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Mr. Byers: That is a quite different point, as I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows. A child attending an independent school will not trigger a payment for standard spending assessment purposes, and we have no plans to change that arrangement. I therefore cannot give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks. What I can say is that existing regulations allow local authorities to bear the full costs of a place in the independent sector--and rightly so. The hon. Gentleman is trying to move us on to a different debate which may not be entirely in order this evening.
Mr. St. Aubyn: As I pointed out earlier, the standard spending assessment cost is critical. If the local authority is paid that cost, it is entirely realistic in areas such as ours to hope that the additional cost of sending the child to a fee-paying school can be met--
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. Interventions must be brief. The hon. Gentleman cannot make a speech during an intervention.
Mr. Byers: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks. The local authority must carry the full cost of exercising its discretion.
I hope that I have been able to reassure the hon. Member for Guildford, at least in part. I know that I have not been able to give him complete satisfaction, but I can at least say that the power he wants to give to local authorities already exists. We can see no merit in including such a provision in the Bill, because it merely duplicates a power already in existence.
I ask the Committee to reject the new clause if it is pressed to a Division.
Mr. Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire):
The Liberal Democrats support the new clauses, on the grounds that they are simply common sense. The Government have said that they want a smooth and sensitive transition from where we are to where we want to be. The new clauses would facilitate such a responsible transition.
We would be completely opposed, however, to the provisions being used as an opportunity to reintroduce the assisted places scheme by the back door. Nevertheless, there must be sufficient flexibility in the system to ensure that children who in some exceptional circumstance can benefit from a special opportunity for study are allowed to do so.
There must be an element of trusting local authorities: we must believe that they would not necessarily abuse the additional provisions. If we cannot trust authorities to make responsible decisions, there is a great problem in our education structure.
Mr. Byers:
The hon. Gentleman says that the Liberal Democrats support the new clauses. Do they support new clause 3 and the use of lottery funds to buy places in the private sector?
Mr. Öpik:
If that led to the simple replacement of the assisted places scheme with a similar scheme paid for by the lottery, absolutely not. We are saying that the provisions could provide a way for the Government to honour their commitment to a strict spending package and yet provide local authorities with some flexibility, ensuring that the people who benefit from the special educational opportunity can survive. I emphasise again that we are with the Government on abolition of the assisted places scheme: we do not support its reintroduction.
We are concerned about being seen to be fair. We want local authorities to have some limited flexibility to make such decisions. The Minister has reassured us about the provision that already exists. If that provides the flexibility that we seek to achieve through the new clause, perhaps that is a satisfactory solution, but if there is a failure to honour that flexibility in the long term, we shall be uncomfortable about it.
We support the new clause on the assumption that the provisions represent a sensible way in which to proceed, but we do not want assisted places to be supported wholesale by the national lottery.
Mr. St. Aubyn:
I welcome the support of the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. Öpik), and I welcome the Minister's comments, as far as they go, but I am afraid that we have witnessed a loss of nerve tonight. The imaginative course would be to leave open a variety of
It is a great pity because, in the Minister's narrow interpretation of a local authority's existing powers we heard a sharp closing down of the scheme and of the opportunities that it would give to children over and above those that we all want to give them in the state sector. I am, however, grateful to him for making it clear that all the local authorities' powers may be used to create what we might still loosely term assisted places and the Government will not stand in the way.
Having secured some clarification and assistance, with as much grace as I can, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule agreed to.
Bill reported, without amendment.
Order for Third Reading read.
Ms Estelle Morris:
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Bill is one of the first of the new Government. It shows our commitment to education and our determination to have an education service that raises standards for the many, not the few. It makes it absolutely clear that we have turned our back on policies based on the belief that only a few can succeed or that to reach the top one has to escape from the maintained sector.
The Bill will release funds that we will use to cut to 30 or fewer class sizes for all five, six and seven-year-olds. That pledge was one of the reasons why the people elected us to govern. Today, less than six weeks after the general election, we are passing legislation that will provide the resources to enable us to keep our promise.
Throughout our consideration of the Bill, we have been reminded that the maintained sector was run for the past 18 years by a Government who did not believe in its potential. We share the understandable concern that children should attend schools where they can achieve at the highest levels. We differ, in that Conservative Members such as the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) believe that that cannot be done in the state sector.
Bright children pass examinations, go to universities and other institutions of further learning and take posts in all walks of life, at all levels, with all sorts of responsibilities, having been educated and given their life chances in the state system. The challenge for our country is not to devise ways of helping some to escape to the private sector but to ensure that all our pupils get the standard of education that can currently be found in the best of our state schools.
The resources that will be released through the Bill will be used to give a better start to the 440,000 five, six and seven-year-olds who are currently in classes of more than 30. Class sizes matter. They matter most in the early years, because children can get more attention, more teacher time and more space, and they can be taught in more manageable groups. It is not the only thing that matters and will not by itself solve all the problems that
we face in our education service, but we believe that it is a crucial part of our overall plans to raise standards for our children.
No one can be surprised by the contents of the Bill. As was drawn to our attention on Second Reading, we have opposed the assisted places scheme every single year since it was introduced. Private schools have had every opportunity to prepare for the removal of the subsidy. In any case, the Bill fulfils our promise to protect the interests of those children who are currently in the scheme or who have already been offered places to start in the next academic year.
The previous Government presided over steadily rising class sizes. Much has been said by Conservative Members about the number of assisted places in their constituencies. They have not spoken about the five, six and seven-year-olds in their constituencies who will benefit from a reduction in class size: 7,000 in the area that includes the constituency of Chesham and Amersham; 4,000 children in the area that includes the constituency of the shadow Secretary of State; and almost 50 per cent. of the children in Bromley, which includes the constituency of the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth).
Mrs. Gillan:
Will the hon. Lady confirm that there are no assisted places in her constituency, that of the Minister for School Standards or that of the Secretary of State for Education and Employment? Is she not happy to introduce the measure because she knows that it does not affect any of her constituents?
Ms Morris:
That comment does not deserve an answer, but I shall answer it.
We were elected to speak for the people of this country, for parents who wanted opportunities for their children and who were fed up with finding that their children were not getting the best chance at infant school because they were in large classes. I have every confidence that what we have said during the Bill's passage will be welcomed by parents and teachers who, like us, want to give a good start to all our children. Our belief in the inherent value of every child, and in the potential of every child to achieve, is different from the values of Conservative Members, which are vested in the potential of only a few children.
If I thought for one minute that the brightest children could not achieve in the state sector, I would not support the Bill. The brightest children can achieve. The children of the Lady's constituents and of those of other hon. Members have gone on to achieve great things. If she had shown the same passion for the state system that she has shown for the independent sector during the Bill's passage, I confidently believe that we would not have inherited a system in chaos.
7.45 pm
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