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Mr. Mills: Thank you for calling me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I find it very difficult--and rather sad--to speak
opposing my right hon. Friend, but she and others know my views. My dilemma could be resolved quite simply if high-achieving councils were excluded from the scheme. I am in real despair about why the Government--who are committed, as I am, to the market--cannot accept what parents, teachers and others involved in education in my constituency of Meriden, which is part of Solihull, want.
The Government are forcing us to join the scheme. We are high achievers; we provide the example to which others look. The Government have recognised that my borough is the best provider of nursery education. I have spoken to parents in my constituency who have children aged three and a half in reception classes. I have talked to my hon. Friend the Minister and to my right hon. Friend time and again about the issue, and I shall continue to do so. Why do the Government not allow us to do our own thing? Why are a Conservative Government forcing us into a straightjacket, along with the rest of the country?
I accept that some local education authorities do not provide the correct sort of nursery education and must be forced to do so. That is fine. The four pilots have been running for only a short time, but I have lots of information about them. I could quote various sources chapter and verse, as my right hon. Friend did, but I shall refer to only one or two. My right hon. Friend said that the take-up in Westminster was 90 per cent., but my figures say 60 per cent. I do not accept the Government's figures which show that the pilots are successful.
Why the rush? My constituents say to me, "OK, if the Government are determined to go ahead, we understand the reasons. But why proceed so quickly?" I understand the reasons too, but I do not understand why the deadline is April 1997. Why is it not later?
How will the vouchers reach those already enjoying good nursery provision in Solihull and Meriden? It will be like issuing tickets for a garden fete. How will it happen? It is unbelievable to expect the local education authority to produce something that is already being produced, is working and is satisfactory--the Secretary of State has recognised that fact. Little bits of paper will be put into envelopes and sent to parents. Will they go to the right people? Will those who have places for their children in reception classes receive the bits of paper?
The Government's recent record in calculating standard spending assessments does not provide any grounds for believing that, if we had the number of four-year-olds required to subtract the £1,100 from the SSAs, leaving the council to top up the rest, that would be the end of the matter. That has never happened. On Solihull local education authority, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will argue that this year it has been quite good; I do not disagree that it was bad, but in the past couple of years it has been an absolute disaster.
Mr. Spearing:
The hon. Member for Meriden (Mr. Mills) demonstrated perfectly that this issue should not be a party political matter. Fifty-two years go, R. A. Butler and all the parties agreed on the need for nursery education, and I have presented a petition signed by 106,000 people, so how the Secretary of State can say that Opposition Members are not in favour of nursery education and want to stop it is almost beyond belief. But she is right, up to a point.
The Secretary of State is careful not to use the words "nursery education" in her speeches, because she knows too much. She has used the word "settings". What the voucher will buy might be what we understand by the words "nursery education"--properly housed and properly taught by people who are properly qualified--but it might not. That is the answer to the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson). It will not necessarily be--
Mr. Spearing:
Time is very short.
The voucher will not necessarily buy what the hon. Gentleman thinks it will, and what the Government and the Prime Minister have said time and again that it will buy.
Sir Donald Thompson:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Spearing:
Well, I did mention the hon. Gentleman.
Sir Donald Thompson:
The hon. Gentleman pointed to me and to my hon. Friends the Members for Meriden (Mr. Mills) and for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg), whose local authorities are high providers. The only reason why the money has to be given in a voucher is so that it can be ring-fenced. Every local authority has received enough money from the Government over the past 20 years to be in the same position as Durham and Calder Valley, but they have chosen to spend it on other priorities.
Mr. Spearing:
I was not referring solely to Calder Valley. It might be able to retain nursery education, as might Solihull and Meriden, but the point is that the rest of the country might not necessarily purchase it, because it will not be available as it is today.
In my earlier point of order, I referred to a letter that the Minister of State had written. As far as I can tell, it was sent to his hon. Friends who were worried, and it tried to tell them that the evaluation would be all right and was already showing some success. I shall not quote the letter, but the evaluation of parents claimed that general awareness of the scheme was high, with three out of four parents claiming to have heard of "a new government scheme". When prompted, 94 per cent. were aware of nursery education vouchers.
The quality of the survey by the Central Office of Information, which was farmed out to contractors, is, I suggest, very much in question, as is the one that appeared in the Library this very day, which relates to a survey of
providers. It is the only one that relates to the quality of education. Surely the quality of education is inherent in the word "evaluation". Paragraph 9.1 says:
As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) said, the delay referred to by the Secretary of State amounts to only a term; but if it were two terms, or even a year, what would that be in comparison with the three or four years for which the Prime Minister and his friends have been bickering about the issue? What would it be in comparison with the 17 years for which the Conservative party has been in office, not implementing the genuine nursery scheme that was introduced by Lady Thatcher in a White Paper shortly after she became Secretary of State for Education? What have the Government been doing all that time?
Lady Thatcher introduced another novel scheme, which was her downfall. She tried a pilot scheme for the poll tax in Scotland. She did great damage to her party, and even more to herself, by not understanding the impact of that pilot scheme when it was introduced in other parts of the country. Conservative Members voted for a scheme involving contractual provision, with providers and purchasers, in the health service. We know what is happening to that. The Government were begged to organise a pilot scheme to see whether the system worked. Who were the victims? The elderly and the sick.
We are now confronted with an opportunity to provide for a proper evaluation after a proper period. This is not a proper evaluation, but a proper period could be available for the youngest of our children. The Government are risking their future, and the education of those children. I put it to Conservative Members--because persuasion is the basis of this place--that, if they reject the Lords amendment, they will pose a risk to our young people that they will have to bear on their consciences regardless of whether they are Members of Parliament in the next few years.
Mr. Nigel Forman (Carshalton and Wallington):
The House will know of my lingering doubts about the scheme, because I expressed them on Third Reading. I base my remarks on the assumption that Conservative Members will still be on the Government Benches after the next general election, and that we will inherit the consequences of the decisions on which we are now embarking.
I was pleased by what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said about further empirical evidence suggesting that the pilot scheme has proved acceptable to the great majority of people in the limited number of areas where it has taken place. I should like to hear from the Under-Secretary of State whether the representative bodies of parents of rising five children have been consulted about the experiment, whether the governors' representative bodies have been consulted, whether the unions and others representing nursery school teachers have been consulted and, briefly, what has been their response. Those bodies' views are relevant.
I also want to be reassured that there are precedents for a consultation as limited as this--limited in terms both of scope and of time. By the standards of Government consultation, it strikes the layman as being rather brief. I would be reassured if my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary could give examples of similar educational procedures.
"Four in ten providers agreed that quality of nursery education would improve in their LEA."
That means that six in ten did not. This is the evaluation that the Minister is commending to his hon. Friends, who might send it to questioning parents, one of whom wrote to me. I think that it was an attempt by the Minister to reassure his friends, but the content of the papers suggests the opposite. Ultimately, it will be up to him to reply.
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