HC Deb 17 October 1989 vol 158 cc7-9
5. Mr. Flannery

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what plans he has to establish a new negotiating body for teachers' pay.

Mr. MacGregor

I expect to hold a further round of meetings shortly with the employers and the teacher unions to discuss new pay determination arrangements.

Mr. Flannery

Tory Members are showing a surprising enthusiasm for education matters today. Does the Secretary of State know that the teachers were deprived of the right to free negotiation by his predecessor? The right hon. Gentleman said some nice and charming words about teachers, for once, at the Tory party conference. The right to negotiate freely is allowed in every democracy except this one, and the United Nations has condemned the Government for taking it away. When will it be restored, or shall we continue to be allied with the dictatorships in that regard?

Mr. MacGregor

That is a ludicrous comparison. The International Labour Organisation knows that our aim is to re-establish a permanent pay negotiation machinery. I have already made the position clear. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster saw the teaching unions in July and put forward a range of options, of which three are on the table. I have been receiving responses from the unions, and two further ones came in only this weekend. There is a wide variety of views in these responses, and I am now setting dates for meetings with the unions to take the discussions further.

Mr. Pawsey

I welcome my right hon. Friend to his duties at the Dispatch Box. I urge him to disregard the rantings of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery). My right hon. Friend will learn, as we have, that they are full of sound and fury and signify very little. We have no desire to see a son of Burnham or Burnham mark 2. Burnham is discredited, but we welcome the interim advisory committee and the £600 million of additional funding in 1990–91. We also welcome the fact that this represents a doubling of funding over two years.

Mr. MacGregor

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind remarks about me and for what he said about the remit of the interim advisory committee. It is a substantial sum, but a fair one in all the circumstances. I am glad that he recognises that. He has made it clear that it is larger than in the past two years. I was well aware of the educational rantings of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) and I regard it as a step forward that he watched what happened at the Tory party conference.

Mr. Simon Hughes

First, I welcome the appearance of the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box in his new position within the Cabinet. Does he accept that the provision of £600 million has not yet met the concern of teachers that not enough money is promised for the profession in the short term to stop the still substantial flow of teachers away from the profession, both in the short and long term?

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept also that short-term measures should be implemented in areas of acute need, especially in the capital, during this academic year, and that longer-term measures should be taken so that teachers, especially those in the more senior grades, can be assured that there is a prospect of promotion with reasonable rewards? Without that money, the teaching profession will not have adequate prospects of recovery from his predecessor's policies.

Mr. MacGregor

First, £600 million is a substantial sum. It is double the remit of the year before last and 55 per cent. up on the remit for the current year's settlement. Secondly, it is not true that there is a substantial outflow of teachers. The number of teachers taking up jobs elsewhere amounts to about 1 per cent. of the total teaching force. Thirdly, I recognise that there are problems in certain geographical areas, of which London is the most notable, and in certain subjects. It is on that issue that I have been focusing above all, and it includes the problems that the hon. Gentleman has identified. He will have noted that in the remit that I have given to the interim advisory committee these problems have been identified as the ones upon which I want it to concentrate.

Mr. Haselhurst

I understand the attachment that teachers have for negotiating rights, but does my right hon. Friend agree that a pay review body which does not imply old-style face-to-face bargaining remains an acceptable alternative for a professional body?

Mr. MacGregor

There are three options that I shall be discussing with the teaching unions and others as soon as meetings can be arranged.

Mr. Straw

Is it not clear that the Secretary of State's decision to bind the interim teachers' pay committee with a ludicrously low cash limit will mean that morale will decline further and that teacher shortages will become much worse? The Secretary of State said when he announced the terms of reference for this IAC inquiry that inflation has now fallen a full 1 per cent. from its summer peak … It will continue to decline further in the months ahead. As that statement has been confounded in the space of two weeks—inflation has increased, not decreased—will the right hon. Gentleman make it clear today that if the IAC proposes an increase in teachers' pay that is above the cash limit, he will not dismiss it out of hand?

Mr. MacGregor

I hope that the hon. Gentleman recognises that, for the reasons I have given already, £600 million is a substantial sum. I hope, too, that he is not saying that there should be no financial limit to the remit of the interim advisory committee. I have made it clear to the committee that £600 million is a firm figure within which I expect it to work.

Finally, I ask the hon. Gentleman——

Mr. Straw

What about inflation?

Mr. MacGregor

I am coming to that. The hon. Gentleman must allow me to answer his first question without interrupting with a request for an answer to his other question. We are talking about a pay settlement for teachers that will start in April 1990—the pay year 1990–91. The interim advisory committee will be meeting for some months. The entire purpose of the Government's policy is to have a downward bearing on inflation. We are talking about April 1991, not about today.

Mr. Jacques Arnold

When considering the future of teachers' pay, will my right hon. Friend consider the introduction of regional pay, which would allow us to reflect local living costs, especially in areas of the south-east such as Gravesham, which has no territorial allowance at present?

Mr. MacGregor

The interim advisory committee considered regional pay and recommended that to remedy precise problems it would be more sensible to make use of incentive allowances, and that we are doing substantially. There are 170,000 incentive allowances in place. It is for the committee to consider what should be done with incentive allowances this year. However, it was its clear view—one with which I went along—that it would be better to have an incentive allowance system that could more precisely target particular issues or problems rather than a widespread regional pay structure.