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Mr. Tyrie: The Minister has made clear his commitment to the principle of AONBs. I came fairly new to this subject and, as he probably knows, two years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) and I called for a debate to try to secure an extension to the south downs conservation board. The Government granted a three-year extension,
which is due to expire in about 18 months. Before he concludes, will the Minister tell us whether the Government intend to make the arrangements for the south downs permanent? As he knows, and I have said before, there is widespread opposition to having a national park, but there is overwhelming local support for making the south downs conservation board permanent.
Mr. Meale: I hope to deal with that matter. If I can get through the rest of my speech in the next three of four minutes, I will give the hon. Gentleman that information.
Special consideration must be made of AONBs because of the recognition that their landscapes are of sufficient importance to have particular value to the nation as a whole. However, as I said earlier, we need to maintain a balance between that consideration and the need, which the Government's policy towards the countryside stresses, to sustain living and working communities as well as a good-quality environment.
We have heard today about the advice on the future treatment of AONBs which the former Countryside Commission delivered to the Government last summer. I can assure hon. Members that the subject of the advice--which related to the future status of the New Forest and the south downs, as well as making recommendations for AONBs generally--is never far from my mind or that of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and our postbags always contain letters about those matters.
Hon. Members will not be surprised when I confirm that I shall not today make any statement about the Government's conclusions on those matters. I can, however, confirm that they remain under active consideration in my Department and that we intend to announce conclusions very soon. [Interruption.] That is better than soon.
I understand that the Countryside Council for Wales has delivered similar advice about AONBs, although, because of the nature of the Welsh AONBs, it does not see the need to provide for statutory conservation boards. Those will be matters for the Welsh Assembly to consider.
The Government are sympathetic to the need to do more to foster a positive approach to the management and protection of AONBs into the next century. In that respect, we have already demonstrated our commitment by providing the Countryside Agency with an extra £2.5 million for work in AONBs in England this year. That will make a difference. It more than doubles the funds that were available to the former Countryside Commission for the support of AONBs, and it will allow a considerable degree of progress to be made in putting in place new management plans and new programmes, and in helping to provide additional expert staff. We shall continue to monitor progress on that to find out what is being achieved and what more needs to be done.
A great deal has, of course, already been achieved in AONBs through the enthusiasm and commitment of local people, by local authorities and other local partners working together, by the Countryside Agency in England and by the Countryside Council for Wales. I understand that at least 26 of the 41 AONBs currently have a management plan in place, and a great many have an AONB officer or a joint advisory committee set up by their local authority.
Of course, because AONBs are very different in size and nature, there is not only one way of managing them or caring for them. Some lie solely within the area of one local authority, which is generally best placed to co-ordinate a management programme. Others stretch over long distances, often following a geographical feature, such as the Sussex downs. In that case, and in other cases, several local authorities are involved.
The experiment set up by the former Countryside Commission and the local authorities in 1992 to form a conservation board for the Sussex downs has in many ways brought us to where we are today on the question of AONBs. In conclusion--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin):
Order. We now come to the next debate.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West):
I wish to draw attention to the £100 million that has been lost to the budgets of grant-maintained schools this year. In so doing, I shall focus principally on south-west Hampshire, because six of the nine secondary schools in the New Forest area are grant-maintained schools. They have become models of efficiency. Despite the fact that many of them have a very mixed social intake and have sought out and addressed special needs, they include some of the most successful comprehensive schools in the land.
On Monday, a BBC journalist approached me, preparatory to this debate, and suggested that the disproportionate success of grant-maintained schools in my constituency was a consequence of their rather generous funding, and that fairness required that that advantage be withdrawn and that all schools be placed in the same funding boat.
I would always suggest that the grant-maintained schools had enjoyed better funding, but I do not think that that equates to more generous funding. Grant-maintained schools--[Interruption.] If the Minister for School Standards will allow me, I shall point out that grant-maintained schools enjoyed a replication of the local education authority's locally managed schools budget, with a central add-on to cover the costs that would otherwise have been provided by the local education authority but which the schools were then required to provide for themselves. That gave the schools the liberty to spend that central add-on on their own priorities rather than on priorities determined for them by the local education authority.
Locally managed schools, under the local education authority, continued to receive quite significant discretionary grants throughout the financial year. However, they never enjoyed the principal benefit of being able to budget and plan on the basis of receiving that financing.
That form of funding for schools has now been brought to an end and replaced by fair funding. If by "fair" we mean equal, the Minister has achieved an objective, because all schools will indeed now be funded according to the same formula. Nevertheless, the grant-maintained schools have suffered a very significant fall in their budgets this year--so much so that the Minister has had to introduce a measure of cash protection to cushion them from the effects of that fall. The very existence of cash protection is a recognition of the less favourable environment that grant-maintained schools now enjoy, and that was not a Government objective.
That is a failure of the Minister's policy because, as the right hon. Member for Tyneside, North (Mr. Byers),the then Minister for School Standards, said, the Government's objective was not
12.30 pm
"to cut the amount being spent on pupils in GM schools, but to increase the funding for pupils in other schools."
He said that he was engaged in a policy of
"levelling up."--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 12 February 1998; c. 461.]
Levelling up is not the experience of grant-maintained schools in south-west Hampshire. I have in my hand a
statement issued on 15 April 1999 by the headmasters of those schools. It may help to clarify the issue if I quote at a little length:
"We understood that one of the purposes of the Government's 'School Standards and Framework Act' was to extend the successful practices of the current Grant Maintained schools to all schools and the local education authorities were to be accountable for enabling schools to raise standards. Critical to the new Framework was the concept of Fair Funding . . .
as the sum to be
Fair Funding should have extended the local management of schools formula to provide delegation of funds for almost all services to all schools, in effect incorporating elements of the Central Grant. As 8.7 per cent. was . . . agreed"
"held back by the local education authority for such services, it would have been reasonable to expect that the local management of schools formula would provide additional delegation of this order.
That statement is signed by the head teachers of Applemore college, the Arnewood school, Burgate school and sixth form centre, Ringwood school, Testwood school and Hardley school and sixth form.
Far from it. The extra delegated amount is nearer 2.8 per cent. and Grant Maintained schools typically find their income 5.9 per cent. short of their . . . commitments . . . Indeed, the reduction in real terms is so great that the extra delegation together with inflationary increases would give some Grant Maintained schools a cash income for this year some 4 per cent. lower than they received last year.
This situation triggers a measure of 'cash protection' which . . . leaves the schools funding this year's incremental drift, pay rises and inflation from the equivalent of last year's income. These schools will need to lose teachers and support staff, reduce expenditure on educational resources and postpone improvements. Classes will be larger, computers fewer, books older and buildings less well maintained. The position is reflected also in the reductions to other 'special grants' where, for example, income for training teachers and regular income for capital improvements will halve.
In 2000-1, if cash protection ends, the position for some will become even more serious and an additional wave of budget cuts, typically 4 per cent. equating to 3 or 4 more teachers, will be necessary."
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