School Funding

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) on securing this debate on an incredibly important subject. I want to start by making two broad points. The first concerns welfare reform, about which there has been some controversy of late. I must admit that I have spoken in favour of tax credit changes on several occasions, and each time I made the point that I felt that the benefit trap prevented people from making the most of their potential. The key thing is that if we are going to reform welfare and take those sorts of tough decisions, we must balance them out by supporting our schools, which enable people to make the most of their potential. I think that that is incredibly important.

The other general point is that Conservative Members have not marched in today calling for more borrowing, a bigger deficit and even more spending. We all support overall Government policy. We simply want a fairer share of the existing spending within the existing prudential spending levels that the Chancellor has set out.

Schools in Suffolk receive block funding per pupil of £4,119 compared with the national average of £4,447. I will resist the urge to get into a debate about who is in the worst position, but Suffolk is certainly in the bottom quartile. In my view, there is a link to standards. There has been a slight improvement recently. For the first time in some years, Suffolk is now slightly ahead of the national average for GCSEs with 53.4% of our pupils gaining five GCSEs at grades A to C, including English and maths.

When I spoke to the county council about the issue, it outlined some of the benefits if we were to achieve higher spending. There is no point simply asking for it: we have to decide what we would do with it. Two things are most important. First, we have some tiny schools in my constituency which have a question mark over their sustainability. With higher spending, we could make small schools more sustainable and therefore preserve a key part of a rural constituency. The other point the council made is that we could meet the increased demands for support for learners with special educational needs and high needs.

I feel very passionately about this subject. I mentioned welfare earlier, and I think that education spending is the prime public good in public spending. It is the way that people from every background can be given a chance by the taxpayer to get on in life. If we are going to spend more on anybody, it must be on those with the greatest needs. In other words, when we ask for higher spending, it is for some of the most vulnerable people in our constituencies. This is not about more money for the middle classes, which is another important point to stress to the Minister.

My final point—something that I have not had a chance to talk about since getting elected but certainly talked a lot about in the build-up to the election in my constituency—is that Suffolk is part of the eastern region. We recently had a referendum about the future of the United Kingdom in which the Prime Minister made a vow. Now, I made a vow to my constituents to represent them and their best interests. The eastern region receives, in total Government spending, an average of £7,950 per head, compared with £9,866 in London and £10,275 in Scotland. Scotland receives 23% per head more than my county while paying identical rates of taxation. I regard that, prima facie, as totally unfair and unacceptable. It would be all right if our trains were of the highest quality.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman mentions funding. Yesterday in Scotland questions, there was an allegation of Scotland being subsidised, but the fact is that Scottish people are paying more in taxes than they receive back in block grants. His own Government have identified that.

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[David Mowat]

rose—

[James Cartlidge]

I will just make one point so that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) is not intervening on an intervention, which is that I call on him to support me on that point.

[David Mowat]

On the Barnett formula, it is true that, historically, Scotland has not been subsidised, principally because the Barnett formula extra—over and above need—has been made up for by Scottish oil. Therefore, the taxation situation is as the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) said. That is not the case this year, nor will it be the case in the future.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

James Cartlidge— back to education.

[James Cartlidge]

It is about education because this is about spending. The point I am making is that if Suffolk had superb trains that were well funded, instead of sending the premium on our railway revenues to other parts of the country, we might feel better about the poor educational funding. If the eastern region received more in terms of the overall Barnett formula, we might feel better. The population of Suffolk is the second-oldest of any county in the country after Norfolk, but our spending formula for health does not reflect that. If all of those were better, we might feel happier. Therefore, we want better spending on schools because our taxpayers are losing out overall. My constituents work hard and pay their taxes. They simply want a fair deal for them and their children.

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[Kevin Foster]

Yes indeed, and let us be clear that the council that would benefit the most from the F40 proposals is Barnsley. If one was looking for an example of an area that one would have thought the Opposition would be committed to wanting to do something for, it would be that one.

For me, this is not about wealthy parts of the country versus deprived parts of the country. There are parts of my constituency that are quite wealthy, but they are the older parts—the places that are less likely to have young families with children going through school. The areas in my constituency that are the most deprived and that have the most challenges are the ones that have the most young families with children going through school. I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) make the point that education is the ladder out of deprivation.

[James Cartlidge]

It is very kind of my hon. Friend to refer to my comments. He is making a very interesting point about overall prosperity. Is it not the case that the levels of deprivation in places such as Tower Hamlets and Hackney were once much higher than they are now, and actually what is happening is that inner London has become relatively far more prosperous, partly because of the housing market and partly because of the City and so on, whereas parts of our constituencies have not caught up at the same pace? That is the underlying change that justifies the demand for fairness.

[Kevin Foster]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. We need up-to-date information and an up-to-date funding formula. Let us be candid: a hundred years ago, Liverpool was a booming port that was producing a tax surplus. Now, the situation there is the other way round, because of changes in industry. It would be strange to hear arguments that we should base funding today on what the economy was like a hundred years ago. Equally, if we do not change the formula and do not move on, people can find themselves living in areas that were once deprived that still receive extra support even though they are no longer deprived.

This is about making sure that pupils are fairly funded, because even in the most prosperous parts of this country there will be families who are struggling and who need the ladder of opportunity that good, solid education provides, so that they can get the jobs and the skills, and share in the aspiration that many of us have.