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Mr. Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead): My right hon. Friend will be aware, following my meeting with the Minister for Children, my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), that Hemel Hempstead is facing particular problems at the moment because of the huge cut in courses available at the local further education college. Schools in the area will need a considerable increase in their facilities to compensate for this. Will my right hon. Friend give me the assurance that, when schools face pressures of this kind, his funding arrangements will be adequate?
Mr. Clarke: I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. In fact, one of the specific mandates of the learning and skills councils is to address the relationship in 16-plus education between schools, sixth-form colleges, general colleges and so on, in a way that will address the issue that my hon. Friend has raised.
Mrs. Annette L. Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole): Assuming that LEAs passport funds as required, how will today's proposals help schools in the lowest-funded authorities such as Poole and Dorset? Guaranteed percentage increases on a low base will not be enough to stave off crises in the future.
Mr. Clarke: There will be enough to achieve a guaranteed per pupil increase for every school in Poole. I know that there have been problems in Poole, and a delegation has met my right hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards to discuss them. The decisions that I have been able to announce today on the standards fund will assist schools in Poole and also in other parts of the country.
Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North): I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. I remind him that schools in my constituency and in many other metropolitan districts in the north of England suffered deficit budgets, year on year, for every year of the old Tory funding formula. Is it not the case that the introduction of a floor for the increase in spending for each individual school will impact on the pace at which the floors and ceilings for each local authority's spending can be phased out? Will my right hon. Friend tell the House how long it will now take to phase out those floors and ceilings?
Mr. Clarke: I cannot give my hon. Friend that information until we have the figures later in the year. I can, however, confirm that his central point is correct.
That is why I have worked so hard to ensure that I could make this statement today on the extra money for the standards fund, so that there would not be such an impact on the floors and ceilings as there would otherwise have been, thus ensuring that schools in his constituency and others will be able to benefit to the greatest possible extent. I shall, however, give him the detailed answer that he wants when we publish the figures based on the School Teachers Review Body report.
Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh): The Secretary of State will be aware that this year Essex had the toughest grant settlement of any county in England. Bearing that in mind, this seems to be a complex statement, and I suspect that the devil will probably be in the detail. Will the right hon. Gentleman give the House an assurance that whatever guarantees he is offering will be fully funded by central Government, so that no unfair burden is placed on local council tax payers to finance them?
Mr. Clarke: I can give that assurance. I have visited Essex, as the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) said, on a couple of occasions. My journey from Norwich to London takes me through Essex, and, rather than just looking from a distance, I prefer to engage with the populace and to discuss these things with them. The impact of the funding formula was variable across schools, and some schools in Essex did very well out of it. My candid advice to the Conservative county council and its leader, who sits in the other place, is to make less political capital out of this issue and to focus more closely on the specific situation in the schools.
Roger Casale (Wimbledon): Thanks to the excellent work of teachers and head teachers in my constituency, many of those parents who are fortunate enough to be able to choose are now entrusting the education of their children to state schools rather than paying to have them educated privately. If we are to continue to accommodate and encourage this increase in demand, should we not allow the oversubscribed schools such as the Hollymount and Wimbledon Chase primary schools to expand? Should we not also ensure that schools such as Pelham and Dundonald primary schools and Raynes Park high school are no longer faced with the kind of budgetary pressures that they have faced this year? Will my right hon. Friend undertake to work with me, the schools and the local authority to tackle these problems and to get to the bottom of why they have arisen, so that we can ensure that the improvements that are being made can be built on in the coming years?
Mr. Clarke: I give those assurances, and will add to them. The Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg), is working hard through the London Challenge precisely to deal with the problem of over-subscribed schools and to get more flexibility in these areas. That is being done for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Roger Casale) states, and we will continue that work.
Mr. Richard Bacon (South Norfolk): During the Secretary of State's sojourn from the Palace of
Westminster to Norwich, South, he passes through my constituency, and we were pleased to see him engaging with the populace at Loddon just the other day. Does he accept that teachers and classroom assistants in my constituency and elsewhere in Norfolk are losing their jobs? Does he also accept that it is just possible that the very complexity of the educational finance system may be part of the problem? Will he at least consider a pilot in which the money available from the state that is spent on education is given directly to parents to spend as they choose?
Mr. Clarke: I agree with the hon. Gentleman from my neighbouring constituency that the system is complex and difficult, and that it is necessary to get more clarity into it. I am not prepared to contemplate a pilot such as he described at the moment, but I suggest that he talks to his political colleagues on Norfolk county council to see whether they would consider such a step in his constituency.
Mr. Michael Jabez Foster (Hastings and Rye): I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement, today in particular, because it helps us for the summer and perhaps messes up the Liberal Democrats' summer campaign. That apart, will he define what he means by sufficient central Government grant for next year? My authority had a £14 million passport figure, but only a £10 million increase this year. Does it mean that any passported sum will be fully funded?
Mr. Clarke: The short answer to that question is yes, but we will deal with the context and quantums later this year. I acknowledge that Brighton and Hove council has had to address a number of difficulties, and my hon. Friend has raised those with me. We will endeavour to deal with them in those circumstances.
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire): On the Secretary of State's stately progress from Norfolk to London, perhaps he would like to stop and visit schools in my constituency, which are running deficit budgets because they want to retain teachers, not make them redundant. He talks about a guaranteed per pupil increase for next year. Does he accept that for those schools the key concern is that it reflects not only the unavoidable additional costs in 2004–05 compared with 2003–04, but meets some of the unavoidable costs that arose in this financial year that were not covered in the settlement available to Cambridgeshire? Although Cambridgeshire passported 113 per cent. of its increase in formula, it did not make up the disparity that many schools experienced.
Mr. Clarke: In answer to previous questions, I have dealt in some detail with precisely the point that the hon. Gentleman raises, and I do not have anything further to add. If I am invited to visit his constituency, of course I will be delighted to do so.
Ms Oona King (Bethnal Green and Bow): I apologise for being a few minutes late for my right hon. Friend's statement, but I was receiving a petition from the Tower Hamlets parents association signed by hundreds of residents. Like me, they are desperately concerned about the £5.5 million funding shortfall for education in
Tower Hamlets. I thank the Secretary of State for seeing my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick) and me about this problem. I particularly welcome his announcements on standards funds. What assurance can he give parents, teachers, governors and local government that schools that set a deficit budget as a result of the reduction in standards funds last year—not this year, but the 2003–04 financial year—and the increase in teachers' pay will get the additional funding they need to prevent redundancies and to set a balanced budget?
Mr. Clarke: I am aware of the issues in my hon. Friend's constituency, and I am grateful for her acknowledgement that we had a useful meeting to discuss these questions. I do not think that there is anything I can add on deficit budgets for this year, but I shall certainly take her remarks fully into account.
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