Funding and Schools Reform

John Healey Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is right. It was a new approach and we must give credit to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband), who said when he was a Schools Minister, “Let’s do it differently—let’s not give out capital in a piecemeal fashion.” My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) is nodding because he was in the Department at the time. Our approach was to go to the places where aspirations were lowest and young people did not have a great expectation of what life might give them, and build the best possible learning environment. That is why we should not listen to the nonsense that is spoken from the Government Benches. Building Schools for the Future has transformed many communities. It could have done more if the Government had stuck by its needs-led approach to capital allocation.

The sad thing about the Secretary of State’s negotiating failure is that it has direct and unpleasant consequences for schools and councils. Within hours of the Chancellor’s sitting down, there were panicked phone calls asking for 40% cuts to projects that only weeks before had been approved by the Secretary of State as unaffected. Why? Because what was left of his capital budget was needed to push towards his pet projects—or as we should now more accurately say, his pet shop projects. The losers, yet again, are schools in some of the most deprived parts of the country: Sandwell, Birmingham, Salford, Leicester and Nottingham.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

And Rotherham.

[Andy Burnham]

I could go on. There are more.

Last week, I went to the Wodensborough technology college in Sandwell—a great school, battling against the odds. The Secretary of State is nodding, but he has not been to Sandwell. Since the summer, he has promised many times that he will go there, so I hope he is nodding because he will actually do so. When he was at his conference in Birmingham he was not far away. We hope he will go to Sandwell.

The college has been thrown into limbo by the 40% demand that is now being made of local authorities. After all the chaos to Building Schools for the Future that the Secretary of State caused in such authorities back in the summer, it is barely believable that he is coming back for another bite of their funding.