House of Commons Hansard Debates for 24 Jul 1997 (pt 18)

Orders of the Day

Education (Schools) Bill

Clause 2

Transitional arrangements for existing assisted pupils

Lords amendment: No. 1, in page 2, line 5, at end insert--
("( ) in the case of a pupil with an assisted place at a school providing education for children up to the age of 13 but not beyond, at the end of the school year in which he attains the age of 13; or")

6.4 pm

The Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. David Blunkett): I beg to move, That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): I must inform the House that the amendment involves privilege.

Mr. Blunkett: In order to detain the House for as short a time as possible, I shall not go over all the old ground and refer in detail to familiar issues. We oppose the assisted places scheme; some Opposition Members support it.

In phasing the scheme out, we are doing our best to protect children's interests. We have declined to overturn its extension, which we could have done in time for next September. We have made it clear that we will protect the interests of children who have already been guaranteed places and that, in allowing the scheme's extension to children in primary education, we are protecting their right to remain in it until the age of 11. Today's debate deals not with substance and principle, but with the issue that arises from the Lords amendment, which refers indirectly to the Kilfoyle letter.

Mr. Don Foster (Bath): My party is as convinced as the Labour party of the need to abolish the assisted places scheme as quickly as possible, but we also believe that when a promise has been made it is important that it is kept.

Will the Secretary of State confirm that he supports what Lady Blackstone said in the debate on the Bill in another place? She said:

"The presumption will be that any parent who has accepted an assisted place running through to age 13 in a free-standing preparatory school on the basis of the Kilfoyle letter will have that place honoured. I can confirm that in such circumstances the commitment will be honoured through the use of the discretionary power."--[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 July 1997; Vol. 581, c. 1093.]

In what circumstances would the Secretary of State not agree that the commitment given in the Kilfoyle letter is being met by the Government?

Mr. Blunkett: I am happy to support what was said by my noble Friend. On the understanding that the promise was given as a consequence of the Kilfoyle letter, it will be fulfilled under the discretion that we have agreed.

Mr. Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood): The Secretary of State is dealing with the nub of the issue. What if a child

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at an independent preparatory school has an assisted place that was given according to the rules of the assisted places scheme but not on the basis of the Kilfoyle letter? If the right hon. Gentleman cannot describe circumstances that distinguish the general case from the case that has not relied on the Kilfoyle pledge, I do not understand why he has to preserve the discretion. Why can he not simply write the principle into the Bill?

Mr. Blunkett: I think that the right hon. Gentleman understands perfectly well why we need the discretion. There are people who, although their child had entered a school that keeps pupils up to the age of 13--and had done so at an early age--had not been assured that their child would continue until the age of 13. Such people were not in the position that we are discussing.

There have been some peculiar quirks to the assisted places scheme, and we, as a new Government, do not propose to repeat them. There have been quirks in the interpretation of the scheme--not least the fact that, when the original secondary education scheme was passed in the early 1980s, hon. Members were not necessarily aware that it would be applied to primary education by primary and prep schools. People who were obtaining places were highlighted in the press because, as the former hon. Member for Buckingham said, there was a presumption that they may not strictly have been entitled to them. We are not examining what has happened in the past, so as to protect the interests of the young people concerned. We are mindful of the fact that we must not drop ourselves into the hole of not having discretion and being unable to examine claims properly.

Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham): It is obvious that the Secretary of State intends to press ahead and put the legislation on the statute book. The amendment is important. How will he exercise the discretion? How much will it cost to examine the cases of each of the 2,000 children who are covered by the amendment? What extra amount will his Department put to one side to scrutinise each of those applications? No parent of any child who falls into this category will be satisfied with the right hon. Gentleman's blanket assurances. If he intends to keep his pledge of putting children before dogma, he must say how much is being put aside to examine these cases.

Mr. Blunkett rose--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. Interventions should be short: they should not be mini- speeches. I appeal to hon. Members for co-operation.

Mr. Blunkett: As an ex-Minister, the hon. Lady should be aware that the section, including staff at Darlington, have a duty to examine the applications and the allocation of places and to hold on file the information that is required, including details about the nature of the places that have been given up. As we are not expanding the scheme, and as that information is available, it can be made available at no expense. It is a question of using departmental time, and I am, and intend to remain, a great believer in ensuring that we use that time effectively and efficiently.

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I am not sure that the people involved in the 2,000 cases to which the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) referred will apply for their children to go through to the age of 13. Some of them will think that it is more sensible to transfer their children to secondary education at the age of 11 than to seek private sponsorship, which many appear to be doing, or to transfer them to state secondary education at an age that is inappropriate for the area in which they live. These matters have already been debated at length, and I do not intend to delay the House by going through them again for the sake of hearing my own voice.

It is critical to understand that I am honouring our commitment to use the discretion sensitively and generously and to ensure that the young people and their families are not let down. I give that assurance again, and I have given it in the words of my noble Friend. I repeat the assurance that I gave on Second Reading about the 12 schools where children will take up places in September at the age of 10 and stay until the age of 18. We shall honour that assurance.

Much of the debate arises from the fact that, at the general election, we chose not to overturn the Conservative Government's decision on opening up primary education to assisted places. We did that because we thought that it was in the children's best interests not to have their education disrupted, and so that they would not have to enter the state system at such a late date that there would be no preference for them or their families. Contrary to what has been said in earlier debates on the matter, we have been extremely sensitive to the needs of children and have not put dogma first.

The amendment would not have been carried in the other place if only life peers had been voting. It would have been defeated by 79 votes to 55 if hereditary peers did not exist. It was simply a case of what I have described before as privilege defending privilege. Someone described it as democracy. This House is the democratically elected forum and has a mandate from the electorate. We had an overwhelming mandate on the Bill at the general election and no one could have been in any doubt about where we stood. We are not, therefore, debating the principle of the measure but whether discretion should be used in the way that we describe.

I say to the House and to the other place that great care must be taken over an amendment that is designed to undermine the Bill. We are sensitive to the importance of using the discretion wisely and of continuing to give guarantees. We are making sure that we protect children's interests and are going out of our way to prevent disruption.

6.15 pm

I wish that Conservative Members would understand that, as in the past, discretion will be used wisely and publicly. I fully understand that light will be shed on individual children and the importance of what was promised and what will be fulfilled. We do not want to open any more cans of worms that can be used to undermine the aim of switching resources from the benefit of a few to the benefit of the many. Some 400,000 youngsters of five, six and seven in state schools will

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benefit from smaller classes. That is a clear message from the House, and it was sent at the election on 1 May. I hope that the House will reaffirm it in rejecting the amendment.

Mr. Dorrell: I hope that the House will reject the Secretary of State's motion to disagree with the Lords amendment. In moving it, the right hon. Gentleman was softly spoken--butter would not melt in his mouth. He is determined to try to present his case in the gentlest possible way. The question before the House is simple: whether the Government should write into the Bill the commitment that was given on behalf of Labour by the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service, in his letter to the chairman of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools on 1 April.

I disagree with the Bill's principle, which is the abolition of the assisted places scheme. The Government's policy is divisive, and closes opportunity to many children. The Bill removes choice from parents and, in short, is regressive and reactionary. However, as the Secretary of State rightly said, that is not the question before the House. The question is very precise: whether the pledge given by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), now the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service, should be put into the legislation to abolish the assisted places scheme. Let us be clear about the circumstances and history of the argument.

During the election campaign, the chairman of the IAPS sought clarification from the Labour party about how its policy to abolish the assisted places scheme would apply to his members--traditional preparatory schools offering education between the ages, typically, of eight and 13. There was some correspondence. The first response from Labour was not clear. The IAPS wrote again and received a crystal clear letter from the hon. Member for Walton, dated 1 April. It was not, in the language of the last Parliament, a statement made on a wet night in Dudley. It was a clear statement by a Labour party spokesman, no ifs or buts. I shall read it again to the House:

"If a child has a place at a school which runs to age 13, then that place will be honoured through to 13."

The question is whether that pledge, as given by the hon. Member for Walton, should be written into the Bill. It is a question not of the merits of the Bill, but of whether a Minister's word is his bond or simply the first convenient thing that comes into his head. It is a question that has dogged the Bill throughout its passage through Parliament.

It all began during the Second Reading debate on 2 June, when my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) asked the Secretary of State what his response was to the Kilfoyle letter and why the pledge was not in the Bill. It is instructive to go through the various occasions when the issue has arisen during the passage of the Bill. The House should note that, each time the issue has arisen, the Government's response has been different. No wonder the Secretary of State was so modest in his presenting his case this evening. He was anxious not to present a new argument. That at least is a departure in the way Parliament has dealt with the issue because, at every stage, the Government have offered a new excuse.

On 2 June, the Secretary of State offered his first excuse:

"I am very clear, and so is the Bill, that assisted places will remain in primary education up to the normal age of transfer at 11. Where an alternative transfer age applies in that area, the Secretary of State

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will have discretion, and my ministerial team and I will use it wisely to ensure that we do not have a situation where 500,000 youngsters transfer at 11, but other people think that they can transfer at 13, even if 13 is not the normal transferable age in that locality."--[Official Report, 2 June 1997; Vol. 295, c. 27.]

There we have the first doctrine that defended the Bill as drafted--that we should not allow transfer at age 13 where the normal principle of the local education authority within which the prep school operates is to transfer schoolchildren between primary and secondary stage at age 11.

I have two answers to that response. First, and most important, the Secretary of State's response on 2 June--which was not, I have to say, repeated in his speech this evening--breaks the pledge given by the hon. Member for Walton, who said that, where a child had a place at a school up to age 13, the place would be honoured up to 13. The Secretary of State's first response was that that would not apply if, in the locality surrounding the prep school, the normal habit was to transfer at 11. It was a breaking of the pledge.

Secondly, it is, of course, a matter for parents to decide whether it is in their children's interests, given local circumstance, to transfer, in the normal traditions of the locality, into the state system at 11, or to continue to 13, as the Kilfoyle pledge made it clear they would be entitled to do.