Angela Rayner
Main Page: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)Department Debates - View all Angela Rayner's debates with the Department for Education
(6 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes the Conservative Party manifesto pledge to make sure that no school has its budget cut as a result of the new national funding formula, the statement by the Secretary of State for Education that each school will see at least a small cash terms increase and the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s guarantee that every school would receive a cash terms increase; endorses the aim of ensuring that there is a cash increase in every school’s budget; agrees with the UK Statistics Authority that such an increase is not guaranteed by the national funding formula, which allows for reductions of up to 1.5 per cent in per pupil funding for schools; and calls on the Government to meet its guarantee, ensuring that every single school receives a cash increase in per pupil funding in every financial year of the 2017 Parliament.
The last time I moved an Opposition day motion, I know I upset the Government. With the support of every party except theirs, our motion rejecting the regulations that increased tuition fees was passed by the House. After that, the Government announced that they would no longer vote on Opposition days. Today, they should find our motion more helpful.
As I suspect Members on both sides of the House know all too well, the Conservative party lost hundreds of thousands of votes at the general election due to its school cuts. With another polling day coming up, I have decided to extend an olive branch. Today’s motion is extremely modest. It does not even call on the Government to commit to Labour’s spending plans. It simply asks Government Members to implement the commitment in their own manifesto and support the positions of the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Education.
In January, the Secretary of State told us at the Dispatch Box that every school
“will see at least a small cash increase.”—[Official Report, 29 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 536.]
Then, during the spring statement, the Chancellor told the House that the Government had given a
“guarantee that every school would receive a cash-terms increase.”—[Official Report, 13 March 2018; Vol. 637, c. 742.]
He reiterated: “That guarantee stands today.” There was one problem: that guarantee did not exist.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Brampton Primary School in Chesterfield got in touch with me on Friday to say it has had a £130,000 budget reduction this year. That school has one of the few autism units in the area. Spending on special needs has been halved. The most vulnerable pupils in the schools that most desperately need funding are the victims of that broken Tory promise.
Angela Rayner
I absolutely agree. That is one of the travesties of this issue. Many parents up and down the country are angry and upset, particularly parents of children with high needs and special educational needs. They feel let down by this Government and their broken promises.
When the Institute for Fiscal Studies heard what the Secretary of State said about a cash-terms increase, it responded: “This is not true.” When I raised the matter with the UK Statistics Authority, it too said that the claim was not, as it stood, accurate. The fact is that the national funding formula does not guarantee every school a cash increase per pupil. In fact, it permits a cut.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Out of 103 schools in Coventry, 102 will face cuts. Put another way, over the next two or three years, education in Coventry will face cuts of just under £14 million. Put yet another way, there will be cuts of £249 per pupil. Is that not disgraceful? Is it not terrible for a party to entice people to vote for it through a manifesto, then cut their throats?
Angela Rayner
I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I remember visiting his constituency and seeing the fantastic work that teachers and support staff do in his area. I commend their work, but I say again that the Government have to listen to teachers and parents up and down the country who say that enough is enough and that the cuts to their budgets are not acceptable.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady acknowledge that the IFS also said that the extra £1.3 billion for schools means that school spending will not fall but stay the same per pupil?
Angela Rayner
It is interesting that the hon. Lady says that. That may be the case from today onwards, but that £1.3 billion figure takes no account of the £2.7 billion that her Government have already taken from schools, so they still face cash cuts between 2015 and 2020. Our motion offers the Government the support of the House to change that and to put their own words into practice.
Schools increasingly face an environment that is completely unacceptable in a country like ours. Earlier this month, teachers warned of a growing child poverty crisis. Staff said that children were coming into school without clean clothes. We even heard that pupils were showing signs of malnutrition. I doubt that anyone—in this place or outside—thought they would read headlines like that in 2018, but every part of our children’s education system is experiencing a funding squeeze.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
The hon. Lady mentioned malnutrition. Does she acknowledge that it took a Conservative-led Government to introduce the free schools programme and invest £26 million in a nutritional breakfasts programme to help young people? Surely she would welcome that.
Angela Rayner
If the hon. Lady casts her mind back, she will remember that at the general election her Government offered school breakfasts at 6p a breakfast. I do not know how they thought they could feed children for 6p a breakfast. I will take no lectures from Government Members given that, after six months, the Government still do not have a chair for their Social Mobility Commission.
Our motion offers the Government the support of the House to change that and to put their words into practice. Earlier this month, teachers warned of a growing child poverty crisis. The Government should support children and their families from the beginning of their lives, but funding for Sure Start has been slashed by hundreds of millions of pounds and 1,200 Sure Start centres have been lost since the Tories came to power. School funding cuts have left more children crammed into super-size classes, there are fewer subjects on offer and the school day has even been squeezed.
Angela Rayner
No, I have already given way to the hon. Lady.
The NASUWT warned just weeks ago that one in five new classrooms is a portakabin. Is it not time for the Government to match our commitment to getting the school estate into a safe and acceptable condition?
For kids with special educational needs, the funding crisis creates even greater challenges. Let me declare an interest: only last week, I was one of those parents facing the issue of making transitional arrangements for their child with special educational needs. Frankly, parents up and down the country worry that support will not be in place for their children. When school budgets are cut, the services that support children who are most in need are often lost first. The National Education Union found that almost two thirds of schools have had to cut special needs provision.
The Government’s new funding formula presents local authorities, which are at breaking point due to cuts to their budgets, with the terrible choice between top-slicing additional funding for high needs and giving schools their full allocation. Councils should never have to face that choice. Will the Secretary of State look at giving every local authority the additional funding they need for high needs from his Department’s budget instead of squeezing it from schools, which are already under pressure?
There is a similar picture for other support. We recently debated the new rules on free school-meal eligibility. Despite Ministers and Government Members claiming that no children would lose their existing allowance, the IFS found that one in eight who is child eligible under the legacy benefits system will not be eligible after the changes. Will the Secretary of State finally publish his Department’s methodology?
At 16, children should have new opportunities ahead of them, but too often those are lost. Some £1.2 billion has been slashed from the 16-to-19 education budget, hitting sixth forms and colleges. Apprenticeship starts are in freefall. This Government’s repeated failure to invest in our young people and their futures will rob them of the opportunities that so many of us in the Chamber took for granted.
I am sure that the Secretary of State will remind us all of the £1.3 billion his predecessor eventually came up with last year, so perhaps he will also tell us where that money will come from. We already know that £300 million was raided from the healthy pupils fund despite the Government’s promise that that would not be cut. His predecessor also indicated that she would save money by rowing back on the free schools programme—at last, an admission that conventional schools are actually cheaper.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
The Tories have cut £2.7 billion from the schools budget in England since 2015. Does my hon. Friend agree that the extra £1.3 billion of schools funding that the Government announced in July comes nowhere near plugging the funding gap?
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend makes a crucial point, which relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield). Taking £1.3 billion from the existing education budget does nothing to mitigate the £2.7 billion of cuts that schools have faced.
Will the Secretary of State tell us how many new schools will now be built by local authorities and how much money will be saved?
The rest of the cuts come from mysterious efficiency savings, which the Secretary of State’s predecessor said would be identified by officials. Have those savings been identified and can he share that information with the House today? Will he admit that the £1.3 billion will not reverse the loss of the £2.7 billion from school budgets, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) reiterated?
Money is not the only factor, but it is hard to escape the reality that the cuts are the fundamental fact of life facing those who run our public services and those who rely on them. Can the Secretary of State tell us exactly how many schools will face a cash-terms cut to their budget in the next year?
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Local parents in my constituency have formed a group called Fair Funding Enfield, which recently contacted schools to see what effect the current funding arrangements are having on them. Of the 59 schools that responded, 49% said they had cut teaching staff, 76% that they had cut teaching assistants, 72% that they had cut learning resources, 32% that they had cut school trips, 95% that the cuts would negatively impact the quality of education being delivered and 42% that they had requested or were considering requesting financial contributions from parents. Does my hon. Friend agree that, despite statements to the contrary from the Government, our schools are in financial crisis and in urgent need of proper funding?
Angela Rayner
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I commend the work he is doing across his constituency and the work that Fair Funding Enfield and other parents’ groups are doing on this issue. Alongside the unions, such groups have tried to push the issue up the agenda. I also pay tribute to the work of the Select Committee on Education and hon. Members across the House who have raised this issue continuously. I hope that the Government take heed of that today.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady also pay tribute to the Minister for School Standards, who has listened carefully to headteachers in my constituency who came to see him about the new funding formula? They have received an increase from £4,100-odd to £4,800 per pupil per year for their schools. Is it not right to acknowledge that the Schools Minister has listened and acted accordingly?
Angela Rayner
I did commend the work of hon. Members across the House to push this issue forward with the Government. The Government have to understand that their manifesto made the commitment that there would be no cuts in cash terms, yet the IFS has already said that there will potentially be cuts of 1.5% to schools. Today’s motion is about holding the Government to account for their promises at the last general election.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
The hon. Lady mentioned cash terms, but spending per pupil under this Government in 2019-20 will be 50% higher in real terms than under Labour in 2000-01. When she talks about cuts, will she look at the evidence and at the real-terms effect of this policy?
Angela Rayner
I say to Government Members that the evidence is clear. Under the last Labour Government, there was a 70% per pupil increase in school budgets. Since 2015, schools have faced cuts. We have heard that time and again from media reports, teachers, parents and leaders of councils of all political persuasions. All of them have said that these cuts are having a detrimental effect. If Government Members want to stick their heads in the sand, that is up to them, but we are trying to hold the Government to account for their promise to give a cash increase to all schools.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
To give an example of the cuts that education faces, does my hon. Friend agree that the cuts to the music service in Conservative-controlled East Sussex, which covers my constituency, are a real danger? The Conservative council is proposing to cut the music service in Brighton and Hove because it cannot afford it. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) is chuntering away. In Brighton, 40% of the schools have had to cut mental health services because they cannot afford them any more. Those are real cuts that are harming real children.
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend makes a crucial point. Arts and culture are suffering under this Government. All children across the country should have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument at school. Under Labour, they would get that opportunity.
Angela Rayner
I will make a bit more progress.
What requests has the Secretary of State received from local authorities that cash cuts hitting face their schools and what has his response been? How much additional funding would be needed to meet the shortfall? That is all we are asking for in the motion. We are not asking the Secretary of State to match Labour’s commitment to increase per pupil funding each and every year to restore the funding lost since 2015. We are asking only that he is true to what he has promised in this House and ensures that not a single school faces a cash-terms cut next year.
Luckily for the Secretary of State, the Chancellor has given schools across the country the same guarantee. Will he give us the commitment here today that he will go to the Chancellor and ask for the funding to meet that guarantee? Even he has to acknowledge the reality.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Thinking of the future, whichever side we were on in the Brexit debate, this country will face real challenges. We must upskill like we have never done before if we are to compete. If nothing else, that is one dashed good reason for investing in our young people and in education.
Angela Rayner
The hon. Gentleman touches on an important point. When I was speaking to my constituents in Ashton-under-Lyne, who voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU, one of their frustrations was that they felt their children had not been given opportunities and had been left behind. How will they feel when the schools in my constituency face these cost pressures and cuts? The Government have to listen to people across this country who feel left behind and as if their children are not being treated fairly by this Government.
Only a few months ago, the Secretary of State said at the Association of School and College Leaders conference:
“It has been tough, funding is tight, I don’t deny that at all.”
The fact he recognises the problem is welcome, but action is always better than words.
David Evennett
I am listening with great interest to the hon. Lady’s peroration. She has quoted the IFS, but since 2010 the core schools budget has been protected in real terms and we are protecting per pupil spending until 2020. Surely she should recognise that as well.
Angela Rayner
The right hon. Gentleman and I have worked well together across the Dispatch Box at times, but however we cut the figures from the IFS, our schools still face cuts. That is what the motion is about: it is about the commitment that the Government and the Conservative party made at the last general election. I hope to see many Members from across the House supporting the motion, because all we ask is that the commitment that was made at the general election is fulfilled and the promise kept.
The same is true of pay. The Chancellor promised to lift the pay cap after seven years of real-terms pay cuts left support staff £3,000 a year and teachers £5,000 a year worse off. Only this week, I was at Unison’s conference meeting support staff at the frontline of our public services. Along with teachers, they are essential to our schools and the children they serve, yet nearly one in 10 teaching assistants was lost between 2013 and 2017. Too many are now living on poverty pay. The GMB union found that three quarters of apprentice teaching assistants were on £3.50 an hour, yet the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that without new funding for pay, there will be cuts in other education spending or to the workforce. The Government’s own pay review body has warned that
“some schools will find it challenging to implement any pay uplift at all.”
Does the Secretary of State agree? Has he assessed the gap in funding, and how will he ensure that we can recruit and retain the teachers and vital support staff that we need without yet more cuts?
As I outlined at the beginning of my speech, Government Members have developed a habit of abstaining on all Opposition day motions, but today, I hope that we have offered them something different: a motion that they can actually vote for, because this motion does not ask them to do anything but follow the lead of their Ministers. They have repeatedly promised that all schools will get a cash-terms funding increase and have then failed to deliver it. The Education Secretary recently told us that
“the mere repetition of a falsehood does not turn it into the truth.”—[Official Report, 13 March 2018; Vol. 637, c. 801.]
I hope that his promises were indeed the truth.
The Government have given a guarantee that not a single school will face a cash-terms cut to its budget. If that guarantee stands, there is no reason Government Members should not join me in the Aye Lobby after this debate. Our children deserve the best education in the world and our teaching staff need the resources to do their job, so I ask all Members across the House to commit to the promises made at the election. I commend the motion to the House.
Maria Caulfield
I will not for the moment.
How have the unions reacted to this debate? Do they welcome this school funding? Do they welcome the Government redressing the balance between urban and rural areas? No. The National Union of Teachers has been quite open about making this a political campaign. In fact, it spent £326,000 campaigning on this issue during the general election last year—more than the Green party and UKIP. The union uses this issue as a political football for election purposes. That is a shocking state of affairs.
The NUT sent letters to parents, frightening them about school funding cuts that were not actually coming, and put banners in schools telling parents how much their children would be losing, when that was not true at all. It spread lies and fear. It is under investigation by the Electoral Commission for submitting incomplete spending returns. Given the funding announcements after the election, hon. Members might think that there would be a consensus to support the Government and welcome the funding increase. But no—the joint general secretary urged members at a recent conference in Brighton to ramp up their efforts ahead of the local elections as school funding is a top concern for voters. This is the true reason that we are having this debate. The NUT said about the issue of school funding that
“if voters changed their mind because of that—then we are pleased…We make no apology. We will do it again.”
That is the whole purpose of today’s debate. It is about next Thursday; it is not about schools funding or the future of our children.
Just look at the example of Labour authorities up and down the country, including Brighton and Hove, right next door to me, where some of my constituents send their children to school. The council there has been having issues taking in more children. Brighton’s The Argus newspaper investigated this case in an exposé by their lead reporter, Joel Adams. The council told parents that it had no money and could not accommodate children, and that this was all down to Government cuts. The Argus found, however, that the Government had actually given Brighton and Hove City Council £15 million to deal with the problem and build new classrooms, and that the Labour council had refused to spend it. It preferred to send out letters scaremongering parents and to put up banners on railings than to spend the £15 million that it was given by this Conservative Government. That is the truth.
Some of the schools in my constituency that sent letters to parents have now had an 8% increase in funding. When I challenged them on this, they said that there is pressure from the unions to get the message out. It is absolutely disgraceful. Opposition Members should be ashamed of themselves for raising this fear and scaremongering. But the truth is out today, because we heard it from the shadow Secretary of State; we all know that this is about the elections next Thursday.
I will close my speech with another irony. The whole point of this debate was to challenge parties about what they put in their manifesto and how they will find the money. Well, what did the Labour party put in its manifesto? Abolishing tuition fees. But once the election was over, that was suddenly just an aspiration and the abacus was put into storage for the next general election.
Angela Rayner
Will the hon. Lady take the opportunity to correct the record? We said in our manifesto that we would abolish tuition fees, and we continue to say that we would abolish tuition fees.
Maria Caulfield
I welcome that announcement, as it takes me to the second point I mentioned: where is this money coming from? As the abacus is in storage, we will have to wait until the next election to find out.
The Labour party’s aspiration is to spend, spend, spend—with no idea where the money is coming from. But we know from the Labour leader that Venezuela is the role model that his party is following—an aspiration to all of us fighting against austerity and neoliberal economics. At schools in Venezuela, children are missing 40% of their classes while teachers queue up in food lines, and the rate of children dropping out of school there has doubled. That is Labour’s vision for this country. It is not one that I want for the children here.
Nick Gibb
I share the hon. Lady’s support for Labour’s academisation programme, which is why we expanded it from 200 academies to over 6,000. She is fortunate to have in her constituency the Harris Federation, which is one of the most successful multi-academy trusts and school sponsors in the country. She should also want to acknowledge that funding for schools in Mitcham and Morden will rise by 7.3% under the national funding formula, and that Merton will receive an extra £6.3 million by 2019-20—a 5.4% increase in funding.[Official Report, 22 May 2018, Vol. 641, c. 5MC.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), in yet another highly effective speech on education, rightly pointed out that Dorset will receive a 4.2% increase and Poole a 3.8% increase under the full national funding formula. He also highlighted that England is rising up the PIRLS league table for the reading ability of our nine-year-olds. Reading is the basic fundamental building block, as the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who is sitting on the Opposition Back Bench, would acknowledge. This country’s adoption of phonics and the hard work of primary school teachers up and down the country mean that we have risen from joint 10th to joint eighth in the PIRLS world league table.
In her strong contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), like my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, effectively revealed Labour’s and the unions’ political motives for raising school funding. Lewes’s schools will see a 4.3% increase in funding under the national funding formula, but I will certainly come back to her on the three requests from the primary schools in her constituency.
Although I think there is some consensus in the House about the principles underlying the national funding formula, we disagree with the Opposition on the overall amount. Is the £42.4 billion we are spending this year enough, and can our public finances afford more? Last July, we announced an additional £1.3 billion increase in overall school and high needs funding, over and above the increases agreed in the 2015 spending review—£416 million more for 2018-19 and £884 million more for 2019-20. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that school funding will be 50% higher in real terms per pupil by 2019-20 than in 2000.
However, we know that in the past two years schools have incurred increased costs, such as higher employer’s national insurance contributions and higher pensions contributions. Of course, both have applied to other public services, and higher national insurance has also applied to private sector employers. Those costs are all part of tax and revenue-raising measures that were introduced to help reduce the public sector budget deficit, which stood at £150 billion per year—10% of our GDP—when we came into office in 2010. That was unsustainable and would have been bankrupting if we had not addressed it. Thanks to the hard work of the British people and a series of difficult decisions, that deficit has reduced to £42.6 billion—2.1% of GDP—and is set to fall further.
Without that balanced approach to public spending and the public finances, we would not now have a strong economy providing young people with the job opportunities that a record number of jobs in the economy brings. Without that careful and balanced approach, we would not have been able to spend £42.4 billion on schools this year and allocate more than £23 billion to capital spending from 2016 to 2021, and we would not have created more than 800,000 new school places, with more in the pipeline; seen a rise in reading standards in our schools; helped schools raise the standard of maths teaching; allocated significant funds to music and the arts; ensured that 91% of 16-year-olds studied at least two science GCSEs, up from 62% in 2011; or seen 1.9 million more pupils in schools rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted than in 2010.
None of that would have been achieved if we had taken the hard left-wing approach to the public finances set out by Labour during and since the general election. Labour’s spend, spend, spend plans would mean £106 billion more public spending, wiping out in one blow eight years of hard work on deficit reduction. Its plans to nationalise a raft of industries would add £176 billion to the national debt. Its other plans would bring the increase in debt to £350 billion, costing us another £8 billion a year in higher interest charges—an amount equal to nearly a fifth of the schools budget blown on increased debt interest charges to fund Labour’s spending plans.
What do we know about Labour’s statements and promises on spending? We know that they cannot be delivered without bankrupting the country. It would lead to a run on the pound, a flight of investment and a rise in unemployment—the hallmark of every period of Labour in office. That is why, no doubt, the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, in a moment of candour, described Labour’s economic policy as “a bit of a” something “or bust” policy.
By contrast, because of our balanced approach to public spending, funding for schools under the national formula will ensure that every school attracts at least 0.5% more per pupil funding this year and 1% next year than in 2017, with thousands of schools receiving significantly more. It means that for schools that have historically had the very lowest funding, we can introduce a minimum of £3,500 per pupil for primary schools and £4,800 per pupil for secondary schools. It means that we can increase funding for special educational needs from £5 billion in 2013 to £6 billion this year.
Delivery, not promises, is what matters and this Government are delivering—delivering on the economy, delivering on jobs, delivering on school funding and delivering on academic standards.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes the Conservative Party manifesto pledge to make sure that no school has its budget cut as a result of the new national funding formula, the statement by the Secretary of State for Education that each school will see at least a small cash terms increase and the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s guarantee that every school would receive a cash terms increase; endorses the aim of ensuring that there is a cash increase in every school’s budget; agrees with the UK Statistics Authority that such an increase is not guaranteed by the national funding formula, which allows for reductions of up to 1.5 per cent in per pupil funding for schools; and calls on the Government to meet its guarantee, ensuring that every single school receives a cash increase in per pupil funding in every financial year of the 2017 Parliament.
Angela Rayner
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder if you can help me with something. Earlier today, the Prime Minister said that the Leader of the Opposition had said that he would ameliorate student debt and suggested that he was no longer looking at that. That is not something that the Leader of the Opposition is not doing. Is there anything you can do, Madam Deputy Speaker, to help me correct the record to ensure that the Leader of the Opposition is represented fairly?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
That is not technically a point of order, as the hon. Lady may know. It is up to any Member of the House to correct the record if they feel that they may inadvertently have misled the House.