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Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that his county council will have significantly more

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money to use. I also point out that this Government changed the weight of local taxation considerably when we moved to council tax. We made the biggest ever move from local taxes to central taxes.

Mr. Skinner: Answer the question.

Mr. Gummer: I am answering the hon. Gentleman's question, although it was incorrect and factually wrong. At least the hon. Gentleman is consistent because, as far as I can recall, he has never asked a question that was factually correct.

Sir Anthony Grant (South-West Cambridgeshire): While welcoming the expenditure increases for education and fire services on Cambridgeshire county council, I regret the decreases for the more efficient South Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire district councils. Is my right hon. Friend aware that there will be deep disappointment that the reform of the ludicrous area cost adjustment system is to be delayed once again? Despite the courtesy and patience of his Minister of State, Cambridgeshire is no closer to obtaining justice. It is losing millions of pounds compared with its next-door neighbour, Bedfordshire, and that is a disgrace.

Mr. Gummer: I wish that I were able to satisfy my hon. Friend on this occasion because I have considerable sympathy with his views. He knows that that is true, not least because my county makes exactly the same complaint about the structure. However, if there is a research project of this kind and all four local authority associations--including that association most in favour of the area cost adjustment changes--say that it is not possible to make the changes this year, it would be foolish for the Government to insist upon them.

That does not mean that I disagree with or put aside that research. I have said that specific concerns must be met in order for it to be robust, and it must be robust because it cannot be changed again without causing a great deal of turbulence. I want to do the work and I assure my hon. Friend that it has not been put off long into the distant future. We intend to arrive at an answer and I hope that it will satisfy him.

Mr. Bill Olner (Nuneaton): Does the Secretary of State recognise that my constituents in Nuneaton and Warwickshire will be extremely upset that their representations to his Department and to the Department of Education and Employment about the SSA and how it has dealt badly with them in the past have not been heeded? Warwickshire has been offered a 2 per cent. increase, which is nowhere near the 16 per cent. increase that has been offered to Westminster. If Warwickshire had the same settlement as Westminster, it would be able to employ another 2,119 teachers. The Secretary of State has done nothing to sort out the differences between Westminster and the other local authorities in this country.

Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that that is not true. Westminster does less well than any comparable London borough and recently we have reduced its settlement almost every year. I do not know why the hon. Gentleman bothers with Westminster; why does he not take Islington? If Warwickshire had the same settlement as Islington, the revenue support grant would

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be worth about £897.61 per head. If everyone got what Islington gets, the council tax band D would be reduced by more than £1,500--it would be negative in Warwickshire--and we would have £25 billion on central taxation, which is 14p on income tax.

When Labour Members say, "Let's all do it like Westminster", we will reply, "Why not do it like Islington, which is even more favoured?" Why not do it like Islington and increase national income tax by 14p? The hon. Gentleman may want that, but I am not sure that the public would.

Sir Peter Emery (Honiton): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the increase in education expenditure, on which few hon. Members have commented. That increase should be recognised and praised; in Devon, it means an increase on last year's expenditure. Will my right hon. Friend try to ensure that the increases go to the sharp end of education--the schools--and are not kept by county councils? Devon county council keeps 28 per cent. of its SSA, which is quite foolish. We should ensure that the money reaches the teachers and governors so that they can get on with education properly.

Mr. Gummer: My right hon. Friend again shows that he has a good command of what happens when the money gets as far as the county. I have done everything in my power--by passporting and the like--to ensure that it is spent on education. Perhaps my right hon. Friend will have a word with the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel), who might explain to him why so many Liberal councils manage to spend a lot of money away from the sharp end of education and at the same time complain about the amount that they have to spend on each schoolchild. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to remind every school in Devon that this is the amount that is available, and if they are not getting it they should find out what the Liberal county council is doing with it.

Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley): Is it not a fact that, once again, the Minister is misleading the House with regard to what he says about education? Do not most local education authorities and local authorities already spend at above SSA for education? How many education authorities, if they were to spend at SSA, would reduce the amount spent on education?

Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman represents a constituency in Lancashire, which is one of the counties that spend a great deal of time demanding more and more local decision-making, and that is why it is a decision that Lancashire county council will make. All I am saying is that it will be able to increase its spending by 3.6 per cent., which to me seems to be a very sensible and satisfactory situation all around the country. To be specific, Lancashire's permitted increase in budget is 2.2 per cent., but there are considerable savings that Lancashire could make, because it is a badly run council, which for a long time has wasted significant sums, and if it started to spend more by enabling elderly people to go into private homes, for example, it would save a great deal, all of which it could spend on education if it got off its backside.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the priorities that have been

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established--namely, education, personal social services, fire and police--and as far as education is concerned, my county of Cheshire has been given another £12.5 million, for which we are grateful. But I am sure that my right hon. Friend will expect me to express grave concern for my most efficient borough council of Macclesfield--one of the few with overall Conservative control in the country--which, yet again, has had its standard spending assessment reduced, this year by about £250,000. That really does not reflect well on a very efficient council, which will find it very difficult to provide services without dramatically increasing its council tax. What will he do?

Mr. Gummer: I share my hon. Friend's unbounded enthusiasm for Macclesfield district council. I realise that, by having an increase in spending of 0.5 per cent., his local authority has particular difficulties. I remind him that the concomitant of saying that we are spending more and placing the emphasis on education means that it is more difficult for those that are not education authorities. That is what has happened. We have applied the same system over the country as a whole, and Macclesfield has that difficulty.

I will look with considerable care at anything that I can do to help Macclesfield, which is one of the authorities where considerable effort is made to save money rather than spend it. One difficulty from which Macclesfield suffers is that it is in a class with many other local authorities--many of which are run by the Labour party--where the same saving is not to be found. That is difficult, because we have to have a system that covers all.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington): How can the borough of Westminster, which includes Belgravia, Mayfair, the area around Trafalgar square, Buckingham palace, the Houses of Parliament and the most expensive property in the United Kingdom, be treated more favourably than Cumbria, which has to wrestle with problems of unemployment and deprivation in large pockets? How can it possibly be fair?

Mr. Gummer: Obviously the hon. Gentleman moves only in Belgravia and never goes to a Peabody estate. He never notices that Westminster is the most closely packed of London boroughs, that it has special local problems of regeneration that are necessary to tackle and that it meets all the objective criteria. The hon. Gentleman seems not to notice that Westminster did much better when there was a Labour Government than it does under a Conservative Government.

Sir Peter Fry (Wellingborough): Does my right hon. Friend accept my deep disappointment about the failure to do anything about the area cost adjustment? Continued delay means that unfairnesses will continue. I understand the problems that my right hon. Friend is having with the Labour-controlled local authority organisations, but I have to explain to my constituents why it is that a Conservative Government have to give way to Labour-controlled local authorities. I hope that my right hon. Friend will give me an answer that I can take back to Wellingborough.

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