Orders of the Day — Education Service

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 9:10 pm on 5 March 1981.

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Photo of Mr Phillip Whitehead Mr Phillip Whitehead , Derby North 9:10, 5 March 1981

The hon. Gentleman should listen to the remainder of my sentence. There will hardly be any advanced and non-advanced further education left outside of the area that is to be brought under the control, if he has his way, of the Secretary of State's new body—the new public sector higher education funding body, which is to make 98 institutions of higher education responsible directly to the Department of Education and Science, which is to take away control from local education authorities, because they cannot be trusted to cut enough, and which is to impose for the first time, under a party that has always advocated local freedom, the diktat of the Secretary of State and his Department. That is not good enough for the educational system of this country, when we face the cuts that are now being imposed on us. I do not have time to go into the other matters mentioned by other hon. Members that are devastating education today.

The Secretary of State said in one of his speeches that human ingenuity is such that we should not think only of the bricks and mortar, of the fact that we never have the resources, but of how to deploy our education expenditure. But in conjunction with the Government of whom he is a member, he is imposing cuts by rigour, by attrition and by denial. One is reminded of the attitude of another educationist, the notorious Wackford Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby, who said when he had three slices of bread to feed five boys, and was putting them on the stage coach, Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you have conquered human nature. This is the way we inculcate strength of mind, Mr. Nickleby". I do not believe that the appetite for education will be subdued. I do not believe that the solemn forecasts, like that by Peter Wilsher in The Sunday Times just a week ago, of a mass walk-out from State education, if we have the progressive cuts, as over the past few years, will take place. The matter is poised and uncertain of resolution. I do not believe that parents will bolt from the system. They will make the case that the Secretary of State has failed to make. They will take the 1944 Act to the courts and insist on their due portion if they have to.

I do not want this country to move towards the Polyfilla Society—a society where education is a matter of make-do-and-mend. The Secretary of State should speak out for education as effectively as his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House spoke out for defence. He rebelled in Cabinet on defence and got away with it. I have never seen the present Secretary of State do that. He should do his job. We mean him no ill-will, but if he does not do it, the parents of this country and the law will do it for him.

I leave one last thought, on a campaign button from the United States, for the Under-Secretary of State who is winding up—"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance".