Laws quizzes Balls

10.19.23am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 24th Jul 2009

• [Jun 30] David Laws (Yeovil, Liberal Democrat): ' . . IF we are really expected to believe that some of the aspirations in the White Paper will be fulfilled, will the Secretary of State tell us how on earth they will be funded in the light of the cuts that would have to be made on the basis of existing public expenditure plans?'

I welcome you to your new responsibilities, Mr. Speaker. I also thank the Secretary of State for allowing me advance sight of the statement and the White Paper.

We welcome the licence to teach and the principle of the school report card-provided that it is not diluted by a fuzzy focus on issues of partnership, which I think would detract from its ability to hold schools more effectively to account-but I want to ask the Secretary of State about the two issues that give us the greatest cause for concern. I refer to the issue of how all the proposals are to be funded, and the issue of what I thought was supposed to be the Prime Minister's big idea yesterday: the idea of moving from a system of targets to one of entitlements.

We saw this morning how the White Paper had been spun by the Government across the media. The BBC website, for instance, speaks of

"legally enforceable rights to schemes such as one-to-one tuition".

Yesterday we heard about the right of exit to the private health sector that would be given to people who were not seen rapidly as NHS patients. However, I am not sure what has happened to that idea of entitlements. The Secretary of State's statement made no mention of parental entitlements, and as for the paper that the Prime Minister issued yesterday, not only has it nothing to say about people's rights to leave the NHS and obtain private treatment if their entitlements are not being delivered, but on the issue of enforcement of entitlements to one-to-one tuition, it states that

"we will not legislate"

for

"redress... through the courts."

That appears directly to contradict the spin that we were given this morning.

Perhaps the Secretary of State can explain-in the context of education and, if he wishes, in wider contexts as well-whether the idea of entitlement is meaningful and will give extra power to consumers of public services, or whether it is a bit of spin. If it is not a bit of spin, how will parents denied access to one-to-one tuition for their children exercise their right to ensure that it is received?

Our other major concern is, of course, the extent to which the Secretary of State's proposals can be funded. He has promised one-to-one tuition for what could turn out to be 20 % of the seven to 11-year-old cohort-the youngsters who are falling below national standards. Is the money really there to deliver that? The Government promised a year ago that they would deliver one-to-one tuition, and they promised 30,000 places, but we now know that they delivered only 3,500.

The Secretary of State has been notably active-more active, perhaps, than the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the last couple of weeks-in talking about the Government's public expenditure plans. However, he has apparently been unwilling to accept that his own budget's real level of expenditure will decline between this year and next year, or that, despite his efforts generously to give away part of his capital budget for home building, the Building Schools for the Future programme will be entirely undeliverable in its existing form against a background of 50 % cuts in capital expenditure across all areas of Government. If we are really expected to believe that some of the aspirations in the White Paper will be fulfilled, will the Secretary of State tell us how on earth they will be funded in the light of the cuts that would have to be made on the basis of existing public expenditure plans?

(Citation: HC Deb, 30 June 2009, c170)

Edward Balls (Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Normanton, Labour): I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's interest in these matters and for the more serious way in which he has addressed the statement and the White Paper. I welcome his support for the idea of the report card, and I hope he agrees with me that it will strengthen accountability and provide more information that parents actually want in order for them to understand the progress of every child in the school.

On partnership, it is important that this issue does not make the report card fuzzy, but we also know that it is only by schools working together that we can deliver good behaviour and strong discipline. Also, as I have announced today, it is schools working together in federations that is driving up standards. I think that when the hon. Gentleman looks at the detail, he will be reassured on this matter.

On targets and entitlements, we have announced that on the basis of this White Paper in the next Session we will legislate to make the pupil and parent guarantee statutory. That means that it will be set out in law. The analogy is the admissions code. We will make sure that in the first instance the parental right to complain is to the school through the governing body. There will then be an independent appeals mechanism, in most cases to the local government ombudsman, but in some cases to the school adjudicator. If they find against a school, the Secretary of State has power to intervene. This is a legal entitlement, so judicial review is, of course, available as a backstop, but we are not seeking to make this legalistic. We want to make sure that the existing complaints procedures that we are putting in place will work effectively. I think we can make this work for both the pupil and the parent guarantee.

On funding, in the financial year 2010-11 we will spend more than £300 million on delivering one-to-one or small group tuition for 300,000 children, and we are currently training 100,000 teachers to teach that one-to-one tuition. The funding is there.

We have also set out a September guarantee. That will mean that this September every young person leaving school will be guaranteed a place in school or college, or an apprenticeship. I can now make that September guarantee only because I have made some difficult choices to shift £650 million from parts of my budgets and individual agencies to fund the 55,000 places that I need to meet it. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman supports that guarantee, but I hope that he and his party can make it clear that they do. What I do know is that other parties in this House will not match that September guarantee. The reason why is that if they make efficiency savings, the first call on resources is not young people getting school, college and apprenticeship places; it is an inheritance tax cut that will go to the 3,000 richest estates and cost billions and billions of pounds.

That is the choice in politics; that is the funding issue. I hope the hon. Gentleman will support me. Tough choices are needed to invest in the future of our country, our children and our young people, not simply to give tax cuts to a small number of millionaires. That is the choice in values, that is the choice in policy, and that is the choice for the future of our country.

Related Link:

• Full Debate in Parliament