Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:36 pm on 23 March 2000.

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Photo of Theresa May Theresa May Shadow Spokesperson (Women), Shadow Secretary of State for Education 1:36, 23 March 2000

The hon. Gentleman's confusion is not a matter for me; it is a matter for him. Again, I suggest that he looks at what the Government are claiming for the new deal and the reality. [Interruption.] I suggest that the Labour Whip, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts), is a little patient and curbs his excitement. I can understand why the Government are keen to hear of better ideas for getting young long-term unemployed people jobs—it is because of the expensive failure of the new deal.

I repeat that we welcome extra spending on education, particularly on schools, but then, we welcomed the £19 billion extra announced in the comprehensive spending review. However, it did not take long to realize that it was not £19 billion and that, at the best estimate, it was only £9 billion, and that was before the issues of real terms and the underfunding of teachers' pay awards were taken into account.

The best description of the way in which the Government have manipulated the figures on education spending was given at the weekend in one of the newspapers by a former Member of the House, Phillip Oppenheim. [Interruption.] Perhaps Labour Members would like to listen and understand what their Government have done with the figures. He made the point that if someone was 3 ft and grew by 1 ft a year over three years, they did not end up being 9 ft tall. That is exactly what the Government have done with the figures on education spending—they have double and treble-counted.

I say to the Secretary of State, who finds this so amusing, that the issue for him is the expectations that teachers, parents and governors had of what the schools would receive. Those expectations have been dashed. There is considerable disillusionment in schools among teachers, governors, parents and others because what they thought was going to be an additional £19 billion for education has turned out to be nothing of the sort. We see disillusion setting in because the Government are failing to meet their manifesto commitment to increase the share of national income spent on education over and above that spent by the previous Conservative Government. The extra £1 billion that the Secretary of State announced today will do nothing to meet that commitment and nothing to ensure that, during their term in office, the Government will be spending more as a proportion of national income on education than the previous Conservative Government. In fact, they will be spending less.

The Secretary of State has said that £300 million will go directly to schools and that it will be up to heads to decide how it should be spent. I welcome his conversion to our policy that heads should have freedom to decide how money is spent in their schools. I would like heads to have freedom of decision over the whole of their school's budget, rather than the small proportion that the Secretary of State has announced. It is common sense that heads know best what is in the interests of children in their classrooms.

However, the Secretary of State's comments this afternoon about the importance of freedom for heads to determine how to spend their budget will be met with incredulity by former grant-maintained schools which had that freedom but had it taken away by the Government. Those schools were able to exercise the sort of freedoms that the Secretary of State now talks about over the whole of their budget and they flourished and improved the quality of education. That freedom was taken away from them. One can imagine how they feel, hearing of the Secretary of State's damascene conversion. I should be interested to see what happens when he meets the former grant-maintained school heads who have consistently complained about the removal of that freedom.