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Mr. David Porter (Waveney): Before my hon. Friend leaves the subject of education, will he consider the damage that has been done to parents' confidence in schools by the county council campaign? In my constituency, parents have received threatening letters from the LEA that say that, unless their children take their nursery vouchers to local authority schools, they will not be guaranteed places in the primary schools of their choice. Is that not another example of what my hon. Friend is talking about?
Mr. Spring: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that valid point, and I hope to elaborate on it when I reach the subject of the handling of nursery vouchers by the county council. He is right to say that the fear and anxiety aroused by the council about nursery vouchers has undermined parents' confidence in the education of their children. That is an absolute disgrace.
One of the county council's most bizarre extravagances is its anti-poverty strategy. All my right hon. and hon. Friends in Suffolk, including myself, have done voluntary work and are completely committed to helping those in genuine need. If that is what the council's anti-poverty strategy is about, we would applaud it. It is not. It is a wheeze to spend taxpayers' money to curry electoral favour with certain groups and to create a new bureaucratic empire.
Suffolk's unemployment level is 5.4 per cent. That is below the national average, and less then half the European Union average. It is one of the lowest anywhere in the industrialised world. Such has been the pace of job creation in Suffolk in the past four years that we have seen a dramatic fall of 40 per cent. in unemployment. By any proper measurement of need--school meals, income support and other indices of deprivation--Suffolk is a
quietly prosperous place. How does the county council define poverty? Incredibly, anybody who lives in a household that has less than half the national average household income is defined as living in poverty. That gives new meaning to the adage that the poor will always be with us. If household incomes were to soar or fall sharply, the number in poverty would change in tandem by that definition. The council does not provide any absolute definition of need or consumption: its definition is useless.
The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. John Gummer):
My hon. Friend is not being entirely fair to Suffolk county council when he says that it has provided no absolute definition of poverty. It has provided a definition of poverty, and two of the criteria were lack of access to piped gas and not being connected to a mains sewer. I have neither of those, so I must be included in the council's definition of poverty.
Mr. Spring:
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. He illustrates the fact that the council's definition is based on urban areas. Suffolk is a predominantly rural county, where the county council has not the faintest idea about how thousands of its residents in rural areas live. That sums up the whole urban orientation of that council.
How is the money spent in Suffolk? It is spent on esoteric items such as a low-calorie cookbook and a sewing circle in Ipswich. A council that is supposedly starved of resources somehow spends £60,000 on a bus providing information, not books, on how libraries work, the revenue cost of which is £20,000 per annum. Yet I cannot get a footpath built in a rural village in my constituency, despite the fact that lives are under threat. It is a disgraceful misordering of priorities and the sort of politically correct nonsense characteristic of Labour inner-city authorities. It will change the circumstances of no one in real need but will simply provide a beanfeast for the county council press office and for councillors and officers attending conferences and workshops at taxpayers' expense.
The reason why education and the anti-poverty campaign are interconnected is both noteworthy and disturbing. Parents of young pre-school children in Suffolk may be forgiven for believing that the provision of taxpayer-funded nursery school facilities is based on a reasonably rational basis of need. In Suffolk, it is not. Children get their new nursery school place only if they happen to live in an area where the county council has deemed that such a school is warranted under its anti-poverty strategy.
What would happen if that principle were applied across education in the county? Would a new classroom, a new gymnasium or an extra teacher be made available only if, in its wisdom, the county council decided that socio-economic needs were the prime determinant? That is precisely the mumbo-jumbo that has destroyed the quality of education in places like Islington, Hackney and Lambeth, which drives parents to educate their children in entirely different areas.
We all welcome nursery provision, which the nursery voucher scheme will soon liberate. However, the enormous expansion of nursery schools initiated by Suffolk county council has put unreasonable pressure on
existing school budgets and the funding of teachers' salaries. Before the last county council elections, the previous council sought to increase the number of new nursery schools by three a year. In the past four years, by contrast, both capital and running costs have soared, with seven new primary units this year.
The council cannot have it both ways. It is unacceptable to decline to spend the additional education SSA increases, yet shout for more; it is only fair to existing schools in Suffolk to have a proper balance in nursery provision. Through their budgets, existing schools are paying for that decision. My hon. Friends and the public will draw their own conclusions as to how the anti-poverty criteria have produced a clearly demonstrable bias in favour of nursery provision being located in Labour-controlled areas of the county.
So here we have it: forecasts of teacher sackings; cuts, cuts, cuts; and a massive increase in council tax. My hon. Friends will know that that particular scaremongering should be seen against a projected increase in Suffolk county council tax of only 4.1 per cent. So much for the gigantic increases in bills, that the county council told us we would face in April.
Mr. Michael Lord (Central Suffolk):
My hon. Friend has dealt in detail with how parents and teachers have been frightened by the ridiculous proposition of severe cuts. Is there any evidence that the county council now appreciates that it was wrong? More importantly, has it taken steps to admit, to the people it so frightened, that it was wrong?
Mr. Spring:
I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised that point. The best we had was what I imagine passed for an apology from the leader of the council, who said that the £18 million cut scaremongering campaign was a worst-case scenario.
Throughout all those events, something has obviously not been quite right--the propaganda barrage has been so totally over the top. In large measure, it has been about the terrible dissensions within the Labour party at county hall, and the uncritical passivity of the Liberal Democrats. We are witnessing the outbreak of a form of municipal fratricide between the leader of the council and the chairman of the education committee, like two aging comics fighting it out for top billing in the end-of-the-pier show. For what Councillors Mole and Macpherson want is to secure the crown of leading the Labour group after 1 May--some crown, some group! They will clearly do and say anything, no matter how distorted or misleading, to establish their macho credibility, and all of Suffolk pays the price for their mutual animosity and ambition. If the matter were not so serious, it would be laughable.
Mr. Jamie Cann (Ipswich):
I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker and to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) for arriving late and missing the start of the debate. I did not intend to do so, and no discourtesy was meant.
I shall now tackle the points made by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds. First and crucially, the hon. Gentleman alleged that, under its Labour-Liberal Democrat leadership, Suffolk county council provoked anxieties and fears unnecessarily over the past year or so about the necessity for budget cuts for 1997-98. I should point out that all that the council did, as it has done in previous years and as it did when it was Conservative-controlled before 1994--indeed, as the council has always done since its inception in 1974--was to take the Government's forecast figures in the Red Book and apply them to its finances.
The leader of the council checked with the Secretary of State that the figures were the ones on which any responsible council must base its plans. They showed a 5 per cent. cut in the sum that the county council could spend in the coming year.
Mr. Gummer:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
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