Gentleman, I shall tell him about two groups set up by the Department to examine different aspects of the Green Paper. It is considering how we can compensate for disadvantage in the formula, so that we can move away from the old characteristics that served a bygone era, and see where extra funding is needed, on top of good quality basic funding. The second group is examining tentative methods of reforming the way in which central Government pay the money to local authorities. I know that it is almost four years since the general election. I say without any feeling of having let people down that every hon.
Gentleman knows better than most the consequences of getting it wrong.
No matter how many terms the Government serve, I expect that we will not have many more opportunities to have a good go at getting the formula right. Even if it means not having done it in the first year, I would sooner get the formula right by putting down firm markers and routing the change through a good, sensible, well thought out Green Paper, which has received many responses. Gentleman will not be surprised to know that the vast majority of responses to the education element of the Green Paper were about the SSA funding formula. He is right to draw the iniquities to our attention, but I can assure him and his head teachers that the Department for Education and Employment does not need persuading of the need for change. We spend a great deal of our time trying to explain that, and we would prefer not to have to do so.