Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I recently had a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who takes the lead on trafficking. We want to ensure not only that those children are picked up at the border whenever possible and that we can track their whereabouts in this country, but that when we do know their whereabouts we work with local education authorities to ensure that they get the education to which they are entitled and which they desperately need. We must help them to shake off the people who have trafficked them, in many cases under the most gruesome circumstances.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

T5. Can the Minister confirm that the budget for the new early intervention grant, which includes funding for Sure Start, will be almost 11% lower next year than the current funding for the various programmes, and 7.5% lower in 2012? Can she tell the House by what definition of flexibility that is not a cut?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

The hon. Lady will be aware, especially if she has listened to the answers to previous questions, that when her party was in government it unfortunately spent all the money. We simply cannot fund everything at the same level as before; otherwise we will never be able to tackle the deficit.

By producing a flexible grant, we are responding to what local government has asked us to do. It has asked us, especially at a time when money is difficult, to create one large, flexible budget to ensure that it can prioritise based on local need. That means it will be able to fund things in a different way. If we tell local government that it has to fund things in one exact way, with certain priorities and in a certain order, it has no flexibility to focus on local areas. A flexible grant will allow it to prioritise funds and change the way in which it provides services locally.