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Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry): I come fresh to the debate on the amendment, and it seems to me that the Secretary of State's remarks about the normal age of transfer must mean the age of transfer within the state sector only and have no relevance to the normal arrangements for transfer of primary and secondary school children in the private sector. Is that my right hon. Friend's interpretation?
Mr. Maude: Even when the words are examined carefully and in the most generous and charitable way, they bear no interpretation other than that which my hon. Friend places on them. However they are interpreted, they are bleakly at odds with the clear terms of Labour's pre-election pledge--what I might call the Walton pledge--which was given, somewhat ironically, on 1 April. We have clearly established that the Bill breaches that pledge.
It is also clear, and the silence of Ministers amplifies it, that the modest discretion in the Bill is not intended to be used to give effect in any meaningful sense to that pledge. The Government stand indicted, and, unless they move swiftly to rescue their reputation, they will stand convicted, of a grave breach of trust.
Labour made many reckless promises before the election which will be found increasingly difficult to keep, because they are contradictory in so many ways. The Government have made so many contradictory promises to so many groups that at some stage those contradictions will fall to be resolved and will be found incapable of resolution.
However, I do not think that the Government would, without reason and so early in their life, put their reputation so recklessly at risk. Therefore, we must seek an explanation of why the Government should so quickly go back on their word and so lamely attempt to defend it. The explanation lies at the heart of another contradiction between the pledges.
The justification for the Bill is that the savings from phasing out the assisted places scheme will be used to pay for reducing infant class sizes. As the Committee knows, we have questioned that and we think that the sums are nowhere near right. Much of the independent research confirms our view that the figures, as often happens with the Government's figures, simply do not add up. When we probe this sorry little saga, we find that the Government themselves are beginning to realise that the sums do not add up. They are beginning to see that they will not even get close to the savings they need from abolishing the assisted places scheme to pay for the reduction in class sizes that they promised.
What do the Government do about that? As so often, they go on the grab. They think, "Where else can we grab some money? Where can we find a soft target who will not complain too much and will not be able to fight back and defend himself? We shall go for the 11 and 12-year-olds who have the benefit of assisted places. What do promises matter? We shall get the extra savings in future years by grabbing back those assisted places."
Those places were given and accepted in good faith, but it seems not to matter that children's education was planned on the basis of the scheme, which was reinforced by Labour pledges when the party was in opposition. That matters nothing, and the Government will push it to one side because there is a little more money to be grabbed to try to make their figures add up.
I suspect that that was the reasoning in the minds of Ministers. That is why they have gone down the path of callously ignoring the pledge and disappointing the hopes and plans of real people. This is not a technical or academic argument; this is about people and children at a vulnerable age--children, almost by definition, from less advantaged homes, because if they were not from such homes, they would not be in receipt of an assisted place to begin with--whose hopes are being dashed cruelly and cynically.
I invite any of my right hon. and hon. Friends to volunteer an explanation as to why the Government should expose themselves to the contempt not only of the Committee but of the country by behaving in this way. It must be no more than this: the Government have realised what we have been telling them for so long--the sums do not add up. They will not be able to deliver the reduction in class sizes through the Bill and, therefore, they have used this provision in clause 2 to grab back a bit more and to go beyond what they said they would do. Frankly, nothing that we have heard goes any way to justify it.
Therefore, we have to look a little beyond the provision and make a case which I hope appeals to the decency in Ministers. I hope that the Committee will join Conservative Members in urging Ministers to take the provision away, even at this late stage, reconsider it and find out whether they can do a little to rehabilitate their reputation.
If the Prime Minister had applied his mind to the issue, he would be urging Ministers to do the same. He has made many remarks about trust and promises. If he understood that this saga was going on and that this breach of trust had taken place, I feel sure that he would intervene. Let us consider just what the Prime Minister said in the Loyal Address debate. Talking about the difference between the Labour Government and the Conservative party, he said:
Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney):
The right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) bandied about the words "breach of trust" and "promise". I say to my Front-Bench team that our biggest, most important promise was that we would use the funds that would arise from the Bill to lower primary class sizes in state schools. There would certainly be a breach of trust if we accepted the amendments, as funds would be less likely to be obtained for schools. There is a straight difference of values and priorities.
Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Rowlands:
I have scarcely started. The right hon. Member for Horsham developed his case at length.
I want briefly to say that, in relation to values and priority, there could be no greater contrast than that between the speech of the right hon. Member for Horsham and the one that I am about to make on behalf of schools in my constituency.
Mr. Maude:
I am encouraged--well, discouraged really, but at least the hon. Gentleman is being honest about it. He admits that the reason for the provision is to grab back a little more money. What he is also saying is a little more bothersome: if the Government keep one promise, it does not matter if they break another one. That is exactly the point that we are making: they have made contradictory promises.
Mr. Rowlands:
I am about to tell the right hon. Gentleman why I support the Bill, and why I shall vote against the amendment. I want to contrast the schools that I suspect he has been describing with a school in my area, whose current position illustrates the problems that face our community here and now. Parents, governors, children and teachers involved with primary schools in our community will face problems in September--
Mr. Luff:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Rowlands:
No. I want to answer the case put by the right hon. Member for Horsham.
"There will be one other difference. This Government will keep their promises."
10 Jun 1997 : Column 956
He went on to say--recklessly, the Committee may think:
Well, we certainly do now, given that the first opportunity Ministers have to deliver on a promise, they break it. But it is not just on that that I rest my case and urge Ministers to take this provision away and redeem their reputation--or, failing that, that I urge the Committee to accept the amendments and restore some decency to the Bill. On 1 May, as reported in The Independent, the Prime Minister said:
"Conservative Members find that an extraordinary proposition."--[Official Report, 14 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 62.]
"The promises we have made are specific".
I add in parenthesis: what could be more specific than the Walton pledge in the letter? He went on:
"and if we deliver on these, then I think we are entitled to trust. If we do not deliver on those, then we'll not be."
If Ministers do not respond positively to the amendments, they will have broken their promises, they will have betrayed the trust that has been put in them and their reputations will have been irredeemably damaged.
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