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Mrs. Campbell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Willetts: I have a soft spot for the hon. Lady, so I shall give way.
Mrs. Campbell: Will the hon. Gentleman join me in condemning Tory-controlled Cambridgeshire county council, which, for the second year running, has not passported the increase in the standard spending assessment made by the Government? That upsets teachers in my constituency.
Mr. Paice: Cambridgeshire already spends over the SSA.
Mr. Willetts: I have been reliably reformed by my hon. Friend that the council is already spending above the SSA level, and that is relevant.
We do not need to use the Government's method to raise standards in schools. There are better alternatives--Conservative ways of raising standards. As anabsolute minimum, every time the Government introduce regulations, instructions and directives to the House and impose them on schools and local education authorities, they should publish their estimate of how much teacher time and financial resources would be necessary simply to comply with them. We could then have a rational debate about the extent to which the costs that were being imposed would be matched by the benefits that were being claimed.
Miss Melanie Johnson (Welwyn Hatfield):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Willetts:
No, I am reaching my conclusion.
I am trying to explain to Labour Members that they and their party are responsible for a catastrophic collapse of confidence in schools and teachers caused by thevery initiatives that they boast about in the House. Conservative Members believe in setting schools free, and giving them a break from the tiresome, tedious flow of instructions and directives from the Labour party is the single best way of raising standards in our schools.
7.45 pm
The Minister for School Standards (Ms Estelle Morris):
I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
Mrs. Browning:
The Minister and I served on that Committee and she knows only too well that the Conservatives made it clear what effect the regulation limiting infant classes to 30 pupils would have, particularly in rural schools, where there would be vertical streaming and pupils at key stage 2 would be in larger classes. We were disputing not the principle but the Government's regulatory method and their adamancy that there would be no flexibility. The hon. Lady knows that that was the Opposition's position, not the one that she has just stated.
Ms Morris:
That is exactly my point. The hon. Lady cannot have it both ways. One cannot say that class sizes matter and then deny the means of achieving smaller classes, but that is exactly what she and her colleagues sought to do throughout the Bill's passage through Committee.
I do not mind the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) using Supply days to say that he has reversed the Opposition's policy, but I object to him trying to rewrite history, as he has done today. When he was speaking, I had to remind myself that, on education, the previous Government were the most centralising Government since the war. The Tory Government introduced an education Bill each year for 18 years, but their average on education quangos was even better--they managed to set up nine in eight years. In his speech and his press release today, the hon. Gentleman complained about 322 edicts and directives issued by the Government within a year. I shall return to that point later. With 322 directives, we are far behind the number that he managed to achieve when he was in government.
The Education Reform Act 1988 produced not 322, not 500, not 700, not 800, but 1,066 statutory instruments, 670 of which were introduced in the two years following
the legislation's passage through the House. Have the Conservatives forgotten--I have not because I was in school at the time--the mountain of paperwork caused by the introduction of the national curriculum? That was caused not by a concerted effort to raise standards, but by the fact that they kept getting it wrong and having to change their mind. They did not run trials; they did not consult; they did not provide resources to back up the policy, and their errors in introducing the national curriculum cost £744 million. There is no comparison between that figure and the amount that we have spent on introducing the literacy curriculum.
Let us be clear--the Opposition are entitled to change their mind, but they are not entitled to kid us or anyone else that their past actions can be wiped clean from the slate. The passion and enthusiasm displayed by the hon. Member for Havant today was that of the convert.
Mr. Fabricant:
The Minister comes from the west midlands, so she will understand my point. She talks about history; can she not understand the sense of betrayal felt by people in Staffordshire, where Labour candidates promised during the general election that a Labour Government would initiate wholesale reform of funding, including that for Staffordshire, which, as the hon. Lady knows, is at the very bottom of shire county funding? The Minister has now told us in answer to written questions that there will be a review in three years' time, after the next election, and even then Labour may not meet its promises. How dare she talk to the House about history--she has broken the rules of history.
Ms Morris:
There is another hon. Gentleman who wants to wipe the slate clean. Let me remind him that Staffordshire was at the bottom of the table for money under his Government. What action did they take?
Mr. Fabricant:
Will the Minister give way?
Ms Morris:
No, not again; it was bad enough the first time. What action did the hon. Gentleman's Government take to change or review Staffordshire's SSA? Staffordshire can now welcome a 6.5 per cent. increase in SSA. For the first time in years, it will be able to celebrate an increase in SSA and grant compared with that received under the hon. Gentleman's Government. I will take no lectures from him, given that, for 18 years, the Conservative Government failed to address the problems of SSAs. In comparison with that, three years, in which to do it well and get it right, is but a short time to wait.
Mr. Jonathan Shaw (Chatham and Aylesford):
What has my hon. Friend to say to Medway parents, teachers and schoolchildren, given that Liberal Democrats and Tories voted down the Labour budget, cutting £250,000 that was earmarked to go straight to primary schools, despite £28 million reserves? Does that not show that only the Labour party is interested in investing in education, and that the Tories and Liberal Democrats are interested only in cutting budgets?
Ms Morris:
My hon. Friend is right. I have met many head teachers in his constituency. They will have learned
Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead):
Will the Minister give way?
Ms Morris:
Yes, but then I shall not give way for a considerable time.
Mrs. May:
On precisely the assertion that only Labour can be trusted to put money into education, what would the Minister say to Labour councillors in Leicestershire, who, with Liberal councillors, voted against a Conservative proposal that money from the Government for increased education spending should be passported to education, and instead voted for a lower amount to be spent on education? What does she say to the Labour leader of Hertfordshire council, who has received a letter from the Secretary of State expressing his regret that Labour Hertfordshire will not passport money to the education budget?
"commends the Government for the introduction of vital measures to improve standards, particularly in literacy and numeracy; applauds the extra flexibility it has introduced in the national curriculum for primary pupils and support for work-related learning for 14-16 year olds; welcomes the Government's support for greater diversity through specialist schools and education action zones; believes that the extra £19 billion for schools will underpin the drive for higher standards and welcomes plans to reward good teachers well; congratulates Ministers for introducing much greater clarity to mailings for schools with a view to keeping paperwork to a minimum; recognises the huge benefits which the National Grid for Learning and voluntary schemes of work bring in reducing unnecessary paperwork; and notes that the Opposition has no proposals to raise standards in schools."
The Opposition tend to use Opposition day debates as a way of announcing a U-turn on policy, which I do not mind. What is interesting tonight is that we have heard the second U-turn on class sizes in the past 18 months. The right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell), who led for the Opposition in the Standing Committee considering the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, seemed to have been converted to the view that class sizes matter. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning), who backed the right hon. Gentleman up in Committee, has said tonight that class sizes do not matter and we should not be addressing the issue.
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