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Mr. Hughes: The Committee has rightly emphasised the importance of the issue. It would be helpful if the Minister could make one more offer: to do as he has done in respect of other matters and, not only promise further Government reflection, but convene outside the Committee a forum in which we can try to reach agreement between the three parties whose members currently represent London in the House of Commons. Ideally, we will have reached a common view on the issue by the time we go into the elections for the Greater London assembly.
Mr. Raynsford: I fear the hon. Gentleman will have difficulty in securing the degree of consensus he hopes for, given the fundamentally different positions adopted by the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives on most issues. However, I have given an undertaking that the Government will reflect further and I am happy to meet representatives of the Liberal Democrats and of other parties who wish to come to see me in the period between now and Report stage. With that, I urge the Committee to agree to the schedule.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Bill (Clauses 1 to 4 and Schedules 1 and 2) reported, without amendment; to lie upon the Table.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Hanson.]
Mr. Steve Webb (Northavon):
It will come as no great surprise to hon. Members to learn that the subject of my Adjournment debate has not been the sole topic of conversation this afternoon among my fellow Liberal Democrats. Having said that, it is an issue of substantial importance to thousands of children in South Gloucestershire, who are represented by me and by the hon. Member for Kingswood (Mr. Berry), whose constituency includes a substantial part of South Gloucestershire, and who hopes to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The allocation of money between local authorities, especially for education, is a highly political issue because it relates to values. However, it is also a highly technical issue. I shall refer principally to those technical issues tonight, and I hope that the Minister will respond positively.
I hope not to approach the issue on a party political basis. As I have said, my arguments are principally technical and hon. Members on both sides of the House who represent South Gloucestershire constituencies--I welcome also the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Dr. Naysmith) who represents part of the authority area--share some of my concerns and may give voice to them during the debate.
By way of background, I should explain that South Gloucestershire is an area with a rapidly growing population--in fact, it has one of the fastest growing populations in the country. Many new employers have located to the area--including the Ministry of Defence at Abbey Wood, the aerospace industry and Hewlett Packard--and large numbers of people have moved there also. That is not a one-off phenomenon as population projections suggest that South Gloucestershire's population will also grow rapidly over the next decade or two. That presents some particular problems to which I shall refer this evening.
The Minister will be aware that I have tabled questions designed to assess the amount of money per primary pupil that authorities throughout the country receive under the standard spending assessment. The Minister will also be aware that South Gloucestershire usually finishes at the bottom of that league table. According to the written answer that I received, primary school pupils in South Gloucestershire receive an SSA of £2,215 each compared with the national average of £2,372.
I am the first to accept that any league table must have a top and a bottom--although I do not welcome the fact that South Gloucestershire has been persistently at the bottom of it. I recognise that other authorities with greater deprivation and greater needs deserve more funding. That is not my problem tonight. However, I believe that the formula must achieve its desired objective: if it is trying to capture deprivation or need, it must do so in the right way. I argue not that South Gloucestershire should be at the top or the middle of the league table, but that the formula should achieve what it is designed to achieve. South Gloucestershire has remained at the bottom of the
table following the announcement of this year's settlement--we could debate the generosity or otherwise of that settlement--partly because of reasons that are technical and difficult to explain on the basis of justice.
I shall raise three principal issues, to which I hope that the Minister will respond positively. The Government allocate a certain amount of money per pupil and then multiply that sum by the number of pupils in the authority. The fundamental question is: which pupils and when? As I understand the system--I hope that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong as I do not claim to be an authority on local authority finances--the number of secondary school pupils is counted in September at the start of the academic year. That information feeds into the local government calculations in the autumn, and the money starts to filter through the following April. The process is completed within one financial year, which seems perfectly reasonable.
The system is different for primary pupils and the count is taken not in September but in the preceding January. That will not make much difference to many authorities with static populations, but it makes an enormous difference in South Gloucestershire. I asked my local council--which has kindly provided all South Gloucestershire Members with a briefing for tonight's debate--how many primary pupils were added to the count between January and September. The answer is 267--more than 1 per cent. That is the equivalent of an extra primary school in our area--and that is an extra school this year, next year and the year after because it happens every year. It is not a one-off phenomenon.
The council reckons that the figure is out of date and that, if the figure for September rather than the preceding January were used, it would receive an extra £750,000. That is serious money for South Gloucestershire. If the formula were based on up-to-date rather than out-of-date statistics, the loss to certain other authorities--assuming that the total pot remained unchanged--would be quite marginal. I do not argue that all London authorities should lose and only South Gloucestershire should gain. However, that discrepancy in the formula acutely affects my local authority and a small number of others with rapidly growing populations. If it were taken into account, it would result not in huge, sweeping losses but in only fairly modest losses elsewhere.
The council has further calculated that, over the course of a year, it spends £1.5 million educating children whom it has not counted yet and for whom it has not received any money. There cannot be any rationale or justification for such a system. I shall illustrate the most extreme case. If a family moved in February 1998 to South Gloucestershire, perhaps because of a job at the Ministry of Defence at Abbey Wood, their children would not appear in the count of pupils at primary school until January 1999. They would not, therefore, become part of the local government calculations until autumn 1999 and the money to pay for their education would not emerge until April 2000. That means that the council would face more than two years of paying for books, equipment and other costs before it received a penny.
I hope that there is a more rational system that we could use. In the age of the internet, it seems incredible that we have such out-of-date figures on the numbers of children in our primary schools. They are not difficult to count. My pre-primary school-age children move around rather a lot but even they are not too difficult to count.
It has been suggested to me that, in the autumn, the Department's civil servants are under considerable pressure gathering material and information to work out all the figures. I accept that their work has a seasonal nature and that counting the children in September would place a greater burden on the Department than counting them in the previous January. With tongue only slightly in cheek, however, I shall make the Minister an offer. I understand that there are about 18,000 primary schools in England. I will personally type in the numbers of pupils in those schools if that will make the difference. If the only obstacle to counting the children currently in school rather than those who were in school nine months ago is the civil servants' lack of time, there are ways round that. I hope that the Minister will reassure me on that point. My researcher looked very nervous when she read that part of my speech.
My second point is particular to South Gloucestershire but less so than my previous point. It relates to the education of children from beyond the local authority boundary. South Gloucestershire was recently reorganised and used to be part of the former Avon authority. Children go to and fro and now cross boundaries that did not previously exist. Therefore, partly for historical reasons, South Gloucestershire educates a particularly large number of pupils--about 3,000--from outside the authority. That number may be diminishing, but it is still substantial.
If a primary school child is to be educated in a neighbouring authority, such as Bristol--which is the most obvious authority to export pupils to South Gloucestershire--the authority will be allocated £2,338. If the same child goes half a mile up the A38, to be educated in a South Gloucestershire school, we have to educate him or her for £2,215--£123 less. The authority is already under a great deal of stress.
I am not trying to set up South Gloucestershire against Bristol, but many people move into the area and want their children educated in local schools, which are full. Those parents must understand not only that the schools are educating pupils from other authorities but that South Gloucestershire receives what it considers to be an inadequate amount of money for doing so--something that parents find particularly hard to accept.
8.43 pm
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