School Funding

Debate between Mark Harper and David Laws

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

Gloucestershire is one of the lowest funded local authorities, so the Minister of State’s announcement will be very much welcomed by schools in the Forest of Dean and across the county. Will he set out for my benefit the amount of extra funding that we will get in Gloucestershire? The good news in his announcement can be detected in the fact that there are only eight Labour Back Benchers interested in schools funding. That is a triumph and shows the success of his announcement.

[Mr Laws]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. He notes quite correctly that the Labour party does not like to hear good news on this or on any other issue. I can tell him that the news for Gloucestershire is good. The proposals on which we are consulting today would give almost £10 million extra to Gloucestershire schools. They would potentially increase the per pupil funding rate from just over £4,200 per pupil to £4,331. Furthermore, south Gloucestershire is a gainer from these proposals, gaining more than £8.5 million. Its per pupil funding rate would rise from around £3,969 to £4,217, which is a massive increase that will be welcomed by schools in that area.