Finance Bill

Debate between Tim Roca and Damian Hinds

2nd reading
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Well, we shall see. As a teacher, he will know that teachers move between the state and independent sectors all the time. They move in both directions, but that is not what the Association of School and College Leaders was talking about. It was talking about the fact that the change is being made mid-year, and said that it carried a risk of redundancies, and of the permanent loss of teachers to the profession.

Labour Members—the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) is one of them—frequently like to say to Opposition Members that we have to choose. They say: “Are you on the side of the many or the few? Are you with 94% or the 6%?”. Well, we refuse to choose. It is not a question of whether we care about the 94% or the 6%. We care about the 100%—all the children. It is definitely true and right that at the Department for Education—this was true when I was a Minister there—Ministers spend way more than 94% of their time and effort on the state sector. In our time in government, between 2010 and 2024, that paid off with huge results. When we supported our brilliant teachers in their great work, our results went up. We went from 27th in the world to 11th for maths, and from 25th in the world to 13th for reading. We had the best primary school readers in the western world. Free school meal eligible children were 50% more likely to go on to university, and the number of schools rated less than good was down from one in three to fewer than one in 10. That was through supporting teachers, academy trusts, a broad knowledge-rich curriculum and the propagation and spread—from school to school and teacher to teacher—of proven methods, such as maths mastery and synthetic phonics.

Yes, the system does also need money. Per-pupil funding under the last Government was higher than it was under previous Labour Governments. Among the G7 nations, it was middle of the range in cash per child, and the highest as a proportion of national income. Of course, we have to keep increasing the resourcing that we put into key services, none more so than education, but the Conservatives did that as a priority from general taxation, not by taking from another part of the wider education system. I repeat: the Government do not have to choose. These are all children.

[Tim Roca]

Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify his comment that all the education spending that he mentioned came from general taxation? My understanding is that the figures that he just quoted include the student loan system.

[Damian Hinds]

No, they do not. If the hon. Gentleman is talking about the OECD figures, they are for primary, secondary and college-based education in the state sector, but I am grateful to him for his intervention.

When Government Members talk about “the 6%” in the same tone in which they sometimes talk about “the 1%”, I think they believe that they are about to topple the toffs and achieve some sort of great victory in the class war. They are not. Eton college will not miss a heartbeat over this measure. The pupils who will be hit will be those in smaller town schools—the ones that are significant employers locally and a big part of the local community. They do not have big endowments; they do have pretty thin margins. Schools that cater to children with special educational needs will be hit. Denominational schools will be hit.

There have been some concessions from the Government. They are not the most massive concessions in the world, but they are not nothing either. We should acknowledge them, and I thank the Government for them. The first is on the music and dance scheme, with extra help for families with children at the schools in question, albeit that the concession will benefit only a little less than half the total number of families in what is a means-tested scheme anyway. There is also the confirmation that centres for advanced training will be exempt, and of what the Government plan to do on the continuity of education allowance. We need to ensure that those mitigations are more comprehensive than they are now, and that they become permanent.

Of course, the Opposition would prefer the Government to drop this measure altogether and not be the international outlier by taxing education, but if they are determined to bulldoze on, we must have key changes in Committee. We must have an exemption for all children with an EHCP—not only if it specifies the individual school—children who have SEN support, and those who are currently applying for an EHCP. We must have exemptions for schools whose fees are lower than the average charge in the state sector, and for religious denominations where there is no faith school provision in the state sector.

I do not accept the notion that, as Ministers have said at the Dispatch Box, members of religious faith communities are not discriminated against by this measure. It may well be that, as a whole, people of faith are not discriminated against more than others because the vast majority of people of religious faith are in the state sector anyway, where there are plenty of Catholic schools, Anglican schools and other denominational schools, but it is not credible in the slightest to claim that there is no discrimination, and that the effect will not be felt much more strongly by members of certain traditions within Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

We also need key postponements. Children who are already in public exam years, or the year before public exams, cannot have their education disrupted in this way. The school that they move to may not even offer the same GCSEs or A-levels, the same exam board or the same syllabus. Most significantly of all, the Government must for good reasons, including simple practical reasons, at least postpone the introduction of the measure in areas where state schools are already full, or almost full, at that stage of education, because the biggest effect of this divisive, destructive tax attack will be on state schools. It will be felt in class sizes, and ultimately in all parents’ ability to get the preferred choice of school for their child.