Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600
- 619)
WEDNESDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2005
RT HON
MARGARET HODGE
MP
Q600 Mr Chaytor: It is surely something
you need to take up with them.
Margaret Hodge: What I do take
up with them consistently is trying to put a clear bottom on the
commitments, for example to expand the school nursing cohort,
which is firmly stated in the public health White Paper, and which
I think is really important to our agenda and to improving children's
outcomes. So my drive is not to challenge the work that is going
on elsewhere, but to ensure that there is a balance of expenditure,
with appropriate expenditure going on children's services. And
there are those targets. It is probably worth reiterating that
there is a target around children's mental health services, which
PCTs will have to meet. There is a target that we share with health
around teenage pregnancies, which we both have to meet. There
are targets around drug abuse, which we all need to meet. So there
are some pretty powerful targets, which will also drive expenditure
decisions over time.
Q601 Mr Chaytor: This week the Secretary
of State for Health said that he would be happy for hospitals
to close as a result of the choice policy. It is all very well
having targets for PCTs, but if PCTs are landed with the costs
of dealing with a hospital closure, they are not going to find
it easy to meet their targets in the primary care area.
Margaret Hodge: There are huge
pressures on PCTs. We all know that from our own local PCTs. I
am not denying the tension.
Q602 Mr Chaytor: The pressures will
be greater because of government policies in a different area,
and it brings in the question of integration across the departments,
does it not?
Margaret Hodge: What I would put
to you are two issues. One is that there is an expansion of resources
going into health—a massive expansion of resources in real
terms. So we need to secure a share of that. The second is the
question—
Q603 Chairman: There are massive
resources going into health? Could you repeat that last sentence?
Margaret Hodge: There is an expansion
of resources going into the Health Service. The second is the
presumption that you make—that this will put additional
pressures—which is one that I am sure Health Ministers would
challenge. That is all I can say to you, but I accept that there
are tensions.
Q604 Mr Chaytor: Perhaps I could
pursue the line of argument with respect to education and school
admissions. The same principle is operating here, and the Government
is encouraging more popular schools to expand. Surely the impact
of that is likely to be felt most severely in the very 20% of
the most deprived wards where you are going to establish the SureStart
Children's Centres. I can envisage across the country, in some
of these more deprived wards, less popular schools disappearing
because of the impact of greater choice, leaving the control in
the local community, whilst at the same time the Government is
coming in and building a SureStart Children's Centre. To many
of our constituents, the threat of the loss of their secondary
school or of their primary school will not be compensated by the
building of a SureStart Children's Centre.
Margaret Hodge: I think there
is an interesting, almost philosophical, value-driven issue here.
I have always believed that parental choice—
Q605 Mr Chaytor: Do you accept that
schools will close under the impact of parental choice? If popular
schools expand, the other schools must start to contract.
Margaret Hodge: Let me come back,
because I have always believed that choice by the user—whether
it is the patient, the parent or the pupil—is an important
driver for improving quality. I have always believed that. Again,
I think that is a lot of the thinking behind our reform programme
and it is a lot of the thinking behind the NHS reform programme.
If that means a change in the configuration of institutions, so
be it. It is always important to hang on to that. If we really
want to raise the quality of public services, to which we are
all committed, enabling user choice—which is a word we all
feel more comfortable with—whether it is the patient or
the pupil or the parent, is a critical driver to improving quality.
Q606 Mr Chaytor: Surely the change
in the configuration of institutions is most likely to impact
adversely on the 20% of the most deprived wards that you wish
to focus on?
Margaret Hodge: No, I do not accept
that. Honestly, I just do not accept that. If there is a school
that is not performing well, what you first do is pick it up through
your performance mechanisms and you try and support change and
support improvement, and that means you get a good local school,
which is what parents want. If parents vote with their feet not
to attend a particular school, i.e. they exercise their parental
choice, I think that is a pretty powerful driver. I do not think
that we should try in our policies to diminish that driver. I
think that it is a really important way of improving quality.
So I feel that—with all my long, traditional values.
Q607 Mr Chaytor: The question I am
trying to raise is that the choice—
Margaret Hodge: And it may mean
change.
Q608 Mr Chaytor: Choice is not infinite.
There will be parents who are left without choice. This is the
logic of government policy in both health and education, it seems
to me.
Margaret Hodge: But you do not
retain choice by simply maintaining poor-quality services.
Q609 Mr Chaytor: Of course not. I
do not think anyone is arguing that. We are trying to spell out
the implications of the full-blooded choice agenda, which is now
being advanced.
Margaret Hodge: I think that we
differ on that one. I think choice is a good driver. It is a democratic
driver.
Q610 Chairman: What is the percentage
of schools in special measures that are in the 20% of most impoverished
wards?
Margaret Hodge: I do not know
the answer to that.
Q611 Chairman: Could you find out?
Margaret Hodge: I will find out
and let you know.[2]
Q612 Chairman: Your constituency,
or mine or that of any member of this Committee—whilst many
of us will be in favour of choice as you are, if the knock-on
was that we would cease to have schools in the most deprived areas
of the communities we represent, that would be worrying to you,
would it not, Minister?
Margaret Hodge: Of course. I think
that is a bleak picture that he paints. If you look at the record
of where standards have improved most, they have improved most
in those most deprived areas where, before we came into government,
the quality of the offer to the children was weakest. So our actual
record may give some comfort to David's fear that it means that
it is going to—
Q613 Mr Chaytor: Without prolonging
this point, I think that you are conflating the question of the
schools where standards have improved most and the schools that
are most popular. The two are not necessarily the same. You can
have schools that are doing a very good job, with high standards,
but yet which remain not popular to a sufficient number of parents
for the school to be viable. That is the real issue.
Margaret Hodge: I agree, and that
is why all that we are doing about the school profile and opening
schools to public account is so important—so that parents
make a choice based on real information. I agree with that. That
is why I was so keen on all we did in the early days. Playground
gossip is not a good alternative.
Q614 Mr Chaytor: Could we move on
more specifically to the question of funding? The figure you gave
for the increase in Early Years funding since 1997 was a 40% increase—one
billion to four billion.
Margaret Hodge: Over four billion.
Q615 Mr Chaytor: Can you remind us,
in the next three-year spending period, how much will be allocated
(a) to Early Years and (b) to the implementation of the Every
Child Matters programme overall?
Margaret Hodge: Over this spending
review period we are doubling the investment. It is a 23% real-terms
increase each year over the spending review period. So it is massive.
Q616 Mr Chaytor: From four billion
to eight billion?
Margaret Hodge: Within that four
billion is the nursery education—
Q617 Mr Chaytor: We need some hard
figures here.
Margaret Hodge: Can I send them
to you? I do not have it with me today. I was looking at them
last night. When we came in 1997-98 it was about £1.1-£1.2
billion, something like that. It is now over four in 2004-05.
It is going up from 2005-08. It is doubling; but what is doubling
is the SureStart budget. In that overarching figure which I gave
you I included nursery education investment as well. So I have
to extricate the nursery education from the rest. But I will let
you have that breakdown of figures.
Q618 Mr Chaytor: Could you give us,
within that figure of four billion or whatever, exactly how much
is earmarked to the development of the Every Child Matters
work?
Margaret Hodge: That figure I
gave you is entirely to deliver the Early Years and childcare
paper that we published before Christmas.
Q619 Mr Chaytor: So in addition to
that there will be a budget allocated for the development of the
basis—
Margaret Hodge: Yes, and that
goes—
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