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Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her lengthy reassurances on both issues. It is useful to have on record that there will be limits on the degree to which an LEA budget will be delegated and that a number of central services relating to SEN will remain centralised, which is a useful facility. As to Amendment No. 70, the Minister's reassurance that the emphasis will be on the whole school approach and that the budget will be incorporated within the whole school budget is extremely useful. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.15 p.m.
Baroness Walmsley moved Amendment No. 68:
- Page 25, leave out lines 3 and 4.
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I will speak also to Amendments Nos. 69, 71 and 72, which also relate to the new funding system that gives powers to the proposed schools forums—about which there was considerable debate in Committee—to determine that part of a school's budget that relates directly to pupils. That provision was clearly described in Committee by my noble friend Lady Sharp.
Our problem with the proposals boils down to two matters of principle—the first of which is Clause 39(4)(c). Should an unelected body have ultimate
responsibility for deploying a school's budget when a perfectly suitable, legitimately elected body already exists for that purpose—the local education authority? I believe in the slogan "No taxation without representation" and thought that a Labour Government would do so too. The proposed school forums would be unelected and contain representatives of heads and governors. Forums would have no democratic accountability. Practical problems of how representative and balanced they would be pale into insignificance in the face of the overarching principle that in this country councillors are elected to do the job. If we do not like the way that councillors perform that duty, we can throw them out at the next election—and do. We shall not be able to do that with the people who serve on school forums.Although the present regulations give forums powers over only a small part of the budget, there is nothing to stop a future Secretary of State changing the regulations, to give forums much greater power in future. The proposal is a small but significant wedge in a large door and we do not want to see it opened further. There is already pressure for that to happen. The National Association of Head Teachers' briefing on this part of the Bill comments:
- "Whilst having a number of concerns regarding the limited powers of the School Forum as currently proposed".
That is a clear indication that some head teachers will press for regulations to be changed in future, to give unelected bodies more power.
The second principle relates to the desirability of devolving decision-making to the lowest appropriate level. Giving the Secretary of State the reserve power to intervene and impose a prescribed minimum level of schools budget where the council's provision is thought to be inadequate is an attempt to make a major change to the balance of power between national and local government. No amount of assurances from the Minister that the power would be used sparingly addresses the fact that the power would be there.
Ring-fencing erodes the power and authority of local government in two ways. It takes away the power itself and undermines the whole reputation of local government for the future—such that the public believe that local councils do little and do not bother to vote for them. The low turnout in local government elections encourages people to say, "Nobody votes for them anyway"—creating a vicious spiral that leads to a complete collapse of confidence in local government. Is that what the present controlling Government want?
The Government contradict themselves. The finance Green Paper published in September 2000 stated that ring-fencing weakens local accountability and democracy, whereas delegating power to local authorities strengthens democracy and encourages participation and serious local responsibility. What are we to think if, in total contradiction, the Secretary of State wants to take to herself a power that has always been in the hands of locally elected representatives? That is being done in the name of
curbing the excesses of a small number of inefficient LEAs that are anyway subject to the scrutiny of Ofsted and the local electorate.The only conclusion that one can draw is that the Government do not trust real democracy where it results in a body that does not do what the Government tell it to do. My late husband suffered a number of bitter electoral defeats but always said to me, "In the end, in a democracy, people will democ". A joke perhaps but one with a serious message. Clauses 39 and 40 are an attack on local democracy. I beg to move.
Lord Jones: My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Baroness's spirited speech. I speak in support of the Minister's Clauses 39 and 40 and with the specified budget of LEAs in mind. In the previous Parliament the previous Secretary of State found it necessary to publish a list of LEAs that had not played fair. Those LEAs did not spend the moneys allocated to them by central government and they did not spend them in the way that central government expected. Therefore, they were named. Their titles were promulgated in the press of our country and perhaps beyond.
One presumes that Clauses 39 and 40 aim to improve matters. Do local authorities continue to misbehave as they did in the previous Parliament? What report will the Minister give on such matters? Is the money that is now being allocated by the department to LEAs being spent on schools? Can we be absolutely sure that that is the case? Is the money getting into the classrooms? Is the money providing more teachers? Does the money buy more library books? The Government provides money for those things.
I ask the Minister what intelligence she has on local education authorities' spending records as of now? How does she know that the treasure of the state being pumped into the service is being spent on the children? That is the Government's aim. I believe that the Government have a splendid record, but I would like to be reassured every month of the year that no LEA is in effect siphoning-off the money. Can she tell the House how the department currently checks to ensure that the money goes where it is intended, to the children and on their books? Can she also say what checks take place to ensure that the money is not secretively siphoned-off by local authorities to be spent under other council spending headings? That is my suspicion. Are the Government sufficiently equipped to monitor effectively our LEAs in that respect?
By asking those questions I am indicating my support for the clauses and I presume that the Government are determined that our children shall receive a better deal, that our councils will do better and that the Government's objectives will be achieved.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Jones, because I believe that he has posed pertinent questions. I cannot answer what progress has been made by local authorities since the previous Parliament. It would be helpful to have on
record whether there has been any improvement. Certainly the funding regime was changed. We were promised more clarity and the percentage of money that had to be passported on to schools was deemed important enough to be made a legal obligation. We now know that there are ways and means for the Government, without this Bill, to do something about breaches. It would be helpful to have the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, answered.I can answer another question posed by the noble Lord. He asked whether the money is reaching the schools. The answer is no, it is not. But the villain of the piece is not necessarily local authorities. Like the noble Lord, Lord Jones, I accept that some local authorities go to enormous lengths to camouflage the way in which they fund their local authority schools and do not serve their local schools well. My personal friend, Nick Seaton of the Campaign for Real Education, will soon produce a pamphlet on the amount of money that is held back by local authorities, which by anyone's judgment should be money that goes into schools and into classrooms.
However, there is a real lack of clarity about the information that we need to make judgments on whether the money is being passed on to schools. At the moment we have a Government that are holding back unprecedented sums of money from schools. On a number of occasions when we have spoken on this subject, I have said that almost by the week we hear of another tranche of money that is being spent nationally by Government, and every pound that is spent nationally, with a national Government tag on it, is money that does not necessarily find its way into the classroom through the core funding mechanism.
This afternoon a handout of today's sum of money has been handed to me. It is £43 million. Unless that money comes from even more additional money, it will come from money that could be spent in individual schools. We know that it will be spent somewhere in the education system, but there will be a great deal of bureaucracy involved in the spending of that money. Sums of money will be dissipated and they will not find their way into schools. So the villain of the piece is not local government.
A third point, which I make with some feeling as my own local authority has suffered from it, relates to what I believe is called "brown money". The Chancellor of the Exchequer decided that rather than trust local authorities, he would send some money direct to head teachers. The money would be sent to the head teachers as a cheque in the post and they would spend it directly.
There were also other sums of money that the Government exhorted local authorities to passport on to schools and if they did not passport them on, they would be punished. Many such local authorities, my own included, were spending either at or above their standard spending assessments that the Government deem to be the sums of money that they should spend on their services to provide a normal level of service in each authority. It is almost offensive to a local authority to say that it should passport more money
down when it already spends at or above its SSAs. I have no objection to encouraging local authorities to pass down to schools as much money as possible, but I would like the Government to accept that message. I would like to put a clause into the Bill that tells the Government to passport money down through the local education authorities into schools.There is still a need for greater clarity. We were promised greater clarity by the Government; we were told that everything would become transparent, but we know that it is not. We know that it is difficult to ascertain the kind of information that we need to make a judgment about whether a local authority is doing right by its schools, or whether schools are receiving a fair deal. A school that is badly served by its local authority—we are talking about a minority of local authorities that fall into that category, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said—experiences a double jeopardy. It has a Government that are holding back unprecedented sums of money and it has a local authority that is also holding back unprecedented sums of money.
I agree with the principle that was outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. If there is to be determination of an aspect of the budget, I believe that those responsible should be accountable through the ballot box. We have a system of accountability for local authorities, which I support. Can the Minister say why it is that the Government have found it necessary to remove from local authorities the power to determine that aspect of the budget set out in the clause and give it to unelected, unaccountable groups of people in authorities to make the determination? Yet, they have not chosen to do that for the Learning and Skills Councils that will fund sixth forms.
A school for 11 to 18-year olds will have two separate streams of funding. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Dormand of Easington, referred to that the other day. There will be separate streams of funding for sixth forms from the Learning and Skills Councils, a separate funding stream from the local authority and a decision made by an unelected, unaccountable third body that is set up by this part of the Bill. There is a great deal wanting in this part of the Bill. We certainly wish to support the removal of this power. I have a later amendment dealing with Clause 41, to which I shall not refer at this moment.
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