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5.50 pm
Mr. Michael John Foster (Worcester): I congratulate the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) on his maiden speech. I, too, am making a maiden speech, and I know what a daunting task it is. I must say at the outset, however, that I do not share some of the hon. Gentleman's views on education, especially those on grammar schools and assisted places.
I also have taken advice and read widely about the content of my maiden speech. I am, of course, mindful of the advice that Madam Speaker, gave following her election, to keep contributions in the Chamber as brief as possible.
It gives me immense pleasure to tell the House of the infinite variety that Worcester, as a city, offers, from its magnificent cathedral to its lively night life. The city can be enjoyed by all.
Worcester has a successful range of industry, from Royal Worcester porcelain to high-tech manufacturing companies such as Mazak of Europe. The city has also a variety of education establishments. For example, it contains four fee-paying secondary schools that benefit from the assisted places scheme. They benefited last year to the tune of over £2 million. At the same time, 1,847 five, six and seven-year-olds in Worcester were in class sizes of more than 30. Clearly that is wrong. I and thousands of other fellow parents whose children are in the state sector are overjoyed at the prospect of seeing the Bill progress through the House.
Schools in my constituency have historically been poorly funded. That is the somewhat sad inheritance of the previous Conservative-controlled county council. That administration may have been satisfied with average results achieved by poorly funded schools, but I am not. We, Labour, are in favour of good results--indeed, the highest level of results possible. I want Worcester and Worcester pupils to achieve the best.
I have a great interest in sport, and Worcester can be proud of its sporting traditions. The city boasts a very successful rugby club and an ambitious soccer club. It is home to the county that plays on unarguably the most attractive cricket ground in the country. It must be said that we were the first this summer to show that the Australians can be beaten.
Politically, Worcester contains a high proportion of Members. I pay a special tribute to my far-sighted predecessor, the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff). The hon. Gentleman kindly decided to contest a more rural seat than stay within the city. Had he stayed, the result would have been closer than it turned out to be--that is a credit to his work within the constituency--but the outcome would still have been the same.
I understand that the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire, as a constituent of mine, was not alone in taking such action. The right hon. Member for
Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) is a resident of Worcester. He showed his potential leadership qualities. Conservative Members may be interested to know that the right hon. Gentleman, as a leadership contender within the Conservative party, had the foresight to see that Loughborough, which he previously represented, would change hands in the general election. The right hon. Gentleman decided to move to Charnwood instead.
I can honestly say that the new hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire has been most kind and helpful to me since my election to this place. He has offered welcome advice and has even kept some unfinished case work for me.
The 1997 general election will be remembered in Worcester for different but remarkable things. First, there was the appearance of the Conservative party's femme fatale, a lady who held the key to its success or otherwise. I am talking about Worcester woman. It was The Sunday Times which first revealed her. Stripped down to her bare essentials, she is married to a skilled manual worker and there is a joint income of £18,000. She has children and buys computer games for them. She and her family have holidays in Florida.
I have it from a well-placed source--not to be confused with a Worcestershire sauce--that any west midlands woman would have done for Conservative central office. I understand that Worcester was its second choice. Luckily for Worcester and, I suspect, for Conservative central office, it rejected West Bromwich wench.
I said that Worcester was lucky to be chosen for such an attack because Worcester woman attracted the world's media. Attention was focused on Worcester during the general election campaign. I can boast of giving interviews about Worcester woman to a Dutch newspaper, Danish television, Canadian television, Irish radio, German television, three United States newspapers and even the Yorkshire Post.
Mr. Anthony Steen (Totnes):
Last year, 1,011 children in Devon were partly funded to go to independent schools. With the passing of the Bill, I want to ask the Secretary of State where those children will go. We know that 42 per cent. of children with assisted places are from poor families. I mean not families of former Lloyd's underwriters but single-parent mums with incomes of less than £10,000 a year. Not all poor children who receive assisted places are from middle-class families, as the Secretary of State wrongly suggested.
The factor that assisted places children have in common is that they are gifted. As I am married to a child and educational psychologist, I am aware of the importance of giving gifted children special help.
If the Conservative Government had tried to introduce the Bill three months ago, a Labour Member standing on the very spot from which I am speaking would have rightly criticised them on the basis that the Bill would have been attacking the less privileged. Here is the Conservative party on the Opposition Benches--a one-nation party which does not favour the rich against the poor--a party which wants equal opportunities for everyone based on merit, and here is a Conservative Member criticising the Labour Government for attacking the less privileged. It is, indeed, an irony--a paradox.
The evidence in favour of the assisted places scheme shows that assisted places pupils outperform their peers in the state sector and those in independent schools. The Government will not improve standards and opportunities for state school pupils by denying children from less privileged backgrounds the opportunity of an independent education.
In my new constituency of Totnes, there are splendid secondary schools. In Totnes itself, the governors of KEVICS, a former grammar school, made a direct appeal to the Secretary of State in 1989 to limit the school's intake to 240 children a year. There is no more space for any more children. There are limits in Kingsbridge, Dartmouth, Brixham and Churston. All those schools are full. Indeed, they all have waiting lists.
There are additional problems. There is constant pressure in south Devon for more homes. It is one of the fastest growing areas in the west country. The structure plan for Devon requires 90,000 more homes to be built by the year 2011. Some of those homes will be allocated to the existing population, but about one third of those 90,000 houses will go to new families who will be brought in to fill jobs within the new industry that is being built.
Perhaps the Secretary of State will explain where the children living in the 90,000 newly built homes will go to school. Already there are no available places in my secondary schools. If we add the extra 1,011 children who will no longer be able to take up assisted places, there will be a crisis of education in south Devon, created entirely by the Labour party.
There is a direct correlation between the number of new factories and businesses, units built and the pressures on housing requirements from those who take up jobs in the area.
A few years ago, the Government gave £25 million to Nortel--the former STC factory--to develop new technology. The staff who filled the new jobs created came from all over the country with their families and children. The increasing pressure on housing demands has a spin-off on school demands, and already the schools say that they cannot accommodate the children of these new families. Therefore, extra money is needed from the Government for new buildings and for more land, because the secondary schools have no more space as they are.
The money raised by the abolition of the assisted places scheme will not go to secondary schools at all. It will go to primary schools. So perhaps the Secretary of State will explain, when he winds up, where we are to find the new money.
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