Schools Funding

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan]

I can absolutely confirm that we are on that journey. The last Government started the consultation process on that journey towards the end of the last Parliament, as the hon. Member for Worcester mentioned in his opening speech.

We also heard contributions from the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), who mentioned Taoism in his remarks, and from the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who mentioned Deng Xiaoping. Perhaps I can also quote Zhou Enlai, who, when asked about the effects of the French revolution, said that it was too early to tell. It is also, perhaps, a little too early to tell exactly what the outcome of the funding formula for schools will be, but we would welcome some transparency about it from the Government.

I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for York Outer—

[Miss McIntosh]

I am the Member for Thirsk and Malton.

[Kevin Brennan]

I beg the hon. Lady’s pardon. The constituencies keep changing all the time. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) paid tribute in her remarks to the teacher Ann Maguire, who was tragically killed yesterday in school. I associate myself with those remarks, and I am sure that everybody in the House would want to do the same.

Contributions were also made by the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) and by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who recognised the long-standing issues and the source of some of the present inequalities in the system, acknowledging that some of the issues in Cambridge go back to decisions taken by the county council in the 1980s. Such historical difficulties are hard to unravel, as Governments of all colours have found. Contributions were also made by the hon. Members for Redditch (Karen Lumley) and for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray). The hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) managed to point out some of the odd outcomes of the Government’s methodology in the current allocation made in the recent statement. We heard a contribution as well from the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who also pointed them out and summed up the difficulty for all Governments when he said that he does not want to take a single penny away from Hull.

Will the Minister acknowledge that introducing a national funding formula will result in losers as well as winners? We must be open and honest about that. What I found frustrating about the statement was that the Schools Minister would not acknowledge that, and that some of the bad news about what will happen elsewhere was being parked down the road rather than openly alluded to now. I make that point now, as I made it at the time. Interventions were made by many hon. Members present, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who rightly pointed out that her local authority has been subject to issues relating to the national funding formula.

There are undoubtedly wide disparities among different areas. Some of those disparities can be explained by levels of deprivation or by things such as London weighting, but it remains true that pupils in schools with essentially similar characteristics can be funded very differently depending on where in the country they are. It goes back even as far as to when I was teaching, 25 years ago, before the introduction of the dedicated schools grant. Before that, the exact level of funding for schools was determined by local authorities, and the grant from central Government was part of the overall local government settlement. The Government set out an expected level of school funding for each local authority during that time and well into the 2000s, until 2006, when the dedicated schools grant was introduced. However, authorities were free to ignore it, as the money was not ring-fenced. That is exactly what happened in Cambridgeshire, as the hon. Member for Cambridge pointed out.

The result was that most councils spent more than the Government’s expected amount, which was known then as the school formula funding share, but to widely different extents. The exact level of funding was determined as a result of local political priorities, including the level of council tax, and the arcane working of the local government settlement as a whole. The national funding formula grant was introduced in 2006, and those basic levels of funding were taken as the baseline. The grant was increased by a given percentage each year, so the differences basically continued, except that authorities that spent less got an increase to bring them up to that level. Over and above that, there was some relative increase in the funding for areas of deprivation. That leads us to the consultation that took place towards the end of the last Government. The issue is long-standing, and it is rooted in how the funding was calculated formerly. The last Government changed that system. I accept that the disparities remained, which is why we began consulting towards the end of the last Government on a national funding formula approach.

The current Government have committed themselves to the national funding formula, but when they made their announcement back in 2011, they did not analyse the figures fully. It was up to the Institute For Fiscal Studies to do so, and its report showed that the level of disruption caused by the introduction of the Government’s proposals for the national funding formula would be highly unpredictable. The IFS calculated that one in six schools would lose at least 10% of their budgets as a result of the Government’s plans as outlined at that time, that one in 10 would gain at least 10% and that nearly 20% of primary schools and 30% of secondary schools would experience a cash-terms cut in funding if those plans were introduced.

Having realised how complicated and difficult it is to get it right, as we must—I welcome hon. Members’ remarks that we should attempt to do so in a cross-party way—the Government have tinkered with the proposals a bit in the meantime and have put some money towards the problem in the announcement that we are discussing. However, as hon. Members have acknowledged, the Government have not done what they said they would do at the beginning of this Parliament and introduced the national funding formula. They could have done so, but they chose not to. That is the reality. Although they have made a down payment, as hon. Members have described it—another way of putting it is that they have thrown a bit of money at the problem—they have not actually introduced the national funding formula, as they committed themselves to do. I do not criticise them overly for that, as it is a difficult thing to do, and it must be got right. We have seen what the consequences are, as the IFS has pointed out.

On the Government’s proposals themselves, the current proposals assert that no authority will lose money as a result. That may be true purely in cash terms, but it will occur in the context of no increase for inflation throughout this Parliament, and an extra 2.3% increase in employer pension contributions that will not be funded by the Government. The consequence will be a continuing squeeze on school budgets. Will the Minister acknowledge that that is the reality on the ground? For many schools, many of the gains will only offset losses that they suffer elsewhere. Welcome as the proposals are for those schools, the reality is that they will not lead to a real increase in the amount of money available to them, and that other schools’ budgets will be squeezed by increasing pressures. Malcolm Trobe of the Association of School and College Leaders said that the announcement

“is completely overshadowed by the reality that all schools and colleges will have a huge hole in their budgets caused by the pensions contribution rise. This will have a catastrophic effect and lead to larger class sizes and reduced curriculum choice.”

I shall just ask a few questions, because I want the Minister to have time to respond. Will she confirm—it was difficult to get this information out of the Minister for Schools because he would not answer me—exactly where the money is coming from? He said that it was a mixture of Treasury and Department for Education money and, later, following a written parliamentary question, on which I had to press him to get an answer, he mentioned that some £90 million of the £350 million would come from the Treasury, the rest being taken from other parts of the schools budget. Will she confirm that and tell us which programme that money is being taken from? I have the text of that written answer, but not the reference from Hansard.

Will the Minister publish the Government’s modelling of who will be the winners and losers from the national funding formula? If she cannot do so now, will she place that in the Library? Over what period is she planning to introduce the national funding formula, if it is to be introduced, if the Government are re-elected at the next election? Other hon. Members asked about that. Is it possible that after the consultation there will be changes to the allocations announced in the statement and that some authorities will lose money that they were expecting and others will get more than they were expecting? Hon. Members have asked about that, too.

Contamination of Beef Products

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

I shall come to that very point. I am grateful to my hon. Friend and fellow member of the Committee.

The Food Standards Agency is an independent, arm’s length, non-ministerial body. The question we ask is: to whom is the FSA accountable? It was found on this occasion to be flatfooted. We note that the Food Safety Authority of Ireland informed of its testing in November, but the FSA UK started testing only when those results were known, on 15 January. We draw the conclusion that no statutory powers are given to require testing. We also note a need for the FSA to co-operate more with its European counterparts across the European Union.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady will know from the front of The Times today and from her own Select Committee that the former Agriculture Minister, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), spoke to her Committee last summer and warned that unlawful meat would be imported from Europe as manufacturers sought cheap sources to make up for banned British supplies. She said the FSA was flatfooted. Does she think the Government should have been more ready for that possibility, given that one of their former Ministers had warned of that very thing in front of her Committee last summer?

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has referred to conclusion 8 in our report, which is entirely relevant. I note with some sadness, as I represent one of the largest meat-producing areas in the country, that that one decision led to the loss of 30 jobs in my constituency. No other ban has been imposed on any other member state, and we are importing that so-called Baader meat, a similarly produced meat, and substandard —I would say—filler meat as well.

The one welcome aspect, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) referred, is that there appears to have been a change in shopping habits over the past month. The one shining light is that we can have absolute confidence in home-produced beef and other British meats. We are now buying more British beef, more local meat from butchers and farm shops and more meat marked with the Red Tractor logo at the supermarket. The Red Tractor signifies that the entire food chain has been traced from farm to plate. It shows that the highest animal welfare and hygiene standards have been met. The farmers pay for the inspections. I believe that that is the flagship that should be used for good traceability for all imports. They should meet the same high standards and be as transparent for processed and frozen meats as they are for fresh, whether the meat comes from home, Europe or third countries.