Schools Update

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I think I have been very clear that every school will see gains from the announcement that I have made today, which I hope is good news. It is a reflection of the need to strike a balance between bringing up traditionally underfunded schools and recognising that those receiving higher funding need help to some extent to get on to the national funding formula.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I warmly welcome today’s announcement from my right hon. Friend. This is a real moment of celebration for those of us who have been campaigning with the f40 Group for years for a proper fair funding formula. Will she confirm to my governors and headteachers in Gloucestershire that by 2020 all schools currently receiving £3,800 per pupil will be receiving £4,800?

[Justine Greening]

I have set out that we will have a minimum of around £4,800, which will be transitioned in over these two years. That is good news, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend who has been a tireless campaigner on fair funding. He has done an outstanding job of being very clear with me about his local community concerns and also his desire to see fair funding. It is responding to colleagues like him that has led to the statement today.

Education: Public Funding

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

They are not receiving a cut in funding. That is the whole essence of this debate, which, in my view, has not been fairly conducted. As we have said, we are spending record amounts of money on school funding—£41 billion this year rising to £42 billion next year—and we are moving to a fairer way of distributing that funding. We said in our manifesto that even where the new fairer funding system would have resulted in a cut in funding to some schools, that will no longer be the case, so no school will see a cut in per pupil funding under this Government.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

It must be wrong, historically, that children in Gloucestershire receive almost half what the highest-spending London authority receives. Will the Minister therefore tell us, so that I can reassure my local parents and governors, when we are likely to see the fair funding formula announced?

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are moving to the national fair funding formula in 2018-19. The consultation, which closed on 22 March, had over 25,000 responses, and we will be responding to it very shortly.

Education and Local Services

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State give way? I have been very patient.

[Justine Greening]

I will give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), and then to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown).

[Justine Greening]

My right hon. Friend is right. Under the Labour Government, youth unemployment went up by just under 50%. It was not just young people from lower income backgrounds coming out of the education system often without basic skills. It was graduates who came out of the system and could not find a job. We are determined to make sure that never again is there a lost generation of young people in our country coming out of the education system wanting a career but not even being able to find a job.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on giving way to me. May I commend her on the increase in standards in education? To improve those standards still further—the current funding formula is unfair and depends on a lottery code—does she agree that every pupil and every school deserves fair minimum funding?

[Justine Greening]

As my hon. Friend knows, we are absolutely committed to making sure that we have fair funding across our schools. We had an extensive consultation that received 25,000 responses, which we have gone through. We are pulling together what that means for the right way forward. He is right to point out that many schools in his local community have been systematically underfunded, which is not tenable in a country where we want all children to receive consistent investment and a consistent opportunity to make the most of themselves. We are determined to introduce our plans to ensure that schools are fairly funded, wherever they are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I start by paying sincere tribute to the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Lesley Laird). I can see from her demeanour that she will sincerely and diligently represent her constituents. I also pay tribute to my new hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Ross Thomson). It is great to have both Members in this House: it sends a clear message to the people of Scotland that a referendum to divide this united nation is most unlikely to happen. I am grateful to see them both in this House.

I would like to start where the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) started, and pay tribute to the teachers and governors in my schools. They do a great job on behalf of our children. I was delighted that the Conservative manifesto pledged an extra £4 billion for education over the course of the Parliament. That is an increase in real terms, so there is no reason why any school budget in England and Wales should decrease. Before I am reprimanded by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), let me say that I am with him absolutely: we have to live within our means. Austerity only means living within our means.

We in this House have been struggling for too long with an unfair education funding formula. In Gloucestershire, the key stage 3 funding differential means we receive £3,700 per pupil, while the highest spending London authority receives £7,200 per pupil—a difference of £3,400. That cannot be fair. The new funding formula announced in our manifesto will go a long way to ending that unfairness. I was very encouraged by the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education. It seems that she is well on top of this problem. When she publishes the proposals, I believe they will be fairer to less well funded areas like Gloucestershire. Under the proposals published in the previous Parliament, I heard from one of my head teachers that they were going to have to cut £400,000 from their budget, meaning the loss of 14 teachers. That is unacceptable for the children of our county.

I want every child in this country, from nursery school to postgraduate training university course, to have the very best education in the world. That is how this country will succeed in the world, and how we will increase productivity and trade. I pay sincere tribute to both my constituency neighbours in Gloucestershire for two things they have done—one each. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) has secured the real prospect of bringing a cyber-park to Cheltenham, which will bring huge opportunities for our talented and bright youngsters. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) has brought university-level training for nurses to the University of Gloucestershire—another real prospect for our youngsters. These are the sorts of opportunities I want to see in our country today.

There is a lot to do in education and there is a lot to do to explain how the money for our schools will be raised, but we owe it to our children. We want to be the world’s best when it comes to education. We welcome the new technical institutions, we welcome the new T-levels, and we want workplace visas for the brightest and best foreign students who come here from around the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I think it is because we are using accurate data. We end up in a straightforward place. First, do we believe that our children should be funded fairly during their time in school, wherever in the country they are growing up? Secondly, do we believe that deprivation funding should be based on up-to-date data? If the Labour party wants an approach that is unfair and based on out-of-date data, I will be happy to see its submissions to the consultation.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

6. What progress her Department is making on the proposed national funding formula for schools.

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Our proposals for funding reform mean that schools and local authority areas would, for the first time, receive a consistent and fair share of the schools budget, so that they can give every child the opportunity to reach their full potential. The consultation on the second stage runs until 22 March. In Gloucestershire, funding would rise from £331.5 million to £334 million because of the national funding formula, on the basis of the 2016-17 figures, which is a rise of 0.8%.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My right hon. Friend is well aware that Gloucestershire has suffered for years under the current system; there is a 61% disparity between the top-funded and the bottom-funded primary schools. Will he look carefully at the unfair proposals he has brought forward in the funding formula, because they double-count items such as deprivation, low attainment and English as a first language, and it is not fair on rural schools?

[Mr Gibb]

I have listened very carefully to the representations my hon. Friend makes, both today and in the various meetings we have held. The Government’s proposals for funding reform seek to balance carefully the differing needs of rural and urban schools. Schools in the historically lowest-funded areas would gain, on average, about 3.6% under the national funding formula; 676 small and remote rural schools would also benefit from sparsity funding for the first time; and, nationally, small rural schools, as a group, would gain 1.3% on average, with primary schools in sparse areas gaining some 5.3% on average. In his constituency, 64% of the schools would gain funding under the proposals, based on applying the formula to the current year’s figures.

Draft Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 General Committees

[Caroline Dinenage]

I have been very taken with the contributions from all members of the Committee—I was so absorbed that I nearly forgot to stand up for a moment. I thank everybody who has taken part in the debate; I always welcome feedback and questions from Members.

We all agree that it is completely unacceptable that a gender pay gap still exists in this day and age. The regulations will create opportunities for both individuals and employers by driving action that promotes greater gender equality in workplaces across the country.

Back in 2010 there was a coalition Government agreement to take a voluntary approach to this issue, because that was a powerful tool in bringing businesses with us. If hon. Members will bear with me, I will explain a little later why bringing businesses with us at every stage was important. That approach encouraged more than 300 employers—big employers with a staff of many thousands between them—to begin to think about the gender pay gap. It laid the groundwork for that important work to move forward, so it is a little unfair to disparage it as meaningless, toothless and pointless. There was a point to it, and it engaged the business community with this important issue.

As I mentioned in my opening comments, we have undertaken extensive consultation with employers and stakeholders to develop these regulations. In addition to two public consultations, the Government Equalities Office held roundtables with employers, women’s civil society, trades unions, academics, legal associations and experts in gender pay analysis. Having worked closely with such a wide range of stakeholders, we can be confident that the requirements are clear and proportionate and will drive real change in workplaces across the country.

The Secretary of State will review the regulations five years after their commencement just because that is the legal requirement, but that is not to say that we will not look at them in the interim. We will keep a close eye on them to make sure that they are being enforced properly. We have worked closely with ACAS to develop clear and user-friendly guidance to help employers understand and implement the regulations. That draft guidance will be published shortly.

The range of metrics that the regulations require will ensure that no large employer can claim that it is unaware of whether it has a gender pay gap. The publication of the information required will increase employees’ confidence in their employers’ remuneration process and could enhance an employer’s corporate reputation.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt a speech that my hon. Friend is making with such eloquence and competence, but the explanatory note say that section 78 of the Equality Act

“does not apply to government departments, the armed forces or other public authorities listed in Schedule 19”.

It goes on to say that, in October,

“the then Prime Minister announced that these large public sector organisations would also be required to publish details”.

Can I take it that the regulations do not legally require Government Departments to publish the details, but that they will do so on a voluntary basis? Can she also confirm that all non-departmental organisations and large charities with more than 250 employees will be included?

[Caroline Dinenage]

We have laid the regulations that will ensure that public sector organisations, and indeed charities, are included in the legislation.

School Funding

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

In my constituency, which already has one of the lowest-funded education authorities, two thirds of schools will receive a cut and a third will receive a maximum increase of 0.3%. That situation will undoubtedly lead to teacher losses and probably school closures. Will my right hon. Friend undertake to look at the situation? This might be only a consultation, but the proposal needs a radical overhaul.

[Justine Greening]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s concerns. I am happy to talk to him one to one about his local community, as I have done with other colleagues. We are undertaking the consultation so that we can ensure that we get the new formula right. It is important that the formula works effectively on the ground. Alongside it, we will make sure that we protect the funding for deprived communities so that we can use that mechanism to tackle the attainment gap. We have also made sure that an element of our formula follows children who start from further behind, for whatever reason. Low prior attainment is properly addressed in the formula to make sure that if a child needs additional investment to help them to catch up, wherever they are in the country, that investment is there.

The second stage of the consultation on the funding formula runs until 22 March. We want to hear from as many school governors, schools, local authorities and parents as possible. I know that colleagues on both sides of the House will also want to contribute. As I said, we have put a lot of data alongside the consultation because we want to ensure that people have the information that they need to be able to respond. The transparency that the new formula will give us also means that we will have much more informed debates in this House about how we want to fund our schools, and the relative balance we want between core funding, deprivation funding and low prior attainment funding, as well as issues such as sparsity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

For reasons that will become evident to the House, I am particularly grateful to have caught your eye in this debate, Mr Speaker. I commend the Secretary of State for tackling this issue, because it is quite clear from the debate that, in a modification of the Lincoln dictum, on this issue one can only please some of the people some of the time. Inevitably, when there is no more cash around, there will be winners and losers. Unfortunately, my constituency is one of the big losers.

I campaigned with the f40 group for over 10 years, and the absolute sun on the horizon was the national funding formula, but now that the consultation on the formula has arrived I find that my schools will actually get less money. In Gloucestershire, we will get a 0.8% cash-terms increase this year, and in the Cotswolds, there will be a 0.3% cash-terms increase. Two thirds of my schools will get a cut, and a third of them will get a very small increase.

In Gloucestershire, schools were already very efficient. They had amalgamated a lot of back-office functions and had formed partnerships. The secondary schools had done everything they could to become academies, being among the earliest in the country to do so. Gloucestershire is therefore a very efficient county, but we now find that our schools will get cash-terms cuts. That is on top of the Government having imposed limits on above inflation increases in relation to funding teachers, the national minimum wage, pensions, national insurance and procurement. A cash-terms cut for over half my schools means a real squeeze on education in Gloucestershire.

I should pay tribute to the parents and governors of my schools, because the vast majority go well beyond the extra mile to give my children the very best education. As a result, on very meagre funding, we get reasonable results in Gloucestershire. However, the figures I have given from the consultation will put Gloucestershire down from 108th to 116th in the f40 league. That is simply unacceptable because it means that some teacher posts will definitely be lost, and it is likely that some of my smaller schools will close.

[Heidi Allen]

Will my hon. Friend do what I am doing, which is to encourage all my governors, teachers and parents to feed into the consultation? I suspect there are some anomalies because it is the same in my area, in that we expected more and it has not been delivered.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I do urge all people to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) is sitting beside me, and I am sure that all Gloucestershire’s MPs will feed into the consultation. I am also sure that many of my aggrieved headteachers, parents and governors will do so.

It is inevitable that some of my secondary schools, which face some of the largest cuts, will have to reduce the breadth of the curriculum they currently offer. That would be unfair because every child in the country should have roughly the same breadth of curriculum in their schools. I accept that that is often difficult in smaller secondary schools, but it will be very hard for children and their parents to bear if their A-level choices are no longer available as a result of Government policy.

I simply say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I know this is a consultation, but I am looking for some very radical changes. The weighting for deprivation and other measures in the consultation is too high, and the basic pupil funding should never in any circumstances be cut.

“Educational Excellence Everywhere”: Academies

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

Becoming an academy is all about the ultimate devolution—devolution to the frontline of the heads, the teachers and the governors.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s flexibility on this matter. Secondary schools in Gloucestershire were among the first warmly to embrace becoming academies, but that seems to have left a communication gap in relation to small rural schools. How can her Department, and indeed all of us, communicate with the parents, governors and teachers of such small secondary schools about the benefits of academies?

[Nicky Morgan]

In my statement, I set out some of the specific policies, and we will put together a package of information about them that hon. Members can circulate to relevant schools. I encourage my hon. Friend to do what others have done, which is to call together heads or chairs of governors for meetings, and to involve the regional schools commissioners, who will hold events to talk about becoming an academy and the sponsorship opportunities available if that is what such small schools want to pursue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I think that what Frank would want is a high street full of customers. That means making sure that our economy remains strong. Our economy grew faster than any other G7 country last year, and that was because of our long-term plan, of which we will hear more tomorrow from the Chancellor.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Is it not vital that my right hon. Friend’s target of 100,000 new businesses exporting by 2020 is met by lighting that spark in small and medium-sized businesses to export for the first time and, above all, to keep exporting?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not enough British businesses export. More than double the number of businesses export in Germany compared with that in the UK, so we can do more and that is at the heart of the Government’s strategy.

Royal Agricultural University (Funding)

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to raise this important topic so that I can highlight the inequity and inappropriateness of, and real damage caused by, a decision made by the Higher Education Funding Council for England with respect to the Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester, which is based in my constituency and of which I am an alumnus.

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for Skills for being here tonight. In his previous guise as Planning Minister, he and I did successful and fruitful business. I hope that tonight’s debate will be equally fruitful. I am particularly grateful to him for being here since this debate is not a matter of his ministerial responsibility. He is standing in for my hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science.

HEFCE has deemed that the RAU is no longer eligible even to apply for specific funding based on its role as a specialist higher education institution. In the next few minutes, I want to outline the extreme damage that that will do to the institution in my constituency. The impact on the institution will be substantial and potentially highly damaging. It will lead to the precipitous loss of £1.45 million per annum in 2016-17 and subsequently, which is more than 56% of its grant funding from the funding council. That represents 50% more than the RAU’s current surplus, which was just over £1 million last year. If the cut takes place, it will throw the university into deficit, with inevitable impacts on its staffing, investment, student facilities and services. For obvious reasons it would be inappropriate for me to comment any further on that tonight, but it is safe to say that the impact of this funding decision on what the RAU is able to do could be catastrophic. A 56% reduction will be huge, and will undoubtedly have a massive impact on the world-class teaching that it delivers. The knock-on effect on the teaching of agribusiness around the world will be significant.

The Government have been looking for diversification in the higher education sector, to provide students with opportunities that are different from the traditional, academic university route. The RAU provides a different option for school leavers to develop skills in agribusiness and other agricultural sectors. The cut may well lead to a reduction in the diversity of higher education opportunities in this country.

That is compounded by the different decision that the funding council has made for comparable and competitor institutions, which may continue to apply for specialist funding. I will name them—they are Harper Adams University and Writtle College. The RAU will therefore have to compete against those rivals on a potentially very different funding basis, which will make attracting students to courses provided by the RAU very challenging.

To give a bit of history, the RAU is the oldest specialist agricultural college in the English-speaking world, having been established in 1845. Initially a private college, it entered the public sector as a university college in 2001 and became a full university in 2013 under the changes that the coalition Government introduced. It has a strong and long-standing national and international reputation. Indeed, I have personally been involved in furthering its formal links with three Chinese universities—Shandong Agricultural University in east China and the China Agricultural University and Tsinghua University in Beijing. It also has formal and informal links with many other educational institutions across the world.

Since the RAU has been in the public sector it has, like a number of prestigious specialist institutions, received institution specific funding—ISF—from HEFCE in recognition of the particular costs associated with providing facilities for such specialist education. The university provides higher education in agriculture and food, land management and agribusiness to an increasing number of students. Numbers have more than doubled since it entered the public sector and now stand at about 1,200. Applications rose again last year, as they have done over a number of years, and in 2014 the RAU was the third highest performing UK university for student employability, with more than 98% of its graduates entering the workplace. This year it was named by The Sunday Times as the university of the year for student retention. Employability and retention are two of the key criteria that the Government set in their recent Green Paper as measures of teaching excellence.

This year, HEFCE reviewed the criteria for eligibility to apply for ISF. Eligibility now rests on the percentage of students at an institution studying the defined speciality. The percentage chosen by HEFCE was an arbitrary 60%, and the consequences were pointed out by the RAU during HEFCE’s consultation. Eligibility of students for the relevant speciality is based on the coding of courses offered—something that was dictated to the RAU by HEFCE when the RAU joined the public sector in 2003. On this basis, HEFCE has deemed the clearly specialist RAU to be ineligible for ISF, while immediately comparable and competitor institutions are allowed by HEFCE to code their students differently and to remain eligible for consideration. The RAU is being put at a disadvantage compared with its competitors simply because its similar range of courses is required by HEFCE to use different HESA—Higher Education Statistics Agency—codes. This seems to be an anti-competitive and oppressive decision by HEFCE, and one that is counter to Government policy.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this is that HEFCE has decided not only to withdraw the funding but to prevent the RAU from even applying for it. Naturally, ISF funding remains a decision-making process. The RAU would be more than happy to bid for funds in this competitive process, but it has been denied the opportunity to do so. Entirely ruling out the RAU from this process from the beginning seems contrary to all the rules of natural justice.

In the updated grant letter to HEFCE on 21 July this year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills wrote:

“I would like you (HEFCE) to do this (manage the reduction on overall HEFCE grant) in ways that protect as far as possible high cost subjects…widening participation…and small and specialist institutions”.

He also specifically instructed HEFCE to

“ensure that no institution faces a disproportionate reduction in their HEFCE allocation”.

I put to my hon. Friend the Minister that this is totally contrary to what my right hon. Friend had said.

The decision by the board of HEFCE to change the criteria will, as I said, result in a reduction in grant funding to the RAU of some £1.45 million, or over 56%. I believe that the person on the Clapham omnibus would surely recognise the RAU as a small and specialist institution, and 56% as a disproportionate reduction in its HEFCE allocation. That same person would also wonder at a decision that endangered a specialist institution in the field of agriculture, food, land and environmental management at a time when food security and the environment feature so high on the Government’s agenda, not only in this country but internationally. Removing the funding will have potentially very significant consequences for agricultural education in this country.

I appreciate that HEFCE is an arm’s length body and that Ministers should not usually intervene on individual decisions. However, I believe that the Minister has a role to play in this situation. Government, after all, set the parameters of what they wish to achieve for higher education and provide HEFCE with the funds to do so. When the organisation then makes a decision that is so unfair and that will have such far-reaching effects on an individual institution, and on the realisation of Government ambitions, I would have thought that the Minister would want to intervene. Indeed, the work of the RAU also contributes to the Government’s international development aims, by helping some of the poorest countries in the world, such as those in Africa, to grow their own food.

The RAU has made a much-appreciated effort to make agriculture one of the key British exporting industries, with the aim of getting British food exported around the world. This cut will make that function much more difficult.

HEFCE has offered to discuss what transitional funding might be available. Although that may be better than nothing and may alleviate things in the short term, it does not detract from the fundamental unfairness that undermines the principles of this decision and its long-term implications.

I understand that my hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science will visit the RAU in the near future. I will be pleased to accompany him, to show him the important role the institution plays in preparing students for the increasingly important work in agricultural production, the food supply chain and the management of the land on which we all rely. When he visits, I hope we will be able to reassure the university that this Government and their funding council, HEFCE, are committed to ensuring that the work of the last 170 years, which is literally being harvested in the UK and around the world, will continue to be supported in a fair and appropriate way.

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for Skills for listening to me, and I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity.

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

It is a pleasure to answer this debate on behalf of the Government. My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) cares passionately about the subject, and rightly so, because the Royal Agricultural University is a fine, ancient and distinguished institution. It is an adornment to his constituency and he is one of its former pupils, so he is right to represent it as passionately as he does.

I know that my hon. Friend will agree that the United Kingdom’s university sector is one of the glories of our education system. It is respected and admired around the world. It has within it ancient and modern institutions, very large universities and very small specialist universities. It is not the size of an institution that determines its repute, but its quality, and the quality of the RAU is undisputed. It is admired and known around the world. There are farmers in Africa and estate managers in south America who will share stories of what they learned when they were at the Royal Agricultural University. My hon. Friend is therefore absolutely right to say that this is an institution that deserves the full support of everyone in Government who is involved in supporting higher education.

My hon. Friend also knows, however, that one of the key ingredients in the creation of a university sector that is as admired as ours is its independence, by which I mean not just the independence of the individual institutions, but that of the funding council that grants them public money. He was right to recognise that it is, therefore, a very important principle that Ministers do not intervene in the individual decisions that HEFCE makes about specific grants to specific institutions. Nevertheless, he is also right to say that Ministers do have a role in setting the policies and giving guidance and advice to HEFCE, through grant letters, on how it should make those decisions about funding for individual institutions.

My hon. Friend was right to quote what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to HEFCE in July 2015, but I will repeat it. He asked it to protect as far as possible the funding for a range of things, including “small and specialist institutions”. Whether or not it meets the criteria of the new formula, the Royal Agricultural University is unquestionably both small and specialist, and it is very important that it is treated fairly.

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me for pointing out that although the proposed withdrawal of the grant would represent a very significant drop—he cited a figure of 56%—in the funding of the Royal Agricultural University, it is important for the House to understand and for the record to show that, as a percentage of its overall income, the fall will be 8%. That is significant, and no institution wants to lose 8% of its income—it certainly does not want to lose it if it does not believe that it is being treated fairly—but, to put that into context, it is important that the House understands that it is losing not 56% of its total income under the proposal, but 56% of its grant funding.

Nevertheless, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to argue that it is important that there is a level playing field and that HEFCE does everything it can to ensure that similar institutions offering similar courses are treated—shall I say?—similarly, and that no institution is singled out. Although, as I am not the Minister with responsibility for this subject, I am certainly not sufficiently expert to judge on the question of the coding of particular courses, I think it is very important for HEFCE—and HEFCE will itself want everybody to believe this—to be scrupulously fair in its decision and that no perversities arising from historical decisions about coding and the like have led to its decision. He is right to point to natural justice as an important set of principles that any institution doling out the public’s money on behalf of the public should very much take to heart.

I wanted to quarrel with just one thing that my hon. Friend said. He seemed to think that the man or woman on the Clapham omnibus would have a view. I have to say that Clapham is not perhaps a place in which people have a close and intense understanding of the important work done by the Royal Agricultural University. I can assure him, however, that in the Grantham omnibus or the Stamford omnibus—or, indeed, in those in the constituency of my Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), in Devon—there is a great deal of familiarity with its work and a great deal of sympathy for his arguments.

I will conclude by taking this opportunity at the Dispatch Box—not as the responsible Minister, but on behalf of my hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science—simply to ask HEFCE to do all it can to ensure that no institution faces a disproportionate funding reduction and to avoid any threats in the short term to institutional viability. In asking it to do so, we do not seek to interfere in its independence or require it to make a different decision from the one it has set out, but simply to ensure that the principles of natural justice are indeed adhered to.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for what he is saying. He is being very helpful. May I take it from what he is saying that, as a result of this debate, he would expect HEFCE to enter into further discussions with the RAU authorities to see how the coding of the courses works and whether the 60% figure on which it made this arbitrary decision can be reviewed?

[Nick Boles]

I understand that HEFCE is already having discussions with the university about the consequences and implications of the funding cut. I am sure that those will continue and provide an opportunity for all parties to review whether the decision was taken on the basis of a fair assessment of the respective institutions’ activities. Those discussions will also allow the parties to reflect on whether removing 56% of anything is proportionate, when compared with other examples.

I do not want to go further than that because it is ultimately for HEFCE to make these determinations. However, I know that, as a fine institution at the heart of one of the world’s greatest university sectors, it will want everyone always to see that it is fair and impartial and that it does everything it can to support quality institutions.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

It seems to me and to the RAU, my constituent institution, that ruling it out of the bidding process altogether is completely unfair. Nobody would object if it could make a bid and put forward a case comparable to those of its rival institutions, but not to allow it even to make the case is pretty unreasonable and contrary to all the rules of natural justice.

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend has made that point eloquently. I would not want to comment on the processes that led up to the decision, but it is important that justice is done and that it is seen to be done. I know that he will go on fighting vigorously for this institution until he is satisfied that that is the case.

Question put and agreed to.

School Funding

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stuart]

That will have meaning in many rural constituencies. Separately, as my hon. Friend knows, the Rural Fair Share campaign on local government funding, which it is my pleasure to chair, shows up the great disparities. An interesting point about fair school funding is that the issue is not about rural and urban; it is an entirely arbitrary, random and grossly unfair settlement. If we look at the F40 group’s proposals, Barnsley would be the biggest gainer, Sunderland and Leeds would be gainers, and other areas might do less well.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I, too, add my voice to the congratulations on my hon. Friend’s superb campaigning over many years and on getting this number of people to the debate. May I emphasise that the issue is one of basic fairness? Children in similar circumstances wherever they live in the country should get the same resources from the taxpayer. The sooner we move towards a national funding formula the better.

[Graham Stuart]

As I said, the issue should be uncontroversial, but because the discrepancies are so great any change will mean that money is removed from some schools and some areas. The losers will, understandably, fight and try to find an argument with which to defend what is fundamentally indefensible, because there is no rationale for it. I will go into that later in my speech.