§ Mr. Austin MitchellTo ask the Secretary of State for Education what steps he is taking, and what funding is being withheld from colleges of further education, to require them to change the contracts of existing staff; whether any targets for the percentage of existing staff moving to new contracts have been proposed by him; what additional finance is being made available to colleges to allow them to offer incentive packages to existing staff to take new contracts; what limits he has placed on the scale of these offers; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. BoswellThe holdback of grant from the Further Education Funding Council relates to newly employed staff. It is for individual colleges to decide whether they wish to move existing staff onto new contracts and how rapidly they wish to do so. It is also for individual colleges to decide what incentives they will offer their staff, within the resources available to each college and within the framework of the Government's policy on public sector pay.