Clause 50 – in the House of Commons at 7:15 pm on 24 March 1998.
I beg to move amendment No. 56, in page 39, line 4, leave out from beginning to 'as' and insert
'their planned expenditure in that year'.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
With this, it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 57 to 62, 82, 63 and 64.
The amendments will achieve two objectives. First, they will ensure that, for the first time, we will have full information about local authority expenditure on a single return. That is not the case at present, and difficulties can arise. We debated in Committee the difficulty in identifying exactly where LEAs are spending their money. We all want as much money as possible to go to schools, and the returns that we will require the authorities to make will ensure that we can do that.
Secondly, amendments Nos. 63 and 64 are technical amendments reflecting the fact that an Audit Commission Bill is currently before Parliament. They will amend the Bill to reflect the fact that, in due course, the Audit Commission Bill, rather than the Local Government Finance Act 1982, will have effect on certain parts of the legislation. I commend the amendments to the House.
I seek some clarification. We welcome more transparency in identifying how the education budget has been spent and apportioned by the LEA, but within some LEAs the accounting practices for certain fixed costs—mainly the salaries not so much of teachers as of the chief education officer and other staff—mean that they are almost invisible, because they are included in the rounded figure for management and administrative charges in the county as a whole.
It is often difficult to identify exactly how much of the education budget has been transferred to other internal budgets for such purposes. In the return that the LEA will make to the Government, will there be an opportunity to identify clearly where the money has gone? Until one can do that, it is difficult to identify where the LEA has top-sliced certain tranches before apportioning the schools budgets. Can we have some clarification?
The amendments will require the LEA to make returns on non-general schools budget aspects, which may well cover the specific spending areas to which the hon. Lady refers. Perhaps more important, we will have the support of the Audit Commission, working alongside the independent inspectorate Ofsted, as a result of the new inspection regime. I am sure that the Audit Commission will carefully consider the additional areas of expenditure that are all too often subsidised by schools at the expense of the education that our children receive.
The combination of the information that we will receive as a result of the amendments and the Audit Commission's new inspection role will enable us to take action when we feel that the schools system is subsidising expenditure elsewhere, not only within the local education authority but in the local authority generally.
I hope that, with those words of reassurance, the House will agree to the amendments.