School Funding (London)

Debate between James Berry and Tania Mathias

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[James Berry]

The hon. Gentleman is nodding. Before I am intervened on by an MP from Tower Hamlets, I completely accept the political consensus that we should address social deprivation through funding for education. I completely accept that schools in Kingston are always going to get less than schools in Tower Hamlets, where there is a higher index of social deprivation. However, if we take into account the pupil premium figures and the differential in the same city of £2,400 per pupil, that is simply not fair. In my stage 2 response to the fairer funding consultation, I asked that the per pupil funding element should not be reduced to a weighting below the current 76%, unless significant additional funding is identified for the additional factors.

I want to touch on the other pressures beyond the fairer funding formula. I have spoken to many of my headteachers in Kingston, and frankly their concern is not with the fairer funding formula primarily, but with the other pressures on their budgets. Some of those have been mentioned. They include increased employers’ national insurance contributions, increased pension contributions, increased national living wage, the apprenticeship levy, the equalisation of sixth-form and further education funding, the reduction in the education services grant and a general increase in costs.

Another factor that I imagine affects other hon. Members as well, and certainly has a profound effect in Kingston, is the huge overspend in high-needs funding. It has resulted, as in other boroughs, in Kingston having to top-slice the dedicated schools grant to the level of the minimum funding guarantee. It is a demand that Kingston’s schools and Kingston Council are not really in a position to regulate, because a lot of the high-cost, private school, out-of-borough placements—sometimes of more than £200,000 per pupil—are made by the first-tier tribunal for special educational needs. Kingston Council is trying hard to address the issue by supporting applications for two new free schools—two special schools, one in Kingston and one in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias)—so that we can better deal with high-needs children in borough, but this matter needs to be addressed. We need more funding for high-needs provision in particular.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I absolutely agree with everything my hon. Friend says about the pressures regarding special educational needs. These are unpredictable, six-figure sums—he is absolutely right about that. Does he agree that there is a case for there being a separate pot, perhaps of central funding, because those costs are unpredictable year on year and are increasing?

[James Berry]

In addition to the funding formula, those additional costs need to be addressed. I will close by rebutting the ridiculous suggestion that has been made, although not in this Chamber today, that we should cut funding for new schools and use it for existing ones. In London we know that there is an acute pressure for school places, and that the cost of buying the sites for them is very significant. Some 750,000 new places are needed by 2025. Yes, we need more funding for schools now, but we will create a terrible situation for pupils if we take away the funding that has been put aside for the schools we need to build and that I very much welcomed in the Budget.

West London Coroner’s Court

Debate between James Berry and Tania Mathias

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[James Berry]

That experience is by no means unique. In terms of the telephone service, when I called up on behalf of a constituent very early on in my role as a new MP, I had to wait on the telephone for more than 45 minutes, and then it became clear that the call was never going to be answered. Frankly, that plumbs the depth of poor service for bereaved families. As I understand it, the senior coroner’s position is that he inherited a backlog from his predecessor in 2013. Be that as it may, he has not cleared that backlog since November 2013, and has compounded the situation with an ill-conceived staff reorganisation and shocking failures to communicate with bereaved families.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

On the point about the attitude towards bereaved families, I would like to put on the record that twice I have had people in tears in my constituency surgery over inaccuracies on post mortem certificates, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) described. It is extremely distressing for MPs not to be able to improve the situation. I absolutely agree with everything he said.

[James Berry]

Finally on the delays at West London coroner’s court, it would be easy to blame the situation on cuts, but they are not to blame. I wrote to the chief executive of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which is responsible for funding the coroner service in west London. He made it clear that although the council has had to make cuts to various areas, the coroner service has been protected from those cuts. The responsibility for sorting out this shambles lays squarely with the senior coroner for west London. He needs to get his house in order for the sake of bereaved families living across the boroughs represented here.