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Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. Is not the problem an absence of joined-up government? The Department for Education and Skills appears to disapprove of the SEN expenditure that my hon. Friend described, whereas the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) has commended precisely such expenditure across the Floor of the House to me and to many others.
Alistair Burt: My hon. Friend makes an admirable point. The Government cannot have it all ways. They cannot pit Minister against Minister and education provision against education provision, and try to come out top on all occasions. In the present case, the problem has been caused by a miscalculation of what is needed and a desperate attempt to cover it up. That is what is so wrong. Governments do not always get it right in the allocation of resources, but the least that they can do in those circumstances is say, "Sorry, we got it wrong" and not try to blame everyone else.
The Government also criticised my local authority in respect of unallocated devolved funding, as it is called. As the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) made clear, the money may be unallocated, but it is certainly earmarked. All the money is already designated and is needed by schools for anticipated expenditure. It is not money available, like some form of seventh cavalry, to dig out the local authority and the schools from problems of teacher wage rises, superannuation costs and national insurance. The Government cannot have apples and pears. It is grossly unfair to criticise local authorities for unallocated funding.
My local authority, like many others, has rebutted the charge made by Government. It would do all of us some good, and it would do the Secretary of State some good, if he showed the same degree of contrition in the House this afternoon as he did on the local television
programme when he had to admit that the Labour party was losing so many seats around the country because of the Government's failure to deliver basic public services as well as people required.I make two points in conclusion. First, the Government should be bolder in relation to local authority control. They should give greater freedom to schools and governors, and consequently to parents and teachers, to have more control over their own budgets. Secondly, they should end their demand that everybody should bid for more and more initiatives in order to qualify for extra money. That takes time, effort and money, and schools are sick and tired and have had enough of it.
Two issues have come together. First, there is the frustrated professionalism of teachers and those in schools who want to be left alone to get on with their job. They want the money to be given to them so that they can make the decisions about their needs. Secondly, there is a sense in Bedfordshire that schools, parents, teachers, pupils and governors are not getting a fair deal from this Government. The combination of miscalculation, failure to admit the error and blame heaped on local authorities has left a distinctly bad taste in Bedfordshire. The county, its teachers and those in schools are doing their very best. It would be appreciated if the Government could acknowledge that and make this one of the few times in their life when they say "Sorry for the mess that we have caused you."
ROYAL ASSENT
Madam Deputy Speaker: I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that Her Majesty has signified her Royal Assent to the following Act:
Northern Ireland Assembly (Elections and Periods of Suspension) Act 2003.
School Funding
Question again proposed, That the original words stand part of the Question.
4.20 pm
Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who shares a boundary with my local education authority in Cambridgeshire. I am sure that he will be one of the first to acknowledge that, in the past, Bedfordshire has done extremely well in comparison with Cambridgeshire. On many occasions, when parents, teachers and governors in my constituency have wanted to show up the unfairness of the previous funding system, they have pointed out that in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, where authorities attracted the area cost adjustment, schools have sometimes been funded as much as £100 per pupil more than in Cambridge. It has been very hard to explain to parents why that is the case and why a child in Cambridgeshire has been worth so much less than a child in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire or Essex, when we face similar costs and circumstances, so I can understand why he may well feel a little aggrieved that the huge discrepancy and unfairness are now beginning to be put right.
Cambridgeshire has suffered for many years and is now on the road to recovery, but it is worth looking back to what happened in 1990, when we moved away from the old poll tax system and the then Government introduced standard spending assessments. At that stage, it was impossible to calculate whether an individual county council covered a high-cost area. Cambridgeshire was lumped together with Suffolk and Norfolk, which were low-cost areas, so it did not attract the area cost adjustment given to Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex. Another problem in 1990 was the fact that Conservatives controlled the county council, as they do now. Their leader, Lady Blatch, believed that it was incumbent on her to reduce spending as much as possible, as well as the poll tax, and subsequently the council tax.
In 1990, Cambridgeshire had historically low spending. The way in which the previous formula worked meant that the area continued to suffer because of the low level that applied in 1990. I am pleased that this Government have had the courage to put that formula right. I believe that we will see a much more equal distribution of funding in future. We have started the process this year and it will continue over the next few years as the damping mechanism evens itself out.
I was surprised to hear the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), who is, sadly, no longer in his place, criticise the damping mechanism. I would have been inclined to criticise it, because the funding of my local education authority, Cambridgeshire, ended up at the ceiling because the level that it had been allocated was higher than the ceiling. Cambridgeshire has lost money this year owing to the damping mechanism. I cannot complain too loudly, however, because Cambridge city council, which is the other part of my two-stage local authority system, was funded at
the floor, rather than at the ceiling. One of my local authorities is funded at the floor, and the other is funded at the ceiling.
Mr. Chaytor: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital that those authorities that have been caught by the ceiling this year receive, as the years go by, the full award to which they are entitled through the new formula spending share, FSS, system, and that the campaign that has been orchestrated this year by the former beneficiaries of the standard spending assessment, SSA, system does not result in clawback and the ceiling being posited as the absolute limit of future grants?
Mrs. Campbell: I could not agree more. That has implications for Cambridge city council, which is at the floor. My hon. Friend will understand the dilemma that I face. I think that the money should go into education, and I concur with his view that over the next few years authorities that were funded at the ceiling this year should eventually receive their due in full.
I have to say to my hon. Friend the Minister that Cambridgeshire did not expect to do very well out of the local government settlement. Shortly before the settlement was announced in November, the local authority decided to hold a meeting with head teachers to warn them that although they might be hoping to get a large increase in their funding this year, they should expect very little. Expectations were therefore very low. In fact, Cambridgeshire got £20 million more than it expected in the November settlement, and people were very pleased. That is a much fairer settlement for my local authority.
I want to explain to my hon. Friend the problems that teachers face in my constituency. The average cost of a three-bedroom house in Cambridge is just over £200,000. A teacher who earns about £22,000 and has a mortgage of £150,000—that assumes that they have accumulated considerable savings—will face repayments of around £800 a month: half their take-home pay. That puts teachers in a difficult position. It also puts schools in a difficult position, in that it is hard to attract teachers to Cambridge unless they have some other form of income, such as a partner who is earning a good deal more money.
Another problem is that a teacher earning £22,000 a year will not qualify for social housing. They will have no chance of being allocated a property from a housing association or from the local authority, because they will be deemed to be earning too much money. We face a terrible problem in my constituency, in that the sums simply do not add up. A person on a very low income probably qualifies for social housing—although they will have to wait many years to get it—and a person on a high income can afford to buy into the property market, but a considerable number of people who earn about the average level of income cannot get into the housing market either in the rented sector or in the private bought sector. I am grateful to John Barrett from the Hundred Houses housing society, with whom I had a meeting yesterday, for giving those figures to me.
No redundancies in Cambridgeshire have been reported to me, although it is claimed that the National Union of Teachers conducted a survey in the local education authority area in Cambridge and found that there were to be 25 redundancies. The LEA challenged that and said that the figure is 17, of which seven are due to falling rolls. That leaves only 10 that are due to funding problems. I am not happy about 10 redundancies—I would not be happy about one redundancy—so I have tried to go back over the figures that the Department circulated to us. They have been extremely useful in ascertaining why my authority, which received a generous increase from the Government in November, has 10 redundancies.
My first finding was that although the increase in the schools budget is 11.9 per cent., the amount devolved to schools has increased by only 8.5 per cent. There is thus a gap of 3.3 per cent. between the amount that the schools budget received and that devolved to schools. If I have read the tables correctly, that adds up to a considerable sum of approximately £6.1 million. That buys a lot of education, and it is difficult to understand why such a huge gap exists.
Further on, the table shows an increase in special educational needs provision. That funding is retained centrally and not devolved to schools. I understood that schools were now receiving devolved funding for special needs. Cambridgeshire has increased its SEN funding by 52.8 per cent., which amounts to a large sum. Perhaps it goes to central pupil referral units, which badly need funding. I give Cambridgeshire its due for that. However, it begins to explain where some of the money is going.
Cambridgeshire is also diverting a large sum from revenue to capital, so £400,000 is being spent in capital funding although it was allocated for revenue funding. Again, the Government are right to expect an explanation for that. Capital funding from the Government has not decreased but has increased enormously. It should not be necessary to divert the money from revenue to capital.
Another large sum—£2.6 million—has gone into school contingencies. I find it difficult to explain to my constituents why the LEA would deem it necessary to have such a large amount sitting in a reserve somewhere and not being used for education when teachers are being made redundant in some parts of the county.
My hon. Friend the Minister is right to question the schools and the local education authority about how the money has been spent, because large sums are being taken out of school budgets without any immediate and obvious explanation and spent centrally by the LEA.
I find this debate quite extraordinary. I came into the House in 1992, when local education authority budgets were being reduced year on year. I saw cuts that really hurt in my schools in Cambridgeshire. I saw teachers being made redundant, class sizes increasing, and schools having to drop subjects that they could no longer resource. Under this Government, Cambridgeshire has seen a 60 per cent. increase in funding since 1997. That is something to be proud of, and I am astonished that the Conservatives, having presided over the previous dismal decline in funding and
shown such a lack of appreciation for education, should now choose to criticise this Government, who have done so much for education.
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