§ Lord Mulleyasked Her Majesty's Government:
What steps they now propose to take to monitor the expenditure of the revenue support grant to ensure that the sums provided for education are in fact spent on education.
Lord LucasThe Government sets the framework for the funding of education nationally, and decides how national totals are distributed between local authorities through standard spending assessments (SSAs). SSAs are not, however, prescriptive, and decisions about how much to spend on the education service are for individual local authorities to make and justify in the light of their own particular circumstances.