| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Clarke: I am happy to respond. On "The World at One" on Radio 4 on 30 December 2002, the Leader of the Opposition said that his colleagues, including the shadow Chief Secretary,
- "are looking at the target of 20 per cent. savings across the board in Government spending. That's what we are looking at, and we are beginning to come up with figures that will build towards that total."
James Purnell: Has my right hon. Friend noticed that the Tory policy on higher education involves a 20 per cent. cut? Has he noticed that the Tories have guaranteed the defence budget and the international development budget, but not the education budget? Is it not, therefore, the height of hypocrisy for them to call a debate on funding, when they are secretly planning to cut it?
Mr. Clarke: My hon. Friend is right. We hope that the hon. Member for Ashford might win some of his battles in the shadow Cabinet and get a commitment to education spending, alongside those to other Departments.
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): Can the Secretary of State confirm to the House that the funding pressures on Kent, which has received an increase in its education budget that amounts to only just over half of the funding pressures, will be repeated under the local government settlement plans for next year and the year after, so that the remarkable achievement whereby Kent has managed to passport through all the money that the schools need this year will be impossible to repeat for the next two years?
Mr. Clarke: I shall come to that point in a moment. There is well over £10 million still to be allocated by Kent to individual schools, and I hope and am confident that it will do so.
As the hon. Member for Ashford said, there were two significant changes in the distribution of the national resource this year. The first is the change in the local government funding formula, to which he referred, whereby we introduced a 3.2 per cent. floor for all local
education authorities to deal with the situation. The second was the decision to shift the standards fund to local government, for which colleagues in local government had pressed for a considerable time. Those changes have led to distributional effects that, as I have long acknowledged, give rise to particular issues. But the national funding has been more than enough to cover the funding pressures.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): Given the Secretary of State's unwise fulminations against local education authorities, and the fact that £1.2 million in leadership incentive grant has not been allocated by Buckinghamshire county council because he has not given permission to the authority to do so, does he understand why, on 23 April this year, I received a letter from a teacher in my constituency who wrote that if there were A-levels in bullying, arrogance and incompetence, he would pass all three with flying colours?
Mr. Clarke: I am grateful for the compliment from the hon. Gentleman. I shall deal directly with Buckinghamshire, to answer the point that he raises.
Each local education authority has taken four decisions about distributing money to schools in its area: first, whether to passport the money through; secondly, how much to keep in its central schools budget for the LEA as a whole, and how much to distribute to individual schools; thirdly, how much to allocate from its own revenue to capital; and fourthly, what local formula the money is spent on.
The Government position on each of those aspects is clear. First, the money should be 100 per cent. passported. Secondly, the money that goes should be passed on to individual schools, and that is where it should be spent. Thirdly, the revenue should be spent principally on revenue, because there is other capital funding. I shall deal in a moment with the point raised by the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow). Fourthly, the local formula should be fair and not give very high increases to certain schools, and very low increases or even decreases to others.
Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West): My right hon. Friend will know that Buckinghamshire county council has demonstrated a 10 per cent. variation in the funding that it gives to different schools. He will also be aware that in attainment in schools in Buckinghamshire, there is an extraordinary fourfold difference in the percentage of pupils in secondary schools gaining five GCSEs. Has he looked to see whether the variation in funding is aimed at improving performance in the schools performing poorly, or the opposite—giving even more money to schools that are already favoured and taking money away from less favoured schools?
Mr. Clarke: My hon. Friend is right. I shall come to Buckinghamshire in a moment, as it illustrates the point that she makes to articulately.
I hope that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will make clear their positions on these issues, as I have done. Conservative Westminster has passported only
73.8 per cent. of its budget. Conservative Wandsworth, which the hon. Member for Ashford favoured, has passed on only 92.9 per cent. of its increase. It is a bit of a nerve to cite Marylebone school when it is his own Tory friends in Westminster who are not providing the funds for Marylebone schools. I hope that the Lib Dems will explain why Liverpool city council has passported only 94.9 per cent. of its budget through.My position is clear. I urge all authorities to passport 100 per cent. of their money. My challenge to the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is for them to commit themselves to the same approach in relation to their political colleagues. With reference to Westminster and Wandsworth, I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the band D council tax for Wandsworth is £584, and for Westminster it is £570, compared with £1,082 for Lewisham and £1,034 for Southwark, but still they will not passport the money to fund the schools properly in their areas.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon, South): May I draw the Secretary of State's attention to a press release from Labour-controlled Croydon council entitled "Education Secretary—Climbdown on Croydon Passporting"? It states that he accepted Croydon's proposal for the schools budget, which allowed a 90.2 per cent. level of passporting. That is an acknowledgement that he agreed to £1.7 million being taken out of the schools budget and used on social services and other things.
Mr. Clarke: I have directly intimated to Croydon that I believe that it should be passporting much more than 90.2 per cent. I acknowledge the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. In my opinion, Croydon, which is Labour-controlled, as he said, should be passporting in the same way as others. However, my challenge to the Conservative party and Liberal Democrat leadership is to ask whether they are prepared to join me in saying that the money should be passported in that way.
Mrs. Gillian Shephard (South-West Norfolk): I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. He has spoken with disapproval about authorities that have failed to passport the full amount to schools. Would he care to comment on Norfolk, where the full amount has been passported, in addition to extra funds, by the Conservative-controlled county council? As has been mentioned, however, we are also facing 92 teacher redundancies, two of which are at the Old Buckenham high school in my constituency. Is he aware that the deadline for finalising those arrangements for redundancies is the end of this month? What can he say to reassure those teachers and the governors, parents and people of Norfolk that those redundancies will not take place?
Mr. Clarke: I am happy to pay tribute to the Conservative-run Norfolk county council—I have done so on many occasions, including in the Eastern Daily Press, which I think the right hon. Lady will read—for carrying out the passporting as it has done. Moreover, to be fair to the county, when we allocated extra money to deal with the 3.2 per cent. floor, it allocated still further money. It is trying in that respect, but the
question arises about the allocation of resources at the local education authority to individual schools. That has been the subject of debate.
Mr. Bellingham: Will the Secretary of State give way before he moves on?
Mr. Clarke: No—I wish to deal with school budgets and individual schools. I shall say again what I have said previously about passporting: the Government are absolutely committed to money being passported out to individual schools. However, in Conservative-controlled Cambridge, 3.3 per cent. less is going to individual schools than the budget; in Conservative Cheshire, the figure is 2.8 per cent.; in Conservative Kensington and Chelsea, 3.6 per cent.; and under the Liberal Democrats in their new position in Bournemouth, 2.9 per cent. I ask again whether the leaders of the other parties will commit themselves, as I do, to saying that the money that local education authorities have should be passed on to individual schools and not held simply for central services.
Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford): I agree that the other parties have much to answer for. However, I am dealing with my local authority, Lewisham. As my right hon. Friend knows, it is a beacon authority that is working well with the Government. Unfortunately—I hope that we will get some help on this—it tells me that it needs another £3 million to stave off cuts. It has done everything that he has asked it to do, but it is unable to supply moneys from the capital budget, which is needed to keep our schools safe and open. Does he agree that there is a special case in some London boroughs?
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |