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Mr. Blunkett: Tonight we ask the Commons to support and retain the Lords amendment. We believe that grandparents and parents in the House of Lords have shown more sense than Conservative Members of the Commons, who clearly have no idea of the impact of a market-driven voucher scheme.

It is not pieces of paper that people are applauding in Norfolk; it is the opportunity of an early-years place--the opportunity not made available by the voucher scheme but by the allocation of new money. That is why, in low-providing authority areas, parents naturally want something which they believe to be better than nothing.

Did not the Government previously promise nothing, whereas good local education authorities of all political parties promised something? Did not the Secretary of State, 18 months ago, write to her colleagues who have been saying "Hear, hear" to her drive for nursery education tonight, telling them that they should monitor their authorities to stop them spending money on nursery education? Is it not hypocrisy at its worst when the Government seek to delude parents into believing that there is only one option--a voucher or nothing--when there is no such single option? The option is to spend all the new money--£185 million--on creating real nursery places for real children, not bits of paper circulated in a pseudo-artificial market.

Mr. Steinberg: Is not the position even worse than my hon. Friend describes? The hon. Members for Meriden (Mr. Mills) and for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson) said that their local authorities, like mine in Durham, are high nursery providers. If the nursery scheme is successful and goes through this evening, authorities like theirs and mine will lose money--[Hon. Members: "No, they will not."] My local authority will lose £2 million when the scheme is introduced, which means that nursery places in Durham will be lost, not gained.

Mr. Blunkett: The hon. Members for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson) and for Meriden (Mr. Mills) are entirely right, because they represent areas that have been

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investing in nursery education. And my hon. Friend is right to say that money will be lost. The first three months of the voucher scheme in the so-called pilot authorities have shown that that is so. Almost £1 million--£980,000--has been allocated to manipulate the position, otherwise those pilot authorities would have found themselves without adequate resources to cover the number of four-year-olds because of the changes in the four-year-old population that have already taken place. I want the Under-Secretary of State to deny that fact when he replies to the debate. The Government are spending £74 per four-year-old on publicity in the four pilot authorities. If that is extended to a nationwide scheme, they will spend £47 million on publicity alone.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire): I do not want to save all my answers for the summing up. The hon. Gentleman knows, because we have exchanged questions and answers on the matter, that in practice the publicity during phase 1 has extended significantly into phase 2 areas at the request of parents and providers.

Mr. Blunkett: Research among parents and providers, the results of which came out late last night, shows that, despite the fact that £74 per head has been spent on publicity, many parents in the pilot programme do not know about the scheme and need more information. They seek more information because, despite the fact that the Government have spent £1.2 million on publicity in those four authorities, they are still confused. That is why Conservative Members have raised perfectly legitimate issues. On Report, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Sumberg) said:

"can my hon. Friend assure me that the pilot scheme is genuine? I told my head teachers that it was".--[Official Report, 19 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 225.]

Somebody had better tell him that they are not, because the Government have decided that they are no longer pilot schemes; they are phase 1 schemes instead.

Why were there four pilot schemes if they are not pilots? Who was navigating when the idea was first presented to the House? Who suddenly decided that the scheme would not be implemented in a big bang like the poll tax, but that phase 1 would be called a pilot scheme? Who decided that the pilots would be evaluated for only three months, before inspections start, early next year, or before the Office for Standards in Education has had a chance to evaluate them? By that time, the local authorities will have had their standard spending assessments manipulated. Money will have been removed from high providers and transferred to local providers, not for provision, but through the voucher scheme.

On Report, the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman) said about the pilot schemes:

"if they are genuine pilot projects, it would be greatly preferable if we could take a bit longer to build up the empirical evidence to find out whether or not it is a good idea."--[Official Report, 19 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 220.]

He is right, like the hon. Member for Meriden (Mr. Mills). They both know that if there is a pilot scheme, it is sensible to evaluate it.

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If £185 million will be spent on new places that do not exist, people will welcome it. If parents are promised £1,100 instead of nothing, there is a fair chance that some of them will think that that is better than before, because before they had nothing.

10.45 pm

Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley): If the Labour party were elected to government some time next year and the nursery voucher scheme had already been introduced, would a Labour Government abolish the scheme?

Mr. Blunkett: I shall give the hon. Gentleman a straight answer. We have made it clear that the millions of pounds that will be spent on bureaucratic administration of the scheme will instead be spent on proper, professionally provided nursery places for children, including Kirklees in the hon. Gentleman's constituency of Colne Valley, which has an excellent record of developing coherent and integrated early-years policies that make sense and do not rely on the market. Yes, we will replace the vouchers with a free entitlement to a place for all four-year-olds and we will set targets to provide places for three-year-olds. Those early-years places will be provided with a qualified teacher in charge of the class, proper inspection and proper facilities.

We will ensure that, instead of money being spent on inventing ways to waste essential resources on bureaucracy, the children who need places will get them. We will not spend money on a tendering process to find firms to administer the scheme. Those firms include Securicor, Group 4, CSL, Z-Yen--whatever that might be--Handling Solutions Ltd. and SIA Ltd. or Social Research Consultancies. None is in the business of education. They are all, rightly from their point of view, in the business of making money. They will not make money from providing nursery places, but from administering the scheme. The £20 million that has been earmarked for that exercise will not be adequate.

I will tell the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Riddick) something else. The next Labour Government will have to pick up the pieces and sort out the mess that the Government have created. We will have to tell parents that if there are no places, they cannot redeem the vouchers. We will have to translate the Government's mythological paper promise into a practical reality. Within 18 months of taking office, we will ensure that the pledge is redeemed and all four-year-olds will have a place.

Mr. John Sykes (Scarborough): The hon. Gentleman mentioned Kirklees. Does he remember the former chairman of the Kirklees education authority describing parental choice as a piddling technicality?

Mr. Blunkett: I presume that the former chairman used that wonderful language when no choice was available. Where there is no place, there is no choice; where there is no multiplicity of places, there is no choice. If children want a nursery education place, they will have it. The majority of people in the playgroup movement are deeply opposed to vouchers, but they want genuine co-operation and they want to join together as voluntary organisations with private and statutory bodies to develop plans to provide a pluralistic approach to early years provision--

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and we will co-operate with them. We will ensure that development plans and forums are provided at the local level so that no one is excluded.

Regardless of what the leadership of the Preschool Learning Alliance says, the Labour party's proposals to spend all the money on providing nursery places will not deny any child in any authority a decent and properly provided nursery place. If parents wish to place their child in one provision rather than another, they will have that choice--but that choice will exist only if there is a plan to ensure that nursery teachers and nurses are available and that the facilities are provided.

Sir Donald Thompson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Blunkett: No, I shall not give way because I wish to make some progress. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether the facilities that are being provided in the pilot schemes will be provided in the general schemes. For example, the pilots are receiving well over £200,000 in extra administrative costs and extra credit approvals are being granted over the next two years to allow the authorities to invest in capital for the facilities.

I have already referred to the extra resources for publicity and to the way in which authorities have had to change the scheme from the one that was placed before the House. The criteria of no voucher, no place has been overridden because authorities have discovered that if they apply it they exclude the most vulnerable children from entering nursery education.

How are the Government going to deal with the situation when they have not had the opportunity to evaluate the scheme? Research for parents and providers has thrown up considerable doubts--more than 50 per cent. of parents in Westminster and Wandsworth are opposed to the scheme, and they are getting a better deal than the people in Norfolk. People want to know why the Government are not prepared to delay the scheme for one term next year so that an evaluation can take place.

There can be only one answer to that question--in fact, there are two answers. I will show that numeracy reached me when I was at school--even though it is falling short under the Conservative Government. First, the Government are afraid of what a proper evaluation of the scheme would reveal. Secondly, they are determined to get the vouchers out before the general election and to pretend to literally millions of parents that if they receive a piece of paper they will be provided with a nursery place.

I say to the Preschool Learning Alliance that if, for a term, people are prepared to sell their souls for a mess of pottage, they will regret it and we will regret it. We will have to sort out the administrative chaos confronting us. Under the standard spending assessment, we will have to redistribute money to authorities that are high providers and allocate the new money to those who need it. We will have to sort out the bureaucratic nightmare and explain to parents why they are unable to redeem a voucher that the Conservatives promised would provide a nursery place. The scheme is deeply dishonest and deeply flawed. We should support the Lords amendment tonight because it allows time for thought, time for evaluation and time for common sense to prevail.

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