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3 Mar 2009 : Column 227WH—continued
12.18 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Sarah McCarthy-Fry): I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) on securing this debate on an important subject, and I pay tribute to all hon. Members who have spoken.
We have made it our ambition to provide a world-class education for every child and every child should have access to the opportunities and benefits that that brings. That means two things: making sure that every school is a good school, so that parents have real choice when deciding where to send their child, and ensuring that those opportunities are open to children from as early on as possible in their education. We all know that primary education is a really important stage in a child’s life; it is their first experience of full-time education and a place where they get a good grounding in the basics, start to develop independent thinking and develop those skills that prepare them for secondary education.
Local authorities have a duty to secure sufficient provision for children in their area. They are responsible for planning school places, and ensuring that enough places are available to meet local need. That is right, because local authorities know best the specific challenges and circumstances facing their areas and are best placed to deploy local resources in line with those specific needs. The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill will strengthen that further. Pending that legislation, local authorities will become the single point of accountability for all children's services provision from nought to 19 so that we can focus on children and their families.
It is crucial that local authorities make a full assessment of the future demand for school places in their areas. My Department relies on those forecasts when allocating capital funding to cover extra places for future growth in pupil numbers, so it is essential that those projections are as accurate as possible. Local authorities prepare their own pupil forecasts, based on local circumstances and taking account of births, new housing, population migration and other factors. There should be no unexpected demand for reception places because of a rise in birth rate—many hon. Members brought that up—because the information is available from the health authority. Local authorities also use other factors and other methods to predict mobility. As was said, some local authorities are better than others at using the information at their disposal.
Mr. Davey: In a reply to a parliamentary question, the Minister said:
“We have begun work to evaluate the accuracy of existing forecasts”.—[Official Report, 26 November 2008; Vol. 483, c. 1853W.]
Sarah McCarthy-Fry:
We are reviewing emerging pupil number trends to inform the next spending review, so work on accuracy is ongoing. We are also working with London Councils, which is also considering the matter—
that work, too, is ongoing—so that we can offer advice and guidance to local authorities to help them to put those forecasts together.
Funding is fixed for three years at the beginning of the spending review period. That was done in response to requests from local authorities, which value being able to plan their capital expenditure with certainty. Resources in the current spending round have been allocated, and we do not hold back funds for later distribution on the basis that forecasts of the number of primary school pupils may be inaccurate.
Tom Brake: I agree that local authorities value having a three-year view of funding, but does the Minister acknowledge that they become angry about difficulties arising from migration, for example, when a large number of people come into a local authority area, but the funding does not kick in for a number of years after they have arrived?
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: A balance must be struck between certainty in planning and being able to react to unforeseen contingencies, or perhaps contingencies that could have been foreseen, albeit not necessarily the migration the hon. Gentleman mentions.
In Kingston in 2007, pupil projections suggested an additional increase of about 500 pupils by 2012. Those figures provided the basis for the basic need funding to enable the authority to provide for growth in pupil numbers. The authority did not revise its projections in 2008. Virtually all inner-London authorities and four of the outer-London authorities have revised their forecasts of the growth in the number of pupils downwards since basic need funding was calculated for the current spending review period, so there should be no shortfall of funds in those authorities, although I accept that they are probably not the authorities that hon. Members here represent. We will monitor closely those who have projected a shortfall.
Local authorities may also have access to other local resources that can be used to create extra places. It is for local authorities to make those judgments about where their resources are best deployed, taking into account the different needs and pressures that they face. We have already agreed funding for schools for the next three years, based on pupil projections by local authorities, but I understand that London Councils is looking into whether those projections were sufficiently accurate. Many hon. Members have said this morning that they believe that they were not accurate. We are waiting for information from the January 2009 school census, and when we have those data and the information from London Councils, I undertake to consider them seriously. I am sure that they will help to inform future decisions about school funding.
We are reviewing emerging pupil number trends to inform the next spending review period from 2011-12 onwards to take account of the rise in child population and any changes due to the economic downturn. We will also consider other factors that hon. Members have mentioned today. We will cover whether it is still appropriate, depending on the accuracy of the forecasts, to allocate all basic need funding at the start of a new comprehensive spending review period.
We are working with the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services on pupil place planning in London. Discussions are ongoing, and we are awaiting
data to show where the shortage of places is. When we have all that information, I will be happy to meet hon. Members who are particularly affected because of changes in population.
Mr. Davey: I am grateful for the Minister’s undertaking on previous data and her willingness to meet hon. Members. I shall certainly take her up on that kind offer. May I press her on the need for the data review to happen urgently and for the Department to consider changing the funding arrangements, not just in the next spending review, but in the current review, because the need is now and the need is urgent?
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: When I have the data in front of me, I will consider it, but I will wait until I have had the information from London Councils and the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services because I want to see exactly where the problems are.
Based on January 2008 capacity data, many London authorities, including those that underestimated pupil numbers, seem to have sufficient spare places at local authority level to meet current demand.
Susan Kramer: Is the Minister talking about places in schools, where there may be places in year 5 when the need may be in reception? Is that not a distortion, and is it not used frequently?
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I am talking about surplus places in schools as a whole, but we must take into account the fact that surplus places may not be in schools that parents want to send their children to.
We have an annual allocation of capital investment under the primary capital programme, in which there is a range of criteria that local authorities use when identifying schools for investment. As the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) said, one is to have regard to school performance and to surplus places. They are also expected to identify priority for investment on the basis of responding to demographic pressure, so there is flexibility in the primary capital programme.
Funding for 2009-10 and 2010-11 has been confirmed for 13 London authorities, including both Kingston and Richmond. For a further 91 local authorities, 2009-10 funding has been confirmed, but future funding will be dependent on confirmation by the end of the month that problems identified will be resolved. Brent, Sutton, Westminster and Merton all come into that category, so I hope that hon. Members will press their local authorities to ensure that that information is with us and that we can resolve the issues by the end of March 2009 so that we can bring forward that funding. London authorities have reported collectively that they are planning to start projects at nearly 400 schools over the period 2008-11.
On the number of pupils moving from the independent to the maintained sector, the number attending independent primary schools has increased by more than 1,400 in Greater London over the past three years, and by more than 1,300 in inner London over the same period.
Every child should benefit from a first-class education in a good local school. That is one of our highest priorities and reaches throughout the system from national Government to local government to each individual school. Local authorities must use every resource at their disposal to ensure that every child benefits from those opportunities. We will continue to examine the data on current and projected numbers, and work with local authorities to manage that.
Waste (Gloucestershire)
12.30 pm
Mr. Parmjit Dhanda (Gloucester) (Lab): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Pope—from the Back Benches this time. I am bringing to Westminster Hall today a debate on incineration in Gloucestershire and specifically at the edge of the city of Gloucester, adjacent to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew).
Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): No, in the constituency.
Mr. Dhanda: In, even. It is right on the border between our constituencies. In 2005, in the run-up to the county council elections, the Conservative party in Gloucestershire produced its manifesto. It said:
“We will: Oppose incinerators. Conservatives have already worked to stop incinerators being built in Gloucestershire and we will continue to do so.”
I am afraid that that is a lie. There is no other way of putting it, because the Conservatives have gone back on that promise to the people of Gloucestershire. It will be interesting to see what happens when they go back to the people of Gloucestershire in the county council elections in June of this year and try to square their promise with what they are doing now.
Conservatives have made a number of promises in recent times. One was not to build houses in suburban areas on the edge of the city of Gloucester. My hon. Friend and I fought a vociferous campaign that resulted in a planning application in relation to the Hunts Grove area of his constituency being called in, but it was pushed heavily by a councillor by the name of Stan Waddington, whom my hon. Friend knows well—he is a councillor on his patch—and unfortunately permission was obtained. That means that in the very location where the Tories now propose to build a 10-storey incinerator capable of burning 175,000 tonnes of waste a year, thousands and thousands of new homes will be built; they will be built directly in its shadow. The area of Quedgeley, Grange and Tuffley, which is in my constituency, will be directly adjacent to it as well.
It came as a bolt from the blue to us that the Tories were planning that, not least because a few days before their decision to purchase the Javelin Park site in Quedgeley for £7.4 million, they told me and the chairman of our local football club that there was no capital money available at all to help the local football club to return to Gloucester after losing its ground in the floods of two years ago. Then we found out, without any consultation at all, despite the fact that my hon. Friend and I had held a public meeting just a few weeks previously, that they were working to purchase that land and had been working on a big private finance initiative deal with my right hon. Friend the Minister’s Department to try to obtain funding for the incinerator.
I would like to put it to the Minister that the county council is clear that, in its view, that is not its responsibility; it is all the fault of her Department and the Government. I am sure that she will have some things to say about that in relation to local decision making. I would also like to put to her the question whether PFI moneys would have been available for other schemes if a bid had
come to the Department that did not involve a large-scale incinerator capable of burning 175,000 tonnes of waste.
When sites and locations were considered, three of the sites were in or around my constituency. Two were in or around Quedgeley in the south of my constituency; another was in Hempsted. The whole idea and principle of putting such a facility, which burns 175,000 tonnes of waste, in proximity to such an urban area comes as a real surprise to me, but perhaps it should not, because overwhelmingly Gloucestershire county council is run by a small elite—a cohort that lives in the Cotswolds. Those people would never, ever countenance any development like this in their part of the county. In fact, they have gone out of their way to select a Tory prospective parliamentary candidate for my constituency, the city of Gloucester, who hails from the Cotswolds as well, who has been entirely compliant with them on these plans and who will not criticise them at all. Unfortunately, the illness of not asking any questions about this, which has been passed on to other members of the Tory party, has infected local councillors in Quedgeley and other parts of my constituency as well. They refuse to raise their heads above the parapet and say what they think, but at the same time they do not take on the Cotswold cavalry that is running Gloucestershire county council.
Why do I think that such a facility would be bad for my constituency, my constituents and Gloucestershire? First, it would need to burn waste 24/7; once one of these machines is started, it has to keep going. That is ultimately bad for the local carbon footprint. We calculate that by 2020 there will be about 100,000 tonnes of residual waste each year, so we would have to find another 75,000 tonnes of waste to keep the machine burning. That would involve importing waste, regionalising waste. The Tory party claims to be anti-regionalisation, but when it comes to rubbish, it wants to regionalise it and dump it on the doorstep of my constituency, bringing it in from Bristol, Birmingham and who knows how much further afield.
There are real local infrastructure problems as well. Junction 12 of the M5, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, just is not kitted out for this kind of waste to be driven in daily. The people of Bishop’s Cleeve, in the Tewkesbury constituency, are already up in arms and demonstrating because the resultant waste material will almost certainly end up in Bishop’s Cleeve. We think that this is a bad solution.
Mr. Andrew Smith (Oxford, East) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this important issue, which affects one of our neighbouring counties and our hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). Will he add to the issues that need to be raised the question of the safety or otherwise of incinerator bottom ash? I have asked a number of questions about that and it appears that the Environment Agency is now changing its previous statements that all incinerator bottom ash is classified as non-hazardous; those statements seem no longer to be applicable. It also appears that the H14 ecotoxicity testing described in its waste manual is now a requirement. Would it not help if my right hon. Friend the Minister clarified whether that is now required and whether the results of such testing should be made public in regional registers, so that people can judge for themselves the hazardous nature of the material to which they might be exposed?
Mr. Dhanda: I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend; I am sure that the Minister will tackle that point. He makes the point that many Gloucestershire residents—it is not just the city of Gloucester or Stroud residents—are concerned about the issue, not least, as I said, residents of Bishop’s Cleeve, who were demonstrating as recently as last week.
One argument that the council is using, other than blaming the Government for its local decisions, is to say, “Well, what is the alternative?” If people ask around and study things, they find alternatives. There are alternatives out there. We work closely with Gloucestershire’s Friends of the Earth network. We have also been listening to what local residents have had to say. There are a number of things that Gloucestershire county council can do, rather than rushing to build this 10-storey beast that will burn 175,000 tonnes a year.
First, the six authorities in Gloucestershire could start working together coherently. In my part of the world, 36 per cent. of waste is currently recycled. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, the figure is 50-something per cent. However, if the six authorities worked together, there would not be, for example, an ability to collect and recycle green waste in my constituency but not in the constituency next door. There would not be an ability to recycle bottles with their tops on in Stroud, but not in Gloucester. Nor would it be the case that food waste could be collected in some parts of the county but not others. Quite simply, the authorities do not work together, so a single coherent strategy would help and no doubt boost recycling levels.
What levels of recycling should we be aiming for? The Netherlands is already at 65 per cent. The figure is 58 per cent. for Germany and 59 per cent. for Austria, but we do not have to go that far afield to find good examples of high levels of recycling. St. Arvans, in Monmouthshire, is a zero-waste project promoting waste separation and the kerbside collection of paper, glass, cans, foil, textiles—I will run out of fingers—plastics, Tetra Pak, cartons, green waste and food waste. Some 73 per cent. of waste is diverted from landfill in that part of Monmouthshire, and there is a 95 per cent. participation rate. Surely, instead of looking to lower levels of recycling in Gloucestershire and saying, “Well, we have this machine. We’ll just keep chugging along, widening our carbon footprint and bringing in waste from further afield to keep things ticking over,” we should look at the issue more imaginatively and work more closely with Gloucestershire Friends of the Earth.
For many reasons, the incinerator could be something of an eco-disaster. Kent county council’s environment spokesperson, Keith Ferrin, recently said that the council’s decision to build an incinerator was “stupid” with hindsight, adding:
“The people who thought they were being very clever and economical with people’s money ten years ago have produced a situation where the reverse is true, as KCC is now committed to a contract we can’t get out of.”
In Gloucestershire’s case, it would be a 25-year contract, so we would be committed to a programme that we could not get out of for 25 years and which ruled out any emerging technologies or local flexibility. Councillor Ferrin continued:
“What seemed a very wise decision a very long time ago is a very stupid one today...At the time, people were saying nationally
that this was the only way ahead. But if you make a prediction for 10 years’ time, the only thing you can be certain of is that it will be the wrong decision.”
I would like our local authority to be more aware of some of the new, emerging technologies. Just this week, I was handed an article from The Birmingham Post, which talks about some of the new technologies that are coming on stream in Birmingham:
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