| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): With permission, I shall put together the motions relating to delegated legislation.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
That the draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission) Order 1999, which was laid before this House on 11th January, be approved.
That the draft European Communities (Immunities and Privileges of the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission) Order 1999, which was laid before this House on 11th January, be approved.--[Mr. Hanson.]
Question agreed to.
10.25 pm
Mr. Andrew Welsh (Angus): I am presenting this petition on behalf of the Hospitalfield area residents committee and the residents of the Hospitalfield housing estate in Arbroath, who wish to protest against the environmental problems with which they have been confronted over many years and seek action from the Government to investigate, cure and solve those problems. The petition is signed by members of the Hospitalfield area residents committee--Mr. and Mrs. Wright, Mr. and Mrs. Dear, Mr. Bill Kerr and Mrs. Meldrum--and has the backing of 688 members of the wider local community.
The petition reads:
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for Scotland
To lie upon the Table.
(1) to take whatever steps may be necessary to stop this pollution from continuing, and
(2) to ensure that an investigation takes place into how this situation came about and into why it has been allowed to continue for more than two and a half years.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
Education Services (Somerset)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Hanson.]
10.26 pm
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): I am extremely pleased to have the opportunity to address the House on the important issue of education services in Somerset and their funding. I confess to a sense of deja vu, in two respects. I seem to have secured a number of Adjournment debates on the subject during the brief time that I have been a Member of this place. My first Adjournment debate--on 12 June 1997, in which I made my second speech in the Chamber--was on exactly the same subject.
I make no apology for that, because, sadly, the points that I made then are still as relevant today. Although I may sometimes be a little bored of making the same points--the Minister may be bored of hearing them, from me and others--that is nothing against the annual anguish of councillors, governors, teachers and parents, who wrestle with budgets that simply do not work.
If I wanted evidence of that, I should have only to read the letters that have been sent again by schools up and down my constituency, from Huish Episcopi school; Milborne Port county primary; Sexey's school, which is a grant-maintained school making the same point; Nunney county first; Countess Gytha school in Queen Camel. A letter has also come from Berkley parish council, and all those letters make the same point: the present funding arrangements for Somerset do not work.
I also feel a sense of deja vu because we had a near-identical debate only two weeks ago in the Chamber, initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb). It was an excellent debate, with very much the same cast of characters: the same Minister and the same hon. Members on this side of the Chamber. The west country mafia was spread around both sides of the House--
Mr. Bob Russell (Colchester):
And not a Tory in sight.
Mr. Heath:
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct.
My modest request to the Minister is that her civil servants provide her with a slightly different brief this evening, not simply one with South Gloucestershire crossed out and Somerset put in.
What is the problem? It is simply that the revenue support system does not come close to providing sufficient to enable Somerset county council to provide school services at the level that I, and the Minister, would want. That is not unique to Somerset; it appears to be the case for almost all authorities in the rural south-west. That is a significant problem.
Mr. Adrian Sanders (Torbay):
I gave my hon. Friend notice that I should like to intervene.
Is not that problem compounded by areas, such as my constituency, that have rising numbers of pupils which are not reflected in the standard spending assessment totals? That is obviously a problem in Somerset, as it is in South
Gloucestershire, and the sums of money that come from the Government lag behind the expenditure of the schools concerned.
Mr. Heath:
I am grateful to my honourable and elegant Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right, and the point was amplified by my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon in the recent debate.
The Department for Education and Employment admits that Somerset is hard done by. I had a meeting with the Secretary of State, who freely admitted that, when in opposition, he used to quote the Somerset factor in evidence. The sparsity factor and the other factors used to derive the formula work to the disadvantage of a small number of authorities spread around the country, particularly in the south-west of England.
I have a letter to one of my constituents from Mr. Niall Forde, a civil servant in the Department, who says:
What has been Somerset's response to that problem over the years? It has provided more money from local resources. It has massively topped up the amount that the Government provide for education from other resources available to it. That has averaged £10 million a year over and above the standard spending assessment, which is £40 million from local funds in the past four years. I do not take the SSA as an adequate measure of what should be spent, but nevertheless it is what the Government officially say should be spent on education. That £40 million has not come out of thin air: it has come from the budgets for highways, social services and other essential services provided by the county council.
I fully accept that the Government's generosity has increased this year. They have recognised that there is a problem with overall education funding, and they have sought to respond. Indeed, there is an increase in the education SSA for Somerset of £10.6 million for next year, and that is very welcome. On the face of it, that should be very good news, but--and it is a big but--sadly, that increase merely brings the SSA up to fractionally more than the real expenditure this year. That is the constant funding trap in which authorities that spend massively over their SSA year on year find themselves.
The total expenditure increase for the authority is £15.5 million. If the authority spends that much, it will increase its council tax by 6.4 per cent. We are told that the Government's view is that the increase should be 4.5 per cent., so immediately there is a discrepancy between the two.
It would be wrong for me to expect the Minister to be an expert in this area, but she should know that the county council has other commitments apart from education. It has non-service commitments--£6 million comes out of the extra money for items such as landfill tax and land drainage. If the Minister saw the water levels in Somerset at the moment, she would realise how important land drainage is in that area. We have a serious problem.
What is wrong with the system as it stands? The area cost adjustment is often referred to as the tax on the west, although it could just as easily be described as the tax on
the north or the tax on the midlands. It is the tax on those areas that are not in the south-east and do not have the benefit of the adjustment.
The Government's view has always been that they would like to change the area cost adjustment, but they cannot get unanimity among local authorities. Of course they will not get unanimity among local authorities. I was a leading member of the Association of County Councils for years, and I could not get unanimity in the association, because those who represented Sussex, Hampshire and the other authorities that benefited from the area cost adjustment were not going meekly to say that they would give it up. The fact is that it is wrong and is based on a wrong methodology, and it must be removed. It is worth £2.2 million to Somerset in terms of its education expenditure.
"Ministers recognise that historically there has been a very real difficulty for Somerset, because of under-funding over many years."
This is not a recent phenomenon: it has gone on year after year. It was a problem when I became leader of the county council in 1985, and it has been a problem ever since.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |