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Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold): Would my hon. Friend care to comment on the situation in Gloucestershire? I had a letter from the Secretary of State, informing me that Gloucestershire local education authority, already one of the lowest funded of any county, was this year to receive a lower-than-average increase in standard spending assessment while having an above- average increase in the number of pupils. Gloucestershire LEA is so poor that it cannot afford to apply for the full amount of the new deal in schools, which the Secretary of State makes so much of, because it cannot produce the match funding. How should I respond to the teachers and head teachers in Gloucestershire who, for the second year running, have had a standstill budget for their schools?

Mrs. May: The answer to the head teachers and governors in those schools is that that is a direct result of the Government's education policies.

The spin does not even stop there. On several occasions, Ministers have said in the House that the Government are increasing the spending per pupil by £200. Yet the figures show that the average spending per pupil under this Government is more than £50 less than that under the previous Conservative Government. That is nothing new. We already knew that the average spending per student in higher education was £135 less under this Government than under the previous one--and that from a Government whose Prime Minister promised only last December that education will continue to have the first call on public resources. Or perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us this afternoon that that was just an aspiration.

Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath): While my hon. Friend is talking about the use of resources, would she care to comment on a matter that is raised repeatedly with me at schools in my constituency by teachers, head teachers and governors, about the amount of money that the Government spend on glossy brochures? They are besieging teachers and governors with vast amounts of publicity material containing Government spin--there is nothing in them to help with teaching, nothing to help pupils.

Jacqui Smith: Like what? Name just one.

Mr. Hawkins: Every day, another glossy brochure arrives. If the Government spent less money on them, would that not be better for education?

Mrs. May: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was in a primary school recently, where the head teacher pointed to a bookshelf full of glossy Government publications. She said that she wished that she had only a very small percentage of the money that was being spent on those to spend in her school. Perhaps the Secretary of State could offer to stop publishing his speeches in glossy publications--that would save a little money.

The Government, faced with the reality of their actions, will never take responsibility for them. They always try to blame the local education authorities. The Secretary of State is keen to tell us how much more money LEAs are getting for education--he can even get the figure up to an increase of more than 8 per cent.--but those are fantasy figures. The actual amount of money received by the authorities is much less, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) pointed out. However,

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I do not need to rely on my hon. Friends to point that out to me. The Secretary of State told us so--at least, he told that to the School Teachers Review Body in a letter written last December.

Mr. Blunkett: That is old news.

Mrs. May: The Secretary of State says that they heard that last week. I am sorry, but I am going to quote a different part of the letter today. Is the Secretary of State saying that he is embarrassed about his letter to the School Teachers Review Body, and that he does not want his words to be repeated so that more people understand the reality of his actions?

In the letter, the Secretary of State said--far from the 8 per cent. increase that he had claimed local authorities would receive--that

"some authorities have receive grant increases which would make a pay award much greater than inflation difficult to handle. For example, Newcastle has an education uplift of only 3.47 per cent., Sunderland has 3.44 per cent. and Middlesbrough has 3.67 per cent."

That does not sound like more than 8 per cent. to me--even if the Department has its figures right.

Imagine the consternation in Leicestershire when the local education authority--the lowest-funded shire county authority--was told that its share of the £50 million Government grant to LEAs would be £8,000. Leicestershire had been given the figure for the Isles of Scilly, and every LEA was told the wrong grant figure. How much did that piece of departmental incompetence cost schools?

Leicestershire is a member of the new deal-fair deal group--formerly G40--and my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), and my hon. Friends the Members for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan), for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) and for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) wrote to the press to point out the absurdity of the Government's position. If Leicestershire county council spent what the Government advise, it would have to cut education spending by £85 a pupil. Instead, the council--under a Conservative leader--is increasing education spending.

The Secretary of State does not even listen when authorities want to discuss funding with him. Last November, the chairman of the regional assembly for Yorkshire and Humberside wrote to the Secretary of State about education funding. He wrote to the permanent secretary in late January on the same subject. In his letter, he said:

"One common problem we face . . . is the relatively poor level of funding for education in the region that is available through the Standard Spending Assessment when compared with other regions, not to mention Scotland."

The chairman was writing on his own behalf, and for the chairmen of all the local authorities in Yorkshire. He has yet to receive a reply.

The Government try to blame LEAs, but are simultaneously increasing control over what the authorities do. More and more, money is made available only if the LEA does what the Government tell it to. In a letter to me on 25 January, the Minister for School Standards said that

"£50 million extra grant . . . will go to all local education authorities."

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However, some authorities, such as Shropshire, have been told that they will receive the money only if they do as the Government say they should on their SSAs.

The best example of central control is the standards fund. The money will be spent on the Government's priorities, not on the priorities of the schools. With this Government, children come last.

Liz Blackman (Erewash): As the debate is on education, and fundamentally, therefore, about children, will the hon. Lady mention improved standards at some point?

Mrs. May: If the hon. Lady had been listening to the beginning of my speech, she would have heard me quote comments from teachers to the effect that the problems caused by her Government's failure to deliver in education are causing a real threat to school standards. That is the reality of the situation. The hon. Lady may shrug her shoulders, but I suggest that she visits schools in Northumberland, because that was the view expressed by a school in Hexham and in others in that county.

Under the standards fund, Labour-controlled Luton is receiving the equivalent of £114 pupil while Conservative-controlled Wokingham receives less than £55. Is that fair funding? The Government said that there would be a cap on the amount of money in the standards fund, but the proportion of education total spending provided through the fund will rise from 1.8 to 7.6 per cent. The point is that that money is being spent on what the Government think right, not on what schools think right. Schools should be given budgets and the freedom to decide what is right for them. It is common sense to say that heads and teachers know best what is right in the classroom. We want freedom for schools--not departmental dictatorship. The greatest madness in the Government's funding figures is that Sheffield has to cut school budgets in order to obtain access to Government funding--robbing Peter to pay Paul.

My hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) referred to bureaucracy. Much is spent on that. We asked teachers about bureaucracy and they told us:

"Bureaucracy has increased massively since the Labour Government came to power."

They confirmed that bureaucracy had certainly increased, saying:

"The bureaucratic burden on heads is such that being with children in a classroom occasionally has to be firmly held as a priority or is lost under tides of policies and administration."

The damage to schools and to children's education does not stop with funding and with increased bureaucracy. One of the Government's first acts was to abolish grant-maintained status, despite their manifesto commitment that

"Schools that are now grant maintained will prosper with Labour's proposals."

Prosper--as their budgets fall, as they are forced to make teachers redundant, as they are forced to cut back on courses or as they ask parents to pay? Perhaps the Secretary of State would like to ask the Prime Minister about that last point.

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Another of Labour's promises that bit the dust when they came into office was that grammar schools were safe in their hands. In a letter of 10 February 1997 about Wirral, the Prime Minister, then the Leader of the Opposition, wrote:

"Let me put the record straight. A Labour Government will not close your grammar schools. That is my personal guarantee."

However, the guarantee went further. In 1997, the Secretary of State said:

"There's no threat to the continuance of the grammar schools or to their ethos or their quality."

He said that he had felt "enormous energy" when he had visited Wirral grammar school for girls. I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman will need only the energy to run away from parents who see their children's educational chances being taken away by the Government.

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