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Mr. Webb: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. LEAs have a rough idea in September how many primary pupils they have to educate, as they have to pay the teachers' salaries, arrange for the contracts to be drawn up, buy the books and so on. Would it not be possible to get a provisional figure from all LEAs, with some penalty mechanism for LEAs that give an inflated figure? Is it not better to have the right sort of figures--I dread the phrase "the right ball-park"--rather than to use a figure from eight months before that turns out to be
completely wrong? We could at least now set the date as April. I do not believe that it takes from January to November to get the numbers right.
Ms Morris: The hon. Gentleman paused after he said "the right", and went on to say, "sort of figures". He was correct the first time. It is better to allocate money on the basis of actual pupils, rather than on estimated pupil numbers. We have considered the use of estimates as an option, but that would create new bureaucracy to pay money back, claw it back and argue with local authorities about the accuracy of figures.
That was one of the issues discussed in "Fair Funding". On the whole, schools are not keen on using projected numbers. They would prefer their money to be allocated on actual numbers. The hon. Gentleman's argument has some validity, but there are strong arguments against it. It would affect our ability to move quickly if we paid out money to some local authorities and later had to claw it back.
The hon. Member for Northavon perceived correctly that I was about to move on to the other tricky point--what constitutes the standard spending assessment formula. I shall happily keep his point in mind. I shall also happily reflect and take advice on whether it is ever worth moving the timetable by only a few months. Making such a change is very much not a political decision, but a matter of the political machinery practising the art of the possible. No political impediment stops our receiving more accurate and more recent figures; no one has any such political agenda. As I now realise that the hon. Gentleman has an interest in the matter, I shall keep him informed of developments.
SSAs are a terribly complex matter. I realise that hon. Members know that SSAs are not--and should not be--determined to provide the same spending level for each pupil, but should ensure that the same education standard is available across the country, acknowledging the fact that the cost of providing education varies from one local education authority to another.
Additional education needs, providing free school meals, meeting small schools' transport costs in rural areas and labour costs in the south-east and in London are all factors that have to be considered. The hon. Member for Northavon cited two factors--ethnicity and single-parent families--as major elements in determining SSAs. The fact is that there are so many elements in determining SSAs that the process is an absolute minefield. Moreover, the debate on the relationships between those elements, too, is a minefield.
The hon. Member for Northavon said, for example, that ethnicity surely is not the key factor in determining whether extra resources are needed in a classroom. Interestingly, although ethnicity is a factor at some key stages, poverty becomes a greater factor by key stage 4. Moreover, the situation changes at each key stage and across the education system. Therefore--although it would not reflect real life--it would be good, and easier administratively, if everyone could agree on some factors in determining SSAs.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud):
As a kindred spirit--now that South Gloucestershire is back in the historic county of Gloucestershire--I can have some say in this debate, even if we are in a different education authority. My hon.
Ms Morris:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments, and shall try to deal with them--particularly and pointedly--in a moment.
It is amazing that not one hon. Member or council leader queued up to tell me that his or her local authority's SSA was too generous. I smiled when the hon. Member for Northavon started his speech by saying that he would not be making a party political argument. I can tell the House exactly how the battle-lines were drawn in the discussions on SSAs: they were drawn parochially, according to a local authority's boundaries.
Even if we could have changed SSAs and offered funding protection this year, at a time of increased spending, some local authority leaders and local authority associations would still have been split on the matter, as they wanted also to increase their share of a larger cake.
As the hon. Member for Northavon will know, in the past few months the Government have been consistent in dealing with the matter. The bottom line is that, had there been general agreement on the matter among local authorities and local authority associations, we might have been able this year to make some progress in adopting an SSA that was accepted as being fair. However, there was no such agreement.
I feel strongly that we cannot fundamentally change SSAs every year--or even every three, five or 10 years--but that we have to get SSAs right. This year, despite all the effort that has been put into the matter and all the contributions that have been made, we did not feel that there was unanimity or that we could have made more progress. However, that is not the end of the debate.
I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) that more work needs to be done on that issue, and the Government hope to return to it over the lifetime of this Parliament. We have asked local authority associations to continue with their work, and we will continue to do so.
I represent a constituency in Birmingham, in the midlands, not a southern seat. I am not saying that the SSA is fair and equitable and can be defended on either pure educational grounds or even on the ground of giving opportunity to all children. We are all at one about that. I hope that, in this time of an increasing budget, we can seize the opportunity to achieve something that, although it is not perfect, we can all live with and that does a reasonably balanced job of treating our children fairly.
As a Minister, I have to live with that SSA formula, both this year and next year, but I want to do something about what I believe to be inequality of resource allocation. I must use the mechanisms that are to hand and, because of that, we have looked carefully at the money that does not come through SSAs, but through the standards fund and other pots of money over which the Government have more control.
I remind hon. Members who represent the South Gloucestershire area that, as well as the 7.2 per cent. increase in SSA funding, we are making £3.3 million available through the standards fund. That is 10 per cent. more than we made available for the local authority last year and it includes £500,000 specifically to reduce class sizes. Capital funding this year for South Gloucestershire is £900,000.
When the hon. Member for Northavon and I met, I thought that we would discuss performance tables in respect of allocation of resources because he was bound to say that South Gloucestershire is at the bottom of those tables. I do not deny that; it is clear that pupils in his area receive less funding on a straight SSA basis than any others.
Where we have flexibility, however, we are trying to put resources into certain areas. The argument is not about this year's underfunding; underfunding is historic, because the argument has never been tackled and these difficult issues have never been grasped. It is interesting to compare funding in respect of the standards fund. South Gloucestershire has received more standards fund allocation per pupil than more than 115 authorities, and more capital funding than more than 135 authorities. South Gloucestershire would appear in the top part of such a league table.
South Gloucestershire received 20 per cent. more money per pupil through the standards fund than the national average, and 75 per cent. more money per pupil than the national average through our support for capital funding. I know that that is a smaller stream of revenue and capital, but that was where we had flexibility this year and where we could begin to try to rectify some of the faults, which I agree exist, within the SSA formula.
Authorities that do badly under the SSA formula are stuck with that for the next two or three years, but it may be possible to find other ways of getting money into those local authorities. That may offer some reassurance--although big bucks, to use a crude term, are not involved--about the plight of local authorities that get a rough deal in SSAs, through no fault of their own and because of what happened in their area years ago.
Mr. Don Foster (Bath):
Will the Minister therefore confirm that the impact of what she has told the House is that, when using the flexibility that she claims the Department has to choose which of the 16,000 LEA bids made since the Government took office will be successful, the Department is using as one of the criteria for selection the position on the SSA per pupil league table? Is the implication of that that LEAs that are high on that league table are wasting their time putting in a bid?
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