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11 Apr 2003 : Column 549—continued
Mr. Challen: I wonder where the right hon. Lady's argument is going, although I am sure that we will find out. Is she saying that conditions in her constituency call for more state intervention in areas such as the housing market? Of course, many of the problems with pensions are related to stock market conditions. Does she want state intervention in the stock market?
Virginia Bottomley: I made it clear that the Government are not entirely responsible for the pension crisis. However, they have made a substantial contribution to it and the Budget offers no comfort for pensioners. The £5 billion tax raid on pension funds is an outrageous attack for which people are still paying the price.
I am pleased that the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Mr. Challen) has provoked me into elaborating further. Of course, the south-east pays the lion's share of tax. We belong to one nation and we accept that the better-off should pay more tax. However, the way in which that is translated to the council tax system is unacceptable because more again is taken from people in areas such as mine, although many are on extremely low incomes and have no disposable income. The cost of an average house in Waverley is £275,000, which is dramatically higher than elsewhere in the country, even Greater London.
However, a teacher receives an additional allowance of only £870 a year. A teacher in inner London would receive an extra £6,000 a year.
Mr. Love: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Virginia Bottomley: I shall not because I know that the hon. Gentleman will have the chance to make his comments. I want to convey the points about which I feel strongly and deeply on behalf of my constituents.
My area faces a dilemma in providing housing for key workers, and especially teachers, because the Government have abolished the local authority housing grant. Much worse, the system of pooling capital receipts means that they plan to redistribute elsewhere 75 per cent. of the money that Waverley receives from selling council houses. My local authority has made every possible effort to invest in social housing and has more initiatives than anywhere in the south-east, but the Government's latest measures will damage its ability to provide for that key group in its population.
I want to move on to talk a little about universities, because the Secretary of State touched on that subject. They also face the tax hike through the national insurance contributions and, in my part of the world, they also face problems of accommodation. I am worried about how we are going to encourage people to come into the public sector if the effect of the Government's proposals is that students end up with higher and higher amounts of debt. I worry that that will distort their decisions.
Perhaps more crucial to the Government's point—a Government who tax and tax, spend and spend, and have simply failed to deliver results—is the question of how they are to crack the dilemma of achieving change and demonstrable results. Given that there has been a 22 per cent. increase in health spending and only a 1.6 per cent. increase in the number of patients treated, the Government are right to be alarmed. So what have they done? They have announced taskforces, tsars and think tanks. They have also introduced a great raft of productivity teams, set up by the Chancellor, the Prime Minister and all manner of other bodies.
What the Government fail to do, however, is to learn any lessons from the commercial world. It was interesting that, in his speech, the Chancellor mentioned Sir John Parker and Ben Verwaayen, and that, today, we have heard mention of Howard Davies. Time and again, we are told about captains of industry advising on taskforces and think tanks, but the Government do not learn the lessons from all those people about how to manage and to deliver results. Every time something goes right, Ministers take the glory, but every time something goes wrong, public servants get a kicking. That does not make the public sector a particularly inviting place to work. If the Government deliberately stoke up a blame culture, it causes resentment.
It was interesting that the Secretary of State did not mention a single head teacher or head of a university. I would like him to come to Surrey university to meet Professor Patrick Dowling and see what he is doing to integrate the university with the community. I would also like him to come and meet Mr. Latham at Rodborough school. He is an example of best practice,
and a beacon of leadership, public service and commitment to young people. Why do the Government always mention captains of industry rather than the leaders in the field? I have refrained from talking about health today, but I feel this even more strongly about leadership in the health service. The managers always get a kicking; the leaders in the public sector never get the respect that they deserve and to which they are entitled. If the Government stood by public servants who are going through difficult times, it would do a great deal to improve morale.
Mr. Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Hall Green): Like you did.
Virginia Bottomley: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying that, because I did, indeed, stand by public officials. Nobody would gainsay that, and I am proud of it. I have spent most of my career in the public sector, and I believe that we are very fortunate to have people of such calibre, commitment and integrity in it. This is one of the issues closest to the heart of the Government's difficulty over delivery.
The Budget touched on another area about which I want to make a small point. Michael Queen's speech at the British Venture Capital Association's annual general meeting dealt with the factors that lead to economic growth. The elements that he identified included population growth, productivity, a fair approach to taxation and an efficient public sector. I have made it clear that, at the moment, we do not have a fair approach to taxation—particularly local taxation—and I am afraid that, for reasons that are all too clear, we have not yet managed to turn every pound of public money spent into a pound of value, in terms of improvements in our public services. Population growth is a key area—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Lady's time is up.
12.14 pm
Mr. Colin Challen (Morley and Rothwell): We could describe this as a consolidating Budget, so it is perhaps appropriate to take stock of what the Labour Government have achieved since 1997, particularly in education, which is the key driver of the growth and development not only of individuals but of the whole country.
We can look back on the past six years with considerable satisfaction, for the improvement in results has been marked. The schools in my constituency show consistent overall improvement. While that has not always been equal across the board every year for every school, it is clear that young people can now expect a better education. That is not a miracle or an accident. It reflects the hard work of teachers and the extra resources that they have been given to support their teaching. I am pleased that the Government have put such emphasis on improving every school. The previous Government were more interested in improving the lot of a select few at the expense of the many, as their ill-fated nursery voucher scheme showed.
This year has been another good one for my local schools. In the past 12 months, I have been to the openings of two brand-new primary schools, Hilltop
and Asquith, as well as the openings of a new extension at Woodkirk high school and of the new teaching block at Rodillian high school. As one who remains sceptical about many aspects of the private finance initiative, may I say that it was most welcome in the case of Hilltop primary? People have been waiting for a replacement school since the 1940s. However, Leeds can now anticipate a huge £60 million investment in new school buildings if the bid from Education Leeds ultimately succeeds.Despite my reservations about the PFI, I want the bid to succeed, for the sake of all the children who in too many cases are still taught in unacceptably poor and dilapidated classrooms. During my visits to local schools, I have often been shocked by the condition of the buildings. We cannot accept that situation any longer, and with this Government we are not doing so.
I congratulate the Government on dramatically increasing capital funding to address those problems. In 1996–97, when the Conservatives were last in power—I emphasise the word "last"—schools' capital funding was less than £700 million. By last year, it had risen to £3 billion. Next year, it will be £4.5 billion. If that does not show the Government's commitment to "education, education, education", I challenge anybody to tell us how they would cap it. I doubt that the Liberal Democrats would dare to. When the new teaching block at Rodillian high school was opened by a former pupil, he praised Labour's spending on education in the most glowing terms. That former pupil is now a Lib Dem peer, Lord Newby, and I recommend that his colleagues pay more attention to his words of wisdom, which for once avoided the usual Lib Dem flim-flam.
In this year alone, schools in my constituency are to receive revenue budget increases well above inflation. The average is 11 per cent. Most schools are receiving about that, but some are getting much higher increases of up to 20 per cent. We are getting to the stage where schools can be much more creative about how to go about their business. I praise the initiative of some of my local high schools, which, along with the Joseph Priestley college, local businesses and the brand-new library in Rothwell, have set up the South Leeds Partnership to work together to provide a broader curriculum for older students. They are collaborating to break down the barriers between schools and between schools and other places of education.
Some of those barriers relate to parental perceptions of how an individual school is performing and they can reflect "inner-city versus outer-city" prejudices, but by working to create a greater campus in which different establishments can contribute different strengths, we should see the beginnings of a new approach to education.
I want the strengths of schools to be enhanced, which is why I support schools developing specialisms and being recognised for that. Of course, all that has a cost attached, but at least we are moving into an era in which schools are at last getting budgets that reflect new demands and give them more choice on how to use their own income. However, one problem thrown up by that partnership approach is that varying pay scales between schools and colleges are causing problems with recruitment, retention and morale. College lecturers are
paid less than teachers, but the extent to which we depend on what some describe as the Cinderella of post-16 education is only now becoming apparent.We are seeing skill shortages in traditional areas. Indeed, we have heard how the shortages in certain trades mean that in some parts of the country plumbers are allegedly paid more than MPs. Some may say they deserve more, but I shall not pursue that line of argument.
There must be a great temptation for lecturers in various locations to go into trade on their own behalf. That scenario worries me. It reminds me of a short story by E. M. Forster called "The Machine Stops", in which a society obsessed with and dependent on new technology forgets how to maintain the basic functions that kept the wheels turning. Notwithstanding all our optimism about the knowledge-based economy, it will not be much use if additional skills are lost and we cannot flush our toilets.
I am pleased to learn from the Red Book that the Government are to ask Mike Tomlinson to review the question of how all post-14 educational options can be made more coherent and appealing to young people. I hope that the review will indeed address such issues. The emphasis that we have placed on meeting a target involving 50 per cent. of people attending university has in some ways made other forms of education look less appealing—as if the Government did not care as much about them. We need to correct that perception as soon as possible.
Let me now digress somewhat, and talk about the other end of the scale. I have referred to the concrete skills that the country needs to keep the wheels turning, but we must also ensure that universities are not prevented from engaging in what some might describe as esoteric research. We must resist the idea that some universities should separate teaching from research, and ditch the latter. I know that there are real fears that that is what the Government intend in the case of my degree subject, philosophy.
Those fears are based on the premise that some universities should generate more income by becoming, as it were, degree factories with no incentive to push the boundaries of knowledge. For me, going to university was not just about learning about the world as we found it but about exploring new ideas. If we truly want to be an innovative country, we must encourage pure research wherever we can. I do not want to debase philosophy, but that is how new products come into existence.
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