Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about education funding and how important young people having a good education is to the future of the economy. In this year’s spending review, we are looking not just at how investment in physical infrastructure like bridges and roads improves our economy, but at human capital—where we need to put in extra money to make sure that children and young people leave school, university or an apprenticeship with the skills that will help them to get a good job and to live a successful and fruitful life. That is very important. In the past, Governments have been more interested in spending money on things that are sexy and new—the big new pieces of infrastructure—and maintenance has sometimes taken a back seat, but it is very important to make sure that all the existing assets we have, whether roads or schools, are fit for purpose. In the zero-based capital review, we are looking at the balance between maintenance and new infrastructure investment.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I thank the Chief Secretary for giving way. Has she had any discussions with the Children’s Minister, who is currently considering the very relevant issue of investment in nursery schools, which is an obvious case of human capital investment as it has a considerable benefit for society after only a few years?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have had discussions with my hon. Friend the Children’s Minister. That is one reason why we put additional funding into children’s services at the Budget. Part of the human capital review is looking at where we invest in education. As a country, we currently put more money into the later stages of education. There are laudable reasons for that, but we put more money equivalently into universities than secondary schools. We are looking at how to ensure that all children are getting the best possible start of life. There is a lot of evidence that the earlier the investment, the better.

I mentioned the zero-based capital review, which will look at all capital infrastructure to ensure that we are getting the most bang for our buck. That is an opportunity in 2019 to look afresh at our future projects and where the greatest impact can be made. We are also looking at opportunities to reform the way we do things in government. Housing is a good example. At the moment, we spend £34 billion on housing through the housing benefit budget and things such as the housing infrastructure fund and Help to Buy. My question is: by liberalising planning and making it easier to build, can we reduce costs for people looking to get on the housing ladder and at the same time reduce costs for the Government? We should not always assume that it is just about spending more money. We also need to think about how we reform things to do them better, to reduce the cost for people for whom housing is a big item on their household budget and to reduce the cost for the Government.

In summary, 2019 is going to be a huge year for our country. The economy and the public finances are on the right trajectory, but we are not complacent at the Treasury. We are looking very carefully at how every single pound is spent. We want it to be spent as much as possible on ensuring that everybody has access to a good start in life, that our core public services are provided and that we help companies and enterprises continue to deliver the economic growth that they have over the past few years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd]

I do not think that is correct. I am afraid we will have to look at those figures. We will see them and we will hold the Chief Secretary to account when she is at this Dispatch Box and I am at the Dispatch Box where she is now.

[Matt Rodda]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the complete failure of the Government’s austerity agenda. Earlier, the Chief Secretary mentioned nursery schools. Many school and nursery school heads are experiencing a continuing programme of austerity, which is actually due to get worse. She mentioned that she had a brief conversation with her colleague in the Education Department. [Interruption.] However long the conversation was, the message I have had from headteachers is quite to the contrary; actually, a very short stay of execution has been given, for just one year, when the headteachers I speak to in my Reading constituency need a long-term programme of sustainable investment in nursery schools, rather than warm words.

[Peter Dowd]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. May I nip back to the point about the 1.2% increase, if I may beg your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker? The 1.2% is the overall increase. What will happen—[Interruption.] No; the reality is that some Departments will have major cuts in their budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

I mean the shadow Chief Secretary. [Laughter.] Of, course, it is a pleasure to follow the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. It is a greater pleasure to follow her shadow, the emphasis being on the word “shadow”—it is sort of me and my shadow. I call him a friend; I think we get on pretty well when we have a gossip in the Tea Room. He is known for his great sense of humour, and it was deployed beautifully in his speech, which started as a serious attempt and then descended into some sort of 1890s music hall act slightly on its way out—rather like the Labour party and its economic manifesto. I am sorry he did not talk about the need to ring-fence anything in the Budget for the re-education of Treasury officials, which the little red book and Chairman Mao will doubtless be planning the curriculum for even as I speak.

I rise to make a few points to the Treasury Bench. This is a key time in our national economic affairs. The challenge/opportunity of Brexit, including the need for a deal to ensure an orderly withdrawal from the EU, will provide a fundamental foundation for maintaining economic growth and jobs, as my right hon. Friend referenced. From those jobs, of course, come the taxes that pay for the nurses, the doctors, the teachers, the roads and any other project the Government wish to support. We are approaching, if we have not already arrived at, that opportunity which comes with having fiscal headroom and permits choices to be made.

In the last few years—let us be frank—it has been economic management by necessity. We have been trying to deal with the task that we were bequeathed, not by choice, but which the electorate trusted the Conservative party to resolve. Treasury Ministers past and present deserve the nation’s thanks for facing into those difficult decisions. It is all too often characterised, sometimes by the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) and his colleagues, as an ideological pursuit by the Conservative party that in some way engenders jollity and laughter. I believe that all politicians enter public office and service to improve lives and the lot of our constituents. More and more of our constituents, as they get older, look to public services, and it should always be a matter of pride for a Conservative Government with a sound record of economic stewardship to deliver quality public services as efficiently as possible.

The end of the legacy of the crash and everything that flowed from it now provides that opportunity for choices. I would characterise those choices as needing the striking of a balance that is both sensitive and sophisticated. With my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor at the helm of the Treasury, I think we have both those characteristics, although I will not say which of them is sensitive and which is sophisticated—probably they will meld into the two. That is important, though, because we now have an opportunity to choose.

My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and I are very much children of the 1980s—our views and thoughts were shaped by the economic miracle that Mrs Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe worked—but we must appreciate that times have moved on. I am very struck by the fact that people in an earning bracket such that 25 or 30 years ago they would have looked to private health provision and education now look to and use state provision. I applaud that. I used the NHS. I had an operation at Dorchester last week, and I use my local education service—we have three girls in our local primary school. It is important to bear that in mind.

My right hon. Friend is right to point to the need for competitive taxation, whereby we can take people out of tax such that they have more money to spend, and it is absolutely right that our policies focus on those on the lowest incomes, but it is also right, in a fair and equitable society, that those who can should shoulder the burden, in a competitive way, to make sure we can deliver those services that people are looking for. I think it is too easy a prescription merely to say that we must pursue an agenda of tax cuts, as if British society had not evolved since 1985, 1986 or 1987. That is where the balance needs to be struck. It may be the balance between a liberal Tory and a more Thatcherite Tory—I do not know—but it needs to be struck.

As other Members have pointed out, as a result of a period of austerity we are now in a period in which the fiscal headroom allows for additional investment. The spring statement was helpful, and what my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has said about an average increase of 1.2% in departmental expenditure was also welcome. However, we would be foolish to ignore the fact that we are now having to claw our way back from a period in which spending has been—albeit quite justifiably —capped.

Any Member whose constituency contains a prison will notice that the fabric of the prison estate has deteriorated. Some people might say that that is a good thing because we are talking about prisoners, but I am inclined to think that if we are serious about bringing people back into society—the redemption strategy—we need to provide a satisfactory prison environment.

In an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary, I mentioned schools and the need for the long-term provision of new money in the comprehensive spending review. It is great that we are offering the widest and deepest range of free-at-the-point-of-use educational opportunities in our country, and when T-levels come on stream, it will become even wider and even deeper, but it is folly to suggest that we can continue to provide that, and can make the necessary investment to deliver a happy, educated, productive next generation, with the fiscal envelope currently enjoyed by the Department for Education.

[Matt Rodda]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting and thoughtful speech. Has he considered the Government’s policy of placing additional pension demands on schools in an unfunded way? If so, what does he think of it?

[Simon Hoare]

In an intervention on the shadow Chief Secretary, the hon. Gentleman referred to something that I am sure we have all heard from headteachers in our constituencies. Whether we are talking about national insurance, about pensions or about the demands of special educational needs, although increased DFE expenditure is going into most of our schools, it is nowhere near enough. We are asking schools to do more for more pupils with not quite as much money as they need. That is why I make the distinction. I welcome the increase, but new money is required, particularly as the range and the choice become wider and deeper.

I challenge anyone who represents a rural constituency, as I do, not to share my views on rural schools. I was delighted when the Chief Secretary took my point about the needs of maintenance. The costs of heating and running a whole estate of Victorian primary schools are greater than those in new build, perhaps in an urban setting, although that is not to say that there are no Victorian schools in urban settings. Such schools do not provide a good learning environment. Last month, I visited Motcombe primary school in my constituency. In a small classroom, one child is effectively being fried against a not particularly adequate heater, because the school does not have enough money to replace the heating system.

We must make a balanced judgment: we must aim to take those at the lowest end of the earning spectrum out of taxation, while also investing properly. We must strike that sensitive and sophisticated balance. My right hon. Friend was absolutely right: it is not just the big and sexy that we must consider, but schemes for local roads such as the C13 and the A350 in my constituency, and support for those who wish to remedy the rural broadband and mobile blackspots, which could become engines of economic growth and entrepreneurialism.

That takes me to my closing point, to which the hon. Member for Bootle alluded. Some of our recent debates appear to have pitted my party against the Government. I am sorry—I meant to say “against business”. [Laughter.] That was not a Freudian slip—or perhaps it was.

Business is the engine that generates the tax that delivers the services. We cannot have a hostile viewpoint; we cannot have a hostile environment for UK business to flourish. Without a flourishing business sector, without the freeing up of the entrepreneurial spirit that underpins the British character, the proceeds of growth—