Education and Local Government — House of Commons, 2020-01-14
Topic: Education
Charalambos Charalambous (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Government should come clean—this is a smoke-and-mirrors trick—and put back the money that they took out, in real terms The Government must face up to the fact that not enough teachers want to stay in the job. Headteachers across my constituency of Enfield, Southgate regularly tell me how difficult it is to recruit and retain staff. The additional workload and stress generated as a result of being judged on SATs results and Ofsted inspections is one the main reasons given by teachers for leaving the profession, which is why Ofsted and SATs should be replaced by a new system of accountability that gives a true picture of schools and students The impact of child poverty on a child’s education is indisputable. Children cannot learn when they are hungry, surviving in cold or damp homes, or enduring severe overcrowding. When I see parents with their children coming to my surgery showing me pictures of serious damp and rodent-infested, overcrowded accommodation I know that unless action is taken their children’s future is at risk. An estimated 4.1 million children are still trapped in poverty, and that figure is expected to rise to 5.2 million by 2022. The Government can make as many promises as they like about school funding but unless they tackle child poverty head-on the education of children will suffer If Members want an example of how the Government behave towards schools they need look no further than the announcement last year that teachers would receive a 2.75% pay rise. On the last day before the summer recess, they sneaked out a statement proclaiming that they would fund only 0.75%, leaving schools with strained budgets to find the rest. That is what we have come to expect from Conservative Governments. Local government has been treated exactly the same. I remember the Tory-led coalition Government transferring a raft of responsibilities to local authorities, including the council tax support scheme. However, they gave local authorities only 90% of the funding needed to administer the scheme. Is that what we should expect from the Government under the new funding proposals The Queen’s Speech states that the "Government will invest in the country’s public services and infrastructure", but there is little mention of funding for local government. Late last year, the Government released a technical consultation on the review of local authorities’ relative needs and resources—the next stage in the so-called fair funding review—which could be a precursor to the biggest single shift in money from the most deprived areas to the most affluent. That is because the fair funding review proposes to remove the consideration of deprivation from the core foundation formula, despite the Government’s own research, which shows that deprivation is the second-best predictor of the cost of basic services In my own area, Enfield Council is a good Labour council that continually strives to protect frontline services. It covers areas of severe deprivation, including some in my constituency of Enfield, Southgate. Central Government have cut funding to Enfield Council by 60% in real terms since 2010. When the Government make those extreme cuts to Enfield Council’s budget, they are making a clear choice—they do not see the needs of local people as a priority The Government have tried to mask the cuts by saying that councils can raise money through increases in council tax and the social care precept. First, the amounts that can be raised in that way are nowhere near enough to compensate for the cuts since 2010. Secondly, they hardwire regional inequality into the system, because it is the richer areas that are able to raise more through increases in council tax. Despite being one of the areas where the riots took place in 2011, Enfield Council has been forced by central Government cuts to slash its spending on youth services by 88%, from £3.5million in 2011-12 to £411,000 in 2018-19. In its last budget, Enfield Council had to make further cuts of £18 million across all services. If Enfield had not had 60% of its budget cut since 2010, the council would be funding those services, our local crime figures would probably be lower and fewer young people in my constituency would feel that their futures had been thrown away before they had even begun. The Government must realise that by acting in haste to cut local government funding they will repent at leisure, because they will have to find more money for the burgeoning prison population and its after-effects In short, the Government can promise all they like, but unless they are prepared to fund local government properly again and to undo the damage that has been done since 2010, the promises in the Queen’s Speech ring hollow.