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The Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. David Blunkett): The figures that the hon. Lady put out in her press release today attempt to show what she has just described, but they do so by taking only the first three years of this Parliament and not including the full comprehensive spending review. In the previous Parliament, there was a fall of 0.3 per cent. in gross domestic product spent on education, and there will have been an increase of 0.2 per cent. of GDP as a proportion of national income in this Parliament.
Mrs. May: As this is Maths Year 2000, I suggest that the Secretary of State has a few maths lessons. The source of my figures is the Treasury and the Office for National Statistics--
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Jacqui Smith): My right hon. Friend is right.
Mrs. May: No, he is not right. Average spending by the last Conservative Government was 5 per cent. of national income and over the term of this Government, including the comprehensive spending review, it will be 4.7 per cent.
What does that mean in actual money? Just to keep spending at the same level as the previous Government, Labour would need to put in not an extra £19 billion, as the Government have claimed, but an extra £32 billion. They are already £13 billion short even of keeping level with the previous Government's spending on education. That is the reality of another broken promise.
What do the Government claim to be doing? They are announcing more money, more money, more money and more money. Indeed, the money for one programme has been announced 21 times. It is little surprise that, when they said education, education, education, they even had to announce that key policy three times. Every time that they announce more money, people think that it is new money, but it is not. We have looked at the Government's announcements of extra money for education in the past nearly three years and we have added them up. Do they come to the £19 billion that the Government told us that they would spend, or the £32 billion that they would need to spend to keep up with the last Conservative Government? No, they add up to £185 billion of extra spending on education--the equivalent of the Swedish GDP. It is a deliberate attempt by the Government to prove that they are doing something that they are not. They are saying one thing and doing another.
Tell that figure to the secondary school I visited on Friday, which says that it cannot even afford paper for its pupils. Tell that to the Queen Elizabeth high school in Hexham, which has written an open letter to the Secretary of State saying:
- "Our goodwill is being severely tested by poor staff facilities in deteriorating buildings, by relentlessly increasing class sizes and by a lack of money to invest in the kinds of support which teachers need if they are to succeed.
We would welcome an explanation from you as to how, when faced with new challenges to meet, including Curriculum 2000, a real terms cut in the budget is being proposed for our school. This can only lead to a deterioration in our already unsatisfactory working environment and, ultimately, a deterioration in student achievement."
Mrs. May: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I have visited schools in Northumberland and heard directly from them the genuine concerns that they have about the funding problems that they face. They hear what the Secretary of State tells them about money going into education, but they do not see it in their budgets. What they see are deteriorating conditions for their pupils.
Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge): In my constituency, the standard spending assessment per pupil--in real terms, at 2000-2001 prices--fell from £2,578 in 1992 to £2,464 at the end of the previous Government's term of office. Since then, it has increased to £2,591 under this Government--an all-time high, and higher than it ever was under a Tory Government.
Mrs. May: I am pleased to say that Conservative- controlled Cambridgeshire county council has increased the amount spent on education above the SSA level. It is spending more than the increase that the Government have proposed.
However, the problem of funding is not confined to Northumberland. A letter sent out to parents of a school in Dorset stated:
- "The general view being given is that Education is receiving substantial increases in funding from Central Government leading to higher level of funding in individual schools. The fact is that most of this increased funding is targeted at specific initiatives and Dorset County Council is required to make an equal contribution. School budgets in Dorset are at best standing still and in many cases reducing."
- "Education, education, education--"
Mrs. May: The Secretary of State chooses to laugh, but I remind him that the Isles of Scilly authority is this country's best-performing local education authority. It has said:
- "Education, education, education. That was Mr. Blair's sound bite at the last election. Remember? Now the best Primary Schools in the country are coming under threat."
Mr. Blunkett: I do not think it funny, but it is amusing that the hon. Lady should cite figures relating to the Isles
of Scilly authority, which has a cohort of 1,500 and no secondary school. Moreover, that LEA has invited me to open the extra facilities paid for by the new deal for schools.
Mrs. May: I suggest that the Secretary of State prepare himself for the comments that he may hear from those schools. However, I am interested in what is happening in all this country's schools, not just in the chosen few. Unlike the right hon. Gentleman, I do not want to reject the Isles of Scilly simply because that LEA does not have any secondary schools. The right hon. Gentleman says that what is happening in those primary schools does not matter and that they should not be quoted as an example, yet the parents and teachers involved are worried about what is happening as a result of this Government's failure to deliver on their education pledges.
Mr. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield): Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem goes further than the amount of money that is not getting to the chalk face? The Government made another promise before the election. Labour party spokesmen--they are Ministers now--said that a Labour Government would equalise the amounts of funding available to counties, and that they would resolve that problem in their first year in office. However, the Government are now saying that they will not even consider the matter until after the next election. When the Minister for School Standards was asked about that, she said that Staffordshire and other counties should not worry and that Wigan and Poole were worse off than Lichfield.
Mrs. May: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I intend to comment on some of the funding inequities that exist between the education authorities. The Government promised to sort out the problem inside one year but, three years on, they have not even started looking at the matter. That is yet another broken promise--another of the Government's failures to deliver on one of the pledges that they made when they took office.
Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater): If the Secretary of State is going to make fun of the Scilly Isles, perhaps, on the way there, he might be encouraged to call in to the secondary school in Somerset that I visited on Friday. They were discussing whether full-time teachers or part-time assistants, in one form or another, would have to have their hours cut, how great the reductions would be and how strange they found it that, three years into education, education, education, they should be facing such a situation.
Mrs. May: My right hon. Friend rightly points out the very real decisions that schools have to take against the background of the Government's failure. The Secretary of State always quotes broad figures, but the reality is what is happening in schools in Somerset, such as that to which my right hon. Friend referred. Difficult, harsh decisions are being taken about teaching staff and classroom assistant redundancies, reductions in the number of courses and the inability to buy the equipment and books needed for the school. That is the reality of this Government's education policies. Yet they continue to try to spin themselves out of the problem.
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