School Funding

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) for his persistence. I also thank the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw). Similarly, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who fought hard in the last Parliament for fairer education funding, and who continues to do so in this one.

All of us seem to have been fighting for a change for years. I have huge faith in the Minister—I really have. In “Yes Minister”, one of the characters says, “That will be a very brave decision, Minister,” and we want this Minister to make a very brave decision. The £390 million in funding that was introduced in the last Parliament, and which is going into the base budget, is very welcome. In the end, however, it will not cure the underlying problem. If we just put a bit of money in each time, we will not alter the league table at all. Devon went from fifth from the bottom to sixth from the bottom. While that is welcome, we want a huge amount more to be done.

My constituency, which is by far the most beautiful in the country—not that I am biased—contains a huge number of small schools, which have federated. The headteachers share many schools. There are great teachers and great classroom assistants. People are working really hard, and they deliver a very good education. However, if they can deliver a good education, why are some other areas getting so much more money? Why is it fair for things to be like that? Why can some of that money not be shared with other areas?

Local government funding seems to be one of those issues, like education, that is so complex that Governments over the years have decided—almost with fear and trepidation—not to alter it, because that would cause so many problems. However, we have to alter it; otherwise, we will not deliver on what we have promised.

[Graham Stuart]

I would like my hon. Friend to know that, when I started campaigning for fairer funding in local government and education, I had blond hair. I have been doing this not just for eight years—I first raised the F40 in 2005. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to be courageous when they come forward with proposals? They need to be ambitious and really lift authorities that have been disadvantaged for too long. At the end of this, we have to have the courage to do something significant and level the playing field, albeit that it will take time to bring these things in.

[Neil Parish]

I am glad to see that my hon. Friend still actually has his hair, albeit that it is white. Seriously, though, all of us here—there are 30 Members here, and there were more when we started the debate, on a one-line Whip on a Thursday—have been fighting hard on this issue. What I want to tell the Minister is that we need to be brave enough about funding. We need some sort of siphon to take money from the top and spread it gradually to the bottom, or the anomaly will never be put right. The current situation is wrong for those of us whose constituents have high aspirations but who need more funding to raise them even higher. We need that to be dealt with. All our constituents pay the same taxes, so why should their children not benefit? Other hon. Members have mentioned how schools have great parents, who raise money to help; and that is all very good, but, as I have said, it will not deal with the funding problem.

My constituency has further education colleges in Axminster and Honiton, and Petroc college in Tiverton, and all receive reduced funding. If we have aspirations for young people going from primary through secondary and on to FE or university, the education must be provided. What the Government are doing about apprenticeships is great, but good colleges are necessary if the apprenticeships are to be of real value. All those things fit together.

Tiverton high school is on a flood plain, and in 2012 it was nearly flooded. We need to find funding so that it can be rebuilt on higher land—land is available. All that takes time, I know, but we must ensure that we are treated equally. Our fear is that we are not being treated equally. Since the general election the west country is virtually all Conservative—apart from the little patch of red that is the constituency of the right hon. Member for Exeter, which we understand. My point is that the Government have a lot of responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) mentioned, as other Members have, the Government’s commitment to put the situation right. I reiterate my huge confidence in the Minister and I will invite him to Devon to see what a great job our schools are doing, and what refurbishment and extra funding they need. The Government will settle the matter, and put it right. Again I ask the Minister: please, be brave.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank everyone who has spoken in this rather lengthy but none the less constructive debate, and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) and the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) on securing a debate on this important issue. I also thank the F40 for a long and vigorous campaign.

When I was given this job, I spoke to a senior civil servant in the Department for Education who said to me that someone was working on fair funding for schools when he joined the Department in 1991. The problem has been around for a very long time. It did not arise overnight and it bedevils many different types of authorities. This is not a partisan issue: Labour-held authorities have funding issues, as do Conservative-held ones. There are some underfunded inner-city authorities and there are underfunded authorities outside of cities. I thank all Members for the manner in which the debate has been conducted. It has not been party political; instead, we have focused on the issues in our constituencies.

[Neil Parish]

I understand the historical element, which my hon. Friend the Minister outlines well, but I have huge confidence that he will be the Minister who, after all these years, actually sorts this out.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for his confidence in me. It feels rather strange to be urged to be “brave”, as Sir Humphrey would say.

To address the point made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), if one represents a local authority such as hers in Durham, which is the 57th best-funded local authority in the country, one has the luxury of saying, “It’s difficult, but we have to do all these things.” She does not have to take the difficult decisions. She has the luxury of having a local authority that is very adequately funded, but those Members representing local authorities that have been underfunded for more than a decade, where schools are doing quite well with limited resources, are saying that it is time to rectify the situation. It is right that we listen to them and act.

Before getting into the detail of that issue, I want to respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). The Government recognise the importance of long-term investment in education to prepare children for success in adult life. In the previous Parliament, we invested more than £190 billion in our schools—a real-terms increase every year. In this Parliament, we will continue to protect the schools budget, as we promised in our manifesto. We will also ensure that the money reaches the places where it is needed, so all children in all age groups and all locations can access excellent education. We committed in our manifesto to making schools funding fairer, so that every school can support every child in achieving their potential.

The right hon. Member for Exeter made that point extremely well when he highlighted the fact that the root cause of this issue is historical funding. At some point in history—2005, I think—we froze schools funding in aspic, and whatever an authority spent the previous year became the baseline for its funding allocation. Demographics, local authorities and schools’ needs changed, but the funding formula was not updated to reflect current need.