Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

We heard a lot from the Chancellor yesterday about creating stability, ensuring fairness, and choosing to put the next generation first. I must say that his promises sound particularly hollow today, as we debate the important issues of education, women and equalities.

I want to join other Labour Members in raising concerns about the impact on women of the Chancellor’s economic failures. I agree with the assessment of the Fawcett Society that women are facing the greatest threat to their financial security and livelihoods for a generation. Changes in the welfare system and Government cuts in local authority funding and social care budgets have hit women hardest, and many women and young families in my constituency have been driven into abject poverty as a result. According to the Trussell Trust, the London borough of Enfield now has the fifth highest food bank usage in London. That is not a record of which the Government can be proud, and in the light of it I have little confidence that they will be able to deliver on the Chancellor’s promise to do

“the right thing for the next generation”.—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 963.]

I do support the proposal for a sugar levy on the soft drinks industry. The rise in childhood obesity is alarming. However, although the funds raised from the levy are due to go towards the money that is available for primary school sport, we now learn that there is a £560 million black hole at the heart of the Government’s academisation plans for schools. That forced academisation programme will therefore not be fully funded. It seems that the Chancellor could do with some extra maths lessons of his own.

I have serious reservations about the drive to turn all schools into academies. In some parts of the country where standards remain a concern, all schools are already academies, and the Government seem to have no other school improvement strategy for those areas. What will it be like when all the schools in the country are academies? Academies were introduced with the aim of lifting failing schools and helping to improve standards, but the model is now being stretched to fit all schools. This is an ideological approach on the part of the Government, and it constitutes an attack on local education authorities, which will become surplus to requirements. It is disheartening to note the virtual silence from the Government on the important role that LEAs play, both in supporting schools and in helping them to build positive working relationships with each other.

The Chancellor may claim that the academy process offers a “devolution revolution”, but in fact it will centralise power in the hands of the Department for Education. Local parents will no longer be able to hold elected councils, as well as the Government, to account for education standards and provision. Indeed, they will have no say whatsoever. That is a very backward step in democratic accountability.

I know from speaking to parents in Enfield that the structure of the education system is not the first thing that springs to their minds when they are discussing their children’s schooling. They want to know that their children are happy and settled, are doing well at school, and can achieve their full potential. Where are the Government’s grand plans to tackle the teacher recruitment and retention crisis? How do their structural reforms resolve that pressing issue? This matter is of great concern to parents and headteachers in my constituency, and the situation is getting worse, not better.

The Chancellor said yesterday that the performance of the London school system had been one of the great education success stories of recent years. I agree, and I would like to keep it that way. However, the inability of schools to recruit and retain the staff they need is liable to have a lasting impact on the standard of education on offer to children in Enfield and throughout the capital. It will prove very difficult for schools in my constituency to maintain their strong track record of raising standards if their funds are substantially cut, but that is what the new national funding formula threatens to do.

Most London boroughs have per pupil funding rates that are above the national average to reflect the higher costs of education in the capital, but headteachers now face the prospect of money being taken away. That does not seem very “fair”, despite the Chancellor’s claim. We need to be levelling up, not down. I know that the consultation on the funding formula is under way, but I think that schools in my constituency would appreciate reassurances from the Secretary of State today that the Government will continue to invest fairly in the London school system. Such reassurances are vital. I recently conducted a survey involving headteachers in my local primary schools, secondary schools and colleges, which established that real-terms budget cuts were their No.1 concern. Several said that they would be running significant budget deficits within the next three years.

Despite the evidence from schools of increasing levels of poverty and social deprivation, there has been a significant drop in the number of pupils who are eligible for free school meals. According to the Enfield schools forum, that has

“resulted in a drastic and untimely reduction of funding provided to schools.”

The Government need to give further consideration to reviewing the indicators that they use to measure deprivation for funding purposes. Rather than putting the next generation first, this Budget—particularly in relation to school reforms—could do great damage to the provision of high-quality education for all pupils. That is not fair on children, schools or families.