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9.5 pm
Ms Shona McIsaac (Cleethorpes): I congratulate the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn) on his maiden speech but, as the House would expect, I do not agree with him. I disagree especially with his suggestion that bright kids are only at private schools. The thread of thought in the Opposition seems to be that bright kids do not go to state schools or do not do well in them. That is totally wrong. I went to many schools in this country because my father was in the forces. I attended a secondary modern and I was lucky enough to get O and A-levels and to go to university. Children do well in the state system.
I am pleased to make my maiden speech in a debate on education because the phasing out of the assisted places scheme and the investing of the millions of pounds in primary schools to reduce class sizes will be of enormous benefit to the children and families of the new constituency of Cleethorpes which I have the pleasure to represent.
The name Cleethorpes has a music-hall ring to it. It is a traditional British seaside resort with sun, fun, fish and chip shops, the pier and theme parks, but it is also much more. For example, we have Grimsby Town football club. The name of the constituency is misleading, because it centres on three towns on the banks of the Humber. Cleethorpes is basically part of the same urban area as Grimsby. Immingham is to the north of Grimsby and Barton-upon-Humber is at the southern end of the Humber bridge.
Immingham, with its booming port, oil refineries, power stations, chemical works and factories, is a growing, modern industrial area. Immage 2000 in Immingham is a multi-media, state-of-the-art studio--the first in the country. Marvellous educational work is being carried out there on community cable television.
Barton-upon-Humber is a splendid old market town with ancient buildings, many conservation areas and one of the oldest church towers in Britain. Surrounding those towns is the large rural hinterland of the Lincolnshire Wolds with rolling hills, peaceful villages, farms and windmills.
It would be difficult to find a constituency with such stark contrasts, but the people are the one unifying feature. They are canny and friendly and, as befits a constituency with a seaside resort, they love a good night out.
The area has been represented by some colourful characters. I cannot refer to the area as a constituency, because the towns within it have been in and out of a variety of constituencies. When Cleethorpes was part of Louth, it was represented by Jeffrey Archer--as he then was--and the constituency of Brigg and Cleethorpes was represented by my predecessor, Michael Brown, who was certainly an outspoken and interesting opponent.
Although we disagreed politically, in person Michael was always affable and we were united in a love of Cleethorpes, Immingham and Barton-upon-Humber. He also stood up for gay rights, for which I admire him, and refused to condemn me for being selected from a women-only shortlist. He said in many public debates that the Tory party had to consider something similar to redress the balance. On election night, he took defeat with great dignity, praised me for the campaign and wished me well in Parliament. I wish him well in his future, too.
When we consider class sizes in the area, we can see how the Bill will improve things a great deal. Cleethorpes, Immingham and Barton-upon-Humber used to be part of Humberside county council, but that was scrapped at great cost to the taxpayer. Even before the scrapping of the council, however, class sizes were giving great cause for concern. The figures that I have from the Library show that 680 classes in the Humberside county council area had 31 to 35 pupils and 117 classes had 36 to 40 pupils.
After the scrapping of Humberside, new unitary authorities were set up--again at great cost to the taxpayer. Now Cleethorpes is covered largely by North East Lincolnshire council and partly by North Lincolnshire council. Dwindling budgets, thanks to the former Government's cuts, and little or no reserves in the councils' bank have made protecting education a challenge. Despite their best efforts, class sizes are still growing and teachers are losing their jobs. Out of just over 100 unitary authorities, North East Lincolnshire is almost bottom of the league table in terms of pupil-teacher ratios.
Two stories will illustrate the crisis in education in the constituency and how diverting money from the assisted places scheme into primary schools will greatly benefit children. Queen Mary infants school in Cleethorpes has a dedicated staff. I visited the school during the election campaign. As the head teacher Jan Wharton explained, there are 13 children to one teacher in a nursery class, but after the Easter holiday those children go to a reception class with 37 children to one teacher. That is just not on.
At Barton county primary school in Barton-upon-Humber, head teacher Mike Simpson decided to sack himself to save the jobs of three teachers because of the financial crisis. Parents were devastated to lose such a teacher. Those are just two examples of the crisis faced by schools in my area: Surrey it is not.
All the parents to whom I spoke outside schools during the campaign, and for two years before that, were worried that because of increasing class sizes their children were not getting the attention that they deserved. Add to the equation crumbling school buildings and we can understand why those mums and dads are angry and disgusted that millions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been going into subsidising private schools through the assisted places scheme.
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire):
It is a great pleasure to be able to congratulate the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Ms McIsaac). She paid generous tribute to her predecessor, which I know will be appreciated throughout the House, and made an intelligent and thoughtful contribution to the debate, which augurs well. She will be listened to with great attention in the House.
Many hon. Members have made maiden speeches. I will refer to just one. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) said that it seemed to him as though 30 years had passed and that he was seeing the Home Secretary 30 years on. It seems to me as though 20 years have passed. Here we are, debating legislation at the start of a new Parliament, with a Labour Government who profess to be new--yet what do we find? They are revisiting devolution proposals that contributed to the collapse of the last Labour Government. As other hon. Members have said, the so-called new Labour Government are also revisiting exactly the sort of negative approach that they exhibited in the 1970s with the abolition of direct-grant schools.
I, like the Home Secretary, am a product of a direct grant school--in fact, the same direct grant school. However, I would be happy for the ladder of opportunity to be left for those who follow after, whereas Labour Members are willing for the ladder to be pulled up after them.
Labour Members talk a great deal about the many and the few. My first reaction when I heard that mantra, which is Labour's soundbite this evening, was to say, "But do the few not matter? Is this a tyranny of the majority?" Then, when I thought about it, I realised that Labour Members were missing the point. In fact, the assisted places scheme is designed for the many. It is designed to give opportunity to the many, so that parents who are not necessarily part of what Labour would call the privileged few, with the resources to participate in independent education if that is their choice, are able to have choice through the medium of the assisted places scheme.
I want to make a couple of points about how that choice exhibits itself. [Interruption.] In South Cambridgeshire, there are a substantial number of assisted places in four schools. In St. Mary's, many parents--in fact, a higher percentage than the 40 per cent. quoted--benefiting from assisted places have an income of under £10,000 a year--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Conversations should not be taking place in the Chamber while the hon. Gentleman is speaking.
Mr. Lansley:
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Many parents on low incomes make the choice to send their children to St. Mary's because it is a single-sex girl's school with a Catholic orientation. I visited the school during my election campaign and asked the girls where they would go to school if their parents were not to have the choice available to them through the assisted places scheme. The answer was not their local community school, but--based upon their parents' choice--the Herts and Essex high school. That is a very fine school; indeed, my wife was a pupil there. But it does not mean that those children could go to school in their locality. That is an interesting reflection on rural areas, which brings me to an important second point.
In rural areas, where there is no access to the assisted places scheme and the extension of choice that that provides, because of the admission arrangements of schools there is often no choice at all. For some parents, such as those whom I mentioned, there are important examples of where it is necessary for them to be able to make that choice. My hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) referred to children from difficult homes whose parents take advantage of the assisted places scheme to help with boarding places.
There are serious flaws in the Bill--the black hole in finance and the difficulty of being able to relate the Government's rhetoric outside the House about how the Bill will reduce class sizes to the actual mechanics and minutiae of what savings will be delivered. The large gap is evident when we take account of assisted places pupils coming back into the maintained sector and the potential costs of capital provision to cater for them. Labour Members compare the revenue cost of children in the state sector with the total cost of fees payable in the independent sector, but they are not directly comparable.
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