HC Deb 06 December 1974 vol 882 cc2212-22
Mr. David Mitchell

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton)

I should point out to the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Mitchell) that if I accept his point of order the time will come out of the Adjournment debate of his hon. Friend the Member for Melton (Mr. Latham).

Mr. David Mitchell

I shall be very brief. We on the Opposition side of the House were most grateful when the Minister accepted the motion on the Order Paper. The motion calls upon the Government urgently to consider measures necessary for the encouragement of individual enterprise and initiative. My hon. Friends and I wonder whether the Minister is in a position to promise us a statement—we do not expect it immediately—perhaps in the middle of next week. Is he able to do that?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

That is not a point of order.

4.1 p.m.

Mr. Michael Latham (Melton)

I am very happy to have the opportunity to raise the question of the serious state of three schools in my constituency—a matter of which I have given the Undersecretary of State notice. I refer to Bottesford primary school—we discussed Bottesford in a different context yesterday with the Prime Minister—St. Mary's Church of England infants' school at Milton Mowbray, and Sileby Church of England infants' school.

I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State—the hon. Member for Durham, North-West (Mr. Armstrong)—for his courtesy in advising me that ministerial engagements in the North-West would prevent his being here today and that his hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Jenkins) would take his place. That is fully understood and accepted by me.

I have no hesitation in saying that the situation of the three schools which I have mentioned is desperate. My constituency is a rapidly growing area and the resources made available to Leicester County Council are wholly failing to meet the requirements.

The Melton Mowbray and Bottesford projects were originally in the 1973–74 replacement programme, and the Sileby project was in the 1974–75 programme. Following the Barber cuts last December—I accept immediately that present Ministers have no responsibility for them, except that they have tacitly accepted them—Circular 1573 effectively killed off the Bottesford and Melton Mowbray projects since they were replacement projects which were no longer permitted.

When I wrote to the Under-Secretary of State on 22nd April about the Sileby school, the hon. Member for Durham, North-West on 14th May replied: We are considering whether it would be possible for the project to be included in the 1974–75 starts programme. Alas, it was not to be, because the Government's Circular 10/74 of 19th July laid down two criteria for replacement projects—that they should have been in the design list for 1974–75 or have been deferred from 1973–74, and that they should be in specially deprived urban areas. My constituent schools meet the first criterion, but not the second.

Before speaking of these schools in details, I should like to dispel any impression which may be in the minds of Ministers that living conditions in rural or semi-rural constituencies, such as Melton, are so much better than those in large cities that they should always come bottom of the queue for education resources.

I assure the Minister that, having lived in both central London and rural areas, the big city has many advantages—much better communications and an infinitely wider choice of entertainment and leisure pursuits for young people. These are either inadequate or nonexistent in rural areas, and the importance of a good school environment is therefore all the greater.

The Chairman of the Leicester County Council Education Committee, Mr. Nathan Harris, in an official letter to the Secretary of State on 22nd November, in which he asked the right hon. Gentleman to receive a deputation from the county council supported by hon. Members from Leicestershire, said: Conditions in many of these schools such as Bottesford, St. Mary's Church of England Infants School and Sileby can be as damaging to the education of children as those in more urban situations. I heartily endorse that, and, without being churlish, may I say how much I regret the rejection by the Secretary of State of the request to him to meet a deputation and hope that he will think again about this.

I now propose to say something about each of these schools in alphabetical rather than in any question of priority order, and I deal first with Bottesford.

The main school was built in 1854 but the children use four sites, the main building, two temporary wooden classrooms situated 200 yards along the A52 and next to a farmyard, and a kitchen-dining room about a quarter of a mile away. Across the main road there is the playing field, which is itself totally inadequate.

The A52 runs literally a few feet away from classroom windows, with more than 400 vehicles an hour passing. Of these, about 50 per cent. are transporters—some of them of huge proportions—which have to negotiate a blind right-angle corner on which the school is situated, and on frequent occasions they mount the pavement. The situation is so danger-out that parents meeting their children can no longer wait on the narrow footpath—which is all there is between the school and the road—but have to meet them in the school yard.

Secondly, the noise and vibration from the vehicles make teaching almost impossible for long periods in some of the main rooms. Thirdly, the toilet and washing facilities for the children are across a yard and quite inadequate, and the staff have no separate washing facilities at all. Fourthly, there are immediately available only two small, hard playing areas with no grass. The children have to walk up to three-quarters of a mile for any sports activities.

Fifthly, all the rooms have inadequate natural light and poor ventilation and require constant treatment for rising and penetrating damp.

This is a large and growing village with new developments proceeding apace, and the problems get worse every day. Parents are dissatisfied with the present situation and make their views known very forcefully.

Next, there is St. Mary's Church of England Infants School. This school was built in 1853 on an extremely restricted site, with no grass, and a very small playground area. All the toilets are outside. There is no hall for any physical training activities. In spite of several attempts at repair, the roof leaks in several places. The ceilings and poor acoustics in these classrooms cause particular difficulties in view of the traffic noise and with the development of a small industrial estate on the other side of Norman Street the problem will get much worse.

The dining facilites are totally inadequate, with meals being taken in part of the old caretaker's cottage and a classroom. Because the school is outside its own catchment area, only five out of 110 children are able to go home for meals. There is no staff room, and no facilities for children when they are sick or for visiting medical or other peripatetic staff and visitors.

It is particularly galling that a site in the Nottingham Road area had already been acquired and plans for a new building drawn up when the axe fell in December of last year. I understand that a new school was first proposed in 1902. Let us hope that we can have it in 1975.

Finally, there is Sileby. Here the problem is one of stark basic need and not just replacement. This is a large and expanding industrial village. In fact, it is really a small town with a population of more than 6,000 and a considerable number—40 to be precise—of factories and local industry. A large new housing estate of 650 dwellings is well under way, and up to 100 are already occupied

There are only 400 permanent places in the two schools in Sileby, 100 in the infants school, and 300 in the junior school, plus 105 temporary places, with a further 70 to come at Easter at the infants school and 35 at the junior school. The total enrolment is more than 500, and there could be 600 by 1976 because of the way in which the village is growing.

The infants school was built in 1859. There is one double and one single mobile classroom, with a tiny playground taking up virtually the whole playing area, but somehow they will cram in a further double mobile classroom next Easter. I assure the Minister that this presents a ludicrously cramped aspect, even to a casual outsider. No grass area is immediately available to the children, and they have to walk a long way to use the junior school playing fields.

A matter of particular concern is that children have to go to their play breaks in relays, and have to queue to go to the toilet, because there are only six girls' toilets and two boy's toilets and one urinal for this large school. Although re-roofed in the past few years, the roof still leaks, and the classrooms are dark and poorly ventilated. I am sorry to say that the school has recently suffered from a problem of rats, despite the use of the normal remedies.

Because Sileby school is long past the stage of replacement and is now a case of basic need, I understand that Leicestershire County Council Education Committee has earmarked the school for a basic need project in the 1975–76 programme, provided the Minister allocates sufficient resources.

I must tell the Minister that the feelings of mothers and parents are running high in the village, which has many problems of deprivation and disamenity, as well as appalling communications with the city of Leicester and elsewhere. Sileby people say that they feel left out, but the infants school cannot be left out any longer. There must be a new school on a different site in the village. There is certainly no more room on the infants school site.

My constituents in Bottesford, Melton Mowbray, Sileby and elsewhere are intelligent, honourable, patriotic people. They know perfectly well that the country is in serious trouble and that resources are limited, but they also dread anything approaching the disastrous increase in rates that we had in Leicestershire last year. They are getting to the end of their patience over these schools. They see no reason why resources should be concentrated on larger urban areas when their own problems are just as great. They believe, and I share the belief, that their kids are going to school in rotten, miserable physical surroundings improved only by the devotion and energy of the teachers. They think it is time that they had a fair crack of the whip, and they look to the Minister to give them this.

4.12 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Hugh Jenkins)

I wish to add to the apology that my hon. Friend the Member for Durham, North-West (Mr. Armstrong), the other Undersecretary of State for Education and Science has already tendered to the hon. Member for Melton (Mr. Latham) because this short debate is being answered by someone who has not a first rseponsibility for the subject, but I have had the opportunity of discussing the matter with my hon. Friend and I have looked into it closely and carefully.

All concerned—this is certainly true of my hon. Friend and myself—recognise the urgent need for the replacement of these three schools. I say that without any equivocation or qualification whatsoever. However, it is one thing to recognise a need and another thing to give effect to that need and to take the action that is obviously necessary as soon as possible.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the manner in which he recognises the responsibility of the Barber cuts—although perhaps it is hardly fair to call them cuts. Perhaps a fairer way to put it would be to say the Barber reductions in growth.

We must be careful not to speak harsh words about that former Member of the House who is soon to be ennobled, particularly today of all days. But hon. Members on the Opposition Front Bench would do well to follow the hon. Gentleman's example in recognising that we are the inheritors of the situation, and we recognise freely, having inherited it, that we are unable in the present economic climate to restore the original growth rate as quickly as we would wish. This is our problem.

Up to 1973 the Leicestershire Education Authority had improved seven of the 29 primary schools in the Melton constituency built before 1903, and had replaced two others. Five of the remainder were included in a programme or had been listed to be included for replacement, including the three which the hon. Member has mentioned. Two of these, the Bottesford Primary School and the St. Mary's Infants School at Melton Mowbray, had been scheduled to start in the building year 1973–74 and the third, Sileby Infants, would have been due to start in the current building year.

That is the programme which would have dealt with the situation about which the hon. Member and his constituents are understandably complaining. These three schools had been programmed because their premises were very poor and inadequate for modern primary education, and there was a measure of overcrowding at two of them. Nobody disputes that these three schools need to be replaced.

When the last Conservative administration announced in December 1973 the categories of school building projects which would be eligible for approval between then and July 1975, it effectively suspended for that period the programme of old primary school improvement and replacement projects which had been running. The Labour Government who came into office in February 1974 decided to review this situation. Although we were unable, as a result of the severe economic difficulties we had inherited, to restore fully the cuts in the improvement and replacement programme, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science stated in July his intention to set some money aside to enable a limited number of primary school improvement or replacement projects to go ahead in the 1974–75 building year.

As I understand it, Sileby could have been started in that year, 1974–75, if the Leicestershire Education Authority had thought that its priority was urgent enough. Then, in September my right hon. Friend announced that £31 million had been allowed for the year to be allocated to local education authorities to undertake improvement and replacement projects, that about two-thirds of this sum would be in the form of major projects at primary schools, and that the remaining one-third would be distributed as extra minor works allocations to be used by authorities for smaller but urgent improvements at primary and perhaps at secondary schools as well.

The decision to apply some resources in this way was taken with the needs of a certain type of area particularly in mind. As the total money available was limited, the Government considered that it could best be concentrated in areas of special social need. These have been defined by the Home Office as areas within towns and cities where living conditions are particularly poor in national terms and the pressure on social services is severe—where, in fact, there is evidence of multiple social deprivation, taking such forms as poverty, high levels of unemployment, delinquency, mental disorder, children in care, overcrowding, old and dilapidated housing, and inadequate community services. Education authorities were, therefore, asked to bear these criteria in mind, as well as the condition of the premises of the schools themselves, when putting forward bids for the programme.

The Leicestershire Education Authority submitted six projects for consideration, and two of these were included in the programme. I think I have said enough to indicate why none of the old primary schools in the Melton constituency, deplorable though the condition of their premises may be, was submitted for inclusion. It would be difficult to contend that this constituency contains urban schools in areas of multiple social deprivation. Clearly, the Leicestershire authority did not think it does. This, then, is why the three primary schools to which attention has been drawn, as well as two others which had earlier been listed for inclusion in a replacement programme, have not yet been restored to the building programme. The Government accept, of course, that these and other old schools need to be rebuilt. Nobody is more anxious than my right hon. Friend to get on with replacing old and unsatisfactory school premises, and we shall endeavour to restore the full programme as soon as economic circumstances permit. When this happens the Melton constituency will no doubt get its share of projects, and the Bottes-ford and Sileby schools both stand high in the Leicestershire authority's list of rural primary school buildings in need of replacement. Indeed, I have late information, which I think the hon. Gentleman confirmed—I do not know whether I am justified in using the word "intention", but it is very near that—that the authority hope to use part of its allocation for 1975–76 to build Sileby. It is free to do that. I understand that that is at least possible. I had better be careful not to go too far because it is the authority's decision and not mine. I hope that that will prove to be the case.

In spite of that, in the meantime we can only allow very limited progress to be made. We are clear that it is right to concentrate the available resources on improvement and replacement projects in those areas where we believe the need is greatest.

There has been a suggestion that conditions at the Sileby infants' school are possibly the worst of the three. But I recognise that this is a very melancholy piece of competition. No doubt parents associated with one of the other schools would say that this was not so.

Mr. Michael Latham

I hate to interrupt the Minister in view of the time factor, but I made no suggestions about one school being worse than the others. I am entirely impartial about the schools in my constituency. They are all equally bad.

Mr. Jenkins

I shall follow the hon. Gentleman's example and not indulge in a competition about badness. It would be a fairly fruitless exercise, which I am not tempted to pursue.

I know the problem at Bottesford, too. It is my hope that the authority will find some way of ameliorating the difficulties in that area during the period which remains until it is free and able to deal with the problems in a more fundamental fashion.

The areas covered by the new Leicestershire educational authority lost 15 primary school improvement or replacement projects from the 1973–74 and 1974–75 major building programmes. Only two have so far been restored—one in Leicester and one in Measham. I cannot offer any assurances about when it will be possible to restore the rest—although we have hopes about Sileby—particularly as the authority's area has other pressing needs and some of its secondary schools may also be considered to have a high priority for improvement or replacement when sufficient money becomes available.

However, by and large, the authority must be allowed to determine its own priorities within the policies laid down nationally, and no doubt the hon. Member will wish to convince the authority that the schools to which he has referred should be placed at the top of the list when money is available. It would be difficult for me to enter into a competition among all the other hon. Members representing the area or to say that they should all be placed at the top of the list.

The hon. Gentleman has made a most convincing case for these three schools. I hope that the time will not be too far distant—in respect of not only Sileby but of the others—when it will be possible to give the children of this area the educational facilities which they and their parents deserve. I am confident that my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend would associate themselves with what I have said.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes past Four o'clock.