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Taylor, John M. (Solihull)
Thomason, Roy
Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)
Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)
Thurnham, Peter
Townend, John (Bridlington)
Townsend, Cyril D. (Bexl'yh'th)
Tracey, Richard
Tredinnick, David
Trend, Michael
Twinn, Dr Ian
Vaughan, Sir Gerard
Viggers, Peter
Waldegrave, Rt Hon William
Walden, George
Walker, Bill (N Tayside)
Waller, Gary
Ward, John
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)
Waterson, Nigel
Wells, Bowen
Wheeler, Rt Hon Sir John
Whitney, Ray
Whittingdale, John
Widdecombe, Ann
Wilkinson, John
Willetts, David
Wilshire, David
Wolfson, Mark
Yeo, Tim
Young, Sir George (Acton)
Tellers for the Noes :
Mr. David Lightbown and
Mr. Timothy Wood.
Question accordingly negatived.
Mr. Deputy Speaker then put the Questions on amendments moved by a member of the Government, to the end of clause 256.
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Clause 242
Power to make and deal with such proposals in the case of schools eligible for grant-maintained status
Amendments made : No. 52, in page 145, line 38, leave out first the' and insert any'.
No. 53, in page 145, line 41, leave out both sets of proposals' and insert
the proposals under section 12 or 13 of that Act or section 241 of this Act and the proposals for acquisition of grant-maintained status'.
No. 54, in page 146, line 13, leave out (3)' and insert (5)'.-- [Mr. Boswell.]
Clause 257
Provision of goods and services by local education authorities
Mr. Cynog Dafis (Ceredigion and Pembroke, North) : I beg to move amendment No. 122, in page 153, line 12, after (2)', insert where an order relates to a local education authority in England.'.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : With this it will be convenient to discuss also the following amendments : No. 121, in page 153, line 14, at end insert
(2A) Where an order relates to a local education authority in Wales, the area specified in the Order may extend to the whole of Wales.'.
No. 120, in page 153, leave out lines 21 to 23.
No. 198, in page 153, line 25, at end add--
(6) Any order under this section shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.'.
Mr. Dafis : I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the amendments in this small but significant group.
The issues with which the clause and the amendments are concerned have been debated at length already, in Committee and last night. The fact that this is a matter of great concern was evident from Conservative Members' eloquent speeches last night about the provision of the music service, to which I shall return.
Amendment No. 120 would remove the two-year limit after which LEAs would not be allowed to sell services to schools in other LEA areas or to grant- maintained schools. Amendments No. 122 and 121, which I drafted myself, would enable services to be sold by any LEA to the schools of any other LEA in Wales and to grant-maintained schools in any other part of Wales.
I emphasise that, if Opposition Members' only concern were to sabotage the grant-maintained movement, we should not have tabled amendment No. 120. The non-availability to grant-maintained schools of LEA services after two years is likely to act as a strong disincentive to schools to become grant maintained. The Under-Secretary of State for Schools confirmed that last night when he said :
"If parents decide that relying on the continuance of LEA provision of the kind to which their school is accustomed is of paramount importance to them, perhaps that school is not the right sort to become grant maintained."--[ Official Report, 2 March 1993 ; Vol. 220, c. 206.]
The hon. Gentleman actually admitted that the non-provision of services might be a disincentive to some
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schools to become grant maintained. We are not being driven by ideology in this : we are not in the business of sabotaging the grant-maintained movement at this time.It is worth mentioning the fact that only after a period of about two years will schools in Wales be going grant maintained at all, so in effect they will be unable to benefit from the services anyway. Opposition Members are driven not by ideology but by the wish to ensure that, if the grant- maintained sector grows and develops, the mixed system that will then exist should be able to work with the minimum amount of damage being done to pupils. That is our main concern.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Mr. Eric Forth) : It is important that the ground rules should be clear. The restrictions will not even operate if only a few schools have become grant maintained. Only when a local education authority experienced a significant number of schools becoming grant maintained and exceeded its margin of capacity would the question even arise. The two-year period would start from that point, allowing a transitional period during which the appropriate adjustments could be made. It is important to understand that.
Mr. Dafis : I accept that and I shall come to the question of the margin of capacity in a moment.
I emphasise that amendment No. 120 does no more than propose that there should be a level playing field between the public and private sectors. If Conservative Members are saying that it is not possible to identify the true cost of services provided by LEAs--that has been suggested--and so ensure that there is a level playing field, they are saying, in effect, that they regard local authorities as perfidious and in the business of cheating. Some Conservative Members--not all--clearly believe that. The hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Mr. Richards) clearly regards LEAs and local authorities as essentially perfidious bodies. Conservative Members must take a dim view of the extent of human ingenuity if they do not believe that it is possible for human beings to devise a system whereby the true costs of providing services can be identified.
That is not the view of the Secretary of State for Wales. The White Paper on local government reorganisation in Wales states that local authorities in Wales will be encouraged, as a matter of good practice, to introduce an internal accounting framework for corporate and other services and to expose them to competition as soon as possible. Clearly, the Secretary of State believes that it is possible to develop an accounting procedure which makes it possible to identify the true costs of services provided by local education authorities and local government generally.
Under the Bill as drafted, LEA schools will have a choice as to where they obtain their services : they can get them from the LEA or from the private sector. Grant-maintained schools, however, will not have that choice. On the face of it, the Bill seems to discriminate against grant-maintained schools as much as it discriminates against LEA service providers. In that context, it is worth asking which principle is more important to the Government : the promotion of grant-maintained schools, or the discouragement of the public sector as providers?
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Some people in the grant-maintained movement and in the semi-independent sector say that they cannot understand why the Government insist on the prohibition coming into operation after two years. I think that I understand what is behind the Government's thinking. If the LEA is prevented from supplying services to grant-maintained schools and if the grant-maintained sector grows, it will be increasingly difficult for the LEA to provide services for its own schools. The necessary economies of scale will not be available and schools will increasingly lack any reason to remain with the LEAs. That is probably the Government's strategy. Like God, the Conservatives move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform. It would be naive to imagine that they intend to leave the growth of the grant-maintained sector to parental choice and that they will not employ other measures in the background to facilitate and hasten their process. They are prepared, in pursuit of an ideological goal, to endanger services and the quality of children's education. It is difficult to imagine anything more irresponsible.Last night the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack), in an eloquent, moving and civilised speech, talked of his anxiety about the question of music provision. The hon. Gentleman was ably supported by the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis). In the case of those two hon. Gentlemen the term "honourable" seems appropriate. I should like to talk about music provision in my constituency and, in particular, about trading at the margins of capacity.
In Ceredigion we have a fine school orchestra, whose conductor is the music organiser for Dyfed. The orchestra has enjoyed considerable success on great occasions at the Royal Albert Hall. If, in the new county, which will be called Sir Aberteifi, there is one grant-maintained school, its pupils will presumably be able to join the orchestra. Presumably grant-maintained schools would pay the LEA fees as it would be within the capacity of the LEA to provide for its own schools. In other words, the provision would be within the margin of capacity. However, if more schools were to become grant-maintained, such provision in Ceredigion could be made only beyond the LEA's margin of capacity. Thus, grant-maintained pupils would not be able to take part in the orchestra. I think that my understanding is correct.
What would happen then? Would grant-maintained schools set about starting their own orchestra? It was surprising to hear the Minister talk last night about co-operative ventures. Perhaps the grant-maintained schools could organise a co-operative venture. Thus we would have two orchestras. It might be argued that competition would be created and that that would be a good thing. Competition between the two orchestras would drive down the fees charged for putting on concerts here and there. I am being facetious, of course, but I shall now be serious. Such a situation might very well mean the LEA's own orchestra becoming unviable.
Mr. Forth : I should like to deal with this point now lest it fail to be picked up later. I shall check the situation and provide confirmation, but I am pretty certain that the problem posed by the hon. Gentleman can be resolved under the Local Government Act 1972, which enables such services to be provided across county borders and across boundaries between the LEA and grant-maintained
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sectors. I made this point in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) in Committee and on the Floor of the House.Mr. Dafis : If that is true and if it applies to orchestras specifically, it is a comfort. None the less, there remains the argument that at a certain stage grant-maintained schools will be unable to obtain services from the local education authority as that would amount to trading beyond the margin of capacity.
I refer to other services in Wales--in particular, in my part of Wales-- that will suffer similarly. I have mentioned those in Committee. The education authority has set up language
centres--canolfannau iaith--where children undertake intensive courses in Welsh. After six or eight weeks they return to their own primary schools and receive part of their education through the medium of Welsh. The language centres are run by one or two specialist teachers, who have gained considerable expertise through periods of training. The centres are essential to enable schools to cope with the shifting linguistic circumstances in my part of the world.Families arrive from England and children enter school at various ages. Schools could not cope satisfactorily without such support.
Linked to this provision is the network of area teachers which we call athrawon bro. That service is partly funded by special grants from the Welsh Office which are very much appreciated. Some of the teachers are peripatetic. They visit various primary schools and teach Welsh as a second language, provide language enrichment lessons, and so on. The specialist teachers also train other teachers and develop teaching materials. The loss of such centres and of this network of teachers would have a disastrous effect on the provision that is necessary to deal with the complexities of the bilingual situation in my part of the world and to meet the opportunities.
Mr. Anthony Coombs (Wyre Forest) : It is difficult to follow the logic of the hon. Gentleman's argument. He seems to believe that if something is not provided by the local education authority it should be lost. That is similar to the obsessive and purblind ideological approach of the Labour party. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many grant-maintained schools are taking part in co-operative exercises? In that way they can purchase services from bodies in the independent trust sector, often in conjunction with local education authorities in cases such as those to which the hon. Gentleman refers. Music and language services can be obtained in that way. The Labour party has talked about how pleased it is to see the Clinton administration in power. Well, that administration has a bible called "Reinventing Government", which describes governments not as providers but as facilitators. The hon. Gentleman is not a member of the Labour party, but he may have learnt from that approach.
Mr. Dafis : I do not question the possibility of having trusts, set up by groups of schools, which could organise alternative provision. However, alternative provision might not emerge.We have a very efficient system already. The scenario put forward by the hon. Gentleman would lead to duplication and would make it more difficult for the local education authority to continue to provide a service to its own schools, as it would have to carry the same overheads with reduced provision. It would certainly create a more difficult and complex situation.
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Mr. Rod Richards (Clwyd, North-West) : Is the hon. Gentleman seriously telling the House that the ethos of Welsh schools will disappear under the grant-maintained system? If he is, he does not seem to have a high regard for the demand for Welsh education and things Welsh in his new county of Sir Aberteifi.
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Mr. Dafis : That is an extraordinary intervention. Obviously, the hon. Gentleman was not listening to me. I was not talking about Welsh schools : I was talking about special language centres that are set up by local education authorities to service schools which are designated Welsh medium schools and those which are not so designated.
The provision of special language services would be destabilised and made more difficult. There might be duplication and the services might not be available at anything like the present level. I have every faith in the demand for Welsh medium education, but I am concerned about the provision of services and the ability to cope with the varying linguistic situations in west Wales. There is a great danger that the provision of services will suffer as a consequence of the Government's proposals and their refusal to allow local education authorities to continue to sell services to grant- maintained schools.
We have heard more than once about the effect of the Bill on outdoor pursuit centres. I will not pursue that matter in detail--perhaps other hon. Members would like to mention it--but it is a significant element. I should mention in passing that outdoor pursuit centres in Wales that are owned by local education authorities in England provide a not insignificant element of employment in Wales. That is a side issue, but it is worth mentioning. I beg the Government to reconsider the matter. We are talking about the difference between ideology and pragmatism. The Opposition parties--Labour, Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru--have proposed a pragmatic approach and a pragmatic response. To insist on competition between the public and private sectors to maximise efficiency is perfectly reasonable and shows a confidence in market forces which is rational. To prevent the public sector from competing with the private sector in the provision of services to the public sector and to assume that the private sector will deliver the goods in all circumstances seems to betray a faith in market forces which borders on the mystical. We should not be legislating on the basis of mysticism.
May I examine amendments Nos. 121 and 122 in the context of local government reorganisation in Wales. The amendments would enable local education authorities to sell their services in any part of Wales. They are meaningful only if amendment No. 120 is passed so that we get rid of the prohibition beyond the margin of capacity after two years.
In connection with that, I shall quote from paragraph 46 of the White Paper on local government reorganisation in Wales : "Authorities must be directly accountable to local people for the services which they secure (by purchase or otherwise). The new unitary authorities will therefore normally be responsible in law for securing the provision of services. But statutory responsibility does not mean that each authority should itself seek to provide every aspect of service, so authorities will need to have a flexible legal framework allowing them both to work much more closely with one
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another and to purchase services and expertise from each other and from outside agencies--including the private and voluntary sectors." That is clear enough. It keeps with the purchaser- provider relationship which the Government advocate and there is something to be said for it. If it makes sense for local authorities to be allowed to sell any services to each other, surely it makes sense in education. There is no justification for differentiating between education and other services.Mrs. Jacqui Lait (Hastings and Rye) : Would the hon. Gentleman contemplate the concept of the local education authority as a monopoly provider and that what he recommends remains a monopoly? We are trying to break down the monopoly and create competition. Such competition will provide a much greater opportunity for many more people to provide good quality services in exactly the same way as the purchaser-provider relationship in the health service has been broken down from a monopoly into a much broader competitive field.
Mr. Dafis : I am not quarrelling with the concept of the purchaser- provider split. I am saying that, in the White Paper, it is envisaged that one local authority shall be the provider and another local authority shall be the purchaser. It would not be a monopoly situation but one in which the private sector could also offer services so that there was competition between the public and private sectors. There would be a varied pattern of purchasers and providers.
We should not allow an ideology-driven English Government--which is what we have--to mess up the provision and delivery of education services in Wales. Obviously, the smaller size of the new local authorities in Wales will make it more difficult for all of them to deliver the whole range of services. The White Paper opens up the possibility for what are called lead authorities to specialise in various fields and supply services to each other, alongside contributions from the private sector.
The scope for specialisation within the education service is considerable-- for example, specialised courses and residential courses, including courses for the learning of Welsh. The demand for such courses will certainly increase, partly as a result of the Government's Welsh Language Bill. One local education authority could make such specialised courses available for purchasing by people working in the education service in other parts of Wales. Teams of inspectors specialising in specific parts of the curriculum could be working for one local education authority with their services being for sale to schools in other local education authorities and grant- maintained schools. It has been suggested to me that, unless we have a market for those teams of inspectors throughout Wales, it will be difficult to recruit sufficient people to them, especially to carry out inspections through the Welsh medium.
The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Sir Wyn Roberts) : The hon. Gentleman knows only too well that we have created the office of an independent inspectorate for Wales which operates on a Wales-wide basis, not on a local education basis.
Mr. Dafis : I am grateful for that intervention. I was talking about the possibility of teams of inspectors being employed by a local education authority and then selling their services to schools in other local education authority
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areas. Is that not a possibility? Perhaps I am misunderstanding the matter, but that is what has been suggested by people in the education service in Wales.Advisory services in specific subjects have been developed by local education authorities in Wales. Those services exist among employees and can be provided to other areas in Wales. It would be tragic if local authorities were prevented from supplying services to schools in other areas. To allow them to do so would be within the spirit of the Secretary of State's White Paper.
Clause 257 would allow a local education authority for two years to sell services only to areas contiguous to it. That would be particularly disadvantageous in Wales, where the Government propose that there will be 21 authorities, because many fewer of them will be contiguous with each other. An English authority on the Welsh border could sell services to schools in Powys, Monmouthshire, Wrexham or Flintshire, but many Welsh authorities could not sell services to those counties even though the syllabus in Wales is significantly different in many subjects from the syllabus in England.
If one looks at the map one can see, for example, that Anglesey could not sell services to Denbighshire, Cardiganshire, could not sell services to West Glamorgan, West Glamorgan could not sell services to Heads of the Valleys and Bridgend could not sell services to Caerphilly because those counties are not contiguous. If they were contiguous they could do so at least for two years. That is nonsense. It frustrates the intentions of the local government White Paper, which would enable general selling of services throughout Wales. We should not allow a Bill intoduced by a Government dominated by English interests and values--I do not think that the Bill would ever have emerged from the Welsh Office--to undermine the Welsh education system. It is possible that it could.
I should be interested to hear the Minister's comments on the position that I have described. I beg the Government to show flexibility and no more on the matter.
Mrs. Angela Knight (Erewash) : The hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Dafis) has mistaken the intention of the clause. We are dealing not with some prohibition but with relaxation. The reference notes which are available to all of us in the Members' Library clarify the point.
At present, local education authorities with grant-maintained schools in their area can sell services to those schools, provided that they are trading at the margin of capacity. The clause allows that procedure to operate more widely under certain circumstances. There is a period of two years in which local education authorities can employ additional staff or incur additional expenditure, if it is necessary because there are no private sector suppliers in those areas. That is the point. The existing procedure is being relaxed. The hon. Gentleman led the House to believe that the clause represented a prohibition.
Mr. Byers : The hon. Lady used the phrase "margin of capacity", which has also been used by the Minister. It is not used in the relevant legislation on local authority goods and services. Will she tell the House where the phrase comes from?
Mrs. Knight : My hon. Friend the Minister answered that question in Committee, and dealt with the point earlier today. Undoubtedly, he will deal with it in more
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detail in his reply. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Audit Commission has interpreted the legislation as operating in the way that I have described. There is no contradiction on that point. We must examine what a local authority is there to do. It is not there to provide everything for people in its area. It is there to enable certain necessary services to be delivered. Within that framework, competitive tendering has been widely successful in local authorities across the country for services such as cleaning, rubbish collection and direct labour organisation operations. It is now cascading through into the professional services. That is correct, because competitive tendering has ensured not only that the quality of services has increased for the benefit of local people but that the cost of services has declined.The hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North implied that grant- maintained schools were desperate to receive services from local authorities and the local authorities were desperate to supply services to grant-maintained schools. I take issue with that. In my area, Derbyshire county council refused to have anything whatever to do with grant- maintained schools So it is relevant to the debate to examine what grant- maintained schools do when they seek the services that they require.
7.15 pm
I refer all hon. Members to the recent report and survey on what grant- maintained schools are doing. They are turning to private firms or employing their own staff to run ancillary services. Local authorities are failing to win contracts especially for cleaning and school meals. The survey was carried out just before Christmas, and covered 229 schools which had either opted out or were in the process of doing so and had made decisions on contracts.
The survey was not carried out by the Department for Education, by the Grant-Maintained Schools Centre or by some Conservative party think tank ; it was undertaken on behalf of the Confederation of Health Service Employees, the National and Local Government Officers Association, the National Union of Public Employees and the Transport and General Workers Union.
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