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Mrs. Gillan: The hon. Gentleman said that Mr. Woodhead fiddled the statistics. I would like him to
bring proof of Mr. Woodhead's deception and I invite him to repeat his remarks outside the Chamber, where he is not covered by privilege.
Mr. Steinberg: As I have already said, if the hon. Lady would listen, that statement was made in the Select Committee, when Mr. Woodhead was personally able to answer the criticisms of him that I and others made. Read my lips: read the report. It is a pity that you did not read it when you were in government; you would not have made as many damn mistakes as you did over the past 18 years.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is out of order. I have never been in government.
Mr. Steinberg: This is not the first time that I have spoken in the House about the assisted places scheme. On the previous occasion, I spoke against an increase in its funding, knowing full well that I was wasting my time. I am delighted that this time I can speak in support of its abolition, knowing full well that we will win the vote this evening. The old adage rings very sweet: he who laughs last, laughs loudest.
I make no apology for referring to my speech on 13 July 1993. I was shouted down that night by Tory Back Benchers, just as they have tried to do in the past few minutes. The last time that they shouted me down, they had been drinking in the bar. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) has been there. I pointed out then that it was a disgrace that, when most state schools were struggling to find enough resources to pay for teachers, equipment and essential repairs and when there was a lack of nursery places, the Government continued to subsidise private education from public funds.
When the scheme was brought in by the then Education Minister, Rhodes Boyson, he said that it was intended for able children from the poorest homes. He may have been sincere in his intentions but he was proved wrong. The scheme is, and was, exploited by the middle class. A MORI poll in 1996 commissioned by ISIS, the Independent Schools Information Service, showed that only 30 per cent. of assisted places scheme pupils came from working-class backgrounds.
Only two out of five households receiving assistance had incomes below £9,874 and so received the full remission. In other words, almost 55 per cent. of children using the scheme have parents who are lawyers, civil servants, teachers, clergymen or other white-collar workers. As few as 10 per cent. of children on the scheme have fathers who are manual workers. The proportion of professional and managerial families receiving financial support has increased by 8 per cent. since 1991.
In July 1993, I gave examples of the subsidies offered to parents who wished to send their children to Durham school, the prestigious public school in my constituency. I have updated figures that show the iniquity of the scheme. In 1995-96, the average fee charged at Durham school was about £6,220 per year. A family earning £25,000 a year with one child on the assisted places scheme attending that school would have received a subsidy of £2,350; with two children, the subsidy would have been £5,670. I suspect that that subsidy would have been bigger than its tax bill for the year. If a family
earning £19,000 had sent one child to the school, it would have received a subsidy of £4,330, or £9,000 if it had sent two children. All those sums come directly from the public purse.
It is a scandal that, this year, £140 million will be spent on the assisted places scheme in England. By comparison, the Tory Government intended to spend only £253 million on school building grant to the main sector. The Tories planned to spend more than half what they planned to spend on all the school buildings in England on a small number of students in the private sector. That is wrong and immoral.
As I said in July 1993, the scheme does not even offer value for money. The average cost of an assisted place in England is estimated at about £4,000. The education standing spending assessment for secondary and post-16 education in the 1996-97 financial year was equivalent to £2,800 per pupil. In other words, it costs the taxpayer over £1,000 more to educate a pupil in a private school instead of a state school and there is absolutely no evidence that the children in private schools do any better than they would have done in a state school.
After my speech in 1993, I was criticised by the then Under-Secretary of State for Schools, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), for making
I conclude as I did in my 1993 speech, by saying:
Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West):
Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to you for calling me to address the House for the first time during this important debate on education policy. I apologise to the House--the class of 1997 is a particularly large one and I fear that there will be several other maiden speeches made during the debate.
There can be no more important issue than education for it is vital to the future of our country and to the future of all our children. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House are united in their desire to see the best education provided for our children, even though we differ passionately on how best that can be achieved.
I understand that it is customary in a maiden speech to acknowledge the service given by one's predecessor and as the first Member of Parliament for the new
constituency of Altrincham and Sale, West constituency, I am privileged to be able to pay tribute to two distinguished parliamentarians. Sir Fergus Montgomery represented Altrincham and Sale in its various configurations from October 1974, during which time he was a diligent constituency Member of Parliament and a popular member of the House, which he served with distinction, most recently as Chairman of the Committee of Selection. I know that some of Fergus's fondest memories, however, were of the time that he spent as parliamentary private secretary to Lady Thatcher. I understand that the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) has now applied for that vacancy.
I am sure that I am not the only new Member who has been advised to prepare for his maiden speech by reading those of his predecessors. There can be few who have been so badly served by that advice as I. When I went to the Library and obtained Fergus's maiden speech, I discovered that he had spoken about Newcastle, East, for which constituency he was first elected to the House in 1959. In desperation I turned to his predecessor, Tony Barber, but he entered the House in 1951 as the hon. Member for Doncaster. I count myself fortunate indeed to begin my Parliamentary career as the Member for my home constituency of Altrincham and Sale.
The heart of my constituency is the historic market town of Altrincham, which contains the old market place where Bonny Prince Charlie stopped on his journey south. The charter establishing the market was granted 700 years ago. With so many hon. Ladies in the House, I hesitate to mention Arnold's yard, which is reputed to be the site where a woman was last sold at public auction in this country. Just two minutes' walk from my front door is the site of the old slum of Chapel street, which sent so many of its young men to fight for our country, our freedom and our democracy in the great war that George V described it as the
From 1983 until this year, the Sale, West part of my constituency was fortunate to be served by another fine parliamentarian--Winston Churchill. Like him, I enter Parliament as the youngest Conservative Member. Unlike him, I am the first and not the fifth generation of my family to enter Parliament, and my presence here, like that of many Members of this Parliament, bears testament to the more open, meritocratic society that we have built in recent decades. I believe that the greater opportunities in today's Britain have been put in place principally by Conservative administrations and there can be no greater proof of that than in the field of education.
We are all in part the product of the environment in which we begin our lives, however privileged or impoverished that may be. Perhaps the most important function of state education should be to free us all from the social or material constraints of our birth--to free us all to achieve our full potential. Like many in this House--and like three of our last four Prime Ministers--I was fortunate enough to enjoy a grammar school
education. In the borough of Trafford, successive Conservative administrations have worked, not only to preserve our excellent grammar schools, but to raise standards in the high schools as well. What we have a achieved is an example of selective education that works and it should be taken as a model for improving education across the country.
I believe passionately in the role of the grammar schools as the greatest of social levellers and I fear that before long I will be called upon to defend my old school, Altrincham boys grammar school, from those who would see the remaining 160 grammar schools destroyed. As a believer in grammar schools, I have always thought that the goal of state education should be to achieve such high standards that parents would not wish to send their children to private schools. Sadly, we are very far away from achieving such high standards in many parts of the country, especially in our inner cities. That is where the assisted places scheme plays such a vital role.
In my own city of Manchester, independent schools such as those already mentioned by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman)--Manchester Grammar, William Hulme's, Withington and Manchester High--are providing a top-quality education to local children who are dependent on assisted places. These are children from Moss Side and Hulme--boys and girls from poor families who have few opportunities in life.
In an attempt to justify its attack on the scheme, the Government have claimed that assisted places are just a subsidy for middle-class parents who can afford to pay school fees themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. The 300 boys on assisted-places at Manchester Grammar are part of a 500-year-old tradition of providing top-quality education, regardless of social or economic standing. Of the 242 pupils with assisted places at William Hulme's, 160 have their full fees paid, which means that they have combined parental income of less than £10,000 a year.
The assisted places scheme is not a middle class subsidy--it is a ladder of opportunity for the poorest families. By abolishing this scheme, the Government will take opportunities from those who have little else. It is wrong to take away the assisted places scheme without putting something of value in its place. In many inner-city areas--it must be said that they often have Labour local education authorities--there are few good state schools to provide for children who lose their assisted places. Many independent schools will work hard to continue to provide places free of charge to talented children whose parents could not afford to pay fees, but the sums involved may be great and such schools often have little money in reserve.
The Government say that their objective is to raise sufficient funds through the abolition of the scheme to reduce class sizes in primary schools, but it looks increasingly unlikely that that objective can be achieved without building new classrooms to accommodate further classes. Even if smaller classes can be achieved, that will not provide better primary and secondary schools in the centre of Manchester to replace what will be taken away.
"a rather pathetic parade of class-ridden prejudice".--[Official Report, 13 July 1993; Vol. 228, c. 948.]
In anticipation of similar criticism, I say to Opposition Members that, if that means that I defend and speak for the rights of the majority of ordinary people against the privileges of and state pillaging by the private sector, I am delighted to accept that analysis. I suspect that my feeling was shared by the vast majority of the electorate when they expressed their views on 1 May. The Tories arrogantly continue not to listen.
"the scheme produces no better results from the pupils who participate in it".--[Official Report, 13 July 1993; Vol. 228, c. 944.]
It was never spelled out to the House or to the public that the scheme would predominantly assist pupils from middle-class backgrounds, so I can only conclude that it was a device used by the Tories to meet the increase in private school fees and tackle the financial problems faced by those schools. It is a subsidy to the private sector from the state purse, it is grossly immoral, and I fully support the abolition of the scheme.
5.40 pm
"bravest little street in England".
I am proud to represent Altrincham and Sale, West, not only because of its history, but because of its present quality as an attractive place to live and work, its combination of modern businesses, fine shopping, excellent schools and efficient small farms.
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