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Mr. Damian Green (Ashford): I am, as always, grateful to the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement.
The crisis that has caused the Secretary of State to come to the House with this statement has been both unnecessary and hugely damaging to our schools. Twelve months ago, his predecessor presented the Government's plans for education spending as a triumph. Six months ago, it was obvious to heads, teachers and parents across the country that the reality was cuts, redundancies and disappointment. For those six months, the Government have turned all their energy on a hunt not for a solution, but for a scapegoat. They tried blaming local authorities and they have even tried blaming heads for paying teachers too much.
The ludicrous nature of that attempt to shift the blame from the Department, where it belongs, has finally been revealed today, when we learn that the Secretary of State's Department underspent by £846 million last year. So hundreds of teachers are being made redundant while his Department is sitting on the money that could have kept them in work. He referred charmingly to his accumulated end-year flexibility. Can he explain what is more urgent in his budget than stopping teachers being made redundant?
The statement contains some detailed proposals that improve the current system. Bringing forward the date on which the School Teachers Review Body reports and the local government settlement so that schools' budgets may be set earlier will be helpful. But quite apart from the point about whether that is an adequate response to the crisis, there are key questions about the Government's own behaviour. One important point that the Secretary of State has made this morning is that he is recentralising, after last year's short flirtation with trusting local government. More of the pot of money will come from his Department in future, but does he not recognise that it is often his own Department that is the cause of the delays? Some schools do not know what money they will receive from the standards fund until well after they have set their budgets. He has tried to reassure them today. Can he give the House a guarantee that individual schools will know the amount of centrally distributed money that they are to receive before they have to set their budgets?
Even more importantly, what will the Secretary of State do about the Government's besetting sin—trying to do the jobs of heads and governors for them? He will know the widespread view in our schools that the standards fund money is too often an excuse to tie schools up in a web of bidding and form filling to meet the needs of the latest ministerial initiative rather than of our children's education. If more money is coming directly from the Department, what does he propose to do about that micro-management?
The most obvious gap in the statement is the absence of any hard numbers. Today, schools are going into deficit, cutting their capital budgets and sacking teachers. They want to know what their position will be next year. Nothing that the Secretary of State has said clears that up. He has promised what he called a
minimum funding increase guarantee for schools next year. But this year, according to the comprehensive spending review, there was a real terms increase of 3.4 per cent., and yet we have had the crisis. So is he promising more than 3.4 per cent. next year? Is he also promising that the increase will meet all the extra costs that Government impose on schools? Will it meet the added costs for schools that have gone into deficit this year or that have spent their capital budget on revenue spending? If it does not do so, we will be back here next year with a repeat crisis.Will the Secretary of State also clear up what he means by an increase in funding? Funding sounds like it means a grant from central to local government to pay for schools. However, as he knows, in the arcane and rarefied world of local government finance, it can also mean the schools formula spending share, which is simply a theoretical estimate of what each council should spend. If all he is going to do is announce a big figure for that estimate that is not accompanied by the money from his Department, which is what he did to many LEAs this year, he will provoke a repeat crisis, with cuts in schools and a sterile argument between central and local government about whose fault it is. His words in this area were carefully opaque. Can he clear up the question whether the grant will meet not only the increase in the SFFS that he mentioned, but the backlog that so many LEAs have faced and has caused the crisis this year?
The statement also appears to threaten the provision of spending on children with special educational needs and on the rescue services for pupils who have been excluded. I really cannot believe that he means to restrict spending specifically in those areas, where the most vulnerable children will be worst affected. Can he confirm what he appeared to suggest—that he intends to take powers to himself to stop local authorities spending too much on children with special needs?
The Government will not be forgiven by parents and teachers for failing to cope with this year's funding crisis. This statement is designed to prevent another crisis next year. What the Secretary of State has to offer is greater predictability. Of course, predictability is good in itself, but if we discover in the autumn that schools are able to look two years ahead and simply predict more misery, cuts and redundancies, this year's level of anger will be multiplied, and this Government will go down as the Government who betrayed our schools.
Mr. Clarke: I have to say that there was very little substance in those remarks. Let us get the facts clear. First, I am announcing today more money for schools throughout Britain in both 2004–05 and 2005–06. Secondly, I am absolutely clear that we need to ensure that the money that is allocated to local education authorities for schools is spent on them, so that money gets there in the right way. Thirdly, I am absolutely clear and I have announced today that the increase in expenditure between individual schools and central budgets should be balanced so that schools themselves get the resources that they need in an effective way.
I am also clear from what the hon. Gentleman said that there is no commitment of any description from the Opposition to any level of funding increase whatever. Indeed, judging by the rhetoric of his party in the past,
its commitment is to reduce funding on schools, and I think that we should take that into account in considering what it has to say.The hon. Gentleman asked me about numbers. It would indeed be foolhardy to offer numbers to schools when we do not know the level of the teachers' pay settlement, which forms such a substantial amount of any expenditure. That is why the commitment that I give is to make that announcement when we know the teachers' pay settlement following the proper review that has been set up. I think that that is an entirely correct approach. There is new money for schools in this approach in order precisely to give the confidence and stability that the system needs.
I acknowledge—this is the one point that I acknowledge from what the hon. Gentleman said—that my Department needs to improve its practice on the allocation of standards fund information in good time. That is why I said that we would provide that information much earlier in the year than traditionally so that both schools and local education authorities can know better where they are. We are not interested in micro-managing schools' budgets. What we are interested in doing is ensuring that schools have enough money to take the decisions that they have to take to enhance education opportunities for themselves.
I am proud of the announcement that we are making today. I think that it can offer the stability that is needed and that everybody will observe what has been said by the hon. Gentleman and notice the enormous hole at the centre of what the Conservative party has to say.
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield): May I give my right hon. Friend's statement a cautious welcome? It seems to address the major points of concern that we in the Select Committee on Education and Skills were putting to him only this week, so I give it a guarded and cautious welcome. It is a complex statement and we will want to go away and pore over it in some detail. There was an element of concern as he touched on special educational needs and pupil referral units, and on whether schools will be able to decide how much they spend on those matters.
Overall, I give the statement a cautious welcome. My right hon. Friend seems to have hit the three main targets. Let us make sure that the Government are really on target when we consider the statement a little more closely.
Mr. Clarke: I am very grateful for my hon. Friend's remarks. As he says, this is a complex matter, and that is why I appreciate the detailed study that his Select Committee has made of this issue. I look forward to hearing any comments that he wishes to make once he has had the chance to have a considered look at the detail of the statement, but I appreciate the remarks that he has made at this stage.
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough): I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement, but he ought to be ashamed of the cowardly way in which he sneaked it out on the very day that schools go into recess for the summer, when they can do absolutely nothing about it.
To date, the Secretary of State and his Ministers have arrogantly tried to blame everyone for this crisis but themselves. He told us in April that local authorities had
stuffed £500 million down the backs of their sofas. He said in the Select Committee on Education and Skills that head teachers were incompetent for not managing their budgets. His latest excuse was that teachers are being paid too much. When the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) and I were at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers' conference in April, we were told that we were scaremongering, and that that was why schools did not get the budgets that they need.Today, we heard not a single word of humility from the Secretary of State about the chaos that has been caused. He was not able to name a single local education authority that has not satisfied his Department about its allocation or passporting of money to schools. At the Local Government Association conference in July, Barnaby Shaw, the Department's school improvement and excellence manager, said:
- "When you try to analyse what went wrong, the fault lies with the DfES."
Today's statement is also ill thought out. Will the Secretary of State confirm that not a single teacher or classroom assistant who is made redundant today will be re-employed as a result of it? Will he confirm that no additional resources will be given to schools with deficit budgets that have used all their balances or devolved their capital unless they are part of the recovery plan? Will he confirm that the recovery plan is in fact a loan that schools will have to pay back? Will he agree that when he appeared before the Select Committee on Monday, he let the cat out of the bag by saying that schools with insufficient resources will not be able to implement the work load agreement within the relevant time scale?
We welcome some aspects of the statement, including the longer-term settlement, the prospect of a two-year pay deal, and guaranteed per-student increases; but that is what the Secretary of State promised for this year. What additional resources has he obtained from the Chancellor in support of the next two-year settlement? If he has no more money, this is a hollow promise. If he has a sealed envelope, money must come from somewhere else to pay for the real increases that he has guaranteed. Who will be the new losers in this settlement? What plans has he actively to model the proposals at a school level? To be fair to the Secretary of State, we are pleased that he is going to bring forward the School Teachers Review Body process and that local authorities will have all the information before them. His ministerial colleagues refused to do that during the passage of the School Standards Bill, even though we proposed amendments that would achieve it. Does the Secretary of State accept that this year's transfer of standards fund money was in reality a sleight of hand by which he removed £350 million? That had a severe impact, especially on newly qualified teachers.
Finally, will the Secretary of State abandon the ludicrous idea of individually funding 25,000 schools? As we have seen this year, he is not competent to run his
own Department, let alone 25,000 schools. When he lounges on the beach somewhere in Europe this summer, he may be reminded of the hundreds of teachers and classroom assistants who are being made redundant and will have to find jobs elsewhere.
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