Funding and Schools Reform

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

As the hon. Gentleman sees more of his Government, he will perhaps come to understand the difference between real reform and reckless reform. Indeed, the House has just been hearing about the achievements of a reformed national health service under my watch and I can tell him that I am very proud of them.

Let me start with Building Schools for the Future and the charge that I lay at the Secretary of State’s door. He has got into a mess and the allocation of capital is no longer driven by educational need but by ideology. Building Schools for the Future was a needs-led approach to the allocation of capital. Instead, he wanted to use capital as bait to lure schools into his new structural models, but then came the spending review.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Why were fewer than 100 schools rebuilt under Building Schools for the Future under the last Labour Government?

[Andy Burnham]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has ever been to any of those schools, but if he has seen the transformation in those communities and the messages that the schools send to children in areas that have, frankly, been let down for decades, I am surprised that he rises to his feet to say that that investment is not worth making. Let us talk about his Government and the spending review arrangements that his Secretary of State has recently secured: minus 60%. Let us just think about that figure for a moment.

Just after the spending review, the Financial Times reported senior Whitehall figures chiding the Secretary of State for

“folding too early in negotiations over capital”

spending. The only shock for me on reading that was to learn that he had been negotiating at all. We know that he is courteous, and we like that about him, but minus 60%? I can almost hear him now, politely inviting George and Danny to fill their boots. Is 60% enough? Do they want more? I doubt that the Secretary of State has played much poker in his life—although he has his poker face on now—but, as with sport in schools, it gives a person certain life skills and I recommend it to him.

The average capital reduction across Whitehall was 30%. I would think that everyone in education could live with that. But double the punishment? How exactly does that minus 60% reduction meet the Secretary of State’s “schools protected” claim?