Department for Education

Debate between Adrian Bailey and Meg Hillier

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend tees me up for my next point. He also raises an important point. It is a political disease to ask schools to do more all the time and very often assume that it can just be done without the additional funding. It is important that the Secretary of State and his ministerial team watch closely that, while other bits of Government suggest that schools do things, there is the funding in place for that and for the core of what they should be delivering. It was after the general election and as a result of that campaign and that pressure on the Government, who were then elected without a majority, that the Secretary of State announced £1.3 billion of additional funding, which was weighted towards next year. This year, schools are in the throes of receiving the £416 million that was announced for this year and will receive £884 million in aggregate across England for next year. But that—the £3 billion figure—does not even backfill those efficiency demands that were asked for before. It is important that we recognise—in fact, the Government have recognised this—that we need 599,000 school places, which is as a result of the increase between 2010 and 2015. We are very concerned about the pressure on school budgets.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have often heard Ministers say in justification of restrictions on school budgets that there are large balances. In my own constituency of West Bromwich West, the cumulative shortfall in schools came to nearly £5 million between 2017-18 and 2018-19. The cumulative reserves of all the schools in Sandwell is £3 million. There is now hard evidence that the balances left in schools in local authorities are no longer adequate to meet the year-by-year shortfalls that are taking place in them.

[Meg Hillier]

I am going to move on, in particular, to the issue of capital funding where sometimes reserves are built up for capital funding purposes.

Looking at what is happening in schools, I really want to give the lie to the argument that more money is going into schools than ever before. The Government say that, and we can look at it in cash terms, but we need to look at it in terms of per-pupil funding. The Department is estimating that over the 2015 spending review period, pupil numbers will rise by 3.9%, or 174,000, for primary school pupils and 10.3%, or 284,000 for secondary school pupils. Therefore, funding per pupil will, on average, rise only from £5,447 in 2015-16 to £5,519 in 2019-20—next year. That is a real-terms reduction once inflation is taken into account.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Adrian Bailey and Meg Hillier

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. It is tough being a parent, especially in the early years up to age five, so although any support is welcome—all parties have to welcome any support, however inadequate, for children—this is not the sort of thing Labour should be promising at the next election. It is vital that we get cross-party agreement about the importance of families and of parents getting into work.

There is still no promise on the supply of quality child care, however. Supply is a key issue. The Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who has responsibility for children, has been tinkering, finger in the wind, hoping for more child minders but not more child care in child care settings. There are important and detailed questions that I hope Ministers will consider and that I will follow up for a proper response. Will the child care tax break only apply to Ofsted-regulated child care? If so, how does that chime with the children’s Minister’s desire for lighter-touch, or no-touch, regulation by that very important body? Does the £2,000 national insurance break for small businesses also apply to anyone employing child care directly, as well as the promised tax break? We could see a double subsidy for the higher income earner, who can afford to employ a child carer in their home, and much less help for those at the lower end of the scale.

When only one parent is working, much more difficult issues arise. Low-income parents have higher marginal costs. I think of two women I met at a recent roundtable I organised in one of my child care centres: one was a chef who, because of her working hours, found it much harder to access the sort of child care that would get the subsidy the Government have waved in front of us today; and the other was herself a child carer working for a private nursery on £15,000 a year who could not afford to pay for child care herself and whose employer, shockingly, would not allow her to work part-time. How will those women be helped by what the Government have offered today? We need more detail and to ensure that we make this work for working parents. In a spirit of co-operation, I want it to work—I am not just carping—but I do not see how the proposals will work as planned.

I turn now to lending for businesses. I am proud to represent Shoreditch. It is a borough of thriving small businesses, but there are issues with lending. Merlin’s magic wand has not delivered loans from local banks. The reduction in loan interest has not helped businesses, which tell me that one of their big worries is banks removing overdrafts at a moment’s notice. I want to see—I am disappointed that the Budget did not touch on this—better support for peer-to-peer lending to help interesting nascent businesses.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, given the failure of the funding for lending scheme to get money into small businesses via the main clearing banks, which appear to be using it to reinforce their capital position, the Government should consider using the scheme to help other sources of financing for small businesses?

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend, who does good work on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, speaks clearly on this issue. It is vital that we do what he suggests. The funding for lending scheme has effectively been supporting more buy-to-let landlords, which was not really what it was intended for, while businesses in Shoreditch—businesses visited regularly by the occupants of No. 10 and No. 11 Downing street—are losing out.

It is interesting that the Labour Front-Bench team, even in opposition, are encouraging local government to consider investing in one of the peer-to-peer lending vehicles, Funding Circle, representing an important part of the difference in ethos between the Government and the Opposition. We want local money invested in local business and creating local jobs—a break from the distant lenders that have no connection to the business models and economies to which they lend. We cannot say that the banks have stood up well to the test. They have let the side down. They overextended themselves with risky lending and brought the world financial system to the brink of collapse, and the rest of us, including local businesses in my area, have been paying the price.

One way to cut the banks out is to have better approaches to peer-to-peer lending. The Government have said that they will channel £100 million to small businesses through alternative mainstream, but we do not have the detail. The key issue about peer-to-peer lending is that, although it is for profit, there is no necessary prior relationship between borrower and lender. The lender, who buys into the model and will believe in the business, can choose the loan recipients, but there is no protection from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and no full regulation.

The first peer-to-peer lending company, Zopa, was founded in February 2005, but we now have others: RateSetter, the Funding Circle, ThinCats and MarketInvoice. Between them, they expect to provide about £200 million this year alone in funding to businesses with innovative models that are struggling to get money from the banks, which, if they are not familiar with a business model, think it a risk and do not lend, resulting in a vicious circle of not being able to fund a business.

Despite the low level of regulation, there is a good case for peer-to-peer lending organisations receiving more support even as they are. Zopa says that bad debts account for just 0.84% of the £200 million it has loaned over the last seven years, compared with 3% to 5% for traditional banks, so I think the banks are missing a trick and the Government most certainly are. The average increase in employment after a Funding Circle loan was 25%. If we give businesses the tools to get on and build their businesses, we see jobs created. The Chancellor talks the talk on this issue, but he could have done more to help the industry. The problem is that the industry is barely regulated and lenders have to absorb the losses. Where was the discussion today—or even a hint—that the Government might be looking at better regulation? Where were the changes to taxation, for example, to offset losses through bad debtors against tax, which would encourage more people to lend through such models?

My party is strongly supportive of peer-to-peer lending, as it can help small businesses such as those in Shoreditch and Hackney to obtain access to funding that would otherwise not be available—something on which the Government have failed to date. In the current climate there is a lack of access to funding—often to very small pots of funding. Indeed, the owner of Lock 7 cycle shop in Hackney—the first cycle café to open in the country—took out a personal loan to get her business started. She did that because it was quicker and easier than trying to put her innovative business model—a café that sells coffee and fixes bikes—to the banks. Actually, it is not that innovative—I give her credit for being the first, but it is hardly a risky business, given that both sides of the business are likely to do well—but the banks would have been slow, had they even coughed up. To take the chance, she took another route. The Government need to be fleeter of foot if they really mean what they say about supporting businesses.

Finally, I must touch on housing. There is much of promise in what the Chancellor said, but I suspect there will be a lot in the detail, which we have yet to see. The interest-free loan is for all buyers, not just first-time buyers, so it could be a licence to print rent for potential buy-to-let landlords and others looking to invest in second homes. From what the Chancellor said, it is not clear whether this will apply only to first homes.