Oral Answers to Questions

Robin Walker Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend will know that funding after 2015-16 will be determined in the next spending round, and we cannot make precise commitments now about funding in that period. We have been considering the options for funding large programmes such as those containing five or more A-levels, the international baccalaureate, and large vocational programmes, and we plan to announce how those will be treated after 2015-16 in the near future.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I welcome enormously the real progress made on fairer funding, and I salute the Minister and the Secretary of State for delivering in this Parliament on an issue that went unaddressed for decades. May I encourage the Minister to keep on engaging with the F40 campaign, which includes Solihull, Staffordshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire, and to ensure that all areas that have suffered from unfair funding for too long can hope to benefit—as Worcestershire and Buckinghamshire already have—from fairer funding?

[Mr Laws]

We will certainly remain engaged in that debate, and I am delighted to congratulate my hon. Friend on the leadership that he has given to this campaign over a sustained period. That has led to our recent announcement, which has sought to resolve the issue in those parts of the country that have traditionally been very badly funded.