School Funding

Jo Churchill Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

In the two minutes I have to speak, I would like to welcome the Government’s commitment and commend the Secretary of State for tackling this difficult issue. The hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) spoke about fairness. Children in the area represented by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) currently receive £178 more per pupil than my children in Suffolk. After the change, her area will receive £219 more per pupil. I would like the consultation to iron out these anomalies. We in Suffolk are grateful for the uplift, but I, like many others, have campaigned for fairer funding—my children deserve to be treated equally.

I appreciate that it is too complex to make the change in one go, because that would mean walloping some schools harder than others, so we need to have a gentle trajectory. That said, we must not stand back and fail to grasp the nettle. For too long, our children, particularly in rural areas—we have heard from Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Essex—have been underfunded. We have had to play second fiddle to large metropolitan areas. Children in those areas do not deserve better life chances; they deserve the same life chances as others. I have areas of deprivation in my constituency and children who could do with more money spent on their education. This is the right way to continue.

This morning, I held a roundtable of businesses and educationists from across the region. They are talking about skills. Please let us concentrate on early years. That is a bit difficult in Suffolk, because we are losing more than we currently spend on it, but we provide outstanding education. Please can we also look at rural England? Hon. Members should not assume that we have everything. When we consult—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.