Education Funding in London — House of Commons, 2016-05-04
Topic: Education
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister. The worry, however, is that up until now, the Department’s door has been open only to this particular group. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) champions F40. Nobody can object to representatives of that group of local authorities lobbying and promoting their own interests; it is worrying, though, that it has had this exclusive access up until now A version of the minutes of the September meeting with the F40 quoted an official from the Department offering to share "emerging proposals" with the F40 group "in confidence". Proposals should not be shared in confidence with one particular set of authorities. I note that the minutes have now been altered, so they do not say that any more, but no such offer should ever have been made. My deep worry is that we are heading towards a woefully unbalanced proposal as a result of the privileged access given to that group I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance about his door being open, but I want him to give us a commitment that when the numbers are put into the structure in the consultation document published in March, there will be the constraint that there should be no cuts in school funding for pupils in the most disadvantaged areas of the country As we have heard, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) has pointed out that the Conservative manifesto certainly sounds as though it is saying that there will be no cuts for any individual students; I hope that that commitment will be maintained. I particularly want to press the Minister on this point: there should be no cuts to schools funding for pupils in the most disadvantaged areas. Indeed, the Government have recognised the need for additional schools funding for disadvantaged students through the pupil premium, so it would surely be quite perverse to slash the same funding through this formula As I mentioned earlier, if the F40 proposals were put straight into effect, it would result in the 30 most disadvantaged local authorities in the country losing £245 million per year and the 30 most affluent authorities in the country gaining more than £218 million per year. That would be a straightforward switch of hundreds of millions of pounds from the most disadvantaged authorities to the most affluent ones. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that that kind of switch, as advocated by the F40 group—understandably; it is in the group’s interests to do so—will not happen My authority, the London Borough of Newham, made a freedom of information application for the Department’s modelling or analysis of the likely impact of the new formula. The request was refused. Officials said that they had the information, but its release was refused on the grounds that it related to the formulation or development of Government policy and was therefore exempt from freedom of information obligations. As I have said, however, there has clearly been a lot of access for representatives of the F40 authorities. The Minister has given us a commitment that his door will always be open, and I ask him release that information to the other authorities as well, so that everyone can see where we are heading. As things stand, some authorities have been taken into the Government’s confidence and others have not. Indeed, some of those others have been refused information relating to what has been going on. That information should be released A cursory glance at the F40 proposal published in 2013—it is on the F40 website—and at the consultation document published by the Government in March shows an uncanny resemblance between the two. Clearly, the F40 group has been very influential. I feel particularly strongly about this, because modelling suggests that my local authority will be among the biggest losers. Analysis of the F40 proposal shows that seven of the 10 biggest cash losers under the proposals will be in London, while none of the 10 biggest cash winners will be in the capital. That is the direction of the F40 group’s proposals. Of course it is advancing its own interests, but it should not have special access to Ministers in doing that. That is not a fair way for policy to be made I want to pick up on one point of detail that has already been touched on. The point was made in responding to the consultation document that the extent of pupil mobility in London has a big influence on school costs. Mobility has been used in school funding formulae up till now, but it is not used in the F40 proposal. Nor is it in the Government’s proposal. That is a very troubling omission. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst rightly underlined the point that high levels of mobility in London add significantly to the cost of running schools here, and that fact should be picked up in the formula Research published by the Fischer Family Trust this year estimates that a student who moves in-year will perform 10% less well than the average for their class, and that if three or more students join a class mid-year, attainment for the class as a whole will suffer by one to two percentage points. It estimates the combined cost of pupil mobility to schools and local authorities in London at £35 million a year. That should not be excluded from the formula, although the consultation document proposes excluding it. I understand that mobility is generally low in the authorities of the F40 group, and that they do not want it reflected in the formula, and the Department immediately put that into its version of the formula. Authorities such as mine, where mobility is high, will unfairly lose out on funding if that view prevails, so I hope that it does not. I am worried that the process that has taken us to this point has been flawed, which is leading to an unfair proposal. I hope that the Minister will accept that schools funding for pupils in disadvantaged areas should not be cut as a result of the new formula, and that factors such as mobility, which have such a big impact in London, should be included in the formula, so that the damage is not inflicted on schools in London.