequately funded to fill the gap, and that they too were opposed to the scheme--but they did not listen. The Government, true to their ideology, are hellbent on attacking Scottish state-funded education.
Is it not ironic that, as we gathered in the House last Wednesday to discuss the local government settlement and cuts, the Minister responsible for education issued a statement saying that the assisted places scheme was to be increased? That scheme is a direct subsidy to private schools, but funding for children at state schools is being attacked. That is absolutely disgraceful.
Nursery vouchers have been in circulation for two weeks in England, and the system has already descended into chaos. One third of eligible parents have not received their vouchers, because they did not know that, even if they had a child in nursery education, they had to apply for the vouchers. One needs to be a Philadelphia lawyer to understand the system.
First, the child benefit agency sends out a form which parents have to send to a private management consultancy--Capita Management Services--based in London. The company sends details to Her Majesty's Stationery Office, which sends a printed voucher to the school, which then sends the voucher to the local education authority, which in turn sends it back to Capita. Capita sends it to the relevant Government Department, which sends the money to Capita, which sends the money to the local authority, which then sends it to the school. All that costs £290.
Head teachers in Edinburgh told me last Friday that their schools face cuts of £150 for every pupil, yet the Government can waste £290 on administration by a private management company which will destroy the structure of education for the pre-fives in Scotland.
Even more important, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) referred to the Scottish Grand Committee in Stirling, as did the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond). In that Committee, we stressed to the Secretary of State the need for professional pre-five education. We were told that there was to be a light-touch inspection approach. That is another sign of the downgrading of education. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to the Secretary of State's relaxed attitude to providing teachers for nursery education.
I issue a challenge to the Minister responsible for education in Scotland, and hope that he will respond without his usual bluster. Schools in Scotland confront a serious problem because of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994. It is well known that a number of after-school schemes operate in Scotland to care for children after school hours and in the summer holidays. At the moment, a regulatory system is in operation to vet those people who look after the children. Because of a deregulation order on which there will be no vote, such vetting is to end.
Will the Minister guarantee that he will ensure that the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 will be amended by way of a statutory instrument, so that children who could be extremely vulnerable will be protected? Otherwise, there will be a paedophiles charter in Scotland, and people who look after our most vulnerable children will not be vetted in any way. The Government say that they are ending the system because it involves unnecessary bureaucracy for private sector providers. I ask the Minister, who is a sensible man, to tell us today that that deregulation will not be applied in this instance in Scotland.
In the remaining few minutes, I shall deal with the problems facing higher education. Within the next week, institutions of higher education in Scotland, which are centres of excellence, will learn how the funding measures will shake down and affect them. We in Scotland are conscious of the fact that our higher education system is respected throughout the world. Its funding had already been cut.
I suggest that the hon. Member for Southport should have checked his facts, because the capital cuts affecting higher education in England were already affecting Scotland last year. We have experienced cut after cut.We are no longer cutting into the fat of higher education, but into the muscle. I am delighted to see that the Minister responsible for industry in Scotland, the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch), is here, because our higher education is an important element of our ability to attract industrial inward investment.
Strathclyde university carried out significant research, which shows the multiplier affecting every higher education institution. Let me cite one example. One university, which employs 6,000 people, estimates that, through its multiplier, it employs a further 5,000 people in the community. If we damage the ability of higher education to operate properly, we limit its impact on the wider economy. That will affect not only people currently involved in higher education but future generations.
Those of us who have high ambitions for all Scotland's children want them to have the best possible opportunities in higher education, but the Government have let them down. We are rightly proud of our education system, but there have been successive attempts to anglicise and destroy it.
The hon. Member for Banff and Buffin--[Laughter.]I mean the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan;I apologise profusely to his constituents. He said that he had asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether nursery vouchers were to be the thin end of the wedge, and were to be introduced for primary and secondary education.
"The financial institutions will offer loans on terms which are at least as good as those currently offered by the SLC."
"It is true that the private lenders will be able to choose their customers, but there is no reason to believe that they will indulge in 'cherry-picking'."
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