§ Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if she will now specify the distribution of the reductions in the rate of growth in public expenditure announced on 17th December last as between capital and current expenditure on nursery, primary, secondary and further education for which her Department is responsible, and the consequential changes to take effect during the course of the current financial year, respectively.
§ Mr. RaisonThe following information relates to the area of my right hon. Friend's responsibilities, that is, education and related services, including local libraries and museums, provided by local education authorities in England and Wales, except for schools in Wales ; and the universities of Great Britain. All expenditure figures are expressed at 1973 survey prices.
Dealing with capital expenditure first, some £37 million will accrue from deferring the balance of the 1973–74 schools improvement programme and the whole of this programme for 1974–75, as already announced in Circular 15/73. The equipment grant paid to the universities during 1974–75 will be reduced by £15 million. Savings of some £4 million, mainly on youth service and local libraries projects, are expected to follow from the reductions to be made in the allocations to local authorities for locally determined capital expenditure in 1974–75. Further savings will be found from the higher and further education sectors ; the limited programme for those sectors mentioned in Circular 15/73 has not yet been settled. No reduction is to be made 233W in the size of the nursery capital programme for 1974–75.
The main consequential reductions in capital expenditure falling in the financial year 1973–74 are likely to be as follows:
£m. Primary and secondary improvements (England) 12 Higher and further education 9 Total 21 Turning to current expenditure, the reduction of 10 per cent. in procurement expenditure on education and related services, as defined above, which local authorities are expected to secure during 1974–75 amounts to £45.6 million. For the universities, in addition to the measures announced in the Public Expenditure White Paper (Cmnd. 5519), the remaining part of the supplementation of recurrent grant for price increases in 1973 will be withheld in the academic year 1974–75, resulting in an estimated reduction of grant during that year of £7 million, of which £4.6 million will fall within the financial year 1974–75.