Building Schools for the Future

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will make a statement on his assessment of the High Court ruling on Friday to the effect that the decision to cancel the Building Schools for the Future programme in Waltham Forest and other areas was illegal.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

I am grateful for the opportunity that this urgent question gives me to repeat the points made in my written ministerial statement of Friday.

On Friday, Mr Justice Holman handed down a judgment on the judicial review brought by six local authorities, including Waltham Forest, following my decision to cancel BSF projects in their areas. It was, of course, deeply regrettable that any building projects had to be cancelled, but the scale of the deficit we inherited meant that cuts were inevitable, and the inefficiency that characterised BSF schemes meant that we needed a new approach. All the local authorities that pursued the action agreed that cuts had to be made, but, as the judge records, they argued that

“other (unidentified) projects should have been stopped rather than theirs”.

The claimants argued that Government decision making was confused and irrational, but the judge made it clear that the decisions I made were clear and rational. He said that

“the Secretary of State intended to draw, and did draw, a clear demarcation between situations where there were obligations under contract and those where there were not. The decision is not open to challenge on irrationality.”

The claimants argued that the chosen cut-off date for projects was wrong, but the judge also made it clear that

“a cut-off date of January 1st reflected government-wide policy and helped to achieve that policy by making very large savings.”

The claimants also argued that there was a breach of promise in stopping their specific projects, but the judge said:

“I do not consider that there was any failure…because there was no such promise or expectation.”

I am grateful that on all those substantive points, the judge found as he did, in our favour.

On two procedural grounds, the judge ruled in favour of the claimants. In essence, his view is that my consultation with 14 local authorities in relation to 32 sample schools and a further 119 individual academy projects did not go far enough, and that I should have included the six claimants in my consultation. He also judged that I should have had rigorous regard to equalities considerations in reaching my decision.

The judge has not ordered a reinstatement of funding for any BSF project, nor has he ordered me to pay compensation to any of the claimants. Instead, he concluded that I must give each of them an opportunity to make representations, and then review the decision, in so far as it affects these six authorities, with an open mind. I am happy to do so. The judge has made it clear that

“the final decision on any given school or project still rests with”

me, and that I

“may save all, some, a few or none”.

He concluded by saying that

“no one should gain false hope from this decision”.

I am grateful to the judge for that direction, for the fair and careful manner in which he appraised the evidence, and for his support for the Government on the substantive decisions that we took.

[John Cryer]

I want to emphasise, first, that the purpose of the urgent question was not to score points, but genuinely to elicit information, and secondly, that the court action was not taken light-heartedly but because, in the case of my local authority, Waltham Forest, we felt that there was no option as the urgency had become so great.

In my constituency, which is not unusual, seven schools were due for rebuilds—George Mitchell, Buxton, Belmont Park, Norlington, Connaught, Leytonstone and Lammas, which is on the boundary between my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). We were also expecting a new school to be built to deal with the rising demand for places in secondary school. That brings me to the crux of the argument, which is that by 2014 we will be 500 places short in secondary schools. That is a minimum. Waltham Forest is usually a recipient of migration from central London, which means that the actual demand could be 600, 700 or perhaps more. At present, 500 is the bare minimum.

There are three other points to be considered. One is that the structure of many of the schools in question is dreadful and literally falling apart. Teachers, pupils, governors and other staff have fought valiantly, and BSF was the light at the end of the tunnel until it was taken away. Secondly, a number of the schools that I mentioned serve some of the most deprived areas in London, which means some of the most deprived areas in Britain—areas that are struggling with all sorts of problems. Thirdly, some of the schools were on the verge of being decanted, expecting the work to start. In the case of Leytonstone, the school was hours away from moving students to other premises in the expectation that building work would start.

I want to ask a number of specific questions. What is the time scale for finding a replacement and addressing the judgment? Will the Secretary of State approach the matter with an open mind? He has already said that he would, but I want him to reiterate that. Will he consult openly with the schools and the local authorities, but in a fairly tight time frame because matters are becoming so urgent? Lastly, the argument is not about bringing back BSF. We recognise that it has gone, but as he said, we expect a replacement to be announced, and so far that has not happened. When will a replacement be announced?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the fair way in which he makes the case on behalf of his constituents. I should point out that Waltham Forest has already received £68 million from BSF, but I appreciate, as he rightly says, that there are many schools in Waltham Forest which are not in the state of repair that either he or I would wish to see.

The hon. Gentleman makes the point that by 2014 Waltham Forest secondary schools will be 500 places short. I am sure that he, like me, is aware that many primary schools across London are short of places. We must balance the need to ensure that there are places in secondary schools with investment in primary schools, which BSF did not cover.

The hon. Gentleman asked three specific questions, one of which was about the time scale. I have already been in touch, through my Department, I understand, with Waltham Forest. We want to make sure that we can receive proper representations on behalf of the local authority and its schools in a way that enables us to make comprehensive judgments in the most rapid time available. For that reason, in response to his second question, I will of course keep an open mind and will be keen to hear from him, other Waltham Forest Members and anyone with an interest in the decision. His third question was on consultation with the local authority and the relevant schools. I will be in touch with the local authority to find the most expeditious way of ensuring that the judge’s directions can be followed.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate about scrapping the education maintenance allowance. I share the frustration of many Opposition Members about the potential impact of abolishing it. However, although they may deny the relevance of the deficit, my anger is directed at the Labour party and the state in which the previous Government left the public finances.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

You should remember you’re the Chair of the Committee.

[Mr Stuart]

I am entirely happy to chair a Committee and to bear witness to the reality of education funding. I am involved in education and serve on the Committee because I care passionately about improving the quality of education and opportunity in this country. We may hear from others later, but the shadow Secretary of State did at least have the goodness to recognise that there was room for reducing the deficit. However, he would not tell us where, what, when or how. When I consider the attempt to make more effective interventions in the early years and I look at the nursery education opportunities for two-year-olds, I ask myself whether I would prefer to cut that or keep the EMA.

A Labour Member suggested that there might be differences between Members. In my constituency, some students travel for an hour and 40 minutes each way to attend Bishop Burton further education college. That is a real issue for a rural area such as mine. However, I know that half of all 17 and 18-year-old full-time students are eligible for EMA, and I am aware of the chronic crisis and pressure on education budgets—the desperate desire to deliver the outcomes that we have struggled to provide from our system. I have said it before, and I will risk repeating it: I know that the Labour Government were utterly committed to trying to close the gap. They had will and they had resource—a resource which has sadly gone—yet too often the gap widened rather than narrowed. I do not blame the Opposition for using this issue today, but I hope that we will collectively, not in a party political way, take the limited funds that are available—the deficit is not an irrelevant fact but the fundamental elephant in the room—and look to do what is best. We had a lot of spending previously, and we have a diet of hard decisions now. They must be faced.

The shadow Secretary of State suggested that the best approach was to cut everything by the same amount. Is that really the strategically sensible way to ensure that we improve outcomes for people in our society, not least those with least? I do not think that it is. So I am interested to know how the discretionary learner fund—the replacement for EMA—will work, because of the realities faced by my constituents, who travel over three hours a day to get to an FE college, and who then achieve at the end of that. If those people manage to do that in the face of great difficulty and personal inconvenience, I want to be sure that colleges such as Bishop Burton, which run private enterprises to make profits so that they can have a fleet of vehicles, are not disadvantaged. Despite those vehicles, the college is worried that the students, who often live in small hamlets, need to travel from their home to the pick-up point for the college bus. We need to ensure that we have a system—whether financed by local authorities or the replacement for EMA—that covers that.

It is hard to believe that EMA as it stands is the most sensible use of scarce resource. I am not trying to make a party political point, and I am mindful of my position as Chair of the Select Committee, but I want us to devise the system that works most effectively and yet does not deny the reality.

When I was first elected as a councillor—in Cambridge—many years ago, I went to a budget survey meeting with the public in a local shopping centre, which the then Labour council had arranged. I was handed a form which gave a list of spending areas for the budget debate. It said, “Please tick all those areas where you would like to see more spending.” I am a small-state Conservative in some ways, and I found many items on which I wanted to spend more. I was terribly aware of what went on in my ward—the lack of provision for young people, the need to do more in many areas—and I wanted to tick many boxes. However, the Labour council had sensibly included a proviso, which said, “All we ask is that for every box you tick to give more money, you identify another item on which you want to spend less.”

That is the challenge that faces the Select Committee, which will look under the bonnet of the new fund. It will examine engagement and participation by 16 to 19-year-olds. We want to ensure that the dire warnings by the shadow Secretary of State are not fulfilled and that young people are not put off education, but we must realise that we are in a highly constrained position because of this Government’s financial inheritance. Like that wise Labour council many years ago, every time we say, “Let’s save EMA”—Opposition Members have not made it clear so far whether they want to save all or half of EMA—we should ask, “What will we cut?” Just as, in that shopping centre, members of the public, like me, were told, “It’s not enough to say you want better youth services; you’ve got to tell us where to save the money too,” if hon. Members are to do justice to the young people, whom we all want to see given decent and proper opportunity, we must ensure that we do so in a financially responsible manner.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

There have been times this afternoon when, apart from losing the will to live while listening to speeches from Government Members, I thought I must have slipped through a glitch in the space-time continuum and landed on another planet. We have been told that, because £30 is too small an amount, we need to abolish EMA; and someone from a sedentary position on the Liberal Benches told us that because the Labour Government refused to extend school dinners, we should abolish EMA. I have heard many Liberal MPs speak. They in particular have an important decision to make, because when they talk about the 90% dead-weight they should worry not about offending us but about offending those people outside who are included in that 90%.

Last week, I was at a meeting with about 120 students from throughout Britain and the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) indicated clearly that if the Opposition motion was moderately worded and—as I think he phrased it—sufficiently friendly, he would consider going into the Lobby to vote with us. It will be interesting to see whether he does, because if he does not he will have misled those students last week and others at other meetings over the past few weeks. He has a consistent record of doing so, and I shall be interested to hear what he says when he returns to the Chamber.

I was under the impression that today’s debate was about EMA, but according to the Secretary of State it is really about the economy, so let us get one or two facts straight. The real spark for the financial crisis was when BNP Paribas posted its figures on the north American market in autumn 2007. At that point, the British deficit was below 3% of GDP, which I mention because it is the figure in one of the convergence criteria written into the Maastricht treaty by Conservative Ministers, who at the time said that it was quite tight—but achievable. We achieved it year after year, as we did the 60% debt figure that is also in the criteria, but, after the events involving BNP Paribas, followed by Lehman Brothers and Northern Rock, the deficit had to mount because we had to intervene continually. That was the root of the financial crisis

[Gavin Barwell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Cryer]

I am not going to give way, because I am short of time.

In my borough, I note that 63% of students at Leyton sixth-form college in my constituency receive EMA, and well over 1,000—1,100—receive the top rate of £30 a week. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Dr Creasy), who was in the Chamber earlier, 47% of students at Waltham Forest college receive EMA, and more than 800 are on the top rate. Those students and their college principals have told us not to get rid of EMA.

Principals from other boroughs have said the same thing. Eddie Playfair, who has been on television and radio repeatedly over the past few weeks, lives in my constituency but is the head of Newham sixth-form college in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown). He has one of the highest numbers of students on EMA, and he has consistently said, “Don’t get rid of it.” My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said the same in her remarks, yet the Government say, “We know best; we’re going to get rid of it.”

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way.

[John Cryer]

No, I will not, because I need to crack on.

The “enhanced discretionary learner support fund”—if ever I heard an Orwellian phrase, that is it—is so far unclear. We have not been told how it will work, but we do know that funding will drop from half a billion—£575 million—a year to £75 million a year, and it is absolute fantasy to suggest that with such funding we will be able to cover all the students who need assistance. I have attended meeting after meeting with students, principals and lecturers, and they all say the same thing: “This will deter people, particularly from poorer backgrounds, from continuing in education.” Yet the Government, and Liberal and Tory MPs, have engaged in a process of mendacity and misinformation, saying, “We’ll work together and do our best to come up with some scheme that will actually work.” The way to send a signal to the Secretary of State, however, is to join us in the Lobby tonight and vote for our motion.

At a time when bankers’ bonuses are being doled out to the tune of £7 billion, it is an obscenity to see a Government refusing to intervene with the banks yet at the same time taking money away from some of the poorest students in this country. However, there is one thing that we should be grateful for, and that is that the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are managing to do what many of us have wanted to do for a long time by politicising a generation of students. I can promise the House that those students who are being politicised by the abolition of EMA and by the tuition fees debacle will not be voting Liberal Democrat and will not be voting Conservative.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

I am pleased to say that we are not only going to extend the manufacturing and advisory service for all businesses, including the excellent ones in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but improve it so that we can help the productivity and competitiveness of small businesses in Lancashire and, indeed, across the country.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

The Business Secretary continually tells us that the economy is steaming along very nicely and that everything is wonderful. If that is the case, why are wage settlements running at a rate far below price inflation?

[Vince Cable]

The British economy is indeed recovering. It was in an appalling state, but economic growth is now strong. It will become stronger as a result of the work that the Government are doing in stabilising finances, and real wages will appreciate on the back of that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I encourage the Minister to address the House. It is no good his looking behind him, because hon. Members cannot hear him.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

18. What assessment he has made of the effect on school budgets of funding allocations to local authority education services for 2011-12.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

The Government recently announced the 2011-12 school funding settlement. Indeed, the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), has just been dilating on it. The schools budget will stay at a flat cash per pupil rate, before the addition of the pupil premium. The actual level of budget for each school will vary according to its local authority’s funding formula and pupil numbers. There will be a minimum funding guarantee, so that no school will see a reduction, compared to 2010-11, of more than 1.5% per pupil before the pupil premium is applied.

[John Cryer]

May I return to reality for a couple of minutes? I represent some of the poorest wards in London, and that is against some pretty stiff competition. The schools in those wards face a sharp increase in pupil numbers over many years, in particular over the next year or two. At the same time, funding is being cut, whatever the Secretary of State says. Even taking account of the pupil premium, funding per pupil will reduce. Is that what he had in mind when he drew up his plan?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but the truth is that facts are chiels that winna ding. The facts are that we are ensuring that the education budget increases by £3.6 billion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

As ever, my hon. Friend is a strong, powerful and fluent advocate for his constituents. It is important for us to make sure that the capital that we have goes to the schools that need it most. It is also critically important that we ensure that the one area that the previous Government overlooked—the significant expansion in demand for primary schools, particularly in the south and south-east—is addressed. I am sure he will agree that we need to address that along with the dilapidation in the secondary estate.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

On the vexed issue of BSF, I understand what the Secretary of State says about the capital review, but going hand in hand with that must be some sort of needs-based criteria. What progress has he made towards arriving at such criteria?

[Michael Gove]

That is a very good and characteristically shrewd point from the hon. Gentleman. We need to do two things. First, we need to ensure that whatever money we have is allocated in the most effective and efficient way, and we also need to ensure that as well as being efficient, it reflects needs. As regards needs, there are a variety of different criteria that we have to judge: first, so-called basic need—in other words, population growth—secondly, deprivation; and thirdly, dilapidation, or the actual fabric and state of the buildings. We have not had an accurate assessment of the fabric of the school estate since 2005.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

The hon. Lady is right to point out the importance of manufacturing; it is a crucial part of our economy. Sadly, it became imbalanced when her party was in power, and we need to change that. On the tax measure in question, and the representation that she made, she will understand that we are in the period running up to Budget purdah and need to be careful not to get ahead of what I think the Chancellor’s ambitions will be, but at the CBI dinner he made it very clear that, as regards corporation tax changes, we will not act in any way that impugns manufacturing in any form.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Does the Minister consider any part of health and safety regulation to be burdensome or, as he just said, red tape? If so, which bits?

[Mr Prisk]

The key principle in regulation is to ensure that it is proportionate and balanced, and that risks, where they exist, particularly in health and safety, are recognised. However, I say to the hon. Gentleman and to the whole House, let us ensure that regulations are introduced and implemented with a degree of common sense. Under the Better Regulation Executive we have good rules about proportionate regulation, and I want to ensure that health and safety meets those standards.