School Funding

Debate between Clive Efford and David Laws

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and I compliment him on the work that he and other county MPs in Cambridgeshire have done to raise the issue. I know that there is real anger in Cambridgeshire about the fact that it has been left as such an unfairly underfunded authority for so many years. I hope that schools in that area will welcome the uplift. The increase on which we are consulting would take the per pupil funding in Cambridgeshire from £3,950 to £4,225, which is an increase of around 7%. That is a significant uplift for its schools.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

In my experience, announcements made at the Dispatch Box often sound very fair, but when we look at the detail we find a lot of the devil in there as well. I caution Government Back Benchers to heed those words. Some local authorities are missing out but will receive what is effectively transitional funding. How long will that last? Will they fall off a precipice in 2016 and find themselves severely disadvantaged? What transparency will there be, because it is very important that we are able to scrutinise this, including in relation to capital funding? I am waiting for Corelli college in my constituency to hear from the Education Funding Agency, but it is very difficult to find out by what criteria it is being judged so that I know what to expect when funding is decided. We need more transparency in all cases.

[Mr Laws]

This is not overnight funding; we intend to address these issues for the long term. On fairness, I just point out to the hon. Gentleman, as I did in my statement, that the funding will help not only underfunded rural areas, but areas such as Brent, Blackpool, Bury and Stoke-on-Trent. On capital funding, if he has concerns about schools in his constituency, I would be happy to meet him to discuss them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Clive Efford and David Laws

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

I am delighted to do so. Again, I was delighted to join my hon. Friend in visiting that school. It was impressive to see how rapidly that head teacher and his senior leadership team have turned around a school whose performance was previously extremely disappointing.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

T4. The Association of Colleges has said that young people from disadvantaged areas and black and minority ethnic groups will be hardest hit by the cut of 17.5% in the funding for 18-year-olds. That is borne out by the assessment that has been carried out by my local college, Greenwich community college. Why have the Government not issued an impact assessment on this proposal, given the severe impact that it will have on disadvantaged groups?

Government Spending Cuts

Debate between Clive Efford and David Laws

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is staggering that we have been able to find so much waste in Government expenditure, in spite of the state of the public finances and public borrowing. We would have expected the previous Government to have taken action to eliminate some of the waste. We are determined that the exercise that we have embarked on will be not only an efficiency drive, but one that delivers real cost savings in a way that some of the exercises under the last Labour Government simply did not do.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is the convention that the letter left for him by his predecessor should be kept confidential between them? Will he say whether any of the officials in his Department have expressed disappointment that he has broken that tradition, and is it not true that he just bought himself a cheap soundbite to cover the fact that on 6 May he did not support £6 billion in cuts, but on 7 May he did?

[Mr Laws]

The only people who have expressed regret are Labour MPs.