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Ms Keeble: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. St. Aubyn: I will come to the hon. Lady's comments shortly. I have described the result of the Government's policies. Earlier I was told that, somehow, I did not campaign hard enough for my area. I took it as a given that, wherever the Government's new money went, they would at least maintain the standard of care delivered by the previous Government.
When we were in office, we made sure that the areas that we did not represent--the poorer parts of the country--were very adequately funded. For example, over the past seven years of the Conservative Government, the funding per head in Gateshead increased well over the funding per head in Guildford. Since this Government came to power, they have skewed the formula, which already benefited the less well-off parts of the country to the detriment of the areas that Conservative Members represent.
That is the callous political calculation that we have seen and I am determined to expose it in the Adjournment debate that Madam Speaker has kindly granted me on 13 January. I hope that the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) will be present on that occasion, when she will be able to judge in depth the facts of the case. The hon. Lady said that the West Surrey health authority had a deficit in 1997. That is true; there was a small operating deficit--an accounting deficit. The funding needs of West Surrey were met in full by the previous Government. However, that accounting deficit demonstrated that the formula that threw it up was faulty. It showed that the measure of health need in areas such as mine was not adequately taken account of by the formula at that time. This Government's actions have made the position worse.
Conservative Members are concerned not just with the inputs but with the outputs. We are concerned that, despite the extra money that we are told is going into the health service today, the accident and emergency unit at the
Royal Surrey County hospital, which serves hundreds of thousands of people in my area, is still under threat of closure after today's announcement.
Mr. Love: Is the hon. Gentleman calling on the Government to spend more on health in the future?
Mr. St. Aubyn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He knows as well as I do that the Government's remit is to spend the money fairly. I am calling for fair treatment for my part of the country and the efficient allocation of that money. We achieved such efficient allocation with the internal market, the loss of which has directly led to some tragic cases.
I shall give Labour Members another example, drawn from the world of education. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) described how other countries, despite spending far more per head of population on education, have failed to deliver better results than we did when we were in power.
As a member of the Education and Employment Select Committee, I go round the world hearing how other countries have been drawn to the excellent example that this country achieved through our introduction of the national curriculum and external inspection, and other innovations such as the grant-maintained school, with which we were able to improve educational performance in this country.
Above all, I point out to Labour Members the example of the further education sector. It is often said that we live in the learning age, which for me began six years ago when the previous Conservative Government liberated further education colleges from the yoke of local education authorities. The colleges found that, standing on their own feet, they could deliver a 30 per cent. productivity improvement over six years. That meant that they were delivering the equivalent of 1 million extra full-time courses a year to adults and children in this country for the same real cost, without any discernible loss of quality.
When the Government say that they have put an end to boom and bust, let them not forget the role of further education colleges since 1993 in meeting the skills gap by educating the equivalent of an extra 1 million full-time students a year. That has made a dramatic impact on our economy, and it is a vital part of the golden legacy that the previous Government bequeathed to the incoming Administration.
I turn now to class sizes, on which I have tabled a question to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, for answer on 20 January. The Government came to power saying that they would cut class sizes in the first three years of full-time education. They put a cost on that programme of £100 million, which many might say was £100 million well spent. What we now learn, however, is that the cost of the programme has risen by more than six times, to £620 million.
As so many who gave evidence to the Select Committee told us, that money could have been spent on the far more urgent matter of teacher supply and the need to raise the quality of our teaching staff. Whatever the class size, the quality of the teacher is the overriding determinant of how well the children learn.
There is another way in which to view the fantastic overspend by the Department for Education and Employment in delivering the class size pledge. We can
ask ourselves what would have been the cost of delivering the pledge if, to reduce class sizes, the Department had decided to purchase those extra places from the independent sector.We hear a great deal from the Government about public-private partnership and about introducing new players into education, but when it comes to the private sector players who have the most experience of teaching kids, suddenly an iron curtain comes down. An old-fashioned "us and them" attitude pervades the Government, and they want nothing to do with the independent sector.
Nevertheless, we ask what would have been the cost of purchasing the 6,000 places from independent schools throughout the country which would have enabled all pupils in each of the first three years in state schools to be in classes of fewer than 30 pupils. That cost would have been just £10 million a year, or a total of £40 million over four years, as opposed to £620 million. That £40 million is less than half of the amount that the Government originally said they would spend, and less than a tenth of what they will now spend to deliver their class size pledge.
That is a dramatic example of how, if we are to deliver value for money to our constituents, we must measure the outputs and the results of Government measures, not just the money that they pour in. As we have seen time and again, the Government have wasted and misallocated that money at the expense of our constituents' needs.
Liz Blackman: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, no matter how good the teaching, when class sizes reach 44 or 45 pupils, as they did in my constituency, the optimum level at which children learn is capped?
Mr. St. Aubyn: I entirely agree with the hon. Lady that one of the side effects of the Government's programme is that, in their first year in office, the number of children in classes of more than 40 doubled--partly as a result of the pressures on teacher supply created by the Government's early years programme, which would have been relieved entirely if they had purchased the extra places from the independent sector. The hon. Lady makes a valuable contribution to the point that I am trying to make, and I am grateful to her for it.
The question of output relates directly to the debate started by my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) on the tax burden. We notice time and again how Ministers shy away from admitting how much the tax burden has increased under this Government. At the same time as delivering worse value for money, they are increasing the tax burden.
Of course we on the Conservative Benches want a lower tax burden, because we believe that lower taxes are an incentive to members of our society to work harder and contribute more. We proved that in the 1980s and 1990s when in office. We also believe that investment is improved in a low-tax economy. It is more carefully allocated and that leads to greater wealth and an expansion of the tax base. A faster-expanding tax base is worth far more in extra revenue in the long run than a higher tax burden. We will always trade a lower tax burden for the resultant faster expanding tax base, and that is why we will deliver better-quality services in health and education in the medium to long term.
Where would the cost of lowering the tax burden fall? Clearly, it should not fall on health and education, as our amendment makes clear. It should fall on other areas of government. It should be achieved by programmes to convince the workshy to get back into work and to reduce the dependency culture. The latter not only saves the Revenue and the taxpayer a great deal but provides a better future for those in the dependency cycle.
Ms Keeble: The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues constantly express a hard-right, Thatcherite view of the tax burden, but it is interesting to note that in 1985--I am sure that he will accept this--the tax burden was only 0.1 per cent. lower than it is now. That was during what he considers to be the heyday of his Government's policy of low taxation. His argument simply does not hold water.
Mr. St. Aubyn: The fact is that tax burden fell throughout the golden years of the 1980s, to which I shall come in a moment if I have time. With the tax burden percentage in the low 30s, we were able to increase public spending at the same time as repaying Government debt and cutting taxes. That was the agenda on which we went to the country in 1987 and on which we won a record third term in office. Those were indeed the golden years of our economy, which this Government are sadly nowhere in sight of repeating.
That leads me to the question of boom and bust. Yes, there was boom and bust in our economy. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] The years of Labour government in the 1970s were almost entirely bust; there was never any boom. At the end of that term in office, there had been no real growth in the economy for a whole Parliament--just massive inflation. In the 1960s, our level of growth was well below that of our competitors in Europe and America, but in the 1980s and 1990s, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester made clear, we achieved a massive increase in output. Yes, there was a price to be paid in restructuring our economy.
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