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Independent estimates put the amount much higher than £150 million. I have heard the figure of £250 million mentioned on the basis of good authoritative research. The Government should look again at their figures and pause for breath, as the amendments would allow them to do, and think in detail about the scheme's implications for their objectives.
Acceptance of the amendments would also give the Government time to reflect on how to achieve their class size reduction vis-a-vis the phasing of the savings from the scheme. Initially, the savings will be modest. I give the Government credit for not rushing precipitately into abolition in September. I thank them for that because such timing would place a huge burden on schools and parents and would have caused complete chaos as parents scrambled for places elsewhere.
The consequences of the Government's timing are that there will be no savings at all this year. Only in the first year after the phasing out will there be a saving of about £13 million. I understand that at the peak the Government will save about £49 million a year. Therefore, these sums become available only slowly. How will the Government reconcile such phased savings with their class size objective? They need time to think about that, and the conclusion that they will have to reach is that they will need to go into the public expenditure pot more generally. I urge them to seize the opportunity that the amendments present.
The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), who is no longer in his place, made an important point about the need to maintain good relations between the independent and state sectors. One of the chief attractions of the assisted places scheme is that it has done precisely that. It has blurred the edges between the two systems and has prevented the sharp demarcation of "them" and "us" in education. It has made for better relationships between the two sectors. If the Government propose to press ahead with abolition of the assisted places scheme they will have to think about how those relationships can be maintained. I understand that Liberal Democrat Members may have some suggestions on that later in the debate.
We do not want ghettos of excellence in the independent sector that are entirely isolated from the rest of the education system. I was educated in a maintained grammar school that was very like Worcester Royal grammar school. Sadly, the drive to comprehensivisation drove Worcester Royal out of the state sector and into the independent sector against its wishes. I agree with any clever researcher sitting behind the Ministers who may say that it was a Conservative county council which voted for the transfer to comprehensive education in Worcestershire--more is the pity. That was done because of the great pressure of conventional educational wisdom at the time.
A sharp divide was introduced between the independent and state sectors, and that need not have been so. I deplore the fact that schools were forced to transfer across the boundary. I ask the Government to be open minded, original and thoughtful and to respond constructively to the amendments. They should say, "Yes, another year or so would help us to think about these issues in more detail." I am sure that they will say that they are still committed to the abolition of the assisted places scheme and I accept that, although I regret it. It is a fact which I shall have to live with. I again urge the Government to stop and think.
Mr. Boswell:
I, too, support the amendment, to which my hon. Friends the Members for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) and for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) have spoken so eloquently. I do not think that I need to speak quite at the same length.
I should properly begin by declaring a personal interest in that, until last year, one of my daughters attended a school that availed itself of the assisted places scheme--although few hon. Members' children would qualify for an assisted place, and mine did not.
I put it strongly to the Government that the problem with their proposals--a problem that was identified in the Second Reading debate, in which I did not participate, is that the savings from them are very small. Savings would be made only if they were achieved on the basis of an average cost of funding the places. They would be very small, if not negative, if achieved on the basis of a marginal cost, yet moving such a number of children from the private to the state-maintained sector would have to be secured at a marginal cost. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire said, the savings would build up over time and would be tiny at the beginning. There is therefore a premium on proper planning. It would be sensible if the Government took time within their political pledge and their mandate, if they so regard it.
The Government should in particular consider the position of local education authorities because they need time to plan for the reprovision of places and the capital
costs that may apply, especially in cities such as Worcester, which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire had the honour to represent, where there is a high concentration of independent schools that offer assisted places.
I see that my hon. Friend's successor, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster), has just joined the debate. I know of his interest--which we all share--in education. If the Government want to do a good job by LEAs, they should take time to enable them to plan. Capital costs can be more easily accommodated over a planning period than they can if rushed into in an emergency to meet the duty to educate in the maintained sector.
Having said that, I am more generally conscious of the Bill's impact on education. We must consider the impact on not only institutions and authorities but individuals and the institutions that deliver education. Some of the impact on individuals--families and the children concerned--may be more properly explored in debates on subsequent amendments. I merely flag up my concern now, and I may wish to comment on those matters later.
I would very much like Ministers to consider the institutional impact in a couple of respects. The first is on the schools themselves. The impact is all very well in schools where there is a small minority of assisted places--2 per cent. is being quoted as the lowest participant--but very different for schools that offer 40 to 50 per cent. of their places under the assisted places scheme. There is a risk of destabilising good schools, making them unviable or facing them with some most unpalatable planning options in coping with the new situation. Time to think, plan and make alternative arrangements will soften that impact.
The second and more important impact goes to the heart of what my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire said about the division between private and state sectors. Wherever we were educated, many of us were distressed by the outcome in practice of the move to comprehensivisation in the 1960s and 1970s. The move, it was argued, was so conceived as to try to bring children together, but actually succeeded in driving the sectors apart--not by destroying the private sector but by making it more exclusive and, to some extent, more remote from the state sector.
Providing time, within the context of policies for which the Government have a mandate, would enable the independent sector, especially schools offering assisted places, to plan and cope with the change. Of course, many of them, especially the strongest academically and those with the lowest participation in assisted places, could easily float through. They could go on being very successful independent schools almost as if nothing had happened, but something would have happened: the mix of the socio-economic base that had participated in the schools, from which, for example, my daughter benefited indirectly, would come to an end. Incidentally, my daughter never encountered any discrimination between the various children. I do not think that anybody knew who was on an assisted place or not. Ending such a mix would be wrong. I pray in aid George Walden, the former Member for Buckingham, who wrote most eloquently on the dangers of dividing those two sectors of education.
It would be much better to look at ways in which we can use the time set out in the amendment to enable schools, either individually or collectively, to try to
hammer out some arrangements so that they can obtain the social advantages of integration without the scheme to whose abolition the Government are committed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham has already mentioned that the Girls Public Day School Trust is considering the possibility of providing bursaries. That is very welcome. It is a strong organisation, of which I have a good deal of experience. Providing such bursaries may be more difficult for individual schools. Would it not be worth considering at, say, the average cost in the maintained sector, enabling a scheme to be set up whereby schools could offer bursaries with a state contribution--not over the odds or at excess cost but at equivalent cost--which could be used on condition that it levered in contributions from the private sector?
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