| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend will know that the real problems for schools and colleges in this Parliament were caused by the tax rises that the Chancellor imposed after promising that there would be none. The likelihood is that the same thing will happen in the next Parliament, with the same consequences.
Mr. Collins: My hon. Friend is entirely right. The Chancellor took away with one hand what he gave—
Mr. Sheerman: What is going on? Why is the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) now speaking from the Back Benches?
Helen Jones: He was on the Front Bench a moment ago.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury) (Con): This is now the Budget debate, not education questions. Labour Members do not seem to know the procedure.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. Could we have just one debate?
Mr. Collins: I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is clear—
Mr. Sheerman: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have never seen it happen before that an hon. Member who one minute is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench is the next minute allowed to address a question, from the Back Benches, to his own Front-Bench spokesman. That is absurd, and brings the House into disrepute.
Madam Deputy Speaker: If I had observed anything irregular, I would certainly have acted.
Mr. Collins: I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. There are alternative policies that offer a greater prospect for success. They include measures to improve discipline in schools, and legislation—which we have offered to support even if introduced by present Ministers—to protect teacher anonymity, and to restore the presumption of innocence when a teacher is the subject of a serious accusation levelled, all too often
maliciously, by a child. Other measures would cut through the confusing alphabet soup of vocational qualifications, reduce paperwork burdens on teachers by reducing course work, and give much more financial leeway to schools and their governing bodies.Yesterday, as in successive Budgets, the Chancellor made great virtue of paying money directly to head teachers. We agree, but he pays only a tiny percentage of school budgets in that way. We want to pay the vast majority of money via that route.
The Government say that they want more money to be paid to schools in one budget. We agree. We have campaigned for years against the excessive complexity that this Government have created. Once again, however, we would go further. We believe that most money should simply follow the pupil, and that is where the pupil passport comes in. It will make sure that schools are accountable—not as now, upwards to bureaucrats, but downwards, to their local parents and communities. It will give parents greater control and choice over schools. We will abolish the surplus places rule, enabling successful and popular schools to expand. We will encourage successful schools to take over the management of neighbouring schools that have not performed as well. It is a policy designed to improve schooling—not for some, not even for most, but for all pupils in all schools.
It is understandable that Labour Members are much more obsessed than we are with the implications of all that for fee-paying schools. After all, their leader went to such a school, while ours did not. The Secretary of State reflected that fascination when he wrote a letter to the Financial Times this morning—
Mr. Sheerman: Before the hon. Gentleman repeats the fact that the Leader of the Opposition went to a grammar school whereas the leader of the Labour party went to a public school, will he accept that none of us is responsible for the school to which our parents sent us? However—I am looking now at the shadow Secretary of State—we are responsible for where we send our children. I know that many Opposition Members have never had any intention of using the state sector for education.
Mr. Collins: I must say that I regret that intervention from the Chairman of the Select Committee on Education and Skills. Although they have party affiliations, Select Committee Chairmen usually attempt, in debates about the subject for which their Select Committees have responsibility, to strike a rather more non-partisan note. If the hon. Gentleman wants to engage in such attacks, I merely point out that the present Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs sits in the House of Lords, and not in this House, because he refused to send his children—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. This is going very wide of the debate that is before the House.
Mr. Collins: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was trying to get to a matter about which I imagined Labour Members would want to talk—the Secretary of State's very interesting letter to the Financial Times this
morning. He set out what he would clearly like the difference to be between his approach and that of the Conservative party. He wrote:
- "It is the difference between billions of pounds of taxpayers' money spent improving state schools or subsidising private schools that have surplus places".
I can tell from the look of shock and disappointment crossing the Secretary of State's face that he realises that I have shot his fox. Let me make it clear, however, that this fox has been not just shot, but shelled, napalmed and obliterated.
The Government, like the Opposition, will concentrate very substantially increased investment in the state schools to which the vast majority of people send their children. Unlike the Government, however, we will not say that choice and freedom should apply only to the wealthiest parents and the wealthiest schools. It has been the historic role of the Conservative Party to spread the privileges once enjoyed only by the few to every part of society, and we shall do that again.
Mr. Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab): Normally, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would not intervene from this position just behind my Front Bench, but I am trying to keep up with the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). The hon. Gentleman talks about spreading wealth, so will the vouchers be regarded as taxable income? Will poorer families receive vouchers that are worth more, and will that money be taken away from richer families?
Mr. Collins: I can genuinely say to the hon. Gentleman that I have no idea what he is talking about. Of course there is no question that the voucher would be taxable. That proposition is truly absurd. What is very clear is that the hon. Gentleman is frightened that parents throughout the state system will be allowed to have control over the resources made available to support their children. The Government do not like that idea: they have pretended to throw aside their control freakery, but they have not done so for real.
Yesterday the Chancellor rattled off statistics to try to prove that everything in the nation's garden is rosy. Of course, some things are better than they were in 1997. My right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has congratulated the Chancellor on giving the Bank of England control over interest rates. It has taken far more sensible decisions on these matters than any Labour Chancellor ever has or ever could. The Chancellor was right to say that Britain was enjoying its longest period of economic growth in many years, but that is true only because the period in question commenced not in 1997 but in 1992. It started because the Conservative party ignored Labour's advice to stay
in the exchange rate mechanism, and it continues only because the Chancellor ignores the Prime Minister's advice to join the euro.What about some of the statistics that the Chancellor forgot to mention yesterday, and which I suspect the Secretary of State will omit today? The savings ratio—worse than in 1997; manufacturing output—worse than in 1997; business investment growth—worse than in 1997; productivity growth—worse than in 1997; the lowest level of manufacturing employment since records began; the biggest trade deficit in three centuries, and the highest levels of personal debt ever. And in education, teacher vacancies are up, attacks on teachers are up, truancy is up and we have the highest level of pupil drug usage ever.
These problems are not the fault of the teachers and governors any more than the economic setbacks are the fault of businesses. They are the responsibility of a Government who always claim credit when things get better but blame someone else when they get worse. These problems are real and serious, and growing by the day. That is why there is a real difference between the parties over education when the nation comes to vote. Those differences will not be the ones that Labour would have liked. The Labour party would like to be able to say that it would spend more than the Conservatives, but now it cannot. It would like to be able to say that the Conservatives would divert state money for education to subsidise fee-paying schools, but now it cannot. It will have to debate the area in which its record is weakest—not how much money one spends, but how one spends it.
Seven years of socialist centralisation, waste, bureaucracy and interference cannot be wished away just by mass plagiarism of Conservative policy for the future. Labour Members know that we have won the arguments. Now they should get ready for us to win the next election.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |