Business of the House

Andrew Jones Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising the matter on behalf of his constituents and others. I will ask my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to respond to him. I will also, if I may, take an interest in that response, because these are not issues with which I am very familiar, but I will be glad to see what she has to say on the matter.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

Primary schools in my constituency have told me of the challenges that they are facing from the growing demand for places and the pressure that this is causing, particularly on capital budgets. I do not think that it is just a local issue. It is affecting primary schools up and down the country. May we please have a debate to discuss what is being done to ensure that schools can cope with the growing demand for places?

[Mr Lansley]

Yes; my hon. Friend raises an important point. The problem is not confined to his constituency. The number of live births in this country began to rise in 2001 and since then, through to 2011, there has been about a 16% increase, so we have rising rolls in primary schools. The Building Schools for the Future plans of the previous Government did nothing to help primary schools respond to that. My hon. Friends in the Department for Education have been doing that, and through the spending review we are making available £2.7 billion to target local authority areas needing to provide places. I know that my hon. Friend will have seen in the capital allocations particular emphasis on meeting basic needs in the education system, which of course includes areas where demography demonstrates that capacity of schools is not sufficient.