School Funding
Debate between Anne Main and Clive Betts(6 years ago)
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Mrs Main
I do not have experience of that, but I recognise the picture the hon. Gentleman paints. It is vital that we address those concerns about funding.
The UK tax burden is at a 50-year high, so the Minister will be pleased to hear that I do not propose additional tax rises. We are at the limit of how much tax we can reasonably ask ordinary people to pay. Working families have felt the squeeze since 2010 as the Government have tried to tackle the enormous financial burden we found ourselves with. It is good that we have made progress. Far be it from me to tell the Chancellor how to do his job, but the Budget is looming, so I am going to put my thoughts on the record. I am certain that the Government can find the money if we prioritise our spending appropriately.
We had a manifesto commitment—the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale will probably profoundly disagree with me about this—to scrap universal free school meals for reception, year 1 and year 2 pupils, but it was dropped. That was misguided. I and some of the teachers who were at the meeting I mentioned think we should have investigated that further. Thankfully, in St Albans only around 6% of pupils are entitled to free school meals. In Hertfordshire overall that figure is about 8%. Perversely, that means we subsidise between 90% and 94% of parents in Hertfordshire who could pay for their own children to be fed. Just as I do not want budgets that should be used for pupils at the poorest margin to be taken away, I do not want wealthier parents to be cross-subsidised when they do not need it. Such largesse is costing my local authority £6 million, and it is money that should be spent on teaching. I would rather St Albans pupils received a universal quality of teaching than that those with more affluent parents should receive a gratuitous free lunch they are not entitled to.
I am a great supporter of the good aid projects that have been carried out around the world, but, again, it seems crazy to me that we ring-fence huge sums of money for foreign aid when vital public services such as the education budget lack funding. The aid budget should be under the same scrutiny and pressures as other Departments’ budgets. We are effectively shovelling money out the door to meet an arbitrary target set in law. That misplaced policy should be brought before the House so we can decide whether to look at that ring-fencing.
I hope that the Minister will listen carefully to the issues raised in the debate, including some of the experiences recounted by teachers and parents. There is a funding problem in schools and it does not seem right that more and more schools have to go cap in hand to parents for even the most basic of provisions, such as textbooks. Alan Gray started the public meeting I attended by asking “What price education?” He did not ask the price for pruning trees, painting the classrooms or replacing some broken paving slabs, but the price of education. Of course it is entirely reasonable for parents to be asked for contributions for bonus offerings such as trips, but when they are asked to contribute for vital reading materials, the central funding formula needs to be addressed.
Teachers in my constituency do not tell me that the NFF is bad policy; they want it to be funded correctly. The aim of ending the so-called postcode lottery for school funding under the NFF is sensible, but the lack of overall funding means that it is difficult to deliver. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I hope to see some movement on the issue in the Budget. We must answer the call: what price do we put on our children’s education?
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
Six hon. Members want to speak in the debate, and we have to start the winding-up speeches at 20 minutes to 11. That gives us about 50 minutes, so Members have about eight minutes each, maximum.
Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]
Debate between Anne Main and Clive Betts(9 years ago)
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The Temporary Chairman (Mrs Anne Main)
Order. I think the hon. Gentleman was trying to make a fair point about devolution and taking back powers, but the shadow Minister is straying down a path that will not be fruitful.
Mr Betts
I will try to get back on to the straight and narrow, Mrs Main.
My point is that we need a time of reflection, with a discussion between Government, local government and this House about the framework for the constitutional relationships between the centre and local authorities of whatever kind, including combined authorities, so that we can look at the balance of powers and perhaps put down some markers or mechanisms for ensuring that the devolution we all support today is not taken back tomorrow. We need something of that kind. A constitutional convention has been mentioned—the Government may not like those words, but we need some mechanism to enable that to happen.
My second point is about fiscal devolution. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) quoted the report from the Select Committee in the last Parliament, and the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) was a member of the Committee. We produced the report on an all-party basis. We followed the London Finance Commission, which was promoted by the Mayor of London and supported by the London boroughs. By and large, we agreed the report, albeit with some embellishments, with the London Finance Commission, and we had support from the core cities, but it was almost dismissed by the Government as an irrelevancy—something that they did not want to pursue.
I am pleased that the Government are looking at the total localisation of business rates. How they do that will be critical, including dealing with the issue of rewarding councils that get more development in their areas and at the same time protecting those areas where development is not as easy to achieve. Achieving some element of redistribution in the mechanism will be key. Nevertheless, the Government have accepted the need for some more fiscal devolution in principle. They now need to consider how it can be right that any increase in the one tax over which local government has total control—the council tax—is restricted by the need for a referendum. No other tax raised by central Government requires a referendum on any increase. I did not agree with the previous Government’s policy on council tax capping—I refused to vote for that on several occasions, as it is a very centralist policy.
The tax also has not been revalued for 25 years. That is nonsense. The council tax is the one tax over which local government has some degree of control, but it does not control the bands. There must be some flexibility there to recognise the extraordinary difference between amount of tax paid and the value of houses in the top and bottom bands. The difference in the values of the houses is much wider than the amount of council tax paid. Local councils need more flexibility and the ability to control that. As the London Finance Commission said, and the Select Committee agreed, let us also look at stamp duty and other property taxes. Let us consider giving local councils freedom to set business rates. I know that the Government want to bring in some freedoms, but they could go wider. Could local government have a right to be allocated a certain percentage of income tax?
Those are all ideas. All I am saying to the Government is that once this wave of devolution is going through, with cross-party support and local councils entering into it and putting in bids, can we at least have some indication that they will step back at some point and have a serious look at wider fiscal devolution? Ultimately, simply giving to local councils the power to spend money that has been handed out from the centre is not real devolution at all. It is power to spend the money the Chancellor gives out. What councils need for real devolution is the greater power to raise that money in the first place.
Housing Supply
Debate between Anne Main and Clive Betts
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Suitably admonished, I shall keep my remarks brief to allow other colleagues to get in, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I wished to pick up on the comments made by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) about what is “affordable”, because in an area such as St Albans house values and land values are so high that it is genuinely difficult for any local authority and any house builder to deliver social housing and affordable housing. That is why I wanted to ask him whether he supported considering some form of means-testing for those currently occupying social housing. I just wanted to throw that into the mix.
My council in St Albans has the second oldest district plan in the country. I brought my council leader, Councillor Julian Daly, to meet the Secretary of State because I wanted my right hon. Friend to have a sense of the pressures on a place such as St Albans. There is high demand to live in our beautiful area. It is very commutable to London. It suffers similar housing pressures to London and has similar prices. The average house price in St Albans is £401,811. That is a massive sum for any young family to afford. The average mortgage repayment in St Albans is £738 or 16.1% of average income.
Another part of the mix, which has not been mentioned today, and about which I put in a plea to the Chancellor, is stamp duty. That has not been considered by the Opposition. In high-price areas such as mine, we have the Help to Buy scheme through which the Government are helping young families and young people to get on the housing ladder. Those people are saving hard for deposits, yet they have to give over a large whack in tax. Stamp duty has not been considered by the House since 2003 and I make no bones about the fact that I am trying to lead a charge on the matter.
Stamp duty means that some people are unable to trade down and free up homes for other couples because their house values have risen so much that they would pay a large amount of tax. It also makes it difficult for expanding families to move up. It is a barrier to fluidity in the housing market and to young people moving. It seems rather odd that we as a Parliament want to get young people on the housing ladder, yet we are happy to take large sums of money off them in areas such as mine. The cost of an entry-level property in St Albans is probably more than the national average house price, so for the many people trying to get such a property in our area, stamp duty is a big deal.
The reason for our having the most out-of-date district plan is not that we have a slovenly and lazy council—far from it. Our planning department is the busiest in the country. A huge number of people want to build in our area, and we have loads of challenges from developers. My council regularly spends large amounts of money fighting off predatory developers. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), smiles at me—I will be making my rail freight point—but it has cost my council millions of pounds to fight off inappropriate development applications.
The reason we have such an out-of-date district plan is that my council, along with other councils in Hertfordshire, was desperately trying to resist the high housing targets that were imposed top-down by Labour. If the Opposition go back to imposing top-down targets, there will be sclerosis in planning departments again. I welcome the fact that the Government have taken by the horns the point that local areas should decide. Local areas know their housing need best.