HC Deb 08 November 1982 vol 31 cc401-8

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lang.]

10 pm

Mr. Clement Freud (Isle of Ely)

There are people who claim to feel better after they have had their temperature taken. I should like to pay tribute to the therapeutic effects of having had details of my Adjournment debate published on the Order Paper. As a result, things are now better than when I tabled those details.

My motion calls attention to the future of the Palace school, in Ely. It is a school for severely handicapped secondary school children, predominantly those suffering from muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy and spina bifida. They are not capable of being integrated. The school is housed in the old bishop's palace in Ely. It is the property of the Church Commissioners and has been leased for many years to the British Red Cross Society which administers it by a board of governors acting on behalf of the Cambridgeshire trustees. There is a peppercorn rent on a full repairing lease.

Money is recouped by the Red Cross from the local education authorities of many counties. The Red Cross would break even with an occupancy of about 45. The current school roll is 32, which looks like dropping to 22 in the autumn of next year. The staff consists of 21 full-time workers and 21 part-time workers. Virtually no savings can be made when occupancy is down. Some months ago the Red Cross Society announced that it would close the school at the end of the summer term next year, telling the staff that it had done its best to find more pupils but without avail. The society was delighted to see so great a decline in the numbers of severely physically handicapped people and was negotiating with the Department of Education and Science over a claim for repayment of funds. It was rumoured that the Department wanted a return of some of the money it had paid in respect of capital expenditure at the Palace.

The people of Ely, who have done much to help the Palace socially, financially and in every other way, were outraged. The parents of the 32 children, especially the 22 intending to stay to the end of their school days, were deeply perplexed. They had been given no news about what might happen to their children. The Minister will recall that I wrote to him and also to the Department of Health and Social Security. I received the following reply from the Minister: As this is a non-maintained special school the decision on whether or not it should continue is a matter for the controlling body, in this case, the Cambridgeshire Branch of the British Red Cross Society. Closure does not require approval by the Secretary of State. We are, however, concerned about future placement of the pupils now at the school, and officials here have been in touch with the Managers expressing the hope that all reasonable steps will be taken to safeguard the future interests of these children. This brought a ready response that the Managers were offering the parents and the local education authorities what help they could to seek alternative places. I understand that the Managers have arranged a parents' meeting for 6 November at which local education authority representatives will also be present, when no doubt they will offer further help. I hope this will lead to real progress in finding alternative places for the 22 children.

I am not an hon. Member who fights for the retention of what there is regardless of merit. The Minister must accept that I realised the situation of "Who is responsible for what" and "Who can save what" as well as his advisers who wrote the letter which I have read and he signed. What concerns me is that he or his advisers have missed the point. As Minister, he is responsible for local education authorities, which appear to have told the Cambridgeshire Red Cross that there were no children in need of the services that the Palace school provides. If the Minister will place his hand on his heart and tell me that there are, in the catchment area of the Palace school in Ely, which already has pupils from more than 100 miles away, no children suffering from muscular dystrophy, spina bifida, cerebal palsy or Cockayne's syndrome who would benefit from being boarders at the Palace school, I would be tempted to sit down. He cannot do so, so I shall not do so.

What has happened as a result, inter alia, of this debate is that the Red Cross has promised to try every local education authority again to find pupils, and to give a stay of execution until 23 January. By that time, if we can find 25 more children, the Red Cross will continue to administer the school. I shall send details of this debate to each LEA with an invitation to come to Ely and case the joint. I hope that the Minister will support that.

The Red Cross should have done this months, probably years, ago, but I accept that it has now done the right thing, and on behalf of the pupils I thank it. I do not understand how a charity that so many of us support and that has an income of £11 million a year should have to balance its books, but I shall let that pass.

The Palace shool has all the facilities that could be hoped for. It has purpose-rebuilt premises, a swimming pool, expert and dedicated staff, management, governors, physiotherapists, a psychologist, teachers, day attendants, night attendants, house mothers and a caring local community that needs only to be asked to provide.

I hope and trust that the 22 children, in respect of whom contingency plans are now being made to transfer them to Hampshire 150 miles away—probably five hours by car for an East Anglian parent wanting to visit, and rather further than that for those from Lincolnshire and Norfolk—will be able to stay put and be hosts to a new intake. I hope, too, that the staff, many of whom have been there for years, will be able to keep their jobs and will not have to receive the wholly inadequate redundancy payment that is theirs by right.

When I say "wholly inadequate", I mean it. The headmistress, aged 51 and unlikely to find another job, with seven years' service and a salary of £14,712 a year, has been offered £1,417 as a redundancy payment. The deputy head, with 14 years' service and a salary of £10,421 a year, is to receive £1,755.

There is another aspect of the case that I wish to bring to the attention of the Minister. The Prime Minister, in a number of answers to me in the International Year of Disabled People, told me that this Government had made better the lot of the disabled, and that Britons had every right to believe what she said. It would be a poor advertisement for the country, and for the Tory Party, if they had not.

My constituents believed her and continued to give most generously to the Palace school. The Ely Lions gave a video, and more. The Rotary paid for a parents' caravan, and more. The RAF equipped a classroom, and the Master Butchers' Association, the women's institutes, Ely Rotary and Burberry's of Littleport gave money and materials for the school. Virtually every local society and club, pub and hotel and many families in and around the city raised money that went to the Palace school for the benefit of the pupils. That money did not go to the Palace school to enhance the value of the Church Commissioners' property. It went to help the disabled children for whom the Prime Minister said she had such sympathy and for whom her Government cared so much and would do so such a lot.

Had there been no intervention the school would have closed as quietly as the Red Cross could have managed and the children would have been dispersed to the great distress of their parents, causing them untold misery. I say "untold misery" because they are unable to tell us just how much they suffer.

How can people have faith in continuing to deny themselves and contribute to a local charity if the Government, despite their broad brush promises, will not stand up and fight? I do not call my concern about the future placement a fight. I do not think that my hope that this will lead to real progress in finding alternative places is a satisfactory response to tens of thousands of pounds of locally raised funds to equip a building which was to be sold to the private school up the road, thereby saving that school huge building costs and depriving my constituents of the much needed employment that that would have meant.

I am not looking for a detailed reply from the Minister. I shall be content if he signifies simply that he will do his best, as I shall do mine and the Red Cross shall do its, to find children in need so that the children of my constituents and of many other Members at the Palace school, who come from nine local education authorities, will be able to remain in the place which they regard as home and which they would be miserable to leave.

Action by the Minister in the next two months will also restore the faith of the people of Ely and the surrounding district who have every right to believe that the money that they have spent on maintaining the Palace school was well spent. Britain depends greatly on charitable contributions and voluntary involvement.

Closure of the Palace school will be a blow to the people who did so much and who worked so hard, and it would be a great deterrent to future benefactors on whom all sectors of society depend. I have letters from virtually every local authority, from local clubs and societies, and from local councillors supporting the retention of the facilities at the Palace school. I hope that the Minister will say that he will try to bring those facilities to the attention of the many local education authorities which look to him for guidance.

10.12 pm
The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Dr. Rhodes Boyson)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) for raising the matter of the Palace school. I share his appreciation of the valuable work done by the Palace school over the years for the education and care of physically handicapped pupils. I fully share his anxiety that the closure of the school should not adversely affect the continued education of the pupils if closure turns out to be necessary. On the other hand, one hopes that if local authorities are prepared to send children there, closure will not occur.

The problems of the school must be considered against the general background of what is happening to many other schools—special schools as well as ordinary schools. The general decline in the birth rate has led to falling rolls in schools and additional factors have also affected special schools. It is as well to remind the House that over the past eight years school numbers have declined from 9 million to 7½ million.

Additional factors affecting special schools include changes in the nature and extent of handicap, progress in integrating handicapped children into ordinary schools—there was an Act in 1981 related to that aspect—and efforts by local education authorities to place handicapped children in schools near to their homes. I take the hon. Gentleman's point that in this case most of the children come from the nine counties to which he referred. Obviously it is better for the parents concerned and their families that the children are not at the other end of the country but can be reached easily. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will also agree that the reduction in the number of physically handicapped pupils who need boarding education in special schools is to be welcomed, although it may threaten the stability of some schools. There are 106 non-maintained special schools in Britain and I should be surprised if some of those schools were not affected seriously by falling numbers.

Mr. Freud

Does the Under-Secretary of State agree that there is not so much a reduction in the number of handicapped children as in the budgets of local education authorities to pay for those children?

Mr. Boyson

I do not have the figures here, but I shall write to the hon. Gentleman to tell him whether his statement is correct. If there is a fall of about 20 per cent. in the number of children, there must be a fall in the number of handicapped children. If, in addition, we are integrating more children into ordinary schools, there must be a further fall. We can check the demand, but I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's statement. The fall is due not to a cut in budget but to a change of policy on special schools—the hon. Gentleman agreed with the view of the Warnock committee—and to the falling rolls.

Those figures are at the root of the problem facing the schools. The school derives its income almost wholly from the fees that it charges to local education authorities. As the number of pupils falls, the cost per pupil increases. At present, the fees are £6,000 per annum and they will increase to £8,000 in January 1983. The fall in income will be serious. The school is approved for 50 boarding places for physically handicapped children aged 5 to 16 years and up to five day places. In 1980, the school had 54 children. In January 1982, it had 41 pupils and at present there are 32. By July of next year, if there were no alteration following the meeting last Saturday, the figure would have to be reduced to about 20 to 22. The managers have tried hard, but have failed until now to attract additional pupils.

Special education in a boarding school is expensive, because as well as the teaching staff many care staff and other paramedical staff are needed. But clearly there is a limit to the amount that it is reasonable to expect local education authorities to pay for such boarding education. I have referred to a school in Brent where, because of falling numbers, fees rose to about £38,000 to £40,000 a year. There must be a limit beyond which local authorities will not be prepared to go. The non-maintained special schools are caught in a nutcracker. If their rolls fall, they must increase their fees to cover their costs, whereupon the local authorities go elsewhere to schools that are fuller and where the fees are low. The school is run by the Cambridgeshire branch of the British Red Cross Society. It has been suggested that the Red Cross should subsidise the school from its large revenue income. That is entirely for the Red Cross to decide, and it is not for the Government to influence it. This is the only special school run under its auspices and it is not primarily a body concerned with providing education.

Over the years, the Department has paid capital grant to the managers to help with the upkeep of the school buildings and to provide additional teaching accommodation. The school is housed in the former palace of the Bishops of Ely and is expensive to maintain. Since 1967, grant amounting to about £112,000 has been paid and is repayable when the school closes. The managers are aware of that liability. Such an arrangement is made when Government money is invested in non-maintained special schools.

The Department has no resources to assist in meeting any shortfall in the revenue expenses of non-maintained special schools. In any event, it would be wrong to use public funds to shore up a school where there seemed little prospect of it becoming financially sound. I am sure that the hon. Member—or at least his constituents—would be the first to complain if public money were wasted in that way.

Even if some financial arrangement could be made to keep the school open, we should be left with a school for about 20 pupils—unless alternative arrangements could be made.

Mr. Freud

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Could the Minister answer my questions instead of reading his brief?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bernard Weatherill)

Order. That is not a point of order. The Minister is responsible for his own speech.

Dr. Boyson

If the hon. Gentleman will listen carefully, he will find all the answers to his questions in my speech. As I want to give him additional information—perhaps the people at the school may like additional information—I ask him to listen carefully so that he can pass on the information.

If the school has only 20 pupils, it will not be financially viable. The pupils will be mainly of secondary school age, and it will be difficult to provide an adequate curriculum in terms of its breadth and specialist options. The year groups will be tiny. They will encompass an ability range wider than that normally found in a secondary school. In addition, these young people will be denied an essential element of the educative process in that there will be limited opportunity to develop a range of relationships with their peers. When ordinary schools are too small, it is impossible to have the proper spread of teaching. The same is true of special schools. To try to maintain a school unless it can increase its numbers well beyond 20, would be disadvantageous educationally just as it would be disadvantageous financially in maintaining it.

The hon. Gentleman appears to disagree. Perhaps he would care to intervene.

Mr. Freud

The Minister is giving an answer to a question that has not been asked. The problem is simple. Will he help to identify more children if they exist, will he restore the faith of my constituents who have worked so hard to keep this school going, and will he make sure that, if there are no children, they are told, and that, if there are such children, they go there and their money remains well spent? That was the purpose of this Adjournment debate.

Dr. Boyson

I thought that the hon. Gentleman wanted information as well. I shall give the hon. Gentleman a direct answer. We are responsible for maintaining special schools in this country through the local authorities. As I said, there are 106 non-maintained special schools, and the Government would be remiss if they did not treat them all alike. If the only way to keep the school going were to denude other schools, that, in my view, would be completely wrong. As the hon. Gentleman forces me to give it to him straight, I shall certainly not give a pledge that we shall take action especially for this school, which we will not do for other special schools, to the detriment of those special schools. We are prepared to help where we can. The tradition of the Liberal Party was never to put all responsibility on the Government, but clearly the present Liberal Party has forgotten that. The local authorities, not the Government, send the children there. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman should listen. He has put straight questions to me, and I am replying to him.

The Government will not exercise pressure on local authorities against their wishes to send children to a school to which they do not wish to send them. The hon. Gentleman must accept that. There are other parts of the country, apart from the Isle of Ely, and there are other specialist groups. I have great respect for the staff and the headmistress there, but the hon. Gentleman should not expect the Government to act in one case and ignore the rest. If the hon. Gentleman will wait, I shall say what we are prepared to do, but to ask for special consideration that the other non-maintained special schools do not get is totally wrong and parochial and will not help the Liberal Party nationally.

For a maintained special school, the approval of the Secretary of State is required before it can be closed. This does not apply to non-maintained special schools such as the Palace school, so there is no direct Government responsibility there. But the managers have kept the Department informed of their proposals and have received advice from Her Majesty's inspectors and from officials.

We ought to pay tribute to the Red Cross Society, which did not get very much tribute from the right hon. Gentleman. Some of his constituents did, but the Red Cross did not. Tribute is owed to it for the fact that it gave a year's notice when it realised that huge sums of money, which in many cases presumably it wished to use for other purposes, would be needed to subsidise that school. It did not shut down the school immediately. It said that it would go to all lengths possible to ensure that the children there were sent to other non-maintained special schools for which they were suitable. I put on record the responsible way in which the Red Cross Society acted, and I am grateful for this opportunity to do so.

The managers had been concerned about the future of the school for some time, and they approached the Department early in 1981. They also contacted all the local education authorities and other bodies which might wish to send pupils to the school. But the results were disappointing. However, the hon. Gentleman should have paid tribute to the managers. In July 1982, the managers notified the Department of their intention to close the school in July 1983. At the same time, the managers also gave formal notice of the proposed closure to the nine local education authorities with children at the school, to the parents and staff and to other interested parties. Although not obliged to do so, they thus followed the general procedures required for the closure of a special school maintained by a local education authority. I know that the managers took their decision after a good deal of consideration and with a great deal of regret. I think that they acted responsibly in giving a whole year's notice of the proposed closure.

On Friday and Saturday of last week, the managers held meetings at the school with the staff and parents and representatives of the local education authorities concerned. I understand that the managers explained fully the financial plight of the school. They said that they were willing to reconsider keeping the school open if sufficient pupils of the right sort could be found on a long-term basis. It strikes me that that is a perfectly responsible attitude to take. Further meetings are being arranged to consider this again. On 16 December, the managers are to meet local education authorities, medical officers and social workers to see what prospects there are of more pupils becoming available. On 22 January, the managers are to meet the parents again. I understand that the managers have agreed to defer final action on the disposal of the lease for the school buildings until after that meeting.

It is clear, therefore, that there is a chance that the Palace school will remain open. As I have explained, the final decision must rest with the managers. It is not the responsibility of the Government. If the school closes, the responsibility for finding suitable alternative schools for the pupils lies with the local education authorities concerned. Equally, it is for the local education authorities to determine whether they can support the school by being able to send pupils in future. If there are particular difficulties in some cases, I know—and I give this pledge—that Her Majesty's inspectorate and officials of the Department will be glad to advise the managers and the local education authorities.

I say to the hon. Gentleman in a completely straightforward manner that I know that it would be a tragedy for the people in his area, who have helped in the maintenance of that school, and for the Red Cross, which has run the school with a high record of achievement over many years, if the school were closed. But its continuance must now depend on whether a sufficient number of local authorities will send enough children there. I share the hon. Gentleman's hope that they will, but that is a decision which only they can make. They must decide whether to send children there without putting at risk any of their own special schools in their areas.

What happened last Friday and Saturday at those meetings with the managers is good, as is the contact with local authorities and, presumably, with people in the area. I hope that circumstances will arise which allow for the school to continue, but that must rest entirely with the local education authorities and the ruling body of the Palace school, the Red Cross.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o' clock.