HC Deb 29 January 1997 vol 289 cc347-8
6. Mr. Atkins

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what recent representations she has received from Lancashire county council about education funding. [11731]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire)

Lancashire county council has recently made a number of representations to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about education funding. I met representatives of Lancashire county council's education committee on 20 November last year to discuss funding for education in Lancashire.

Mr. Atkins

Is it the case that Lancashire county council received a 3.8 per cent. increase this year on top of a 5.5 per cent. increase last year and earlier increases, largely as a result of pressure from the county's Conservative Members of Parliament? Does not the Labour county councillors' whingeing for more money fly in the face of the oft-repeated statements by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor that there will no more money for local councils under a Labour Government? Should not Lancashire county council's Labour-controlled education committee rearrange its priorities so that it puts our schoolchildren before its dogma?

Mr. Squire

My right hon. Friend is right in every respect. I congratulate him and my hon. Friends in Lancashire on the representations that they have made to the Government on education funding. He is also right to point out that, in the past two years alone, Lancashire has received increases of some £45 million in its education standard spending assessment. It is now up to the council, given its total resources, to determine its priorities. I hope that, like the Government, it will put education first.

Mr. Pickthall

Will the Minister confirm that, during the lifetime of this Parliament, from 1992–93 to 1996–97—which is a realistic period to take—the weighted increase in primary and secondary standard spending assessments per pupil in Lancashire was 3.7 per cent., while during the same period cumulative inflation in the education budget was 13.3 per cent., so that under the Government Lancashire has had to wrestle with a reduction of 10 per cent. in its schools budget? To fill that gap, it has had to rip all its non-statutory education obligations to bits. Will the Minister advise the right hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr. Atkins) to talk to the treasurer's department in Lancashire, which will gladly provide him with those figures and a lot more besides?

Mr. Squire

I certainly will not confirm the hon. Gentleman's figures without notice, but if he wants confirmation from me, he need only table an appropriate written question. As for the wider issue, he clearly overlooks the fact that, throughout the period that he mentioned, and for many years before that, the county council has been responsible for determining its priorities. Nothing in the sums given by the Government requires it to make the cuts in primary expenditure to which the hon. Gentleman referred.