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6.17 pm
Mr. Gerry Steinberg (City of Durham): I must declare an interest as a consultant to the National Union of Teachers and to the Association of Educational Psychologists.
I shall concentrate solely on nursery vouchers, the most deplorable proposal to come before the House in recent times. What I dislike about the system so much is the fact that the Government have never before had any commitment to nursery provision. For years, they ridiculed Labour Members who tried to persuade them that nursery education was important for the development of young children and constantly refused to acknowledge its benefits. In fact, some Ministers--especially ex-Ministers--were hostile to the very concept. Even now, I suspect that some are sceptical about it.
In 1989, the Select Committee on Education produced a report on education provision for the under-fives. The Government's response was anything but enthusiastic; in fact, it was decidedly lukewarm. The report stated that it should be the objective of central and local government to ensure the steady expansion of nursery education until it is available to all three and four-year-old children whose parents desire it for them.
Far from taking that advice, the Government merely took the credit for the amount of provision created--credit that should have gone to Labour local education authorities, which had increased provision for nursery
education. The Government have done nothing to improve provision since; they have depended solely on LEAs to do it--especially Labour LEAs.
The Prime Minister's conversion on nursery education has nothing to do with the benefits to children: it is due to the fact that he now sees it as an important issue in the attempt to get the Tories re-elected. The benefits of nursery education were clear to everybody in education-- especially to parents--and the Prime Minister's party was out on a limb as usual. Now that the Conservatives are looking for votes at the next election, he has capitulated on nursery provision.
If the Tories had believed that nursery education was important to the needs of children, they would not have introduced this con trick of nursery vouchers. They would have acted sensibly, providing capital expenditure for local authorities to build nursery schools and provide nursery classes, and revenue to run those classes and schools. They have not done so because they are not committed to nursery provision.
Further evidence of the Conservatives' hostility to nursery education can be seen by looking at where nurseries have been provided over the years. Figures clearly show that children aged three and four are three times more likely to have a placement in a nursery school or class in a Labour-controlled authority than they are in an authority under Conservative control.
I shall quickly look at what is on offer in this appalling vouchers scheme. For every four-year-old in each local education authority, £1,100 will be top-sliced from the standard spending assessment and handed over to a new quango--surprise, surprise, another new quango. Vouchers worth £1,100 will be sent through the post to parents by using information from child benefit records. Parents may use the voucher for a half-day nursery education or school place or for education provided by a voluntary group.
An inspection team--not the Office for Standards in Education--has to prove the eligibility of the organisation providing nursery education, but qualified teachers are not necessary. I wonder why. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it is a cheap method of providing nursery education. I leave hon. Members to think about that.
Some new money will be given by the Government-- about £165 million. The scheme will not involve three-
year-olds but will involve all four-year-olds, including those at school until the term after their fifth birthday.
Local education authorities will be reimbursed by an agency--again, surprise, surprise, another agency--which will send the vouchers to parents who will then return them to the LEA. What an absolute mess that will be. At best, it will be cost-neutral to LEAs currently providing nursery education.
It may be in the short-term interest of LEAs providing little nursery education to volunteer to obtain some new money, but most LEAs will not benefit in the slightest. The scheme is not only flawed but is morally wrong. It can only ruin nursery education in this country.
The Secretary of State has claimed in the House that provision in the state sector will remain free, but parents will have to top up the value of the voucher should they wish to buy provision in the private or voluntary sector where the cost exceeds £1,100. It remains--to me anyway--unclear who will foot the bill for a child who
continues in a maintained nursery class or school, or in a reception class in a primary school. What is clear, however, is that £1,100 for each four-year-old will be top-sliced from the local authority's SSA and handed over to a new quango.
The scheme is nothing but a pre-election bribe. The Tories are banking on people believing that they have been given £1,100 to spend. They hope that, when the voucher arrives through the letter box in the run up to the next election, people will believe that they have won the lottery. It is a con intended to trick parents into thinking that their children have been given a new nursery place when, in many parts of the country, no new places will be created--in fact, existing provision will be threatened.
Pre-school provision ranges from catering for around 22 per cent. of children in some parts of England and Wales to 97 per cent. in other areas, and there are more than 200 black spots in England where there is little or no nursery education and no provision available. Government plans skate over that. The reality is that local authorities that have invested in good provision will lose out under the scheme, whereas those that have not done so are unlikely to see any change in their provision.
No capital is being provided to enable the building of nursery schools, and therefore areas that do not have LEA-provided nursery schools will not be able to build any. What good will vouchers be in those areas? I cannot see where places will come from, other than, of course, from the private sector.
Nursery vouchers will provide a massive handout of public money--to parents who can already afford to send their children to private nurseries, to owners of those private nurseries and to the private company that will run the scheme.
That company stands to get £20 million of taxpayers' money for administration and--of course--profit. That money could have been used to provide proper nursery education. There is no money in the scheme to allow local authorities to build new nurseries where they are needed, and there is no cash to train new staff or to meet start-up costs.
This scheme could even result in the reduction of nursery provision in areas such as my local authority, Durham, which has a very good record of provision of nursery places, because every time a voucher is used for a private place the money given to the LEA will be cut by its value. A nursery place costs more than the value of the voucher. If a local authority's funding for nursery education is reduced to the value of the voucher, it will be forced to reduce provision. That is an obvious mathematical conclusion.
Parents should also remember that the scheme applies only to four-year-olds; there is nothing for three-year-olds, among whom there is some of the greatest need. We must remember that 95 per cent. of children who attend nursery school started going when they were three years old. So there is a real danger that the withdrawal of funding from local government will result in a squeeze in the provision already being made for three-year-olds by many local authorities.
We are told that £545 million is to be clawed back from local authorities and recycled through vouchers. The Secretary of State has pledged that no four-year-old will lose an existing place. She has not explained how local authorities will top up the cost of each place--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse):
Order.
Mr. Winston Churchill (Davyhulme):
I should like to touch on two matters in the limited time available--the first and foremost being the responsibility of parents for the criminal acts of their children. At a time of rapidly increasing juvenile crime--despite misleading official statistics that tend to suggest that the incidence of such crime is reducing, when all our constituents know very well from personal experience that the contrary is the case--and when, for instance, in my Greater Manchester constituency there are only 10 police officers on duty of a night time to cover a population of more than 100,000, it has become urgent to invoke parent power in the battle against juvenile crime.
In recent years, the Government have introduced a series of measures designed to extend the use of financial penalties against the parents of young offenders. In 1993, for example, parents were required to pay 6 per cent. of fines and 14 per cent. of compensation orders made against juveniles. It has now become urgent to extend that practice far more widely, to make it clear, especially to that irresponsible element of parents who do not match up to their parental responsibilities, that they will be held legally and financially responsible for the acts of vandalism and the criminal activities of their children who are under 18 years of age.
Only where parents or guardians can demonstrate that they have done their best to exercise such parental control should they be relieved of financial responsibility. In cases where the family in question is on benefit, the time has come for up to 20 per cent. of that benefit to be docked to pay fines and compensation. Only in that way can parent power be invoked in the fight against juvenile crime. Only in that way will parents ensure that they know where little Jimmy is tonight, what he is getting up to and with which friends he may be consorting. Parent power is the last but best hope of deflecting many youngsters from a lifetime of crime.
A key element must be the removal of the present absurd and outdated concept, which is central to existing legislation relating to juveniles, that children under 14 are presumed incapable of committing a crime unless the contrary is proved. In the face of the steep rise in the number of juveniles responsible for dozens or even hundreds of acts of burglary and theft, and in the face of the horrifying increase in the number of juveniles responsible even for crimes such as rape, that concept must be held to be untenable. The law must be changed, and I trust that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will take urgent steps to change it.
The second matter I address tonight is the immigration and asylum Bill proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, which I broadly welcome in the terms he outlined in the House yesterday. However, there is a central and deeply disturbing point. Given that the cold war ended more than five years ago, it might be thought that, in recent years, the Security Service, for which the Home Secretary has a special responsibility, would have had some spare capacity to deal with the emerging areas of threat, specifically the terrorist threat to Britain's neighbours, allies and fellow democracies.
6.27 pm
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