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8.46 pm
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire): I welcome this opportunity to speak on the Queen's Speech. I am glad that the Secretary of State for Education and Employment is in his place. I am disappointed in the Queen's Speech. The slogan that the Government used so effectively in the general election campaign was "education, education, education", but for their legislative programme the slogan seems to be "no action, no action and even less action."
The Secretary of State and the Government have failed to deliver to schools, despite their promises of extra resources for them. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend
the Leader of the Opposition said at his policy document launch a few weeks ago that we are committed to ensuring that the money that the Government are setting aside for education goes directly to schools.
The Secretary of State missed an opportunity when he came up with his great idea of education action zones, which I think have some merit. However, at the same time as he set them up, he destroyed the other part of freedom in education--the grant-maintained schools, which were able to take their own decisions with all the money available to them. I regret that he has done nothing to ensure that the money goes direct to the schools.
I have long taken an interest in education funding, both when we were in government and now that we are in opposition. The Secretary of State knows of the growing concern about differentials in the area cost adjustment. In opposition, he often said that the ACA would be sorted out and changed as soon as he was in government, but we have seen no action by the Government. Only a few weeks ago, an answer from the Minister for Local Government and the Regions said that they had no intention of changing it for at least the next three years.
Mr. David Taylor:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. McLoughlin:
No, because of the lack of time.
When Labour gave the impression throughout the previous Parliament that the ACA would be changed quickly, I think that it deliberately misled people in several constituencies.
I have some sympathy with the Secretary of State on how local education authorities pass money on to schools. That is where he and the Government have failed miserably to act. In our policy document, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition says that we will act.
Not long ago, I asked the Minister for School Standards a question about LEAs' spending on education as a percentage of their total budget. I see the right hon. Lady coming into the Chamber now. She replied to me by way of a letter pursuant to her answer, so unfortunately it does not appear in Hansard. It shows that Buckinghamshire LEA spends 63 per cent. of its total on education. That is the highest percentage in the country. Derbyshire spends only 58 per cent. of its total income on education. If it spent at the same level as Buckinghamshire, it would spend an extra £28 million a year on education. That is a huge amount and a huge variation. The Secretary of State cannot be very happy with LEAs not spending money on what I imagine he wishes it to be spent on.
When I made the point about Buckinghamshire, I was told by the chairman of the Derbyshire education committee that I should not concern myself because Buckinghamshire was in the south and it was an unfair comparison, so I thought I would use neighbouring Staffordshire as an example. Staffordshire county council, of which I was a member some time ago, spends 63 per cent. of its total budget on education. When we talk about 4 or 5 per cent. of a county council's expenditure, we are talking about a large sum of money. If Derbyshire spent the same percentage as Staffordshire on education, it would spend an extra £28 million. That would be a huge increase.
It does not end there. It is not just a simple question of asking how much the LEA spends on education as a whole. We then have to consider the education authority's slicing of the figures. I was pleased that not long ago the Secretary of State published figures on delegation to schools, but even that tells only part of the story. There is a budget called the total net expenditure on education, and then there is the general schools budget. Then there is the potential schools budget and the aggregate schools budget. Every time, slices come off the figures before the money goes to the schools.
The Government have lamentably failed to provide parents with full information on what direct funding is available to schools. At present, LEAs decide their priorities for education spending. I was disappointed in the past when education authorities deliberately thwarted central Government's plans to put money aside for certain things. Between 1986 and 1996, Derbyshire provided a school meals subsidy of more than £150 million. In the same period, Staffordshire provided a subsidy of £64 million. Derbyshire education authority decided to spend almost £90 million more on subsidising school meals, rather than allowing the money to go directly to schools. It is not surprising that a number of secondary schools in Derbyshire opted for grant-maintained status so that they could run their own budget and manage themselves in a substantially different way. If grant-maintained schools were good enough for the children of the then Leader of the Opposition, they are certainly good enough for everyone else.
The Secretary of State has missed a great opportunity. He talks tough but he acts soft. That is the truth. He is becoming the voice of the educational establishment, instead of the radical he tried to be. While he talks about reducing class sizes for five to seven-year-olds, those for the other age groups carry on increasing. That is because he is double counting. He says that he is increasing investment by about £19 billion, but he is in the same double-counting mode as the Chancellor of the Exchequer--no doubt he has to be. Figures from the Department for Education and Employment show that the total spend in 1998-99 was £38.2 billion and that, in 2001-02, it is planned to be £47.8 billion. That is not the increase of £19 billion that the Secretary of State and, indeed, the Prime Minister claimed.
Mr. Hilary Benn (Leeds, Central):
I can only describe the speech of the hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) as a blast from the past, rather than one that addresses the Queen's Speech.
Yesterday, I visited two primary schools which serve inner-city communities in my constituency. Both have a high proportion of children on free school meals--in one the proportion is 50 per cent., and in the other 66 per cent. Both have a large number of children with special educational needs; both experience a high and regular turnover of pupils; and both have staff and head teachers who work hard to create an oasis of calm in which their children can start to learn. They know that, for many of
their children, even getting to the starting blocks of learning--while their peers in more affluent areas are halfway down the track--is a major achievement in itself.
I hope that one of the messages that we send from this debate is our support and thanks to those teachers and support staff for the job that they do in the toughest of circumstances. However, what impressed me most about those head teachers was that neither of them regarded the circumstances from which their pupils came as a reason to have low expectations of what they would be able to achieve. On the contrary, those head teachers know how great is the need to give those children the same start in life that is enjoyed by others. They know that literacy and numeracy are crucial to children's life chances, and that what schools do makes a difference.
I am pleased that those two schools--one of which came out of special measures only recently--have achieved significant improvements in their key stage 2 standard assessment test results. Like many other schools in my constituency and throughout the country, these two schools have high ambitions for their children. As one secondary head told me recently:
Just as those head teachers have high expectations of their pupils, they also have high expectations of the Government. After two short years, there is much of which to be proud. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), who is not in the Chamber at the moment, described the Government's achievements and plans as timid.
We are well on the way to meeting our class size pledge. We shall double capital investment in school buildings and equipment by the end of this Parliament, which would have been a dream under the previous Conservative Government. We shall significantly increase education spending in real terms. We have put 10 million new books into our schools. Schools have implemented the literacy and numeracy hours, and results have begun to improve. Inner-city schools such as those in my constituency now benefit from funding--for which they are most grateful--under the excellence in cities initiative, precisely because it recognises the greater challenges that they face. There is nothing timid about that programme; on the contrary, it shows real achievement.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would be the first to acknowledge, however, that much more remains to be done. In the end, although we may provide support, encouragement and investment, it is the schools that make the difference. They deserve our praise and encouragement as they do so, even though not all teachers are yet convinced about everything that the Government are doing--we might as well acknowledge that fact.
I had the misfortune to watch the Conservative party political broadcast last week, and I was genuinely astonished when the Leader of the Opposition criticised the Queen's Speech because it contained no Bill to raise school standards. That is odd because there is a Bill to raise school standards--the special educational needs Bill. It tells us all that we need to know about the Conservatives' view of raising standards that they do not regard a Bill on special needs as being about raising standards.
"It's not that our children are any less intelligent. It is just that they lack self-confidence."
We know that education offers confidence.
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