School Funding Formula

Debate between Robin Walker and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I agree.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Yet again, my hon. Friend is leading off the debate—in 10 years in the House, I have raised this matter only eight times, so I stand behind him in that respect. Does he agree that the Government did the right thing last year by closing the gap a little but that we need all parties to commit to a new funding formula in the next Parliament, as the Conservative party has done, to ensure that we have a fair and just settlement, not just in rhetoric but in reality?

[Mr Walker]

I absolutely agree with the Chairman of the Education Committee and join him in that plea to all parties to deliver a fair funding formula, as has been promised.

Sixth-Form Colleges (VAT)

Debate between Robin Walker and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Bayley, for calling me to speak. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and to confirm that both the Minister and the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who secured the debate, had agreed to my speaking in it. I am sorry if I should also have informed you, Mr Bayley, but I think my bureaucratic resources ran out after contacting the Minister and the hon. Member.

Given the short time available, I will try to keep my comments brief. In October, I wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for Education. It is a shame, notwithstanding the great respect that I have for my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, who is a deeply distinguished member of the Government, that we do not have a Minister from the Department for Education here to answer questions about what is essentially an education matter. That letter was co-signed by 73 MPs from across the House, and it made the point that the unfair treatment of sixth-form colleges as far as VAT goes made no sense and was, in fact, untenable. The good news is that the Government agreed, fundamentally, that they could not defend that treatment. The bad news is that they do not plan to do anything about it. That is a shame, because Government policy is to create a level playing field for 16 to 19 provision, and they are right to do so. If anyone wants to play party politics, I will point out that the Opposition were wrong to leave the position uneven when they were in power. However, the Government have set out their aim, but now they are not fulfilling it. They have moved in that direction, but there is a real opportunity to take action on this issue. In the overall scheme of things, it would not be that expensive to do so; for sixth-form colleges, it is estimated that it would cost no more than £30 million.

There are reasons why sixth-form colleges could be treated differently from further education colleges, if one wanted a stepped programme. To say, “This is wrong, but we can only afford to rectify some of it, so we will rectify none of it” is illogical. It would be better to do the right thing by sixth-form colleges, not least because, as has been said, they are the most successful 16 to 19 providers that we have. If the Government’s education policy is about anything, it is about raising standards across the board and, of course, closing the gap between rich and poor. Well, guess which the most successful institutions are in the 16 to 19 sector at doing both those things? You’ve got it—sixth-form colleges.

I have no sixth-form colleges in my constituency; I am not banging a constituency drum here. The sixth forms in my local schools will probably be cross with me for speaking up for sixth-form colleges so often. However, the whole point of the Education Committee is that we look at the evidence and try to work out what is the best thing to do. Well, guess what? Sixth-form colleges are peculiarly successful in addressing the Government’s two key aims on education, so it makes no sense to penalise them in the way that is happening now.

The VAT penalty that sixth-form colleges face is worth an average of £250,000 per college, and as has been said, the problem is worsened because, unlike other institutions, they cannot cross-subsidise. If that money were to be provided to sixth-form colleges, it would help them to save courses that are being lost, including less popular courses such as further maths. Ministers are quite right to identify the need to encourage science, technology, engineering and maths subjects. Sixth-form colleges can play a positive part in doing that, if they are provided with the wherewithal to do so.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Education Committee for giving way; he is making a very strong speech. He talked about investment in STEM subjects. Worcester sixth-form college has received money from the Government to invest in a new science centre. However, does he agree that that money would go further if we were able to take action on VAT for colleges?

[Mr Stuart]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I think there are feelings across the House on this subject. I said that I would keep my remarks brief, so perhaps I will bring them to a close. The big point is that sixth-form colleges have for years consistently been the most successful providers at delivering the Government’s key educational aims for 16 to 19-year-olds, but time and again, they appear to be on the front line of cuts in funding. That cannot make sense, in terms of having a rational, coherent approach to this issue.

Funding for Local Authorities

Debate between Robin Walker and Graham Stuart

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker]

Good-looking!

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Svelte!

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is exactly the problem I was about to move on to. As I mentioned earlier, health funding is another area of major concern. Rural areas tend to have higher numbers of elderly people and a higher life expectancy than the major cities. As so much health funding is allocated according to life expectancy and targeted towards areas of high perceived deprivation, it means that the population of big cities is generally much better funded than that of rural areas.

With an ageing population and more people living with long-term conditions that require regular treatment, this creates enormous pressure on all rural health services, particularly on community health services. Worcestershire as a whole gets lower health funding per person than do more urban areas of the west midlands, but it has an older population, placing greater demands on our health service. Shifting the balance of health funding from mortality to morbidity would help to address this, as would having a more activity-based formula for community health. In health as in education, however, the local structures do not exist in isolation from local government. There are close links between the health and the social care systems, while pressures on both the acute and the community health systems create additional pressure on local authority-run social care. The fact that we are underfunded for health means that our underfunding for social care is a more serious challenge for our local authority.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

If there is an injustice that is greater than in education or local government, it is an injustice in health. Is my hon. Friend aware of the work of Professor Sheena Asthana, who looked at Mid Staffs and other hospitals with high mortality rates and saw a correlation between the hospitals with high mortality rates and the populations they serve, which are typically older, rural and funded on an inequitable basis?

[Mr Walker]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, which clearly illustrates the problems we face.

I hope that I have shown that the problems of local government funding do not exist in isolation. The Government should strive to provide fairer funding, not just through the CLG budget but through health, education and no doubt many other budgets. We need to make sure that corrections and changes to formulae are delivered swiftly so as to correct the long-standing problems and not water them down so as to make those problems worse.

What else could we do to improve the situation? Our councils, whether they be city councils such as Worcester or great county councils, did not grow up as organs of central government. As my noble Friend Lord Heseltine pointed out in his “No stone unturned” review, the great cities of England were not grown through the diktat of Westminster or the spending of Whitehall. The councils that directed their growth and success raised their own funds locally, invested locally and built up services according to the demands of their own local constituents. We need to rebuild some of that independence and self-reliance. Although there was a great deal with which I disagreed in the speech of the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who chairs the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, this is one area on which I think we can agree.

This cannot be done overnight, and there would be significant risks in allowing some areas to raise taxes much higher than others, but it should be a stated aim of the Government to provide councils with more of their own resources over time and to give them greater opportunities to raise local funding. Such has been the growth in responsibilities of local government over the decades that there is little chance of it ever returning to being entirely self-funded, but there is a role for Westminster in re-allocating funding from the richest areas of the country to the more needy, including rural areas. Increasing the proportion of local government funding that is in the control of councils will give them greater flexibility to manage the challenges they face and to deliver localism.

Early policies of the coalition, such as the new homes bonus and the delegation of powers over business rates relief, showed some promise. As Lord Heseltine suggested, the creation of a challenge fund, or single funding pot, also offers some prospect of more locally driven projects. However, I fear that there is a conflict between the desire to empower local enterprise partnerships and enable them to bid for local funding, and the demands of our councils. I urge the Minister to give careful consideration to what has been said about the reallocation of money from planning authorities to LEPS under the new homes bonus scheme.

I believe that in the case of funding for local authorities, as in those of education and health, our Government can do more to ensure that money is allocated fairly. I commend and support the campaign of my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness for a rural fair share, and I remind the Government that fairer funding for rural areas affects not just rural constituencies, but county towns such as the one that I am proud to represent.

Fuel Prices

Debate between Robin Walker and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on his passionate speech, on his many campaigns on this issue and on securing this debate, and I welcome the huge interest and support across the House for it. The price of fuel remains, week in, week out, one of the most important and pressing issues raised by people in Worcester. It is an issue on which I, like many other hon. Members, am determined to see real progress.

I wholeheartedly support today’s motion and was proud to put my name to it as a long-term advocate of fuel price stabilisers. I want to put forward one more argument for action that has not been sufficiently covered in this debate and I want to raise a couple of further concerns, which I hope the Minister will be able to respond to in her reply.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) set out and as the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) acknowledged, the Government have to pay attention to balancing the budget. The motion notes, however, that fuel duty revenues are lower now than they were in 2008 despite the fact that the level of taxation has increased since. In my view, that makes but understates the case for rethinking further increases. As I have argued in Westminster Hall debates, that case was admirably set out by the Office for Budget Responsibility when it first looked at, and then rejected, the idea of a fair fuel stabiliser. It concluded that although higher prices added to Government revenues in the short term, by increasing the take from fuel duty, their longer-term impact was to reduce Government revenue through the combination of discouraging usage and the wider negative impacts of high fuel costs on the economy. Although the OBR used this argument to reject the original plan for a stabiliser, I have said many times that the logic of its argument is that lower fuel duties could result in higher tax revenues, and I am happy to put that case again today.

We should look not only at the impact on fuel duty receipts themselves, substantial though they might be, but consider the effect of sky-high prices on business profits and thence corporation tax, their impact on the rate of inflation and thus the rate of increase in costs to Government in everything from wage inflation to benefit uprating. We should consider the depressing impact of high fuel costs on the whole economy and in particular on business and enterprise.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a central Conservative insight that we can lower the rate and up the take so that small companies in rural areas such as mine are able to do more work, earn more, pay more tax and keep the economy going?

[Mr Walker]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. This is one great advantage of cutting fuel duty rather than cutting VAT, which Labour Members argue for.

Horse Racing Levy

Debate between Robin Walker and Graham Stuart

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) on securing the debate and I support the many excellent points that he and other hon. Members made. I thank him particularly for mentioning Worcester. I am fortunate to have in my constituency one of England’s best-loved racecourses and to represent one of the few cities to have a racecourse right at its heart. Members of a literary bent will be interested to know that it recently featured heavily in Jilly Cooper’s blockbuster, “Jump!”

The Pitchcroft racecourse in Worcester has seen racing for more than 200 years and provides vital green space at the centre of the city. It is one of the many wonderful things about Worcester that the city is rich in green spaces—not just formal parks but woodland, playing fields, the prettiest cricket ground in England and one of its finest racecourses. As the Member of Parliament for Worcester, I have vowed to protect those green spaces, and ensuring our racecourse remains viable is an important part of that.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

My hon. Friend’s inspirational words about green spaces take me to the Beverley Westwood, which has been protected by the pasture masters of Beverley for hundreds of years and prevented from being developed, and in it sits the famous Beverley racecourse. So, like him, I wish to see the racing industry and our racecourses maintained for the benefit of the environment and the economy of the areas in which we live.