School Funding

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Let me be the first to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on a superb introduction to this important issue, which has drawn a large number of hon. Members to the Chamber. It would have been nice to see a few hon. Members from Her Majesty’s Opposition, but they seem to be somewhat absent. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the sensitive way in which he has raised this important issue.

We all have a duty to speak up for our constituents. Central Bedfordshire council is in the unique position of having a local authority on one side of it, Luton, which is generally poorer than central Bedfordshire, and a local authority on the other side of it, Buckinghamshire, which is richer. Both authorities receive more money per child than central Bedfordshire. I put it to the Minister that it is very hard, as a Bedfordshire MP, to explain to my constituents why the authorities on either side, one of which is poorer and one of which is richer, receive more money. It makes an eloquent case for why the formula has no logic or rationale.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I am intrigued by the disparity and lack of clarity in Bedfordshire. Three years ago, Cheshire county split into two unitary authorities—east and west. Cheshire East, which includes Macclesfield and Congleton, receives £10 million a year less than Cheshire West. The reason for the disparity is not clear at all, which highlights my hon. Friend’s point. The formula needs clarity and transparency, as well as fairness.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for illustrating a problem similar to the one in the bottom part of Bedfordshire. That adds to my argument.

Each child in central Bedfordshire receives £4,658, compared with a child in Luton who receives £5,315 and a child in Buckinghamshire who receives £4,814. A child in Luton gets £657 more and a child in wealthier Buckinghamshire, our neighbour, gets £156 more. Every political party across the spectrum in central Bedfordshire is unhappy about that. The leader of Central Bedfordshire council wrote to the Secretary of State on 25 January to express the views of the whole council on this matter.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this debate.

If my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) would like another example, Leicestershire is the lowest-funded local authority per pupil head in the country. One disparity between the county and neighbouring Leicester city—I am sure that hon. Members have examples of a city next door to a county—is that pupils in Leicester get £900 per head more than pupils in Leicestershire. Yet books and teachers’ salaries do not cost any more in the city than in the county.

[Andrew Selous]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point powerfully, because that is my point, too.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this debate.

The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) made about teachers’ salaries is vital, because those constitute, as all hon. Members who have been school governors know, the vast majority of a school’s budget. I am not in favour of differential salaries throughout the country. We need standard salaries. It is all the more important that schools funding should be fair, per head, because those basic costs should be the same throughout the country.

[Andrew Selous]

I thank my hon. Friend for speaking with passion and for further illustrating the point, which all hon. Members are making.

Some hon. Members have already mentioned that relatively wealthy areas often have significant pockets of deprivation. That is true in my constituency. There is deprivation in Houghton Regis, for example. The indices of multiple deprivation in some wards in that town are not dissimilar to those in much higher-funded Luton next door. The formula fails poorer children in wealthier areas. We need to look at that to see whether the formula could drill down and give additional funding for poorer children in slightly wealthier areas.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the pupil premium has been a great advance for poorer children, but in many counties there is quite a low level of unemployment and poorer constituents often do not qualify for free school meals and miss out, and are not being helped by the differential funding that he rightly condemns.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for adding that important point to the debate.

This Government made an impressive start on this issue by publishing “School funding reform: next steps towards a fairer system” a few weeks ago. I am grateful to the Minister and his colleagues at the Department for recognising the problem and setting out a route map for dealing with this issue. Having looked through the document, I understand that it will look to vary funding between different areas to try to deal with some of the discrepancies by up to 1.5% variance from the minimum funding guarantee per year. That will apply in both 2013-14 and 2014-15. That is an important start for which we are all grateful.

It is worth putting on the record that this Government came into office inheriting a complete economic shambles. We are still having to borrow £120 billion just to pay for public expenditure this year and we are honouring our commitments on increasing funding to the NHS and on international development. Notwithstanding that, Ministers in the Department have maintained cash budgets for schools, which is no mean achievement. That should go on the record in this debate. Many hon. Members know that the only way to deal with this issue, and the unfairness that many of us are rightly raising, is to get the economy growing and get real economic growth. In a time of rising budgets, I believe that by doing so we will be able to make significant progress towards dealing with these inequalities. I should welcome some reassurance from the Minister that that will happen as the economy grows.