§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. McCann.
§ 2.37 p.m.
§ Mr. John Pardoe (Cornwall, North)I am extremely glad to be able to raise the question of the cuts in the Cornish school building programme so soon after the Summer Recess. I do so I know with the full support of my Cornish colleagues, irrespective of their party allegiance. I apologise at the outset of this short speech if I mention places in their constituencies, because the case I want to make is one for the whole of Cornwall, and not just for my own constituency of North Cornwall.
I apologise, too, for not dealing with every town which has educational difficulties. I want to deal with those where the difficulties seem to be exceptional. My reason for raising this at this stage is because of the utmost urgency about getting a decision. Upon the Minister's reply my Cornish colleagues and I will base our campaign for the future.
I want to state soberly, and I hope without too much drama, the situation as we see it and to give some of the facts. I hope that I will be allowed to issue one small warning to the Minister. The sort of reply I would like to hear is not the sort of reply that the County Council had from her Department in a letter written by one of her civil servants on 11th June of this year. In reply to a detailed account of the crisis put forward by the County Council, in both the schools and further education programme, the Department mentioned just two further education projects and patted itself on the back for those. It did not mention the schools at all. I thought that Cornwall's response to that letter was a marvel of moderation. I should have been tempted to physical violence.
I shall limit myself to the major programmes, those above £20,000, and start by sketching the background to the crisis facing us. The Department's survey of the state of the nation's schools in 1962 showed clearly that Cornwall already then had a far higher than average quantity of old primary schools and schools lacking modern amenties. There are 271 849 primary schools in the county. Only 28 of these have been built since the war. Four of these new primary schools were built out of allocations for minor capital works, and this was done at the expense of other very essential projects. At the present rate of progress it will take 199 years before all the pre-war primary schools in Cornwall can be replaced.
I admit immediately that the secondary school situation is not as bad as the primary school situation, but it is bad enough. Twenty-three of our 50 secondary schools have been completely, or almost completely, built since the war. Twenty of these were done as part of the rural reorganisation programme.
Taking secondary and primary schools together, 51 new schools have been completed in Cornwall since the war. These have provided 15,700 new school places. However, since the war the number of children in the schools has increased by only 60 less than that 15.700. So new building has only just kept pace with the increased school population.
Nearly 70 per cent. of school children in Cornwall are in pre-war schools. These have been patched, adapted and mended to the point where further work of this nature is totally uneconomic.
What about the future of the primary schools? In the next five years the primary school population in Cornwall will increase by 2,500. Very substantial primary school building programmes will be required to cope with this. Within the next five years in addition to the schools already listed in the present starts programme, primary projects will certainly be needed at Bodmin, Truro, St. Austell, Camborne/Redruth, and almost certainly at Helston, Newquay, Saltash, Torpoint and Liskeard.
These projects will merely deal with the increased population in those towns which will arise as the result of those now under 5 going to school. Therefore, this is a natural population increase and has nothing to do with overspill and expanded town programmes.
Bodmin—this is not my own constituency, but it affords an excellent example—has had something of a population explosion. In 1958, 60 children were born. In 1964, 134 children were 850 born. Bodmin will be a crisis point, unless something is done very quickly.
Turning briefly from primary to secondary schools, already there is severe overcrowding even in schools which have been built since the war. In Bude, which is in my constituency, the condition of the buildings is terrible. Huts have been placed alongside huts, and there is absolutely no further room on the site for expansion. We are to have a new satellite tracking station at Bude. I am very grateful for this. The labour required there alone will mean that by 1973 there will be 50 more children in the present Bude Grammar School.
At Helston, the Penrose Road premises are totally inadequate. Yet they, too, are scheduled to take another 75 children by 1971. Gwealhellis, built for 450 children, will have to take 650 by 1971. Bodmin Secondary Modern School, built for 450, will have to take 525 by 1972, not counting overspill. At St. Austell, the Penrice premises, which again were built to take 450, will have to take 600 by 1971. The same goes for Tolgus. At Treswithian, which was built to take 600, there will be 800 by 1971. In the Tor-point school for children between 11 and 16, by 1973 there will be 100 more children than it was ever intended to hold. Although the present situation at Truro can be held, there is no doubt that there will be substantial overcrowding difficulties by 1974.
All these facts together show that major projects are absolutely essential in Falmouth, Penryn, Bude and Helston. These have already been included in the programme which the County Council has put to the Department for 1969–70. In addition to these, there will be essential requirements for major projects in Bodmin, St. Austell, Camborne/Redruth and Torpoint within three years.
I turn to the comprehensivisation programme, which I wholeheartedly support. I have repeatedly urged the Government to move as fast as possible to its completion. However, it must be recognised that it adds an additional financial burden. There is an immediate necessity for new comprehensive schools at Bude and Helston merely to overcome the overcrowding problems in the present secondary schools there. At present, four of the 14 areas in the county are operating on a comprehensive basis. To bring 851 the other 10 areas into the comprehensivisation programme will cost at least another £5 million at current building prices. At the present rate of going, it will take 20 years to make the whole of the Cornwall education system comprehensive. There is very little opposition to comprehensivisation in Cornwall. There are some who have some certain reservations about it, but on the whole those who are responsible for making policy at County Hall are completely in accord with the idea.
I do not want to spend very much time on further education, except to say that the Department's letter of 11th June referred to an amount of £400,000, which included the St. Austell College of Further Education. Has this now been approved? It was originally approved for 1968–69 but then cancelled. My latest information is that the St. Austell part of it had not already been approved for 1969–70.
I want to quote some figures referring to the major projects for primary and secondary schools, taking no account of further education projects, for 1968–69 in the other counties in the South-West just to give some indication of the difference between Cornwall and these other counties. I give these figures to the nearest £1,000. Devon has had £353,000, Dorset, £250,000, Gloucestershire, £720,000, Somerset, £880,000 and Wiltshire, £630,000. Cornwall has had £23,260. It is hardly surprising that people in Cornwall feel that they have been left out in the cold. The Minister will have some difficulty in explaining away this catastrophic difference between the allocation for Cornwall and the allocations for these other counties.
I believe that we need a programme of at least £1 million a year for the next three years if the situation is not to reach total chaos in four, five or six years' time. I am not worried now about the immediate future. We can cope in the next two or three years. But I am convinced that, unless we are to reach crisis point in four, five or six years, the minimum programme must be £1 million a year of building allocation for the next three years.
The county council can cope with a programme of £1 million a year. The 852 architect's department and the construction industry are well able to do so. They coped with that kind of programme at the height of the rural schools reorganisation programme.
In conclusion, I pay a tribute—it is rare, perhaps, for me to do so—to County Hall in Cornwall. The administration of education in Cornwall is of an immensely high standard. The Department may be accustomed to receiving estimates of requirements from other counties sent in by people whose view is that they should put in at least three or four times what they really need. The secretary for education at County Hall in Truro is an honest man who puts in applications for only what he really requires. He is a first-class administrator and when he says that certain things are needed, he really means it, and the Department of Education should take note. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will give us real hope today for the £1 million building programme which is the absolute minimum required.
§ 2.51 p.m.
§ The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Miss Jennie Lee)First, I express my regret that the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) is not in her place today, but, as I am sure the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) understands, she is unwell. I am her inadequate substitute, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that not only will all he has said be clearly reproduced in HANSARD but it will be taken up in the Department, it will be studied by the Minister responsible for schools when, very shortly, she returns to duty, and it will be closely studied by everyone in the Department who is working in this field.
Whether the amount available to be spent on education be as much as or less than we should wish, it is necessary that each county should feel that it is receiving a fair allocation. The hon. Gentleman gave the impression that he considers that his county is not receiving a fair allocation. I have been assured that this is not so. In planning for the future, the first essential is that there should be a school place for every child—"Benches for bottoms".
853 The hon. Gentleman was wise to stress the future so much. There is an optimistic hope there, because, as he knows so much better than I do, there was until 1964 a diminishing school population, but since 1964, in the last four years, it has shown some rise, and it now appears that the rise will be accelerated. The hon. Gentleman stressed that point, and it is one very well known to my colleagues in the Department.
I ask the hon. Gentleman to note these figures. During the 10 years while the school population was static in Cornwall, it increased by over 700,000 in England and Wales. The figure for his own county between January, 1958 and January, 1968, showed an increase of 3,600 pupils. School places must be found for the increase which has already occurred.
In planning for the future in regard to Cornwall, as for every other county, the first priority to be taken into consideration is school places for all the children. I hope that that puts the hon. Gentleman's mind somewhat at rest, realising that not only have he and his colleagues been doing forward thinking but the Department has been doing forward thinking and putting top priority on giving a place to every school child.
The conditioning framework for the allocation of resources was stated by the Prime Minister in January this year when he said:
Taking local authority expenditure as a whole, the Government expect that, in 1969–70, local authorities as a whole will restrain the level of their expenditure so that it does not in total exceed a figure in the region of 3 per cent. in real terms above what has already been agreed for purposes of the Exchequer contribution in 1968–69; and the Government will propose rate support grant for 1969–70 on this basis when the time comes. As regards 1968–69, the Government will expect local authorities to absorb any increases in cost which they cannot avoid by making savings elsewhere."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th January, 1968; Vol. 756, C. 1591.]That all sounds rigorous. It is not what we would wish. But, to keep the picture in perspective, I remind the hon. Gentleman that there are more schools being built this year than in any past year. It would be wrong for any parent, teacher or other person interested in education to have the impression that there is a diminishing amount of building going on. It is increasing all the time, 854 though the graph of increase is not as great as the Government originally intended or desired, and it is not as great as any of us would wish.We have many years behind us when, apparently, we were living in a country of "I'm all right, Jack" and "Never had it so good". The hon. Gentleman's problem, his county's problem and our problem would be easier if we were not having to make up such enormous past arrears of school building.
As I have said, the top priority is to find every child a place—to put it crudely, "Benches for bottoms" for all children. Naturally, therefore, priority attention is going at present to rapidly expanding industrial areas because the children must be got into school.
There is another priority. The Plowden Report made us all aware that children growing up in slums, from deprived homes, from deprived and congested areas without proper facilities, have a very big claim on our priorities. The Government accepted the Plowden Report. Therefore, within the limited resources available—I say again that, although limited, those resources are greater than in any past year and continue to move upwards—the second priority must be directed towards children in the slum back streets, those who do not have the benediction of the beautiful Cornish countryside or many of the other things which a child in a country area often has.
I realise that we are in two minds when we hear statements of that kind. I am myself a Member for a big county constituency, and this very weekend I shall be coping with precisely the same problem as the hon. Gentleman has raised, the problem of schools in some of our rural villages which are an absolute heartbreak and a disgrace. There will be no resting until we get rid of all those schools. But it is important to recognise that more is being done than in the past and that the Government are fully aware of the points which the hon. Gentleman has made.
The hon. Gentleman knows that the rate support grant is a general subsidy and that sometimes a special appeal is made to the county to give top priority to schools. But it is not Government 855 practice—it never has been and it never could be—to dictate to a county what its priorities should be within its rate support grant. The hon. Member may want to exert a little extra pressure, but, although I hope that we shall not have a campaign for home rule for Cornwall—we have had about enough of that kind of development—I think that he will agree that it is right to leave a certain measure of choice to the people who are handling the problem locally.
Although the position with secondary education is not quite so tough as in the village schools, Cornwall, like every other county, is faced with a very mixed situation, with some areas not so bad and some very bad indeed. It is easier to get on with comprehensive planning where there is a very rapid increase in population, because additional money must be given to bring the children into school places, and the Government insist that where that is done, it should be within a comprehensive plan.
We have every sympathy for the situation in Cornwall where there is a stagnant and, indeed, a diminishing population and it is good news—and I hope that the Government will get a little credit for this—that new industries are going into Cornwall, that there is an expansion of jobs and an expansion of population. If the natural logic of that is an expansion of the school population, Cornwall will be entitled to have all that taken into consideration when the general allocation of Government money is made.
I am informed that Cornwall had three main projects for further education and that all these proposals have been accepted, except that there is a three months' delay in starting in St. Austell. I hope that in those circumstances the hon. Gentleman will not feel too discouraged.
I need not labour the point, but we are in a situation in which we cannot do all we want to do, but it is worth noting 856 that while expenditure on roads has been cut by 81 per cent. and 10 per cent. and expenditure on housing, another most urgent need, by 2½ and 5 per cent. these have been cuts in the original intention and not cuts to less than we were spending before. The cuts in education expenditure are a 2 per cent. cut for 1968–69 and a 21½ per cent. cut for 1969–70. All that we regret, but the reductions are in a planned rate of growth and are not cuts below the existing level. Even after this measure of retrenchment, the increase in the next two years is expected to keep pace with the increase in the gross national product.
Looking ahead, the detailed discussions with the local authority associations of the rate support grant for 1969–70 and 1970–71 will begin shortly. I am not in a position to comfort the hon. Member by giving him exact figures, but these discussions will begin in an atmosphere of a lightening of the general economic situation, however modest it may be at this moment, and that will be reflected in everything which the Government are trying to do. It can be seen that such cuts as have been made—and we all regret them—are less in education than in many other Departments. We hope to see these cuts reversed very soon.
Although I have not been able to give all the aid and comfort to the hon. Gentleman which he would wish, I hope that he appreciates that Cornwall's problems are fully understood by the Department and I can assure him that everything he and his colleagues have said has been fully studied in the Department. Perhaps the next time he raises this matter he will be dealing with my right hon. Friend the Minister responsible for schools who, as he knows, is a very great expert in all these matters.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at four minutes past Three o'clock.