School Funding

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the statement and the small amount of notice we had of its contents.

There are growing pressures on education funding and demographic trends are dictating the need for more school places, with the National Audit Office reporting the need for an additional 250,000 places by next year. That has big implications for the allocation of education funding.

Ministers have shown a degree of complacency in addressing the primary school places crisis. In less than a month, parents will learn the outcome of their application for their child’s primary school place and we know that under this Government we have seen a doubling of the number of classes with more than 30 pupils and—do not worry, I will not take up 1,400 words, as the Minister did—a trebling in the number of primary schools with more than 800 pupils. The pressures are real, which is why it is so alarming that according to NAO data two thirds of all places created by the free school programme are being diverted from areas of high and severe need for primary places. In secondary schools, only 19% of places—[Interruption.] Government Members should listen to this—they should listen with their ears, rather than their mouths. In secondary schools, only 19% of places are in areas of need. That cannot be right, particularly on a day when another free school has gone into special measures.

We have to take any statements on finance from the Schools Minister with a pinch of salt, because he has form. He used to claim when in opposition that the pupil premium would be additional money in real terms for schools, but, as he admitted today in his statement, it is not additional money in real terms. What are the implications of the statement for the pupil premium and for non-local authority schools?

The idea of a national funding formula has merit, but it must be debated openly and transparently. The coalition has said that it is committed to a new national funding formula by 2015-16. Can we assume from today’s statement that this has been filed away in the drawer marked “Too difficult”, and that there will be no new comprehensive funding formula under this increasingly impotent Government?

The Minister claimed that previous Governments did nothing on this. That is nonsense. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that a new national funding formula will have winners and losers. If Ministers are pursuing the national funding formula, they must do so in an open and transparent way and be clear about who will lose out. So can the right hon. Gentleman confirm—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think no one is going to lose out. Can the Minister confirm that there are no losers from this announcement because he has decided to leave the bad news for those he intends to hit with cuts, including his hon. Friends who are so voluble, until after the next general election?

If this is genuinely new money for education, it will have a Barnett formula consequential for the devolved Administrations, which I know will be of interest to all political parties in the devolved nations, including the Minister’s own party. Can he confirm that this announcement contains new money from the Treasury, and say how much the Barnett consequential of that new money will be for the devolved Administrations and how much he is taking from his existing budget? It was not clear from his statement how much is new Treasury money, and how much he is cutting from the schools budget to pay for this part of the announcement. I would be grateful if he clarified those figures.

The Minister said in his statement, “We are able to deliver this significant boost by using money from within our protected schools budget and because of additional money from the Treasury.” The House deserves to know how much will come from each source, where the money is being taken from within the protected schools budget and what the Barnett consequentials are. We learned this week that Ministers have been known to put the cart before the horse in devising policy, and only then to think how they might pay for it. Can the Minister assure us that this is fully costed and not simply another botched spending announcement from the Department for Education?

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful, I suppose, to the hon. Gentleman for his response, but all of us in the House are still none the wiser about whether the Labour party supports the proposals I am announcing today. Perhaps there could be some indication of this from the Labour Front Bench. Do I take it from all those critical comments that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) proposes to send back the money we are going to allocate to Stoke-on-Trent—potentially £4 million to his area? We are unaware from the statement whether the Labour party supports these proposals. Or is the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) genuinely embarrassed that his party failed to deal with the issue of underfunded areas year in, year out, in spite of clear evidence of unfair funding throughout the country?

To come to the points that the hon. Gentleman did make, few of which were about the contents of my statement, I do not know how he has the nerve to accuse this Government of complacency over school place planning, when the amount of money that we are putting into basic need is many multiples of the amount that the previous Government put in. How can he talk about complacency when his was a Government who ignored all the forecasts of the Office for National Statistics from 2003 onwards and were taking out 250,000 primary schools places at a time when the population was increasing? That is behind many of the problems that we face in parts of the country today where Labour was closing down places when it should have been funding them.

On the pupil premium, it is clear that we have protected, in cash terms, the settlement for every pupil, and the pupil premium is on top of that. I invite the hon. Gentleman to go to schools across the country, particularly to those in areas of high disadvantage, and try telling them that this is not extra money. It is making a massive difference in some of the most deprived schools. Furthermore, I can confirm that in 2014-15 the pupil premium will rise for primary schools from £900 to £1,300, and for secondary schools to £935. It will give schools thousands and thousands of pounds extra over a young disadvantaged person’s time in education to improve their educational outcomes, and I am very proud of that.

We have also made it clear that the right time to set out the national fair funding formula is when we have multi-year plans, so we can create a sense of certainty. We are not, as previous Governments did, simply kicking this issue into the long grass. For the first time, we are delivering the uplifts that will make a real difference in areas such as Cambridgeshire and the others that I have mentioned. If the hon. Gentleman wants to campaign on that, he is welcome to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laws]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Once again, I praise her resilience in campaigning on this issue throughout the long period of the Labour Administration, who ignored the issue. I am pleased that it is a coalition Government who are proposing to raise the amount of funding for Poole from just over £4,000 per pupil to £4,142, which would give Poole over £2.25 million of additional funding.

[Kevin Brennan]

The civil service is meant to be independent; this is outrageous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I really welcome the announcement. It is a significant step towards a fairer funding formula, which children in our counties were denied by the previous Government. Labour continues politically to use the education budget for its own areas. I am keen to hear what the announcement will mean for children in Suffolk, if the Minister has that information available.

[Kevin Brennan]

Oh, I’m sure he does.

[Mr Laws]

Labour Members are making a lot of noise, which reflects their embarrassment at the fact that this was a problem for years under a Labour Government and they did nothing about it. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not like to hear good news, but I can give him some more good news for Suffolk, whose funding will go up by more than £9 million, from £4,241 a pupil to £4,347. [Interruption.] I am sorry that Labour Members cannot take this in a measured way or accept that we are doing the right thing to deliver fair funding.

[Mr Laws]

I am happy to confirm the figure that I mentioned a moment ago to another Gloucestershire MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). South Gloucestershire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) correctly indicates, is one of the areas that have been underfunded for a long time. Under the proposals on which we are consulting, its funding will go up from the current £3,969 per pupil to an indicative figure of £4,217. That 6.3% increase is significant and I know that parents in my hon. Friend’s constituency will welcome it, even if the Labour party does not.

[Kevin Brennan]

Oh, shut up.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The whole House heard the hon. Gentleman’s remark from a sedentary position. An apology would be appropriate.

[Kevin Brennan]

Without reservation, I apologise.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for acting honourably and trust he will now be a little quieter.