HC Deb 01 August 1984 vol 65 cc410-6

3 pm

Mr. Gareth Wardell (Gower)

I am grateful for the opportunity to comment on the approval by the Secretary of State for Wales of west Glamorgan's scheme for the reorganisation of secondary education in Gower in the face of objections from more than 2,500 people. It is vital to place this matter in historical perspective. On 19 May 1983, during the general election campaign, at a party political meeting in Bishopston, the Secretary of State for Wales made detailed comments on west Glamorgan's previous plan that was then before him. It is unprecedented for a Secretary of State, acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, to make detailed comments in that way. It showed a lack of integrity, an abdication of responsibility to Tory Central Office and a betrayal of trust.

Subsequently, the Secretary of State turned down west Glamorgan's plan. He could do little else, as he had pre-empted any other decision by his earlier desire at Bishopston to catch votes. This afternoon, I seek an assurance from the Minister that such cheap political gimmickry will not be repeated.

In that speech, referring to Gowerton school, the Secretary of State said: I have considered the representations that have been made and examined the arguments very carefully and I have to say that Her Majesty's Inspectors would have to produce some quite unexpected and compelling arguments to persuade me that it would be right to destroy such a centre of excellence. As the plan that has now been approved will mean that the children of Bishopston, at the age of 16, will have the additional option of attending Gorseinon tertiary college, on top of their existing options to attend Gowerton school, Olchfa, and the college of further education at Swansea, and since the children of Gowerton comprehensive school will, at the age of 16, have the option of entering Gorseinon tertiary college under the plan, where is the unexpected and compelling evidence from Her Majesty's inspectors since that speech?

On Monday of this week, when I asked the Minister of State whether he would publish the assessment and advice that he received from Her Majesty's inspectors on the county council's plans, he was not prepared to do so. I should be grateful if he would tell the House now how Gowerton sixth form pupils will be protected under the plan that he has approved.

By turning down west Glamorgan's first plan, the Secretary of State forced west Glamorgan to turn to a second-best solution. It aroused anger and bitterness in me that neither the Secretary of State nor the Minister of State made any serious attempt to understand fully the complexities and implications of the plan that they approved.

I give just two examples. Earlier this week I asked the Minister whether he would list the schools affected by this reorganisation that Ministers in his Department had visited before approving the reorganisation. His reply was, "None." In other words, no Minister went to see the implications on the ground.

I draw my second illustration from the letter sent out from the Welsh Office giving the decision of 20 July. It states: The release of the Penyrheol lower school building for use by the Treuchaf primary school will now be delayed a further three years. However, on Monday of this week when I asked the Minister, first, about the modification or conditions that he attached to his approval of the plan by west Glamorgan, his answer was: My right hon. Friend approved the proposals without modification. He has no power under the Education Act 1980 to impose conditions. On the same day, I asked him whether he would publish in the Official Report the definitive date when the pupils of the bilingual school at Loughor would be transferred to Talbot road Gowerton. He replied: This is a matter for West Glamorgan county council. In the letter from the Welsh Office giving the Minister's decision, he said specifically that this matter would be delayed for three years, yet he is in no position to do that, as he made clear in answer to those two questions earlier this week.

In a letter published in last night's South Wales Evening Post, the parents of Welsh-speaking children said that, if bilingual pupils were not moved as promised to Gowerton, the Welsh and English parents would fight the Welsh Office together. The letter continued: The site is not large enough for 750 pupils (the proposed size of the school) nor would there be room for all the facilities, for example, science and language laboratories, metal and woodworking areas, domestic science facilities, etc., needed by a secondary school for 11 to 16-year-olds. If there was any move to make the site permanent, we could all object together. To whom will those parents object if the plans go through as the Minister says in his letter? In three years' time those children will be moved. He has no power to compel the local authority to make that move, yet he says that in three years that move will take place.

In another question this week, I asked the Minister what grounds there were to reject the first plan. In his reply, he said that one of the reasons, though not the main one, was the excellence at Gowerton school. He said: The Oystermouth location for the proposed bilingual secondary school was also unacceptable. But the Oystermouth school would have had existing facilities for 11 to 16-year-olds. It had the laboratories and the facilities that would have been possible for a bilingual school to be set up there. It would have given the county council the flexibility that it needed to prepare the buildings at the Talbot road site in Gowerton, even with the Government cuts in local authority expenditure. Now that flexibility has gone.

There is not one way in which the scheme is an improvement on the one that the Secretary of State rejected. The new scheme will cause great hardship to many children in Gowerton. The Gowerton sixth form will contract. Indeed, it will probably disappear following the attendant decline in morale among its staff and pupils. The children will vote with their feet and go to the new tertiary college.

The primary schoolchildren at Treuchaf will remain where they are, unsure when their facilities will be improved. Plaster is falling off the ceilings within the building and there is not one hall in the school where they can have a morning assembly together. Four-year-old children will be sharing a playground with secondary school pupils drawn from a wide area of west Glamorgan. In three years' time there is no guarantee that the bilingual school will have adequate facilities and the primary children of Penyrheol will remain in an antique building with relatively primitive facilities.

I have considered this issue extremely carefully. I would not have made comments on a personal level against the Secretary of State or the Minister of State without going through a most careful and heart-searching process. I am sure that the Minister will accept that I would not have made this criticism without first considering carefully all the facts.

The county council's plan was rejected during a party political meeting. That has resulted in the children of many primary schools in my constituency having to tolerate inadequate facilities and in west Glamorgan having been forced to produce a solution that is far from ideal. I wish that the Secretary of State or the Minister of State had visited the schools. As politicians, we are so often accused of being far away from the grassroots that we represent. I know the schools at first hand and I would not have spoken in such a personal way had I not felt deeply within me a considerable sense of anger and bitterness.

I hope that the Minister will give me an assurance that no more schemes will be rejected at party political meetings. I hope that in future Welsh Office civil servants will not make statements that are later contradicted by the Minister's answers to me. It is plain that the Minister is in no position to say to the people of Treuchaf that in three years the Penyrheol lower comprehensive school building will be theirs. He cannot do that; if only the Minister understood that and other arguments that I have been advancing, he would be able to press the local authority to make changes, even on the basis of the arguments that are contained in the letter of 20 July.

3.13 pm
The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mr. John Stradling Thomas)

The hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell) has been fortunate enough to have the opportunity in this debate to present yet again a series of sectional arguments against the approval of West Glamorgan county council's reorganisation of post-16 education in Penyrheol, Pontardulais and Gorseinon and the establishment of a second bilingual school in the county.

The hon. Gentleman knows, or should know since he has been told often enough, that the initiative for such proposals rests entirely with local education authorities, not with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State or myself. This is right and proper, as the duty of ensuring that sufficient and adequate education provision is made to meet the needs of their areas is placed firmly on the authorities by the Education Acts.

Labour Members are fond of levelling at the Government the charge of unwarranted interference in local affairs and frequently talk blandly about centralisation and the erosion of local democracy when it suits them. to do so. But local democracy is apparently acceptable only when it results in conclusions and decisions which meet with their approval. In all other cases, as we have noted this afternoon, they press continually for more interference in local affairs and, as in this case, criticise my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for permitting local authorities to implement proposals that arouse any dislike or opposition whatever.

I have said that the initiative for making proposals rests with the local authorities. If a local education authority intends to establish, close or significantly alter the character of a county school, notices of the proposal must first be published in accordance with section 12 of the Education Act 1980. A period of two months after publication is allowed in which objections may be made. Most commonly, satutory objections are those submitted by 10 or more local government electors for the area acting together. If statutory objections are registered the decision on the proposal is automatically reserved to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State who then has three options. I believe that the hon. Member for Gower, with his experience in education, knows that full well. He has to be reminded of it, however, because of the overblown rhetoric of his recent speech. The three options are as follows. My right hon. Friend may reject the proposal, approve it, or, after consulting the local education authority, approve it with such modifications as he thinks desirable. I remind the House that the scope for modification is limited in that it may not substantially change the character of a proposal. A typical example would be a change in the implementation date.

It is worth pausing to make a few observations on the limits which the Act quite rightly imposes on my right hon. Friend's powers. First, he cannot make proposals for school reorganisation. He can only approve or reject those made by authorities. Secondly, he cannot substitute his judgment for that of the authority which makes a proposal, except that he can reject a proposal which does not commend itself or, after consultations with the proposing authority, approve it with modifications which fall within fairly narrow limits which I have already described. Thirdly—this is important—he cannot give a conditional approval. He may express views on the implementation of proposals—and frequently does so, as in the decision letter—but these views do not carry the weight of his statutory decision. In practice, therefore, his statutory function is essentially United to the approval or rejection of proposals made by responsible local authorities.

The proposal by West Glamorgan county council, which is the subject of this debate and which was recently approved by my right hon. Friend, is for the establishment of a second bilingual secondary school in the county to open in September this year. It is to be established initially in the premises occupied until now by the lower school of Penyrheol comprehensive school and will move in 1987 to the Talbot street premises presently occupied by Gowerton comprehensive school. The proposal also provides for the cessation of post-16 education at Penyrheol comprehensive school from September 1986 and the provision from that date of post-16 education currently provided in the school and in the college of further education at a tertiary college in Gorseinon.

Until now there has been only one bilingual secondary school in west Glamorgan and that is in Ystalyfera, which is virtually on the northern boundary of the county, as the hon. Member is aware. He did not say that its pupils have come from a very wide area, with many having to undertake long and difficult journeys to get there. But he concedes that it has become increasingly evident that a second such school is needed in the county to cater for likely future needs and to provide secondary bilingual education in the western part of the county.

The Government's policy is that bilingual education at both primary and secondary level should be provided to meet local needs wherever this is possible. I challenge any Opposition Member to dispute that there is a demand in the western part of west Glamorgan, particularly in the hon. Member's constituency. Obviously, it is for the local education authority to assess those needs in the first instance and to determine how they can best be met. I find it surprising that the hon. Member should concentrate so completely on a whole range of other issues and ignore the central fact that the proposal and decision give an enormous boost to bilingual education in his constituency and in the county generally. He seems to be positively dismissive of that. By his words he shall be judged.

West Glamorgan county council has formally adopted a policy of providing post-16 education so far as possible in a number of tertiary colleges throughout the county, and the part of the proposal which relates to Penyrheol comprehensive school is in furtherance of this policy. Furthermore, this part of the proposal has been generally accepted, and indeed expected, by the people of the area.

It may be asked — I understand this because it is complicated—what connection there is between these two parts of the proposal and why they were not dealt with separately. To some extent that is at the heart of the debate, but it is not a question that I can answer. The proposal is the authority's proposal—I cannot emphasise that too much—and it was its view that provision for the bilingual school could be made only in the context of a proposal which extended also to the reorganisation of sixth form education in the Penyrheol-Pontardulais area. It was and remains my view that the two aspects would have been better dealt with separately. I think that has given rise to much of the difficulty, but I respect the alternative view taken by the authority and I can see its grounds for taking it. Whether I agree or disagree is irrelevant.

Hon. Members will remember that in 1983—much play was made of this by the hon. Gentleman—my right hon. Friend rejected an earlier similar proposal by the authority. That proposal would have located the bilingual secondary school initially at Oystermouth, which would have entailed some problems, before moving to its long-term site in premises at Gowerton comprehensive school. The proposal would, however, have included a change in the status of Gowerton comprehensive school so that it no longer provided education beyond the age of 16. The Secretary of State was unable to accept this part of the proposal, for reasons I gave earlier, and perforce rejected the whole.

Mr. Wardell

At a party political meeting.

Mr. Stradling Thomas

The hon. Member makes great play about party political meetings. He tries to have the best of both worlds. In some instances he claims that the decision was taken before, but when it suits him he blames the Secretary of State for delaying the decision until after the election. He can try to have his cake and eat it, but he cannot get away with it.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State welcomed the proposal for a second bilingual secondary school and hoped that the authority would quickly make alternative proposals for its establishment. The authority did so earlier this year, and those proposals have been agreed and will now be implemented.

I emphasise that the Secretary of State and the authority are both convinced of the need for the school and that there is a very large measure of public support for it in the county. I am only sorry that the hon. Member does not throw in his weight for such a desirable development.

The proposals now approved stimulated no objections to the removal of post-16 education from Penyrheol comprehensive school and do not affect the age range catered for at Gowerton. In the Secretary of State's view, the proposal was acceptable and would forward the provision of bilingual education in the county as well as making adequate provision, in line with the authority's policy for post-16 education in the Penyrheol/Pontardulais area, thus making the best of the two complicated matters that were brought together in the proposals.

There were a number of objections to the bilingual school— not, I would stress, to its establishement as such but to its siting. Primarily, those centred on the present premises of Tre Uchaf primary school and Penclawdd junior school. As the hon. Member has explained, the parents of children at Tre Uchaf primary school have long expected that the premises of Penyrheol lower school would, when vacated by the comprehensive school, be made available for the primary school. They claim, in fact, that the authority made promises to that effect.

I concede immediately that there are unsatisfactory features at the present primary school premises — as there are at many others in west Glamorgan and elsewhere in Wales—and there is no doubt that the secondary school premises would—after remodelling, I remind the House—offer superior accommodation. That building will, in any event, be available for reassignment in 1987 when the bilingual school moves to its long-term premises in Talbot street. That is the plan. Whether it will then be made available for Tre Uchaf primary school I cannot say, but I have no doubt that the authority will bear in mind the needs of that school and its claim to those premises.

Similarly, the parents of pupils at Penclawdd junior school had hoped that the school would be able to move into the Penclawdd annex of Gowerton comprehensive school. The allocation of the Talbot street premises to the bilingual school will undoubtedly delay the day when the Penclawdd annex can be released for other use, but again I expect that when that day arrives the authority will be mindful of the needs of Penclawdd junior school.

I do, of course, as does the Secretary of State, appreciate how bitter is the disappointment of the parents of children at both primary schools that the schools must, for the time being at least, continue in premises inferior to others which might have become available.

The authority took the view that the higher priority lay with the extension of bilingual secondary provision and the rationalisation of post-16 education. That is a view that the Secretary of State accepted in making his decision. Certainly he saw additional bilingual provision as a major priority.

In a perfect world, it would be possible to make proposals and decisions which would satisfy all demands simultaneously and fully. But, sadly, on the eve of the recess, we do not live in a perfect world or one provided with a cornucopia of resources, whether in the form of money or of desirable school premises. Authorities have to make choices and set priorities, and decisions have to be made on a balance of advantages and disadvantages.

In the present case, there are positive advantages for bilingual education, and provision in the two primary schools will be no worse than before. They will suffer no disadvantage; they will simply not gain now an advantage which they expected.

In giving his decision in the case, the Secretary of State set out his reasons fully and expressed to the authority his hope that all reasonable steps would be taken to minimise any problems facing the two primary schools and Gowerton comprehensive school. He and I are convinced that his decision was in the best interests of education in west Glamorgan, and I am surprised, for the reasons that I have given, that the hon. Member does not agree.

Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege, at 3.29 pm on 1 August, to wish you personally and the rest of the House a happy and flourishing recess.

Mr. Speaker

Before I adjourn the House, I should like to wish all hon. Members a restful and a refreshing holiday. I am sure that they would like me to express that wish and hope to all staff of the House who serve us so well.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Three o'clock till Monday 22 October, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 26 July.