I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important issue. Most hon. Members probably attended a further education or sixth form college, or a sixth form in a school. As most of us have benefited from further education, it is only right, fair and proper that we should take an interest in the sector when it faces such difficulties.

Further education colleges play a vital role as centres of opportunity and learning. They add social and economic value to their communities. The 357 colleges in England and Wales educate more than 3 million students. I make no apologies for the remarks that I shall make on the situation in east Lancashire. I have received much correspondence, both from the college in my constituency and from those in neighbouring constituencies.

The crisis in further education adversely affects its students, lecturers and institutions. From the point of view of staff, incorporation has been nothing less than a disaster. It has led to worsening conditions of service and many redundancies. My local college, Accrington and Rossendale, is due to have its inspection report published early next month. Early signs are that it will get a good report, with staff awarded the highest praise and marks possible. Their reward will be further undermining, underfunding and redundancies. Across the sector, more than 10,000 jobs have been lost since incorporation in 1993.

There is a damaging dispute at my local college. It centres on the case of Mr. Pat Walsh, the senior union official in the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education. He claims that he was sacked by the college because of his trade union activities. The college governing body claims that he was genuinely made redundant. NATFHE is balloting tomorrow for strike action. If it goes ahead, it will be at a damaging time for students in the run-up to public examinations. All that one can say with certainty about this fiasco is that, whatever the failings of the previous system—and there were failings—such disasters did not happen before the incorporation of colleges.

Some people in my constituency want to blame the governing body for the appalling state of affairs. I reject that. I want to lay the blame fairly and squarely where it belongs: at the door of the Minister, the Government and the Further Education Funding Council, which has created a severely flawed funding mechanism for colleges.

Is it not true that in Lancashire—and, I am sure, in the rest of the country— there was better co-operation between colleges before incorporation? We did not get duplication and competition, and therefore had better use of resources. That has been damaged since incorporation.

My hon. Friend makes an important point. One problem is the tension between providers. Training and enterprise councils pull in one direction and colleges in another. Where is the co-ordination between education and training? There is very little co-ordination between the two. We now have the spectacle, as my hon. Friend said, of neighbouring colleges with mushrooming marketing budgets competing in the marketplace and offering very similar courses. They are fighting each other for the same students. It is ridiculous that, in our part of the world, Blackburn, Accrington and Rossendale, Burnley, and Nelson and Colne colleges offer similar courses, competing for the same students.

There is a democratic deficit in the sector. The Further Education Funding Council is yet another Government-appointed quango—a tame mouthpiece for the Government. There is a strong case for democratising the Further Education Funding Council's structure. Often, colleges have little or no accountability to the communities that they serve. I am not suggesting that the colleges should be returned to local education authority control—I do not think that anyone is suggesting that. However, there is a strong case for reforming college governing bodies, to increase openness and improve accountability to local communities.

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that there are colleges—Newham college of further education is one—where attempts are being made to meet the needs of the community by establishing close connections? Our concern is that there seems to disagreement among the three statutory bodies, perhaps even among the Treasury and the Department for Education and Employment, over the changes in the demand-led element, which have caused enormous problems in colleges that have been integrated into the community and are trying to meet community needs.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I shall refer later to the fiasco of the demand-led element; catching up with the Government's flip-flops on that policy is quite an art form.

My hon. Friend referred to a fiasco. We are also concerned about the problem in Stoke-on-Trent college, where there has been a fiasco. Does he agree that we face a problem in terms of lack of accountability over the way in which the Further Education Funding Council was set up? Does he also agree that the National Audit Office report does not address accountability? When my hon. Friend further considers the problems faced by his college, despite the best efforts of its staff, will he also consider how we may address the problem of deficits across the country, including Stoke-on-Trent?

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The problems at Accrington and Rossendale college are replicated, almost exactly, at Stoke, Burnley and Nelson and Colne colleges and other colleges throughout the country. Early-day motion 452, which has attracted the signatures of more than 100 hon. Members representing every part of the country, shows that the problem is not specific to my college or my part of east Lancashire, but exists in every part of the country.

I can confirm that the position in Bolton is extremely serious. The principal, Mr. Hogan, has written to me to say that he feels that the funding cuts are disastrous. The managing director of the focus training group, Mr. Heathcote, who has built up what I believe to be Britain's leading gymnastic training instruction course, says that to have such a sudden cut imposed with so little warning will have a desperate effect on the future of his business.

The hon. Gentleman also makes an important point, to which I shall refer later. In Bolton and in colleges throughout the country, as a result of Government action over the demand-led element, student numbers will decrease, courses will be cut, and people on continuing courses will be left high and dry without proper support, which is a disgrace.

When the colleges agreed with the Government that they would expand—it was a Government initiative to get the colleges to expand—it was also agreed that, if growth exceeded the FEFC targets, the excess would be funded at demand-led element rates. Under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, students eligible under schedule 2 were to be funded by either core, marginal or demand-led element rates.

Now, colleges that have expanded at the behest of the Government are being penalised for having done so. Although the Government have belatedly and rather grudgingly accepted that they must pay the £84 million that colleges are owed for the rest of this academic year, the DLE is still to be abolished in the next academic year, 1997–98.

It is even harder for the colleges to accept that there was never any suggestion that the 1996–97 payments from the FEFC were insecure until they received the out-of-the-blue letter from the Minister on 28 January. The Government's hypocrisy is incredible: they have gone back on commitments that they made to the colleges; they have betrayed their own claims to be the party committed to expansion and diversity in further education; and they have disregarded the achievements that colleges have made as they strive to meet the national training and education targets laid down for them.

Has my hon. Friend seen the letter from the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), dated 10 January, in which she reaffirmed the demand-led element of the funding formula, only for that element to be withdrawn two and a half weeks later?

It was withdrawn after two and a half weeks, and then there was another flip-flop in early February. It is interesting that the letter was sent to the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), many of whose constituents attend my local college who, sadly, is not in his place today.

The Government's behaviour has startled the principals, many of whom are long-serving principals of colleges. Recently, the principal of St. Mary's Roman Catholic sixth form college in Blackburn, an excellent institution with a fine academic record—a point unrelated to the fact that I was educated there—described the problem when he said that colleges that had exceeded the target were now being "savagely penalised". The principal of Accrington and Rossendale college said in a letter to me that the Government's actions were "unforgivable".

The fact that the Government will not be funding the DLE for the FEFC means that budgets of an already economically ruined sector will be thrown into further disrepair. I shall outline the track record of a Government who have been in office for 18 years. One in five colleges are in a weak financial position; one in five full-time teaching posts have been lost since 1993; and the further loss of the DLE funds will mean that more job losses are to come.

I understand that Nelson and Colne college, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice)—I am sure that he will want to raise the issue if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker—has announced that 47 jobs might have to go in the coming year. In real terms, the 1996 budget removes £233.3 million from the sector for the period 1996–97 to 1999–2000.

The absence of DLE funding in the coming academic year means that up to 11 million funding units that it supports will not have funds for that year—that amounts to about 105,000 enrolments. Given that many of those institutions are already in a weak financial position, absorbing those costs will be hard. The only choice open to colleges will be to lower enrolments, which will go against the policy of expansion and diversity that they have been working so hard to succeed in over the past three to four years.

Many principals feel insulted that their institutions have had to present three-year business plans while the Government can make major funding changes and withdraw pension entitlements with practically no notice.

Did my hon. Friend hear the "Today" programme this morning, on which it was suggested that there might be yet another flip-flop on pensions at 50? If that announcement can be made on "Today", why cannot the Minister tell the House the position now?

I heard that announcement on Radio 4; Ministers seem happier to announce changes of policy to the BBC than to the House of Commons. What the Government are doing over teachers' pensions is to saddle an incoming Labour Government with the problem rather than face it themselves in the run-up to the election—a squalid arrangement.

Major changes have been announced at very short notice. That means that much of the planning done by colleges is now worthless. Contractual agreements with companies mean that colleges have had to base their calculations on the DLE rates, which will be unavailable from September 1997. My local college, Accrington and Rossendale, has a successful collaboration with British Aerospace, a large employer in Lancashire, but the calculations that the college has made for contracts with, businesses and students are now rendered meaningless by the Government's actions. The nature of those changes in funding means that courses, especially those of a vocational nature, might end up being cut.

The experience on our side of the Pennines mirrors many of the same characteristics as that on my hon. Friend's side. We are seeing a parallel to what happened in higher education. Once there ceases to be a dynamic in higher education, the ability is lost to plan or even to enter into private finance initiative agreements, and that is now happening in further education, where there is no planning and no future for growth, experiment or innovation, because from now on there will be no growth.

That is absolutely right. We are witnessing the consequences of Ministers in the Department for Education and Employment having consistently, year on year on year, lost the argument with the Treasury in the spending round. All they are doing is shifting cuts round within their Department's budget. Two or three years ago, cuts were in the schools—teachers were laid off and there was a crisis; now the crisis is in higher and further education.

The hon. Gentleman is describing increased funding and increased activity in the sector as cuts. He is entitled to do so, but only if he tells us how much in his judgment—the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), is in America, so he will not hear—a Labour Government should give that sector.

It really is pathetic that, after 18 years, Conservative Members are unable to take any responsibility for the disaster that they have created. All they want to know is what a Labour Government would do. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman accepts that there will be a Labour Government and, in two months' time, he can ask my hon. Friends at Education and Employment questions. I have no intention of trying to foresee how in the next financial year we shall right the wrongs of the Conservative Government.

The stupidity of the question that my hon. Friend has just been asked is explained by the fact that the demand-led element is not cash-limited. It is like asking us: to how many pensioners will a Labour Government pay a pension? The fact is, we shall pay pensions because they are demand-led by the number of pensioners. In this case, the DLE operates on exactly the same basis—it is not cash-limited, contrary to the spin that was put on it in the early days.

Not only is my hon. Friend right, but the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) is showing his ignorance of the system. Next month, the Further Education Funding Council will have to enter into funding arrangements for the next academic year, and it will do so on the basis that the DLE has been scrapped. It is therefore impossible for us to give a commitment on how we shall approach the DLE system in the next financial year, when we shall be in government. I should have thought that even the hon. Gentleman could grasp that.

The changes in funding mean that vocational courses are especially vulnerable and minority subjects, such as languages, may become entirely the preserve of the private sector. Student numbers will undoubtedly fall—an extraordinary U-turn in Government policy—and many of those could-have-been students will join the ranks of the unemployed, where they will be able to meet those who might have been their lecturers.

How can colleges make sensible forward planning decisions when the Government seem to be capable of changing funding allocations almost at whim and without any proper consultation with colleges? Given that many further education courses are two years long, should not proper notice have been given to the colleges of changes of such enormity? Alternatively, could not the proposed changes have been phased in, instead of it being announced, first, that funding would simply disappear halfway through this academic year, and then that it would disappear at the end of the academic year? Is the truth that the Government do not care about the consequences of their actions for colleges and students?

This is a sector in crisis. Since 1990, student numbers have more than doubled, yet at the same time funds have decreased by 34 per cent. Thousands of jobs have gone and thousands of lecturers are still in dispute over their contracts of employment. Part-time lecturers are replacing full-time lecturers and, in some colleges—my local college being one example—all the part-time lecturers have been sacked on the last day of the academic year and told that they will be taken back only if they sign up with an agency.

Is that how we want to run a stable further education system? Unsurprisingly, morale is at rock bottom: a recent independent survey showed that 60 per cent. of lecturers are thinking of leaving the profession permanently. The real victims are students, who are trying to learn and better themselves in intolerable circumstances.

Faced with that crisis, the Minister has taken a leaf out of the Prime Minister's book. He has shown no leadership and no vision; he has dithered, and he and his colleagues bear a heavy responsibility for the sorry state of further education today.

I welcome the opportunity to respond to the remarks of the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope). His language is, to put it mildly, intemperate—he uses words such as "sector in crisis" and "fiasco", refers to no planning and no future and says that people are insulted. We should be asking whether he is making a spending pledge—if he is, the taxpayer should be told. It is all very well for him to criticise, but he has not come up with any answers.

I do not believe that we have anything of which to be ashamed—in fact, we have a record of which we can be proud. We have changed the landscape in offering opportunities to young people, and the climate has changed dramatically for young men and women. It is not only those from educated middle-class homes who have benefited, but those from deprived or impoverished backgrounds who have been given opportunities that are second to none to lift themselves up. The social pattern across Britain has changed entirely as a result of the new educational opportunities that we have created.

I recall the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown). He is factually wrong when he claims that 80 per cent. of children of unskilled parents leave school at 16 and make no further progress in education. The truth is that more than half the children of unskilled parents stay on in further education, becoming in the process professional people such as doctors, lawyers or accountants—even entering the House of Commons. That figure is changing all the time.

We have created a culture in which aspirations to acquiring more skills, qualifications and training are the norm; where opportunities are available to all those who seek them; and where parents are more supportive than ever in encouraging their children to develop. That is the picture of further education today.

The net result is that our further education programme is bursting with activity. It is the normal right and expectation of young people to continue their education after school. One in three go on to further and higher education, compared with one in eight in 1979, when we had a Labour Government. To put it a different way, the number of students has risen to more than 1.3 million—an increase of over 320 per cent. in 25 years—and we now have the highest graduation rate of any country in the European Union except Denmark. All that is in great contrast to the picture painted by the hon. Member for Hyndburn.

Does the hon. Lady realise that the figures that she is quoting relate not to further education but to higher education? There are more than 2 million students in higher education in addition to the million-plus in further education. Her lack of knowledge shows that she is simply reading from a central office brief.

That was a good attempt. The truth is that we are looking at the breadth of education—it is hair splitting to claim that we are examining only further education. Young people today participate in all sorts of education—they do not stop at further education.

rose—

I am sorry, but I must make some progress as many hon. Members wish to speak in the debate.

It is interesting to study a breakdown of student performance. Some 75 per cent. of 16 to 18-year-olds are in structured education and training. That is an increase on 1985, when the figure was only 56 per cent. In 1995, 69 per cent. of students gained qualifications at level 2 of GNVQ by age 19, compared with 46 per cent. in 1985. There have been record passes at GCSE and A-level. Last year, 44 per cent. of 15-year-olds achieved five or more good GCSE passes, compared with 23 per cent. who did not achieve any grades in 1979. Some 29 per cent. of students achieved two or more A-levels, compared with just 14 per cent. in 1979. Those figures tell us that further education is alive and well.

Further to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), whatever the correctness of the hon. Lady's figures and her general view, does she agree that the conditions of funding for further education—as distinct from higher education—have changed in the past few days and have thrown the education funding pattern into organisational and financial chaos? That is what we are worried about. Will the hon. Lady admit that that is true?

No, I will not. The truth is that further education funding is secure, and we are going great guns. We must judge the success of further education by the pupils' results. We must consider not just students' performance in further education, but what the next phase will be. Young people spend probably 15 years preparing for their first job, and our task is to ensure that the economic climate remains robust and strong enough to provide employment opportunities.

In an increasingly educated and competitive world, we must have a highly skilled and educated work force. It would be a cheap and mean trick to let students down and dash their great hopes and expectations by systematically ruining their chances of staying on at school. The Labour party's proposals would do just that. For a start, Labour would make it increasingly difficult for young people to stay on at school. The right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East has announced plans to withdraw child benefit for 16 to 18-year-olds. That £560 per year, or £1,120 over two years of essential learning, assists the poorest parents in particular. The proposal would crucify young people's chances of staying on in education, and they would be forced to work in menial or unskilled fields. It would be a tax on learning.

I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady, and much of her argument is extremely interesting. However, she has had no experience of publicly funded education. Many young people seek further and higher education opportunities. The Government have denied them those opportunities in the past few days, and have said, "We've got enough university graduates." What sort of opportunity growth is that?

The biggest threat to children's educational opportunities is the imposition of a teenage tax, which would prevent them from staying on at school and taking advantage of further education. The row within the Labour party about the teenage tax has created a split between the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East, who believes that it is a good idea to tax the teenagers, and the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), who says the opposite. The Child Poverty Action Group is totally opposed to the measure.

The proposed windfall tax on utilities would do nothing to assist young people: first, it is likely to be illegal; and, secondly, if it were introduced, it is doubtful that it would raise the anticipated £3 billion. For example, the decision by British Gas to reduce prices in order to benefit the consumer would wipe out the alleged "excess profits". There would be no honeypot. On 15 May last year, the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East admitted that the windfall tax would raise only "hundreds of millions of pounds", and not the multi-billion figure that would be needed to fund Labour's spending plans.

In any case, that is a one-off measure that would not create new, real jobs for young people. It would be a stop-gap measure, designed to induce employers to take on new staff at a reduced rate for one year—and then what? People would be forced on to the dole. It is an example of Labour short-termism. I doubt that young people would see a penny of the proceeds of the windfall tax, as the Labour party has a list of IOUs and spending pledges totalling about £30 billion. The windfall tax would be rather like a rubber band: stretching three times around the world in order to support alleged Labour causes.

What about jobs, which are crucial when we consider further education? Centrally run, Government-sponsored schemes do not create work, as jobs cannot be sustained when the schemes have ended. Young people would be back where they started. Labour's Target 2000 is a sham: it would impose an extra tax on businesses, which they can ill afford to pay, with compulsory contributions to training. We should focus on creating a vibrant economy that provides the means and the wealth for employers to take on new staff, especially educated and highly skilled young people. Young people's employment chances would be destroyed by Labour's plans to sign up to the social chapter and the minimum wage.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Many Labour Members wish to speak about the issue of further education, and I wonder whether the hon. Lady's remarks are in order.

It is a wide subject and, if I thought that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) was out of order, I would rule accordingly. However, I take the point that many hon. Members wish to speak in the debate.

As I was saying, in a sober moment many Labour Members recognise that signing the social chapter would be a disaster for young people. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) has admitted that such measures would cause a

"shakeout of jobs. Any fool can see that".

If we have any doubts, we should cast an eye on the countries of mainland Europe. Punitive taxation and burdens on employers mean that they cannot afford to employ young people.

Order. The hon. Lady is ranging rather wide of the subject. Let us return to further education.

With the greatest respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am speaking about further education.

First, we must ensure that young people are able to take advantage of further education; and, secondly, graduates must be able to secure jobs. This country's economy must be structured in such a way as to ensure that their education is not wasted. The two points are related, and we cannot examine them in isolation. I think that the experiences of other European countries are very applicable when we talk about young people. For instance, youth unemployment in Spain is 42 per cent.—those young people are in despair.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Lady is reading from a central office brief. I can see it: it is typed out, and the hon. Lady is simply reading it.

The hon. Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) knows full well that it is quite in order to refer to speaking notes. However, I remind the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam that she is getting rather wide of the subject.

I want to emphasise how important it is that young people's further education is not dashed by what happens to them afterwards. We do not want them to suffer the plight of their brothers and sisters in Italy, where 33 per cent. of young people are idle, in France, where 29 per cent. are desperate and unemployed, or in Germany, where unemployment overall is now 4.5 million—more than twice the level in the United Kingdom and increasing every day, further dashing young people's chances.

Job creation comes not from artificially induced, centrally created Government schemes, but from healthy, innovative economies free to operate in a climate that actively encourages development. It is hardly surprising that we are known as the enterprise centre of Europe.

Further education is a laudable aim. We must continue to invest in education, training and skills, but alone that cannot provide jobs. It merely allows young people to compete effectively in an increasingly tough market. We must ensure that young people get the rich rewards for which they have worked so hard throughout their schooling, their days at further education college and then at university. We have an obligation to ensure that they enter a financially sound world that can create and sustain real jobs, so that young people will be able to achieve their true potential on the basis of their earlier education.

The speech that we have just heard scores one out of 10 for content. It was pathetic and ill informed. I shall address the subject on the Order Paper: the crisis in further education.

In my constituency, Nelson and Colne college is consulting on making 37 lecturers redundant and not filling 10 vacancies. There is a deep crisis in my local college, which is not some hick institution—it has a marvellous reputation. It achieved Investors in People status, and was the first in Lancashire to do so. In 1993, it was one of only three further education colleges to achieve the charter mark; the Prime Minister recognised that Nelson and Colne college was a fine institution.

The college was inspected by the Further Education Funding Council five months ago, in August 1996. The inspectors stated:

"Nelson and Colne College is a successful tertiary college in East Lancashire.… Governance and management are strong. Staff are well qualified. … Standards of teaching are generally high. Students work hard and make sound progress. Examination results are good."

In governance and management, the college rated grade 2, which is defined as

"provision in which the strengths clearly outweigh the weaknesses".

That is the background—a successful college whose board decided on 20 January to plunge it and the wider community into turmoil by announcing all those redundancies. I immediately contacted the college principal, Kath Belton, and had a meeting with her and her senior management. I asked why the decision had been taken. She replied that the college had to save £400,000. It had been operating a deficit, but that is no different from other colleges.

I consulted the annual report of the Further Education Funding Council, which was published only last month. It stated:

"The annual deficit incurred by the sector rose from £10m in 1993/4 to £101m in 1994/5 and stood at an estimated £119m in 1995/6."

The FEFC went on to say:

"A deficit of this order cannot be sustained for more than a few years."

I want the Minister to comment on that when he winds up.

When I saw the principal at the end of January, I asked whether the FEFC had been consulted about the redundancies. To my astonishment, she said that it had not, and that the decision had been taken by the board. I am not entirely sure whether all members of the board knew the reasons behind the decision that they were invited to take on 20 January.

I suggested to Kath Belton and her senior managers, from a layperson's perspective, that getting rid of 37 lecturers and not filling 10 vacancies would have a devastating impact on the scope and quality of the education on offer. I could have been knocked down with a feather when she said that she did not think that the quality and scope of education provision would suffer.

I do not believe that, and people in my constituency and further afield do not believe it. The principal is making the best of a bad job. She has been put in an impossible position by the board's decision of 20 January, but it is incredible that a college could lose so many talented staff and continue to provide a high-quality education for the young people of my area. I do not believe it.

I raised the matter with the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice), who told me at the beginning of this month, in typical Pontius Pilate fashion:

"It is for colleges in the further education sector such as Nelson and Coln college to manage their resources, including staff, as they see fit in the light of changing needs and circumstances."

I wrote to Professor Melville, the chief executive of the FEFC, expecting that he would have something to say about the matter. He replied:

"Individual college corporations must consider how they will best meet required efficiency gains. … The Council—

the FEFC—

"does not have a specific role in advising colleges on their management processes."

The Minister has no responsibility, the FEFC has no responsibility, so my college is left twisting in the wind.

I have read all the relevant documents from cover to cover—the National Audit Office report and the purple report from the FEFC. On page 94 of its annual report, the FEFC states that, as a priority, it monitors

"the financial health of the sector and of individual colleges"

and advises

"colleges on their financial planning and financial control systems".

It did not advise Nelson and Colne college. There has been no contact at all.

I shall be brief, as I know that many of my colleagues want to speak in this important debate. I asked the Minister what steps the Department would take

"to assist further education colleges running operating deficits"—

there are well over 200 such colleges around the country—

"to restore their financial health without jeopardising the quality and scope of the education offered".

Only yesterday the Minister replied:

"Colleges are independent, autonomous bodies and are responsible for managing their own financial affairs. The Further Education Funding Council has effective arrangements in place for identifying colleges in financial difficulty and for working with them to recover their financial health."—[Official Report, 18 February 1997; Vol. 290, c. 455.]

That is what the Minister told me yesterday; it is moonshine.

This is not an academic debate—[Interruption]—nor is it a matter for levity. Nelson and Colne college is an excellent college. It has a charter mark and is central to the local community. All those who should be able to help my college have washed their hands of it. Unless something happens, and happens soon, my college will be devastated by the loss of all those skilled lecturers. I hope that, even at the eleventh hour, the Minister will be persuaded to intervene and save education in my constituency.

I apologise for the fact that I shall not be able to stay for the winding-up speeches. I am serving on not one Committee but two, at 10.30 am. I shall have to read the golden words of my hon. Friend the Minister in Hansard. I shall try to be brief, as many other hon. Members wish to speak.

Further education is very important to my constituents, as it is the only source of sixth-form education in Harrow. Harrow has three tertiary colleges and a sixth-form college, which is part of the FE sector.

I want to draw attention to the problems of St. Dominic's sixth-form college in Harrow-on-the-Hill, a remarkable college with a fine reputation. I am not exaggerating when I say that an enormous number of parents, whether they are Catholic or not—whether, indeed, they are Christian or not—want to send their children to St. Dominic's because they want them to receive sixth-form education rather than the education provided by the tertiary colleges in the rest of Harrow. St. Dominic's is very popular, and so it should be, given the quality of its teaching and pastoral care and the results that it achieves.

The college is uniquely placed. Being in Harrow-on-the-Hill, it is at the junction of the boroughs of Harrow, Ealing and Brent, and therefore draws people from quite a wide area. It is on a restricted site and needs to expand, but it is difficult for it to extend its existing buildings and increase student numbers, because local residents are worried about what that would mean in traffic terms, and about the domination of the expanded buildings. All that is understandable. The college had the option of buying an adjacent building on the main road, which would have enabled it to expand while taking traffic away from residential areas but, regrettably, that is no longer possible.

Along with the principal of St. Dominic's, Mr. John Lipscomb, I have corresponded with my hon. Friend the Minister, and we are grateful for the careful and concerned way in which he has examined the problems of the college. I feel, however, that there is a flaw in the legislation that established the otherwise tremendously successful FE sector.

When St. Dominic's and one or two other voluntary-aided colleges—of which there are a relatively small number—sought to expand, they were unable to borrow money on the strength of their existing buildings because it was not entirely clear who owned them. St. Dominic's did not own its buildings, they had never been owned by the local authority, and it turned out that the Catholic Education Service did not own them either. Getting together the money for expansion proved to be a real problem.

The Further Education Funding Council, at least in the London region, was not as helpful as it might have been. I think that it could have sorted the matter out, but suggesting that, if the present site is too restricted, the college should find another site makes no sense in north-west London. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) laughs, but he knows how restricted space is in east London, and the situation is just as bad in north-west London. It simply was not possible to find another suitable site.

Catholic sixth-form education is highly prized in my constituency, and in surrounding constituencies. The present site is terrific for St. Dominic's, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will look re-examine the legislation and the activities of the Further Education Funding Council in order to ensure that that college, and the small number of other voluntary-aided colleges elsewhere in the country, can continue to be successful. Catholic sixth-form education would be gravely missed by many people.

One of the reasons Labour will lose the next general election is that Labour Members always describe any set of problems—and of course there are problems, some of which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice)—as a crisis. They hope that, by doing so, they will gain some kudos among those who care about these matters, including those in the FE sector. They hope that people will say, "Whatever the present Government may be doing, at least we could rely on the Labour party."

It is not surprising that the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) got so ratty when I merely asked him how much money an incoming Labour Government would give the FE sector. That is the point: as the hon. Gentleman was saying that more money was needed, mine was not an unreasonable question—or, as he put it, a stupid question. It was all laid out by the FE sector in its submission to the public expenditure survey in April 1996. It stated how much money it wanted. The question is simple: how much would an incoming Labour Government provide?

I think that the answer is this: either a Labour Government would provide money, which would mean that, once again, Labour was being financially imprudent and its much-vaunted views on taxation would be proved to be so much moonshine; or it would not provide the money, in which case the rest of the speech of the hon. Member for Hyndburn goes down the drain. If Labour is not going to provide that extra money, there is plainly no point in the hon. Gentleman's making the complaints that he has made.

The further education sector is tremendously successful. Hon. Members scoffed at my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) when she spoke of the number of people in further education. I am getting nasty looks from the Whip, so I shall be as brief as I can be—rather briefer than one or two Opposition Members.

As I was saying, Opposition Members scoffed at my hon. Friend, and said that she must have obtained her figures from a Conservative central office brief. I do not know whether that is true, but the figures are confirmed in the submission from the further education colleges. Whether it was a central office brief or not, my hon. Friend was right, and those who scoffed were plainly wrong.

We are talking about a £3 billion operation which is highly successful, and has expanded tremendously since it was freed from the shackles of local government. All that we hear from Opposition Members are complaints. Of course there will be problems: that is inevitable when we are making massive changes in the sector, and trying to adapt it not just to increased pupil numbers but to a changing society and a new role. The Government are coping with those problems, however, and only this Government will keep those colleges free.

The hon. Member for Hyndburn made one prophetic observation. He spoke of the democratisation of the FE sector. That can mean only one thing. A Labour Government would return the colleges to the shackles of local authorities; they would bring in the councillors and the bureaucracy, exclude the business men and take the colleges out of the real world. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam pointed out, the Labour party must deal with one point before the election. If it has the opportunity to impose a teenage tax, it knows, we know and our constituents know that many people will not be able to go to further education colleges.

FE colleges are a success story. They are expanding, improving and doing terrific work—but all the Labour party can do is sneer at the people who are doing that work.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) on securing this debate.

The Government's ability to shoot themselves in the foot really does beggar belief. They have a success story for which they should be able to claim some credit. In practice, however, in the past few weeks alone they seem to have managed to alienate the principals of almost every further education college in the country. There was the announcement from the Further Education Funding Council, following receipt of communication from the Department for Education and Employment, that, from the beginning of 1997, funding for demand-led student enrolments was to be withdrawn just over a third of the way through the academic year. Just a couple of weeks later, that decision was turned around and the cut will not be made; the pain is simply being transferred to next year.

Colleges were left uncertain, and, naturally, all the people involved in their administration now feel mistrustful. They feel that the Government have not only broken their trust with them but proved themselves to be incompetent. In many ways that is a shame, because the Government's record is good. Even the hon. Member for Hyndburn said that the number of students at further education colleges had increased by 100 per cent. since 1990.

Although credit should be given where it is due, the Labour party has nothing to offer on this subject. As the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) said, the Labour party is pledging nothing for increased funding. Labour Members bleat about the crisis in further education. They wear their bleeding hearts and shed their crocodile tears, but Labour is not promising any additional finance to support further education in years to come.

The increase in student numbers has been achieved not simply through additional funding over the past years but through efficiency improvements made by the colleges themselves—11 per cent. only last year. In the academic year 1997–98, funding is expected to be some £40 million less than that expected two years ago. Less and less money is being provided per further education student.

I hope that the Government will recognise that all hon. Members want efficiency and the most efficient and effective use of money, but there is a danger that, far from following the philosophy of getting a quart out of a pint pot, the Government may risk spoiling the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar. The growth in student numbers over the past few years, although commendable, is still a great deal less than colleges want, and less than they have sought in their strategic plans.

In my constituency, we have three excellent FE colleges with a first-class reputation. The problem, as the hon. Gentleman and the Minister know, is that efficiency savings can be achieved for a certain period, but there is a critical point at which those savings affect quality. That is happening in higher education. It will now happen in further education. The crucial point is that efficiency savings can be made only for so long, and then quality starts to decline fast.

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman.

The Liberal Democrats have made it clear that we want more investment in education. I shall not go into the details at length today, but they involve the need to fund education out of general taxation. We seek a new levy on companies—a remissible training levy—to ensure that more money is put back into higher and further education. We also want to change the funding of students, particularly degree students in higher education, to make more money available to enable an expansion of student numbers.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned that the Liberal Democrats would increase taxation. That must be the fabled 1 p on income tax to fund education, which is supposed to provide a nursery place for every three and four-year-old, to reduce class sizes, and to clear up the backlog in school repairs. He now suggests that it will fund further education as well. It must be the biggest penny in the world.

When I voted last year and the year before against the cut in income tax, the hon. Member for Hyndburn was out in the Corridor having a smoke. I recognise the point that he makes. It is quite true that our pledge to increase taxation by 1p in the pound to invest in education is geared primarily towards education at the lower end, but some £600 million of the money that we would seek to raise would go into further higher education. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman's point—and rather more effectively than he dealt with a point raised by the hon. Member for Harrow, West.

Oldham sixth form college, which was established just a few years ago, has proved itself a great success in raising the staying-on rate of students and pupils throughout the borough. The half dozen or so representatives of my party who were on the council when the college was established had doubts about whether it was advisable to set it up and abolish all the school sixth forms at the same time.

Oldham sixth form college's success over the years has shown that those doubts were unfounded. The greater staying-on rates that have been achieved have been worth the sacrifice of school sixth forms. Raising the standard of education in boroughs such as Oldham—a borough that traditionally had low educational achievement—is crucial to the regeneration of industrial towns such as the one I represent.

According to the principal, Oldham sixth form college turned away 150 applicants last year, although they were quite capable of taking on the courses—and the number who will be turned away will probably increase because of the cuts that are likely to be made next year. It is likely that 200 or more people will be turned away next year. There is a great demand for places, but there is a danger that young people will miss out because opportunities will no longer be available to them. There is also a danger that they will not be able to take advantage of the education opportunities that should be available to every citizen.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that disadvantage and staying-on rates should be included as parameters for a new funding mechanism, which we must have next year, for places such as Oldham and for coalfield communities? Places that have an education deficit should get priority.

I agree. One of the priorities—I hope that the Minister will address this—should be targeting in college funding. There must be a difference between northern boroughs, coalfield communities and the like, where educational achievement has traditionally been low, and counties such as Surrey and Sussex, where the state of affairs is very different.

What colleges need above all is stability. They need clear plans for the medium and long term so that they can prepare their strategies for the future. If they are to achieve efficiency savings, it is necessary for them to have a clear idea of what funding they will have so that they can plan. I am tired of principals telling me, "We simply don't know where we are."

Secondly, the level of funding needs to be addressed. I have already touched on that. Thirdly, there is a need for targeting funding on colleges in less affluent parts of the country. Fourthly, there is a need for urgency in the process, especially as colleges are trying to plan for next year. At the moment, the FEFC is examining options for next year. That examination must be completed quickly so that principals can make their plans for next year as soon as possible.

Further education has been a success over the past few years. It is a success now. It is very important that steps are taken to ensure that it continue to be a success in the years to come.

We have had a most interesting debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) on initiating it, and on speaking so incisively about the issues facing the education sector.

The hon. Members for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) and for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) seemed to deny that there has been a crisis in further education, but this debate is taking place precisely because of the crisis for which the Minister is significantly responsible and which has occasioned deep demoralisation across further education. That is why I—exceptionally for a Front Bencher—tabled an early-day motion, which was signed by 100 hon. Members and which sought to call attention to the problems facing colleges in their constituencies. My hon. Friends the Members for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) and for Hyndburn reflected on the particular problems of colleges in their constituencies. Reference was also made to acute problems in Stoke-on-Trent and in a number of other colleges.

We should dispense with the absurdity of Conservative Members who say that we should account for how we would pay for the crisis. The Government said last November that it was time Labour identified how it would fund certain parts of the education budget, but at that time we knew nothing about the funding shortfall that has led to the recent crisis. As late as January, the Secretary of State said that all was well.

The further education sector told the Minister that there was a shortfall of £80 million on previous years, and that a bill of £80 million was building up for students taking courses in the current year. The simple fact is that the Department should put its own house in order, and the Minister should get a grip on the crisis that has developed in colleges. The further education sector is crucial to education and training for the nation.

Let us get the figures clear. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam has great difficulty differentiating between universities and further education colleges: the subject of the debate is further education. Her figures are incorrect, because there are 3.5 million students in further education, which is more than there are in school sixth forms and universities combined. That is why the sector is so important. It deals with the skills, competences and educational opportunities of which the country is most in need. It provides the platform from which people can move on to higher education, and can equip themselves for jobs in a world in which additional skills are required.

The naivety of the hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Davies) is at times matched only by his honesty. His party had reservations about the hugely successful Oldham sixth form college in my constituency, to which I pay tribute for its successes in recent years. His naivety was adequately exposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn. We are told that the 1p on income tax for education will cover every element of the education budget, which runs into billions of pounds, thus producing a penny that magnifies into astronomical figures. We do not expect the Liberal Democrats to be particularly strong on mathematics. However, we expect the Minister to answer the charge that we have made today.

Did the hon. Gentleman not hear my response to the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope)? I pointed out that £600 million of that money would be geared to further and higher education.

The hon. Gentleman will have great difficulty making his sums add up. Every time the Liberal Democrats speak on education, the sector on which they speak attracts resources based on the 1 p increase in income tax.

I want the Minister to deal with the obvious point that is being made in the House today, which has been made in the many letters that we have all received from across the country, about the crisis facing individual colleges because of the Government's original indication that they were not prepared to fund the demand-led element. That crisis sent alarm bells ringing. It demoralised the sector, and its implications and consequences for colleges are profound.

I suppose that the Minister at least deserves congratulations, because he has succeeded in putting further education on the map. The silent service has suddenly become an extremely noisy advocate of the role it plays, and not before time. What a pity that it has had to do that because of the crisis that has emerged. We welcome the fact that, after pressure was put on the Government, a rapid U-turn took place. It was decided that it was scarcely reasonable to tell colleges that they could not be funded for students who were already enrolled and were taking courses.

I always think that it is best to move away from discussing areas of public service if I want to engage the full sympathies of Conservative Members. I emphasise, therefore, that many private providers of training that are linked to colleges would have faced bankruptcy and worse if the Government had seen through the original absurd proposition not to fund the demand-led element. However, that crisis persists. The Government have announced that they do not intend to make those funds available next year.

The Minister must surely realise that colleges are already committed to a certain number of students who are taking courses. He should also realise that colleges have been thrust into this position. They were told in February this year that the crucial engine of expansion on which they have been dependent for the past three years will not obtain next year. Significant areas of expansion have led to increased opportunities for students in their communities. Colleges already have commitments and plans for next year, which they are expected to honour until this extraordinary act by the Government intervened. The Minister has pulled the rug from under them at this late stage, which has created chaos.

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has drawn attention to this important matter. In Newham and similar areas, college expansions have been funded by regeneration grants from Europe, city challenge and elsewhere, and have been tied to funding for increased student places. If funding is no longer available for such expansion, the danger is that they will have to repay those regeneration grants.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out that issue, which seriously affects a number of colleges. I hope that the Minister will also deal with that matter.

I shall, if the hon. Gentleman sits down.

Indeed. I recognise the constraints on time, and I shall give the Minister the chance to respond to these points.

The Labour party emphasises the significance of the further education sector. Two specific aspects of our policy will be of enormous support to the sector. First, our new deal sets out how we intend to fund, from windfall taxation of the utilities, jobs and training places for 250,000 unemployed people. Secondly, contrary to the mistaken impression that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam sought to create, our proposals for education attendance allowances—transferring child benefit to education attendance—will support students at the place where they enjoy their education. That is our priority. I expect the Minister to tell us that the Government have learnt some lessons from this sorry affair.

As always, the hon. Member for Oldham, Central and Royton (Mr. Davies) omitted the crucial points. First, he omitted to tell us whether a Labour Government would reintroduce the non-cash-limited element of demand-led funding, which has been the centrepiece of this debate. The matter is about not cost but the principle of whether Labour would reintroduce it. Secondly, he reiterated the absurdity of the windfall tax apparently abolishing youth unemployment—a one-off measure paid for by a one-off tax.

It is nearly four years since further education and sixth form colleges left local authority control and were freed to become incorporated organisations. Their achievements have been formidable. Several hon. Members have described the exceptional growth, of which there is no doubt. Student numbers have grown by more than 30 per cent.

In opening the debate, the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) referred to staff contracts and issues relating to the employment of staff, demonstrating that he seems more concerned about the numbers of staff than the students who are being taught. The staff "silver book" contract under which virtually all staff were employed at the time of incorporation—too many are still employed under it—stipulates a maximum of 21 hours a week teaching and 38 weeks' total work a year. I do not think that, in the last part of this century, such contracts can ensure that colleges efficiently use the staff they need.

rose—

I cannot give way. I do not have time, because so many hon. Members spoke in the debate.

Since incorporation, the Government have increased resources to the further education sector, which now receives well over £3 billion a year. The sector will have noticed that, despite all their huffing and puffing today, the Opposition said nothing about providing any further direct funding.

The House may be aware that yesterday the Further Education Funding Council published a comprehensive set of performance indicators for the 1994–95 academic year, which has been placed in the Library. It contains a vast amount of information of both local and national application. It shows that the average achievement rate for students who completed their programmes was 71 per cent., which I am sure most colleagues would agree is not too bad.

If one unpacks that figure, however, one finds a massive variation in colleges. Although part of the variation can be explained by circumstances, colleges with the lowest rates of achievement should at least be giving as much attention to raising them as they are to securing further increases in student numbers. To put that into perspective, the worst achievement rates in the general FE sector are considerably below 30 per cent., whereas the best are over 90 per cent.

I turn to the issue of demand-led expansion funding and the events of recent weeks. It is correct that, in the 1991 White Paper the Government undertook to meet the additional costs of colleges' expansion above agreed targets, which became known as "super-DLE" payments. No Opposition Member has said that, until the current financial year, those payments have never been called on because the costs of the demand-led element have been met by the shortfall in performance of other colleges, such that the overall FEFC budget has been sufficient to meet the total costs.

The unforeseen and unprecedented expansion in student numbers in the 1995–96 academic year changed that. Student numbers in full-time equivalents rose by 11 per cent. and, in that total, the number of FEFC-funded part-time students rose by no less than 37 per cent. Although the rate of full-time equivalent student growth has slowed a little, it is still forecast to be about 8 per cent.

The Further Education Funding Council wrote to the Government on 30 November, after the conclusion of the public expenditure round, to say that its demand for DLE payments would be £82 million in the current financial year. A few weeks later, we were advised that the additional costs in the next financial year to meet the growth above target in the spring and summer terms of this academic year would be another £84 million. So, in the space of six or seven weeks, we were told that DLE would require over two years at least £166 million—excluding the rest of the next academic year. Those are substantial sums to find, but, according to our undertaking, we found the £82 million shortfall for the current financial year from other departmental spending.

A Government decision not to pay the £84 million for the first two terms of the next financial year—the last two terms of the current academic year—was never made. It was extremely unfortunate that the colleges were led to believe by a letter from the Further Education Funding Council that that might be so. The Government never took such a decision, and have therefore not changed their position. When we were able to look more carefully at the figures and examine the matter, I was able to announce, as hon. Members have said, that we shall ensure that that £84 million is met. It is due to colleges, it is being incurred with students in place, it will be met, and the Government will meet the greater part of it.

I know that a number of colleges are concerned about what can be described as borderline cases—precisely, whether a contract was in existence and arrangements were made. I know that the FEFC is consulting colleges on the issues, and I understand that it is sending a letter today to all colleges to try to ensure that the precise details are clear. I should make it absolutely clear that students who are already engaged on a course should have nothing whatever to worry about. There is no question, as has been suggested, of stopping students who are engaged in courses.

On a reasonable basis, we have met our obligations under the White Paper commitment. In the space of six weeks, we found an extra £150 million or so to honour our undertaking. That is a lot of money to find. I must tell Opposition Members that, even if funds are not cash limited, as those were not, they still have to be provided for in public expenditure plans within reasonable parameters of expectation. The sums that I have described could not by any means have been considered a reasonable expectation. We acted promptly to deal with the immediate issues, but rightly must also look at the future.

We are examining urgently with the FEFC measures to improve forecasting to ensure that such a problem does not arise again. Clearly, we did not have sufficient timely and precise signals. I said in my announcement on 5 February that we look to the council to meet all its future expenditure for the next academic year from its voted provision, which is in itself intended to provide for continued growth. I have also asked the FEFC to review the options open to it for the 1997–98 academic year in the light of my announcement and in consultation with colleges. I understand that it will be sending out a document shortly.

One particular issue that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have identified for urgent review is the practice of franchising by some FE colleges. The facts are quite striking. About a tenth of FE full-time equivalent students are in off-site franchised provision, and nearly three quarters of last year's unprecedented growth was due to franchising. I want to make it clear that I am not opposed in principle to franchising; it covers a wide range of courses and activities. Indeed, in my constituency, some excellent work is done where schools franchise from the local FE college. Franchising is, however, a matter of some controversy in the sector.

In its report on the FEFC a fortnight ago, the National Audit Office acknowledged the merits of franchising, but pointed out risks to the quality of provision and of the substitution of public funds for existing expenditure and training. The House will know that I have asked a working party to look into franchising urgently.

Two other issues have been raised, which I shall try to deal with quickly. The first is overall funding. As I have said, the Government have increased funding for the further education sector year on year. We have built in efficiency savings, but I remind the House that the National Audit Office report identified management as a key factor in financial health. The report makes it clear that poor financial health does not appear to depend on any sector-wide factors.

The other issue that has been raised is teachers' retirement. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will lay regulations before the House in one minute. There was no announcement on the radio this morning. I understand that there was a union representative. The regulations will defer the implementation of the proposals until 1 September, and will defer the reduction in the employer's contribution rate to 1 July.

Four Suffolk Members of Parliament applied to introduce this important debate. On behalf of all of us, I express my gratitude to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing the debate to be initiated. Around me are my hon. Friends the Members for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) for Central Suffolk (Mr. Lord) and for Waveney (Mr. Porter). I particularly welcome the Secretary of State for the Environment, my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who will reply to the debate.

In the past 20 years, Suffolk has changed more than most counties, helped by increased trade with the continent of Europe. The population has grown appreciably, and so has the county's accessibility and prosperity. There has been a long-standing willingness for individuals of different political persuasions in local government to work together. The people of Suffolk have every expectation and every right to demand that their parliamentary and local government representatives work together on issues of importance to the county.

That viewpoint held sway until May 1993, when a Labour administration, with Liberal Democrat help, took control of county hall. Since then, the council has not only been the most incompetently led in the history of Suffolk, but has had as its hallmarks distortion, propaganda and arrogance, which have brought shame to the good name of Suffolk and have regrettably turned the administration into a laughing stock in Westminster and Whitehall.

I shall give the House a flavour of that by quoting an exchange of correspondence that I had with the leader of the council, Chris Mole. In a parliamentary written answer of 21 February 1995, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), on behalf of the Department for Education, said that local education authority expenditure on administration in Suffolk was 5 per cent., compared with a national figure of 4.5 per cent. The figure was well above that of any of the surrounding counties: 4.2 per cent. for Norfolk; 3.9 per cent. for Essex; and 3.7 per cent. for Cambridgeshire.

When challenged on that, Councillor Mole aggressively informed me that I was wrong and that, in my figure, I had included the cost of inspectors, education welfare officers, educational psychologists, special needs staff and many others. However, my view was confirmed by my hon. Friend the Minister in a letter on 19 April 1995. Sadly, but typically, no comment or apology was received from Councillor Mole.

Councillor Mole wrote to me:

"Dear Mr. Spring

Your incredulity at my factual responses to your misleading electioneering is only matched by my concern at your ignorance of the work of Suffolk County Council."

He helpfully continued:

"You may not have bothered to check your source, or you may believe that those staff fall into your pejorative definition of `bureaucrats'."

He was, of course, wrong. The mind-boggling arrogance of the council leader was brought out when he further wrote:

"Your reference to reductions in 'educational bureaucracy' making up for the shortfall in school's reserves reveals such a gross misunderstanding of the local management and financing of schools that I would prefer to assist you with a personal tutorial".

That offensive offer was the nearest we have come to a serious offer from the county council of dialogue on financing or other matters.

The blunt truth is that the incoming Labour-Liberal administration made a clear, cynical decision to cut off all constructive contact with Suffolk's Conservative Members of Parliament and to use taxpayers' money to pursue, with an avalanche of press releases, a wholly unjustified vendetta against central Government and Suffolk's parliamentary representatives. The past four years have been a disgrace and a parody of fair and effective local government. By deliberate intent, fear and alarm has been spread among the residents of our county.

What are the facts? Has Suffolk been starved of Government resources? Has Suffolk been shortchanged by the taxpayer? Has the revenue support grant been cut? Not at all. As the House of Commons Library has confirmed, since 1992–93, Suffolk's overall standard spending assessment has risen by 11.7 per cent.—one third higher than the national figure.

I fully accept that local government, like central Government, has been required to show restraint. We cannot bequeath to our children an unsustainable debt burden. One has only to look across the channel to see what is happening to economies and employment prospects there. However, that is no basis for the propaganda outpourings from county hall and the distortions in the revenue support grant.

I shall give the House a flavour of what I mean. A banner headline in the Ipswich Evening Star of 25 January 1995 read, "Cuts Cuts Cuts". The article began:

"Hundreds of jobs throughout Suffolk are under threat as officials struggle to come to terms with Government cash cuts."

On 10 February, the Evening Star reported Councillor Duncan Macpherson, chairman of the county council education committee, speaking of teaching job losses, bigger class sizes and woefully inadequate money from central Government. That was a foretaste of what was to come.

On 14 February, a headline elsewhere read "Time to strike back at cuts". The article said:

"and what it means is that many of our most important services could be pared to the bone in 1995."

On 22 February, we had a headline "Jobs at risk as cuts bite", with Councillor Chris Mole talking about

"the comprehensive emasculation of local authorities inflicted by the Tories"

and alleging that 110 teachers' jobs were to go. None of that was worth the paper that it was written on.

The council produced a so-called information document entitled, "The Government's Funding Failure: Suffolk Schools and Suffolk Children. Their Bleak Future". It catalogued a sort of educational Armageddon, concluding with the sentence:

"A good education is at risk."

Never mind that, in every year since 1979, schools' budgets have grown in real terms. Do not let the truth get in the way of the argument.

I shall not disguise the real anxieties of parents, teachers and governors in response to this. We have all had constituents in our surgeries in a state of shock, fearing—as was the intention—that schools would close, teachers would be sacked and their children's education would suffer as services in the county imploded. The propaganda barrage continued unabated throughout the year.

What happened in practice? In the local government settlement of 1995–96, the county council received no cut in resourcing, but an increase of 3.5 per cent. Most crucially, however, the education SSA for 1995–96 was upped by 5.7 per cent. —£11.7 million. That was two and a half times the rate of inflation and nearly 20 per cent. more than the average SSA increase for English county councils.

I fully accept that, historically, Suffolk county council has spent above its education SSA. However, it is incomprehensible that the council spent only £8 million of the £11 million increase in its 1995–96 settlement. It chose to spend the money elsewhere. No proper or rational explanation has been forthcoming for that decision. As we have discovered, no matter what taxpayer-supported settlement is provided for Suffolk, it is branded as "inadequate". That has become a mantra.

By September 1996, the flagrantly disingenuous county council was at it again. Headlines screamed about cuts of £18 million. Shockingly, the county council invited school head teachers to prepare for a 5 per cent. cut in their budgets. Understandably, they were aghast. In west Suffolk, 134 teachers and head teachers publicly sent a fax of protest to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. The accompanying newspaper headlines were cataclysmic. Hook, line and sinker, the stream of misinformation had been taken on board.

My hon. Friends and I repeatedly asked how the council had reached the figure of £18 million. We pressed for information, but not one shred of concrete evidence was produced. The figure was a total travesty. With exactly the same information, no other county council had been reckless enough to make such ludicrous projections.

Inevitably, bad news grabs the headlines. The barrage of mendacity continued, as reflected in the headline in the East Anglian Daily Times of 7 November 1996—

"Tax warning on education cash".

The county council was spreading fear like a forest fire. Later in November, we had the local government settlement. Did we get £18 million worth of cuts? Surprise, surprise, we did not. We saw an increased settlement of just under £10 million. What happened to the projected education cut of £10.9 million? The education SSA was increased by 4.2 per cent., or nearly £9 million.

How many trees were uselessly felled? How much airtime was wasted by the county council? Its shroud waving was once again been exposed for all to see. As the East Anglian Daily Times summed up in its leader on 28 November 1996:

"Suffolk appears to have been one of the very few councils to have jumped in with both feet and prematurely warned of cuts in jobs and services on the basis of what seems to have been pure guesswork from preliminary figures being bandied around in Whitehall."

The editorial concluded:

"Politics can be a messy business. If this time next year there is still a Labour/Liberal Democrat controlled Suffolk County Council and a Tory Government, the Council Leaders would do well not to cry wolf for a third time. The public and their own staff will not stand for it again."

What has the county council done with the increased education SSA of £9 million? The shocking truth is that the council has decided to spend only £5 million. In addition to the £11 million in school reserves, the general LEA reserve fund is estimated at £5 million from 1 April 1997. There is also approximately £2 million of earmarked balances. Some £5 million that the Government intended for education in Suffolk has not been spent to that purpose.

As the chairman of the council's education committee has confirmed to me, whatever the SSA is, he and his council are so party politically prejudiced that they would describe it as totally inadequate. That is despite the fact that his party has explicitly accepted our levels of departmental spending within the overall Government control total, and no more is on offer. What a compliment to the Chancellor's good housekeeping.

During the past few appalling years of constant griping about funding, we have all been implicitly expected to hark back to some golden era of education in Suffolk. The truth could not be more different. In 1979, under Labour, the Suffolk pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools was 1:23.7—it is now 1:21.7. Similarly, the pupil-teacher ratio for secondary schools has improved from 1:18.1 to 1:16.4. The dramatic improvement in funding for education in Suffolk is fully illustrated by the rise in spending by two thirds per pupil, at both primary and secondary level, in real terms since the last Labour Government. That has been a huge commitment to our county by the taxpayer.

Before my hon. Friend leaves the subject of education, will he consider the damage that has been done to parents' confidence in schools by the county council campaign? In my constituency, parents have received threatening letters from the LEA that say that, unless their children take their nursery vouchers to local authority schools, they will not be guaranteed places in the primary schools of their choice. Is that not another example of what my hon. Friend is talking about?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that valid point, and I hope to elaborate on it when I reach the subject of the handling of nursery vouchers by the county council. He is right to say that the fear and anxiety aroused by the council about nursery vouchers has undermined parents' confidence in the education of their children. That is an absolute disgrace.

One of the county council's most bizarre extravagances is its anti-poverty strategy. All my right hon. and hon. Friends in Suffolk, including myself, have done voluntary work and are completely committed to helping those in genuine need. If that is what the council's anti-poverty strategy is about, we would applaud it. It is not. It is a wheeze to spend taxpayers' money to curry electoral favour with certain groups and to create a new bureaucratic empire.

Suffolk's unemployment level is 5.4 per cent. That is below the national average, and less then half the European Union average. It is one of the lowest anywhere in the industrialised world. Such has been the pace of job creation in Suffolk in the past four years that we have seen a dramatic fall of 40 per cent. in unemployment. By any proper measurement of need—school meals, income support and other indices of deprivation—Suffolk is a quietly prosperous place. How does the county council define poverty? Incredibly, anybody who lives in a household that has less than half the national average household income is defined as living in poverty. That gives new meaning to the adage that the poor will always be with us. If household incomes were to soar or fall sharply, the number in poverty would change in tandem by that definition. The council does not provide any absolute definition of need or consumption: its definition is useless.

My hon. Friend is not being entirely fair to Suffolk county council when he says that it has provided no absolute definition of poverty. It has provided a definition of poverty, and two of the criteria were lack of access to piped gas and not being connected to a mains sewer. I have neither of those, so I must be included in the council's definition of poverty.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. He illustrates the fact that the council's definition is based on urban areas. Suffolk is a predominantly rural county, where the county council has not the faintest idea about how thousands of its residents in rural areas live. That sums up the whole urban orientation of that council.

How is the money spent in Suffolk? It is spent on esoteric items such as a low-calorie cookbook and a sewing circle in Ipswich. A council that is supposedly starved of resources somehow spends £60,000 on a bus providing information, not books, on how libraries work, the revenue cost of which is £20,000 per annum. Yet I cannot get a footpath built in a rural village in my constituency, despite the fact that lives are under threat. It is a disgraceful misordering of priorities and the sort of politically correct nonsense characteristic of Labour inner-city authorities. It will change the circumstances of no one in real need but will simply provide a beanfeast for the county council press office and for councillors and officers attending conferences and workshops at taxpayers' expense.

The reason why education and the anti-poverty campaign are interconnected is both noteworthy and disturbing. Parents of young pre-school children in Suffolk may be forgiven for believing that the provision of taxpayer-funded nursery school facilities is based on a reasonably rational basis of need. In Suffolk, it is not. Children get their new nursery school place only if they happen to live in an area where the county council has deemed that such a school is warranted under its anti-poverty strategy.

What would happen if that principle were applied across education in the county? Would a new classroom, a new gymnasium or an extra teacher be made available only if, in its wisdom, the county council decided that socio-economic needs were the prime determinant? That is precisely the mumbo-jumbo that has destroyed the quality of education in places like Islington, Hackney and Lambeth, which drives parents to educate their children in entirely different areas.

We all welcome nursery provision, which the nursery voucher scheme will soon liberate. However, the enormous expansion of nursery schools initiated by Suffolk county council has put unreasonable pressure on existing school budgets and the funding of teachers' salaries. Before the last county council elections, the previous council sought to increase the number of new nursery schools by three a year. In the past four years, by contrast, both capital and running costs have soared, with seven new primary units this year.

The council cannot have it both ways. It is unacceptable to decline to spend the additional education SSA increases, yet shout for more; it is only fair to existing schools in Suffolk to have a proper balance in nursery provision. Through their budgets, existing schools are paying for that decision. My hon. Friends and the public will draw their own conclusions as to how the anti-poverty criteria have produced a clearly demonstrable bias in favour of nursery provision being located in Labour-controlled areas of the county.

So here we have it: forecasts of teacher sackings; cuts, cuts, cuts; and a massive increase in council tax. My hon. Friends will know that that particular scaremongering should be seen against a projected increase in Suffolk county council tax of only 4.1 per cent. So much for the gigantic increases in bills, that the county council told us we would face in April.

My hon. Friend has dealt in detail with how parents and teachers have been frightened by the ridiculous proposition of severe cuts. Is there any evidence that the county council now appreciates that it was wrong? More importantly, has it taken steps to admit, to the people it so frightened, that it was wrong?

I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised that point. The best we had was what I imagine passed for an apology from the leader of the council, who said that the £18 million cut scaremongering campaign was a worst-case scenario.

Throughout all those events, something has obviously not been quite right—the propaganda barrage has been so totally over the top. In large measure, it has been about the terrible dissensions within the Labour party at county hall, and the uncritical passivity of the Liberal Democrats. We are witnessing the outbreak of a form of municipal fratricide between the leader of the council and the chairman of the education committee, like two aging comics fighting it out for top billing in the end-of-the-pier show. For what Councillors Mole and Macpherson want is to secure the crown of leading the Labour group after 1 May—some crown, some group! They will clearly do and say anything, no matter how distorted or misleading, to establish their macho credibility, and all of Suffolk pays the price for their mutual animosity and ambition. If the matter were not so serious, it would be laughable.

Suffolk county council has ill served the people of our county. Enough is enough. I hope that it is the final curtain call: goodbye and good riddance.

I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker and to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) for arriving late and missing the start of the debate. I did not intend to do so, and no discourtesy was meant.

I shall now tackle the points made by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds. First and crucially, the hon. Gentleman alleged that, under its Labour-Liberal Democrat leadership, Suffolk county council provoked anxieties and fears unnecessarily over the past year or so about the necessity for budget cuts for 1997–98. I should point out that all that the council did, as it has done in previous years and as it did when it was Conservative-controlled before 1994—indeed, as the council has always done since its inception in 1974—was to take the Government's forecast figures in the Red Book and apply them to its finances.

The leader of the council checked with the Secretary of State that the figures were the ones on which any responsible council must base its plans. They showed a 5 per cent. cut in the sum that the county council could spend in the coming year.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No.

During the year, I have protested about those figures, the county council has protested about what those figures mean, and all the committees have examined what a 5 per cent. cut would mean to the services that they deliver. Ultimately—goodness knows why—the Government decided not to continue with the figures that they had originally forecast. It was probably because of the publicity that the county council gave to how the cuts would affect services, because people such as me lobbied heavily in favour of the services in Suffolk, and because organisations, teachers, governors and head teachers throughout Suffolk lobbied and organised—

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I shall not give way. I have only about 10 minutes and there is plenty of time for the Secretary of State to do his bit later.

We all fought to ensure that the Government figures would be changed, and they were. The only people in Suffolk who did not fight for Suffolk, for the county council, for the budget and for our services, were the five Conservative Members who represent Suffolk constituencies. The only time that they mention Suffolk is to have a go at Suffolk county council. The Secretary of State can snigger if he wishes; we in Suffolk are used to that.

The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds criticised Suffolk county council for its education service. Is he not aware that Suffolk is one of the few counties—indeed, I suspect, the only county in the country—not to have suffered even one opt-out school? I know that the Secretary of State knows that, because he has protested about it often enough.

Does the hon. Gentleman not know that there are more teachers and fewer administrators in Suffolk schools now than there were when Suffolk was Conservative-controlled in 1993? Clearly not. Is he aware that under local management of schools, Suffolk is one of the highest payers out to schools, because it is one of the authorities that keeps the least money in central education administration? Is he not proud of that record? He should be. Schools, parents and governors trust that council, which gives out more money to schools than any other authority. Why is the hon. Gentleman not proud of it? Why does he criticise it?

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that, since 1994, when Labour took control—and the Liberal Democrats, too; I apologise to the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) for not mentioning them—the money that the Government give to Suffolk county council has been reduced by 3 per cent. in real terms, whereas between 1990 and 1994, when it was Conservative-controlled, the sum given was increased by 12 per cent.? What a strange set of figures.

Does the hon. Gentleman not know that £39 million, in real terms, has been taken from Suffolk over the past four years? He certainly has not protested about it. Of that sum, £12 million has been made up by efficiency savings within the council, but the rest has had to be found by making economies in its services.

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that, during that period class sizes have increased in our primary schools, and that elements of the fire service have had to be cut? Was he not here three years ago when I stood in the Chamber arguing about the police budget in Suffolk, and managed to get £3 million put quietly back the following year? He could not even be bothered to turn up, and neither could the Secretary of State.

The hon. Gentleman should be careful what he says about anti-poverty strategies. I know that the Government keep altering the way in which we count unemployment. The last I heard, they had altered it 29 times since 1979—and every time they do, the figure goes down. That is strange enough, but there is one statistic that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds really ought to understand.

I do not know exactly where in Suffolk the hon. Gentleman lives, but in my constituency, and I suspect in those of Conservative Suffolk Members too, one in five households have no income other than benefit. The Government can alter the figures, cheat and make headline announcements about unemployment being 1.8 million, but the fact is that in one in five households of working age in my constituency, nobody has a job.

If people live somewhere nice and leafy in a little village, they can try to pretend that that is not happening, but it is. Fear and anxiety live out there. They are not promoted by the county council; they are out there among our people, along with the lack of a feel-good factor. Over the past 18 years, that is what the Government have reduced this country to: insecurity, anxiety and fear.

That fear is not fear of the county council, of Ipswich council or, I suspect, of the local council in Bury St. Edmunds. Fear and insecurity are promoted by the Government as a matter of policy.

The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds talked about transport. However, the county council's transport strategy was agreed by the Department of Transport, and with the Government office for the eastern region and the transport people in Bedford. The policy being carried out is the policy that the Government told the county council to carry out.

The hon. Gentleman said that Suffolk county council was run by people from urban areas who do not understand rural areas. However, only 16 of about 60 councillors are from Ipswich—and I think that there are four from Bury St. Edmunds. There is a great swathe of people from the constituency of the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo), although they are usually either Liberal or Labour, because there is hardly a Tory left. They all represent rural seats. Duncan MacPherson represents a rural seat. [Interruption.] Well, it is rural to me.

Suffolk is a rural county, so the people elected to the council come predominantly from rural areas. The fact that they are not all Tories now is another matter, and that is what Conservative Members should be concerned about, rather than criticising the council.

If the hon. Gentleman wants to talk about building, I can tell him that two nurseries are being built in Ipswich, one for the Britannia area and one for Sprites. Those nurseries are badly needed, and they will open in September. Well done, Suffolk county council. I have long held the view that the rural areas of Suffolk have been subsidised by the urban areas. Through his activities in the health service, the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds has tried to keep that subsidy going. I do not blame him for favouring his own constituency, but I know what he is up to.

For the first time in its history, Suffolk is now being run in the interests of the whole county, rather than in those of Conservative Members' constituencies. The hon. Gentleman will not know that in my constituency three primary schools that were built in 1935 as 10-year temporary structures are still being used as schools today. That is shameful, and it is one of the problems that the Labour and Liberal Democrat-controlled council is trying to put right.

Unfortunately, the Secretary of State—who, as I can see, is not interested in what I am saying—did not feel able to grant our capital challenge bid, which would have enabled the council to go ahead with a new school.

Four hon. Members applied for this Adjournment debate, but it was the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds who was successful. That was right, because he has been the most voluble critic of the county council. Yet he talks to us about dialogue. When Suffolk county council was Tory, I, as the Member for Ipswich, did not criticise the council in the press.

There was no need to.

I did not criticise it because there was dialogue. I went and talked to the council. That does not mean that I talked to the people who chaired the committees, because it was clear that they did what the officers told them to. That was always true of Suffolk under Tory rule. I used to speak to the chief officers, so there was a dialogue and I, as the local Member of Parliament, could get things done in connection with Suffolk county council.

In contrast, for the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, the idea of dialogue is to slag off the county council on the front page of the East Anglian Daily Times, and then expect things to change. Is that dialogue? When the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is fired, the hon. Gentleman ought to be promoted into his place, because clearly he has the same diplomatic skills.

Yesterday, the council's transport committee met. It contains Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative members, and one independent from Long Melford. We still have independents in Suffolk. The independent stood up and moved a vote of no confidence in the five Tory Members of Parliament for Suffolk. One of the Tories walked out of the room rather than vote against the motion, and the committee passed it by 16 votes to eight. My case rests.

I listened in vain for any syllable of condemnation, or even of apology, from the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Cann) for the appalling record of Suffolk county council, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) outlined. In 15 minutes, the hon. Gentleman demonstrated clearly to the House and, I hope, to the voters of Ipswich. how completely unfit he is to represent those voters here in Parliament.

I dare say that we shall find the same absence of condemnation when the hon. Member for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong) speaks. I hope that she will clarify Labour's position on spending commitments. We have heard on many occasions from Suffolk county council that it needs to spend more. As far as I could tell from what the hon. Member for Ipswich said, he endorses those claims; but we know from the shadow Chancellor that no more money will be spent next year or the year after in the event that a Labour Government are elected.

I hope that, when the hon. Member for North-West Durham speaks, she will make it clear whether she endorses the view of the Suffolk county council Labour leader or that of the shadow Chancellor. That is a vital question for the House and for the voters of Suffolk, but it is also important in terms of what happens outside Suffolk, because what we have seen in Suffolk in the past four years an example of what Labour administration means in practice. It is not only an example: it is a salutary warning.

The council was elected in 1993, and is therefore what people would describe as a new Labour administration. Like many others, it is a new Labour administration that is slavishly propped up by the Liberal Democrat party. Once again, the Liberal Democrats in Suffolk have demonstrated beyond any possible doubt that a vote for the Liberal Democrat party anywhere in Suffolk has precisely the same effect as a vote for the Labour party—a message that I am sure the voters have taken on board.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds on securing the debate, and on his excellent and wide-ranging speech. His speech had only one shortcoming: he dealt far too gently and kindly with Suffolk county council: and his language had that moderation for which he has become famous in the county during the past few months, while he has so effectively exposed exactly what has been happening at county hall.

I entirely endorse everything that my hon. Friend said about education and especially about the appalling way in which Labour and its Liberal Democrat allies have, for entirely party political ends, played on the anxieties and fears of thousands of parents and children, and quite a number of teachers and staff, in my constituency.

I want to touch on three simple themes: first, how new Labour in Suffolk still means the old loony left in practice; secondly, how new Labour in Suffolk equals new sleaze, as the county council ruthlessly deprives rural areas of resources and pours huge subsidies into the Labour urban strongholds; and thirdly, how new Labour in Suffolk equals incompetence on a new and breathtaking scale.

The debate is about the revenue support grant for Suffolk county council. The Labour party's thesis throughout has been that money is tight. Labour would have us believe that teachers' jobs are at risk, that social services for vulnerable families are about to be cut and that the fire service will be virtually closed down.

Against that background of shroud waving and alleged lack of resources, let me ask a few questions. Which council has decided in the past four years to employ a full-time equal opportunities officer? Which council thinks that its staff should have extra time off during working hours to carry out trade union duties? Which council has a full-time Unison trade union official? Which council believes that the best way in which to tackle poverty is to pay councillors to attend extra meetings to discuss the anti-poverty strategy? Which council insists on using its own employees for maintenance work and refuses to give outside contractors a fair chance to compete? Which council uses council tax payers' money to fund the appointment of someone called a "black sexual health project worker"? Is it Islington, Lambeth, Southwark, or perhaps Liverpool in the 1980s? No, it is Suffolk county council under a Labour and Liberal Democrat administration; the same council that claims that the resources given to it by central Government are so grossly inadequate.

Will the hon. Member for North-West Durham confirm that each of the points that I have mentioned represents the priorities of new Labour throughout the country, or will she for the first time issue a ringing condemnation from the House of what her party is doing to the people of Suffolk?

The tragedy is that Suffolk is under a political leadership that is so ruthless, doctrinaire and dogmatic that the councillors' attitudes are even starting to affect the officers. In a Suffolk county council education department publication, printed and circulated at council tax payers' expense, a Suffolk county council official—not an elected councillor, but an official—described the Government as

"some manic stage manager"

who

"keeps changing the set and the scripts."

That officer went on to describe the local government review as "nonsense" and attacked privatisation as the cause of

"fragmentation at all levels of government".

My voters in South Suffolk who enjoy cheaper gas, a better telephone service and all the other improvements that privatisation has brought about, might think that it was worth a bit of "fragmentation". The council has so persuaded its senior officers to respond to its political agenda that they are using official publications, circulated at council tax payers' expense, to spout party political propaganda.

My second theme is the new Labour sleaze. Over the past three and a half years, Suffolk county council has systematically set out to starve rural areas of resources in order to reward its political allies in the towns with ever more expensive new toys. I reiterate that the county council's policies had the full and complete endorsement of the Liberal Democrat party in that matter.

The thrust of the council's transport policy is based on that systematic discrimination against villages and the countryside; spending on roads in rural areas is cut so that the budget can be switched to pay for schemes in the towns. The budget for the footpaths that were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds has almost completely disappeared.

Perhaps the council believes that, if a Labour Government are elected, Parliament will immediately approve a statutory right to roam, and that, when everyone has a legal right to blunder across fields and gardens, through hedges and over ditches, footpaths will no longer be needed at all. I think that it is more likely that, as the council's committee chairmen ride around in their cars and claim their travel allowances, they simply do not recognise or even think about the crucial importance of footpaths in a county such as Suffolk.

And bull bars.

My right hon. Friend makes an important point, to which we would return if there were time.

It is not only transport policy that discriminates against the rural areas: charges have been introduced for school transport for over-16-year-olds, which is not a problem for residents in the middle of Ipswich but, my goodness, is a big issue in the rural heartlands where traditional Suffolk families are brought up.

My third and final theme is the sheer incompetence of Suffolk county council. It is not surprising, perhaps, that a council as doctrinaire as this—with such a highly political agenda—should also be incompetent, because such councils nearly always are. But it is worth emphasising just how taxpayers' money is being thrown away. Charitably, I shall select an example of when a project was chosen in a rural area—in Brantham, a small village in my constituency that is close to my home in East Bergholt.

The village was the site of a bizarre traffic experiment, introduced at a cost of £36,000, whereby the road was subject to barriers. They created a dangerous traffic flow, and near-misses and minor accidents became an almost daily occurrence. Pollution increased dramatically as cars slowed down, and my constituents could not get in and out of their driveways. The experiment was an unmitigated disaster from the day it was introduced, and everyone except the county council recognised it. The council did not recognise it because, with its typically arrogant disregard for public opinion and the merits of argument, it refused even to come and see the system in operation. A further £5,000 was wasted tinkering with the scheme, and finally—after almost two years—it was abandoned. The cost of removal amounted to a further £10,000, so over £50,000 in total was involved.

Suffolk county council has become a byword for incompetence, sleaze and political dogma. On 1 May, the voters of Suffolk will have a chance to put an end to all that. Also on 1 May, the voters of Britain will have a chance to avoid imposing the same fate on the whole country.

I am grateful for the chance to take part in today's debate. You will be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that, unfortunately, there are no Liberal Democrat Members representing Suffolk yet, but it was quite clear from the anti-Liberal Democrat remarks of the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) that he at least expects his seat to fall to us next time round. That is the most likely result of the forthcoming general election in that constituency.

I wish to start by referring to some of the points made by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring), including his declaration that he wished dialogue to take place between himself and the county council. He flashed before the House this morning a headline from his local paper, and among my papers this morning is a headline that says:

"Tory MPs declare war on council".

If the hon. Gentleman feels that that is the right way to start a dialogue, his electors may have a different idea.

The hon. Gentleman completely misses the point. There has been no dialogue for four years, and we—as Suffolk Members of Parliament—have had to put up with that. To criticise Suffolk Members a matter of weeks before the county council elections for rightly reacting with anger to what has gone on reflects an attitude of mind that is wholly inappropriate, and shows the hon. Gentleman's complete lack of understanding of the circumstances in Suffolk.

That in no way answers the point I was making, which is that the hon. Gentleman's approach was no way to start dialogue. He mentioned, as did the hon. Member for South Suffolk, that there had been "scaremongering" by the county council. It is worth drawing the House's attention to three points. First, before the planning figures for what might happen to the council tax this year were produced by the county council, all the figures on which the council based its assumptions were checked with the Secretary of State and agreed by him. Secondly, the local auditors, Coopers and Lybrand, confirmed in a management letter that working out what the costs might be was a prudent and sensible way to plan the local council budget.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there is an enormous difference between paid officers doing their homework behind the scenes and looking at the various permutations that may exist, depending on the money that the council receives, and whipping up a huge amount of emotion and terrifying the whole education establishment of Suffolk?

That intervention illustrates once again the way in which Conservatives like to plan—in back rooms, behind the scenes and without consulting the public. What a terrible way to perform. What a dereliction of their duty that they should try to hide from the public what might happen. They are trying not to give the public any right to take part in discussions about the future. It is absurd that they should try to plan in that way without involving the public, and it is quite the wrong way to act in government—whether it be at central or local level.

The third, and perhaps most telling, point—which concerns the so-called "scaremongering"—was that Conservative members of the council agreed with what was happening and that it was a prudent way to plan. Those members thought that this was the right way to look at what might happen to the budget in the year ahead. Are Conservative Members saying that their party colleagues on the county council were—to quote the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds—"crying wolf" and "scaremongering"? Conservative members of the council agreed to the plan.

The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds was not pleased that some of his local papers were turning against the Conservatives, which shows that the papers have been forced to conclude that what the county council was saying had a lot of sense behind it. All I can say is that, if he is worried about his local papers turning against the Conservatives for once, he should try being a Liberal Democrat. We know what it is like to have Tory-supporting newspapers saying the most awful nonsense about us, time after time. If he is worried that a Conservative-run paper—as I have no doubt it is—in his area has suddenly found that the truth is so clear that it has to complain about what is happening to local people under a Conservative Government, he should experience what is happening elsewhere.

I have one point of agreement with Conservative Members. It is true that Labour is promising no more, and shame on it for that. It is also true that, although Conservative party members may not want more money for local government, they do want—they have, as I have said before in the House, made it their official policy—the cap to be lifted. They are right, and it is to the shame of this Government that they have not gone along with their own members' requirement in the motion that was passed by the Conservative party conference.

I wish to refer to the council's efficiency, or lack of it. Since the new administration took over in Suffolk three or four years ago, there have been no less than £40 million-worth of cuts. Some of those, sadly and inevitably, have been real cuts in services, but a large proportion have been efficiency savings. There always will be some efficiency savings that any large organisation can make, year on year, and that has been done effectively by this administration.

If Conservative Members are now saying that the present county council is inefficient, how much more inefficient must the previous Conservative administration have been before those £40 million-worth of cuts were made? The Conservatives controlled Suffolk for more than 100 years, yet at the end of that period the new Liberal and Labour administration has been able to make massive efficiency savings over the short four years that it has been in power. I am delighted that Conservative Members are saying that the new administration is still inefficient, in so far as that must mean that they condemn out of hand the previous Conservative administration, which was rightly thrown out of office four years ago.

You may remember, Mr. Deputy Speaker—no one else does—that on the Order Paper the debate is entitled, "Revenue support grant for Suffolk county council". Conservative Members have barely mentioned the revenue support grant for the county council, for which the Government are responsible. They have been interested only in how the county council behaves and whether its policies are efficient and sensible. That is not the Government's responsibility. I do not know how the Secretary of State can be expected to reply on behalf of the county council. Had Conservative Members remarked on the revenue support grant, he could have replied because that is what he is responsible for, but he cannot be expected to reply on behalf of the county council.

The only time that the revenue support grant was mentioned was when the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds said how good it was and how well Suffolk and his constituents had done compared to other parts of the country. It is clear from his figures that his constituents have not done well compared with real cost increases. That was an interesting change from the way in which Tory Members have hitherto spoken in the House about the settlements in their areas.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for an hon. Member from another part of the country, who as far as I know has not previously shown any interest in Suffolk, to take up so much time in the debate that my hon. Friends who represent Suffolk and who requested the debate will be denied the opportunity to speak?

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it is in order; otherwise, it would have been ruled out of order.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds certainly said that the revenue support grant for Suffolk was good for his electorate. I should have thought that his electorate would have felt that their interests were best represented by their Members of Parliament coming to the House to fight for more Government money for Suffolk. That is what Members of Parliament for Suffolk, or at least those on the Conservative Benches, have so far failed to do.

If I lived in Suffolk and heard the debate today, with Conservative Members of Parliament for Suffolk failing to request a penny more from the Government in this debate and saying that, in spite of the £40 million in cuts in the past four years, the Government were doing well by Suffolk, I would make sure that I did not vote Tory at the next general election.

It is clear from the speech of the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) that he does not understand Suffolk. There is no doubt that Conservative Members of Parliament for Suffolk make out the strongest possible case for their constituents and their county. They just do not do so in the ridiculous, high-profile and propagandist way that the present administration is doing. The hon. Gentleman talks about cuts. As far as I am concerned, cuts mean that one does not get next year what one thought one ought to get. The general public tend to feel that cuts mean that they will not get next year what they got this, which is completely untrue—pick a figure, and if one does not get the figure one wants, it is described as a cut.

I shall be as brief as possible as this is a short debate. I am delighted that we have had this debate, but I speak almost more in sorrow than in anger. I am sorry about the way in which the relationship between Suffolk county council, the House and Conservative Members of Parliament representing Suffolk has deteriorated in recent years.

Central Government have always allocated budgets to local government. It has to be that way. The Chancellor has to be in control. One never knows what might happen to the national economy, and that has always been so. In the past, local authorities accepted the money that they were given—some years they got more and some years less—and got on with it. That was until Liverpool city council started to do ridiculous things a few years ago, and the Greater London council followed suit.

Sadly, that tendency seems to have spread and, since the Liberal and Labour administration took over in Suffolk, it also seems to have spread to our county, doing great damage to the county, to its standing here and in Whitehall, and certainly to the relationship with Conservative Members of Parliament, which had been good. I want that relationship to be repaired if possible, but I fear that it will not happen under the present administration.

I must make two points. The first is the way in which the education budget was treated this year. Despite what the hon. Member for Newbury, who speaks for the Liberal party, and the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Cann) say, there is no doubt that a massive, unfair and grotesque campaign was mounted about the state of education this year. Primarily, it has had nothing to do with the amount of funding that Suffolk has received, but much more to do with pure propaganda on behalf of the councillors who are in charge.

Recently, I attended a meeting of teachers, parents and governors in Stowmarket. I went to talk to them about education and I thought that they would want to talk about the performance of our Suffolk schools, of streaming, selection, opting out or not opting out, of class sizes and of the drugs problem in Suffolk, which sadly is growing. I thought that they would want to discuss those things, but not a bit of it—all they wanted to talk about was more money, more money, more money. We all know that they are not going to get more money, whoever is in central Government. The Labour party will not give them more and that is for sure. I wanted to talk to them, not about money but about all the other issues involved. They did not want to talk about those, and I was surprised.

What saddened me most was the way in which a large number of the people in the audience seemed to have bought the story being sold by the chairman of the education committee. He was present at the meeting, slumped in his seat for three quarters of it, until he finally made his presence known and delivered a ridiculous party political broadcast on behalf of his party as the audience's eyes glazed over. What a farce, and how unfair.

Like all hon. Members, I try to keep in touch with my constituents, with their problems and with education. To go to such a meeting and to hear nothing other than, "Yah! Boo! Give us more money," was appalling. In fairness to the audience, it was because they had been so deceived by the administration and made so anxious about what might happen that they felt that that was the way to go about things. As we all know, the truth has proved different.

Obviously, everyone wants more money for every possible department. We understand that. We have problems with our hospitals in Suffolk and we want more money spent on roads—social services no doubt want more money. It is someone's responsibility to carve up that cake and it has to be done centrally in the House. It will be done that way whoever is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and whichever party is in power. If local government cannot behave more sensibly when it is given a fair distribution, we are on the rocky road to all sorts of problems.

My second point is on the balance between spending in rural and in urban areas. A quarter of Ipswich is in my constituency—I share the town with the hon. Member for Ipswich. We have a park-and-ride scheme along the Norwich road, and bus lanes have been put in to establish the scheme. An enormous sum is being spent on it—money that could be spent more sensibly in other parts of Ipswich or in rural areas. The scheme will prove a complete white elephant. A bus lane already goes right the way down the Norwich road, but I rarely see buses in it. All it has done is produce queues of cars.

At the Suffolk county council transport committee meeting yesterday, someone told me that it is not a park-and-ride scheme at all, but just a bus lane. That is news to me and to the Secretary of State for Transport. I suspect that it is also news to Ipswich borough council, because it thought that it was on the way to a park-and-ride scheme. I think that the county council has discovered that there will not be enough money for the park, so we are just going to get the ride. There are massive queues of people in cars because of the bus lanes. Those bus lanes are there so that people can leave their cars and get on the buses, but they have nowhere to leave their cars.

What a ridiculous scheme, and what a huge waste of money. Does that not sum up the incompetence of the county council, the difference between rural and urban projects and the fact that the council is incapable of getting its priorities right and looking after the interests of the people whose money it is spending?

As I am conscious that time is short, I will bring my remarks to a close simply by saying that I sincerely believe, with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring), that the county council's performance has deteriorated hugely in the past few years. More important, its understanding of how to behave and communicate and of the relationship between it and the House has gone badly wrong. I believe that that will change only when we change the administration. I hope very much that on I May we will get this lot out and a Conservative administration back in county hall, so that we can get back to common sense and a decent deal for the people of Suffolk.

We have heard much about the county as a whole, but parts of Waveney in north Suffolk are different. Suffolk is a big and varied county. There is a Suffolk identity but there are distinctly different areas in Waveney that need to be highlighted.

For many years, we were covered by Norfolk, not Suffolk, ambulances. We are still part of the Norfolk and Waveney training and enterprise council. Most of my constituents listen to BBC Radio Norfolk rather than to Radio Suffolk. Most people go to the Norfolk, show, few to the Suffolk show. We often look to Norfolk but we are proud to be part of Suffolk. That is why I share some of the concern of my hon. Friends about how the county council has behaved in the past four years.

There is a remoteness about Ipswich and events there that alienates people in my part of Suffolk. There is a feeling that big brother knows best. That is illustrated graphically by the traffic exhibition in Bungay, which is as far as one can get in Suffolk from Ipswich. To solve a heavy lorry problem in Bungay, the county council proposed to route several hundred heavy goods vehicles a day through the villages of Flixton and Homersfield on a minor road. It was only after an outcry from the villagers that it reluctantly agreed to public consultation and an exhibition. That shows that big brother knows best unless people make a fuss and fight back.

We have spent much time talking about education—rightly, because it uses a lot of the taxpayers' money that the county council spends. I use the county's education in a big way; I have four children, all in local authority schools. It was as a parent that I first became alarmed by the circulars from schools, heads and, in some cases, governors. Later, my constituents alerted me as their Member of Parliament to the threats and scares about the alleged budget cuts. If the authors of the circulars had waited, they could have campaigned on the facts.

The hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Cann) said that the county council had always campaigned like that, regardless of who was in control. The difference is that, this time, heads and some school governors were publicly behind the campaign. It was that which alarmed parents. They believe their head teachers in the same way that patients believe doctors before they will believe the facts given by the Government.

Some years ago, when the scaremongering campaign started, I asked the Government what were the reserves in school funds in Suffolk. Suffolk had the fifth highest in the country. It is facts we need, not scaremongering, but that has been a hallmark of the county. That authority has urbanised the entire county council, placed kerbstones in most rural areas, and put a blanket 30 mph speed limit in villages. While 30 mph may be right for some villages, the blanket approach is wrong. Big brother knows best.

Finally, why does the county council think that it can run all the social services homes in Suffolk much better than the private sector, when the costings clearly show that the private sector delivers the best service? The administration of the county council has been a disaster; the sooner it goes, the better.

I shall be brief because the Secretary of State wants to speak. As it is his county, he wants to make a substantial contribution. I want to be fair and allow him to do so.

However, fairness has not been prevalent in the debate, and that has saddened me. It is our role to recognise that local government is the legitimate tier of government for education, social services and so on. Inevitably and rightly, local government is much closer to local ambitions and anxieties than we are. It has a job to do. It is our job to question and challenge, but we must recognise that councils are elected to do a job, and that we should support them in doing it.

I was concerned about the ignorance of some Conservative Members of where local government finance has gone in recent years. No Conservative Member—I say this particularly to the hon. Member for Central Suffolk (Mr. Lord)—mentioned the change in local government following the incredible mess left by the poll tax. That led to 80 per cent. of local government spending being determined by central Government. It hasnow led the Secretary of State to acknowledge that that is a ridiculous way to fund local government.

For the past two years, the Government have signalled that they wish to begin to put more of the burden on local council tax payers. That is why they made it clear in the Red Book after the Budget that, over the next three years, local government will be expected to raise an additional £4 billion to meet the requirements that the Government identify for local government spending.

It is no good hon. Members ranting about how local government sets its priorities. We allow it little latitude in setting them, as the hon. Member for Central Suffolk said. Most priorities are set in the House by the Secretary of State and approved by the House.

The debate on education has been interesting. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) wanted it both ways, but that is all right. I wondered whether he was really saying that the local authority should not prioritise or expand nursery education. I hope that he can reassure his constituents that he supports high-quality nursery education. All the evidence shows that that is the best way to ensure that children get the best start in education. The impact of nursery vouchers on the ability of local education authorities to ensure that all children get the opportunity of high-quality nursery education will in many counties be severe. It is no wonder that they are making sure that local people understand the importance of using nursery vouchers in local nursery classes.

I was asked some questions by the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo). I, too, represent a largely rural constituency with limited urban occupation, so I have some knowledge of the problem of identifying how most effectively to support people in rural areas. He asked about our spending plans. I am sorry that he has not attended previous debates in which I have made clear our position on local government spending. If we win the next general election, we shall be left with levels of Government debt unprecedented since the war.

Given that, and given increasing pressure on inflation, we do not say that what the Government spend is adequate. We say that we are not prepared to put additional burdens on the British taxpayer. The tax burden on the ordinary British family is 3 per cent. higher than it was in 1979 as a result of the Government's incompetence. Therefore, we cannot expand the amount that we can do.

Other hon. Members have noted that all the county's transport policies are policies approved and supported by the Government. This year, Suffolk county council will spend £8 million more than the Government say that it should spend on education, yet Conservative Members complain. Over the past four years, Suffolk has spent £50 million more than the Government have said that it should. This year, education is the only service that is being protected; every other service is having to be cut to meet the limit.

It is up to all of us to ensure that local people receive the best services available. We must trust local government to decide its priorities. Local councils will be put to the test this year, just as we will, and the people of Suffolk will decide which party they want to guard their interests.

The most important way in which local authorities and Members of Parliament can work is together. I have always believed in that, and in the past I have been able to participate, with colleagues from other political parties, in discussions with the Government of the time on the issues affecting Suffolk.

I was surprised at the beginning of the new Labour-Liberal coalition when Suffolk county council told me that, in future, political bosses, not officials, would respond to all letters. I was told that I would not receive replies to letters on behalf of constituents, who would be contacted by the local authority. The Member of Parliament who had raised the case would ultimately receive a copy of letters that had been written to constituents. The council began to behave like any other county council only after I pointed out to it very firmly that its behaviour would have to be raised with the authorities of the House of Commons as being entirely inappropriate. That was a bad beginning for the relationship between Members of Parliament and the county council.

I can therefore excuse the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) for not understanding that the situation in Suffolk was different from that in any other council that I know. The council started with the intention of having no dialogue with Members of Parliament, which perhaps explains why I have received no request from it to bring its officials and members from all parties to lobby the Government, as other councils do. I have not received a request from the council to talk to its members. I have not received any requests from the county council except requests that were so party political that it was difficult to take them seriously.

I understand why the motion has been tabled today. It is not just a general criticism of a party structure with which my hon. Friends disagree, but a particular criticism of a specific county council which has behaved in an entirely unSuffolk-like way. It never happened with previous administrations, which always sought to act on an all-party basis over matters affecting the county. I was lucky enough to be able to work in that way, even with people who, as candidates, had fought me in previous elections.

The education standard spending assessment increase in Suffolk has been significant, as has the overall increase.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) is in a strange position: he is the Secretary of State and, as such, I thought that he would respond to the debate. But he is also a Suffolk Member of Parliament. Are you quite clear about which role he is currently playing?

I do not take responsibility for what an hon. Member says, whether he is a Secretary of State or the humblest of Back Benchers. All I am concerned about is whether the contribution is relevant to the subject in hand.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Last year, Suffolk had an education SSA increase of 4.1 per cent., which compares with the shire county average of 3.5 per cent. It received more than the average; it did so in the context of an official Opposition party which says that it would not increase the amount of money available were it ever to gain power. Suffolk county council has therefore received significantly more of an agreed amount of money than its neighbours and significantly more than the average, which contrasts with a county-wide determination to have a 5 per cent. cut.

When I, as Secretary of State—

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

No. The hon. Gentleman did not give way and I shall not give way.

When I, as Secretary of State, saw the situation, I told the county council that it could not possibly know what sort of settlement would be made, because I had not decided on it; I was still discussing it. When Opposition Members suggest that I agreed the county council figures, that is precisely the opposite of the truth. I told the county council directly and without question that no decisions about the figures had been made. The county council still insisted that there would be 5 per cent. cuts.

The results showed—as the council knew perfectly well that they would—an improvement in its position owing to the Government's determination to protect the education budget. Having said how desperate the cuts would be for education, the county council did not rush to spend the money on education in the previous year. It did not do so, although it was able to spend significant sums—above £10 million, and well up on what it had expected. It did not spend the money on education, but took some of it for other things.

I am surprised that my hon. Friends did not mention the proliferation of large placards throughout the constituency that have suburbanised the area. Every village has a large notice that not only states its name, but has yellow backing and three white bars. Many of the placards have the word "village" on them in case people do not realise that it is a village. All the placards were paid for out of the money—more than £2 million. The money did not need to be spent in that way; our schools could have done with it.

This is an urbanising county. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Cann) said that the chairman of the county council's education committee came from a country constituency. In fact, he represents the almost entirely built-up area of Stowmarket. The hon. Gentleman's knowledge of the county is the same as the Labour party's knowledge of county life—that is the problem that we face in the county of Suffolk.

The comments of the hon. Member for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong) on nursery education were scandalous. She evidently supports the county council's policy of threatening parents and saying that, if they choose to use their vouchers anywhere other than in the county council's nursery schools, they will be less likely to be able to send their children to the primary schools of their choice. Such bribery is unacceptable in a free society.

The incompetence of Suffolk county council can be clearly shown. In June 1996, Suffolk employed 21.3 staff per thousand of its population, compared with a shire county average of 19.3. The figure for Lincolnshire, a similar council, is 16.6 and for Norfolk, 19.3. Even Berkshire does better than Suffolk, with 21.3 staff per thousand of its population.

Opposition Members talk about a competent council administration. The fact of the matter is that the county council has suffered from the continuous internal strife between the chairman of the county council education committee and the leader of the council, and that is why there cannot be a common view among hon. Members on both sides of the House to bring to Ministers the concerns of Suffolk—there is not even a common view within the Labour party. The two of them fight like cat and dog and appear at all meetings together so as to ensure that neither says what he has promised not to say.

That makes Suffolk the one county that cannot be properly represented to Government—there is not the necessary dialogue. The dialogue was broken when the present administration came into power. I am sorry that we have had to have this debate, because I want to work with the county council and am prepared to do so under any administration—but it has to be prepared to work with me.

I am pleased to have secured parliamentary time to debate this issue, which will undoubtedly apply to thousands of people throughout the British Isles.

The best way of highlighting the problem is by describing the circumstances surrounding the case of my constituent, Mrs. Ann Weatherby of Brynhailog, Abertafol, Aberdyfi. In 1989, due to her having to retire on the ground of ill health, Mrs. Weatherby applied successfully for invalidity—now incapacity—benefit. She did not wish to relinquish her post as a headmistress, but she had no option but to do so because of her medical condition. In September 1992, she was informed that she would no longer qualify for incapacity benefit when she attained the age of 60—state retirement age—the following January.

I shall pause in Mrs. Weatherby's story for a minute or two to explain the background. The Government's reasoning for incapacity benefit is really an application of the principle of restitutio in integrum—in other words, it is an income replacement benefit that is designed to replace loss of income during working life, and the rate of benefit after state pension age is linked to pension entitlement as part of an interlocking system of contributory benefits.

Mrs. Weatherby's contract of employment and her conditions of service—the national conditions of service applicable to head teachers—would have allowed her to continue in employment until 65. This is therefore a clear case of discrimination which is embodied in United Kingdom law. It is also the crux of my argument, and it will assist us in our detailed consideration of the case and its ramifications if I refer to two recent authorities on this subject.

The two cases that bear directly on the facts of Mrs. Weatherby's case are those of Graham—which is reported in CS27/1991—and Thomas and others v. the Secretary of State for Social Security, which came before the European Court of Justice. At first instance, a social security commissioner ruled that a woman receiving invalidity benefit should not have her benefit reduced when she reached 60, because a man would not have his benefit reduced until he reached 65.

There is a body of European law that outlaws discrimination on the ground of sex. I refer briefly to council directive 79/7/EEC of 19 December 1978 on the progressive implementation of the principle of equal treatment for men and women in matters of social security. Article 4 states:

"The principle of equal treatment that there shall be no discrimination whatsoever on grounds of sex either directly, or indirectly by reference in particular to marital or family status in particular as concerns:

—the scope of the schemes and the conditions of access thereto, —the obligation to contribute and the calculation of contributions,

—the calculation of benefits including increases due in respect of a spouse and for dependants and the conditions governing the duration and retention of entitlement to benefits."

However, in article 7(1), the directive allows member states to exclude from its scope the determination of pensionable age for the purpose of granting old-age and retirement pension

"and the possible consequences thereof for other benefits".

These are the most important words, because they seem to justify legal discrimination in this area.

The Thomas case went to the Court of Appeal, where it was held that the words

"and the possible consequences thereof for other benefits"

had to be construed strictly and in accordance with the Community principle of proportionality. Indeed, any derogation from the equality principle must remain within the limits of what was appropriate and necessary for achieving that aim.

In a case parallel with that of Thomas, a social security commissioner in the Graham case took an important view of the whole matter—interestingly, the commissioner concerned was called Skinner. He looked at the argument advanced by the Secretary of State in Thomas, which was reported in The Times on 22 August 1990. It was contended that Parliament had found it necessary to distinguish between people of working life and those not of working life by reference to the pattern of employment—the working patterns of men and women differ, with women tending to retire at 60 and men at 65—and that, until that pattern changed, income replacement benefit had to be tied to pensionable age. There was a link between the use of pensionable age in connection with retirement pension and its use in connection with other income replacement benefits.

The commissioner rejected that approach. He referred to the Court of Appeal judgment in Thomas in which, as I have said, the court held that the words

"and the possible consequences thereof for other benefits"

had to be construed strictly and in accordance with the Community principle of proportionality. The commissioner quoted from the judgment of Lord Justice Slade, who said:

"Construing the phrase 'and the possible consequences thereof for other benefits' strictly and in accordance with the principle of proportionality, I conclude that it gives Member States authority to prescribe or retain different age limits for men and women when defining the qualifications for entitlement to benefits other than old-age and retirement benefits only when this is a necessary consequence of their having defined the qualifications for entitlement to old-age or retirement benefits by reference to different age limits for men and women and only in a manner which is appropriate to meet this necessity."

The commissioner, rejecting the argument advanced on behalf of the assessing officer, said that he had difficulty accepting the concept of a deemed end of working life and that he could see no reason why invalidity benefit should have a different cut-off point for men and women. He went on to say:

"I have asked myself whether the fixing of pensionable ages—different ages for men and women—requires a special rule relating to invalidity pension which would also discriminate. I cannot see that such is a necessary consequence of Parliament having defined the qualifications for entitlement to retirement pension by reference to different age limits for men and women. I see no objective link … in my view it was not necessary to gear invalidity benefit to retirement age."

Finally, the commissioner went on to consider the issue of invalidity allowance. The claimant was awarded invalidity pension in April 1989 when she was 58 years old. It was argued on her behalf that, if a man had become incapable at the same age as the claimant, he would have been entitled to invalidity allowance. He would have been more than five years away from the pensionable age for men, which is 65, whereas the claimant was not more than five years away from the pensionable age for women, which is 60. The commissioner accepted that argument, and concluded that the claimant was also entitled to invalidity allowance payable at the lower rate.

The commissioner had originally adjourned the hearing of that case to await the outcome of the appeal by the Secretary of State from the decision of the Court of Appeal in Thomas. The Court of Appeal had heard five cases together, collectively known as Thomas. The Court of Appeal held that the discriminatory upper age limit is in breach of the directive on equal treatment in social security. It said that it was not a "possible consequence" of the setting of different pension ages for the granting of old-age or retirement pension and therefore did not escape the requirement that there should be no discrimination. Women were entitled to severe disablement allowance or incapacity allowance, as appropriate, in the same way that a man of the same age would be.

"Halsbury's Laws of England", from which Lord Justice Slade quoted in the Thomas case, states:

"The principle of proportionality requires that the means used to attain a given end should he no more than what is appropriate and necessary to attain that end; in other words, persons may be obliged only to make the least sacrifice consonant with achieving the objective sought.

In order to establish whether a principle of Community law is compatible with the principle of proportionality, it is necessary to establish whether the means it employs to achieve its aim correspond to the importance of the aim and whether those means are necessary in order to achieve it.

Whether a measure is disproportionate or not is not necessarily determined by reference to the individual position of any one particular group of operators. The principle of proportionality applies also to national measures."

In his judgment, Lord Justice Slade said:

"Thus, even apart from the inconclusive nature of the statistics placed before the court, the, as yet unknown, impact of the Barber decision was a further reason why the sex discrimination involved in sections 36(4)(d) and 37(5) could be justified by reference to the assumed working life of a woman as opposed to a man.

A general assumption of that kind, which took no account of individual circumstances and made without adequate factual basis, itself discriminated against women.

The onus had to fall on the secretary of state to show that the designation of different age limits for men and women, when defining the qualifications for entitlement to SDA and ICA, was a necessary consequence of Parliament's having defined the qualifications for entitlement to old-age and retirement benefits by reference to different age limits for men and women."

For the reasons that he had given earlier, his Lordship concluded that he did not think that that onus had been, or could be, discharged. Accordingly, the Secretary of State's appeal was dismissed.

The Secretary of State then appealed to the House of Lords, which in turn referred the case to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling. That court eventually held in favour of the Secretary of State. It is interesting that the Government were able to put aside their disdain for, and distrust of, the European Court of Justice and apply to it in this case when they found it convenient to do so.

Whatever financial repercussions might result from changing the law, I believe that there is a moral imperative to do so. To put it another way: what price justice, fairness and decency? Surely there is not too high a price on those principles, which I think should be uppermost in the thinking of any Government Department—especially the Department of Social Security. How can any Government pay lip service to the principle of equality and stand by this iniquitous position?

The Minister may respond by telling me that matters of social security are outside the scope of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, by virtue of section 51. I am fully aware of that fact. However, the EC directive to which I referred lays down certain minima that are expected of member states in awarding statutory social security benefits. I believe that the Thomas decision is unsatisfactory because it upholds sexual discrimination and, therefore, the law should be changed. I believe also that it is abhorrent that women should be treated so unfairly with the full sanction of the law.

In the case of my constituent, Mrs. Weatherby appealed the decision, and was initially successful in that her payment was restored in full. However, consequent on the Thomas decision, the position was reversed, and Mrs. Weatherby was told to appeal to a social security tribunal. She did so, and I appeared before a tribunal—unpaid—on her behalf on 28 January this year. Although we received a very sympathetic hearing, the tribunal considered itself bound by the Thomas decision and, therefore, could not find in my constituent's favour.

That is why I applied for the debate today. By highlighting this problem, I believe that we can initiate a serious debate that will lead to a change in the law. I am indebted to my constituent, Mrs. Weatherby, for her determination and perseverance and for her resolve to fight for a principle, despite the fact that she was unlikely to gain personally. I applaud her tireless efforts and her selfless attitude. The Equal Opportunities Commission and the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux have assisted me in highlighting the argument.

In opening this important debate, I said that I believed that the situation would affect thousands of women throughout the British Isles. This morning, I received a telephone call from a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Dafis), Mrs. Morfidd Strange of Gelli Aur, Commins Coch, Aberystwyth, who told me about her situation. She was also a teacher who suffered extreme facial pain and was forced to retire early through ill health. When she was awarded incapacity benefit some years ago, the officer assured her that it would be paid until she was 65. Recently, and without warning, she received a letter saying that the benefit would cease when she attained the age of 60. Her weekly income from that source summarily dropped from £76.33 to £40.72. She also told me that she knew of at least three similar cases in the Aberystwyth area alone. Therefore, I conclude that the problem is widespread.

I am sure that we all believe in equal treatment for people of different sexes. I think that this situation is a glaring omission which must be put right. I invite the Minister to state today whether that area of policy will be reviewed. Failure to do so would condone unfairness and discrimination—which can never be the aim of any Government in any civilised society.

This is only the start of the campaign, and I urge any future Labour Government to make a commitment to equal rights, such as evidenced by Labour's worthy campaign to secure greater female representation in the House. I believe that it is also incumbent on any future Labour Government to put that principle into practice and end this iniquitous and offensive discrimination, whatever the cost.

The issue that we are debating concerns the rules for the payment of invalidity benefit to people over pension age. Until April 1995, invalidity benefit was the main social security provision for sick and disabled people who were incapable of work in the long term. Hon. Members will recall that we overhauled that benefit provision in April 1995 and replaced invalidity benefit with the new incapacity benefit.

I think that it is important to ensure that we do not lose sight of the background to that significant improvement. The rapid growth in recent years in both expenditure on invalidity benefit and in the number of people receiving it was beyond dispute. if left unchecked, spending on that benefit alone was forecast to reach £10 billion by the end of the century; yet there was no evidence of any deterioration in the health of the nation as a whole—no wonder concerns were growing that invalidity benefit might be going to people for whom it was never intended. No responsible Government could ignore those developments.

That is why we replaced invalidity benefit with incapacity benefit in April 1995. We have provided a more objective test of people's ability to work, to ensure that benefit is focused on those who are genuinely incapable. The changes ensure a fair system for people who are unable to work that is also fair to the taxpayer. These reforms are a major success, and are on course to reduce expenditure by £2.3 billion a year in the long term.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) for the energy that he has devoted to pursuing this specific case, and I congratulate him on securing this Adjournment debate. His interest in these matters is such that my officials had no difficulty identifying the case that he wished to raise. I am grateful to him for confirming the specifics of that case, and I welcome the opportunity to debate the issue. Having examined Mrs. Weatherby's case, I am satisfied that her benefit claim has been handled correctly by the Benefits Agency. The hon. Gentleman may find it useful if I outline the background to the rules that have led to the decision in Mrs. Weatherby's case.

Under the invalidity benefit scheme that existed before the introduction of incapacity benefit in April 1995, payment of benefit could continue for up to five years beyond the state pension age. However, for people over pension age, the amount of benefit paid was based on the rate of retirement pension to which they would be entitled if they had claimed it instead. That meant that invalidity benefit changed to the pension rate, as the hon. Gentleman said, at the age of 60 for women and 65 for men.

Unlike invalidity benefit, the amount of retirement pension to which people are entitled depends on their overall national insurance contribution record throughout their working life. That is why people who chose to stay on invalidity benefit found that it went down after they reached pension age, if they had not paid enough national insurance contributions to qualify for a full-rate retirement pension. That is what happened in Mrs. Weatherby's case.

I should explain that that rule simply put such people in the same position as those who had been working immediately before reaching retirement age. That is clearly right, as to do otherwise would have placed pensioners who chose to remain on invalidity benefit at an unfair advantage over those receiving their retirement pension.

We have always believed that those rules complied with European equal treatment law. In particular, directive 79/7/EEC on equal treatment in social security specifically allows different pension ages for men and women, along with the possible consequences for other benefits. However, on 1 April 1992, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, a social security commissioner decided that such different treatment of men and women was not permitted by the directive, and that invalidity benefit in payment to women should not be changed to the pension rate when they reached the age of 60.

The Secretary of State and the chief adjudication officer jointly appealed against the social security commissioner's decision to the Court of Appeal. As a result, the increased rate of invalidity benefit awarded to women after the age of 60 was suspended by the Secretary of State pending the outcome of the appeal and clarification of the law.

The Government acknowledged that, while the appeal was outstanding, this area of the law remained unsettled, and were sensitive to the concerns of the women affected. That is why we decided not to impose the suspension of the increased benefit in cases of hardship. Mrs. Weatherby was one of a number of women who were allowed to continue receiving the higher rate of benefit awarded as a result of the commissioner's decision, even though that decision remained the subject of an appeal.

In January 1994, the Court of Appeal decided to refer the case to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on questions of European law relevant to the case. The European Court of Justice delivered its ruling on 11 August 1995. That ruling fully supported the Government's position and confirmed that the linking of invalidity benefit rules to state pension age was permitted by European law.

The case was formally disposed of by the Court of Appeal in December 1995. By that time, invalidity benefit had been replaced by the new incapacity benefit, and those receiving it had transferred to the new benefit. Following the European Court's decision, the Benefits Agency undertook to review those cases where an increased amount of invalidity benefit was—as we now know—incorrectly awarded, following the commissioner's decision in April 1992.

Once those cases had been reviewed by an adjudication officer, in line with the court's decision, it followed that there was no longer any legal entitlement to the increased invalidity benefit. Accordingly, payments that were being made on the grounds of hardship automatically ceased.

I set out those points clearly to the hon. Gentleman, as that is precisely the position that applied to Mrs. Weatherby. I emphasise that the increased money paid to people in that position was based on a decision that was later held by the European Court to be incorrect. The money has therefore been overpaid. I can, however, reassure the hon. Gentleman that we will not take any action to recover those overpayments from his constituent or any others who were involved.

I appreciate the Minister's detailed response. It is a principle of social security law that, if the applicant has not fundamentally misled the agency, there is no ground for it to claim repayment, but I hear what the Minister says.

The hon. Gentleman is right in his interpretation of social security law. I stress that, in the circumstances, the money was overpaid, but that the Government will not seek to recover it.

The hon. Gentleman noted that the European Court ruled in Thomas that the different upper age limit breached European law. My response is that the Thomas case concerned non-contributory severe disablement allowance. The Graham case was decided by the European Court after the Thomas case, and the court held that the linking of contributory benefit to pension age was permitted by the European equal treatment directive.

Invalidity benefit and its replacement, incapacity benefit, are contributory benefits designed to replace earnings during periods of sickness. We believe that it is reasonable to limit or, as with incapacity benefit, to cease paying such a benefit when people reach an age where they are no longer required to work. Once a person has reached pension age, we believe that retirement pension or a benefit paid at the equivalent rate is appropriate.

The Minister is generous in giving way again. The point at issue in the Weatherby case and the other cases to which I referred is that, under the national conditions of service, teachers are entitled to work until age 65. The Minister referred to people being

"no longer required to work."

There is a requirement to work until 65. It is a choice, of course, but it is a standard condition of service in the teaching profession. That distinguishes those cases.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. Sadly, however, for whatever reason, his constituent was unable to work. That is the key fact that the law and the Department of Social Security should take into account.

Income-related benefits would remain available for people who subsequently found themselves without sufficient income or other resources. The Government have made additional sums available to poorer pensioners who have no means of support other than the state pension. That is to protect people, especially poorer pensioners, on low incomes.

Linking the payments of invalidity benefit to people who have reached pension age to the retirement pension rate was not a new rule. It operated under successive Governments and was a long-established principle in the national insurance system as a necessary consequence of the different retirement ages for men and women.

The European Court of Justice ruling has confirmed that the United Kingdom may retain those rules linked to pension age, but in the longer term, as I am sure hon. Members are aware, the state pension age for men and women will be equalised at age 65. The change will not be fully implemented until 2020, as it is being phased in gradually from 2010. When it is fully implemented, there will no longer be any difference in benefit provision for men and women. That meets, at least in part, the hon. Gentleman's concern about sex discrimination. Equalisation is the Government's policy and will be achieved by 2020.

Finally, I again congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate and on the diligence with which he has pursued the case of Mrs. Weatherby, his constituent, including attending a social security appeal tribunal. Clearly, he has well served his constituent. I hope that my remarks, which may not satisfy him in full, will explain to him and to the House why the Government reached the conclusion they did in the case of his constituent.

This debate is very timely, coming on the day after the county council's budget meeting, and also the day after publication of "Better Value for Money in Social Services", of which more later.

On any view, the budget in East Sussex has been a moving target again this year. Across the whole range of spending—including spending on social services—we have seen the Liberal Democrat administration indulge in its usual mixture of scaremongering, blatant party politicking, and plain ineptitude. The technique is to hype up a range of possible so-called cuts in spending in order to antagonise and worry the maximum number of interest groups and individuals. When they understandably react, an attempt is made to blame the wicked Government.

For education, for example, East Sussex was given a generous funding increase of £7 million this year, but we have seen the spectacle of local Liberal Democrat politicians and paid officers of the council warning schools of the possibility of a £1.2 million cut in their budgets. Indeed, at meetings of governors only just before half-term, head teachers were reporting on possible redundancies among teaching staff. Only during the half-term holiday did the Liberal Democrats choose to unveil their plans, and to accept that there would now be no cuts in schools budgets. What an appalling way to treat professional people, as well as governors and parents.

The story in social services is, if anything, even more dismal. In the past, I have often accused the Liberal Democrats of behaving as if they were in opposition, when they are actually running things, and this year is no exception. In the words of Councillor Michael Tunwell, leader of the Conservative group on the county council, we are in the realms of "virtual reality" budgets. I look forward to the restoration of a competent and sensible Conservative administration on 1 May.

Predictably, the Liberal Democrats try to blame inadequate central Government funding. What are the facts? The standard spending assessment for 1997–98, on which Government grants are based, is to increase by 3.5 per cent., which is a larger increase than has been received by any county. If we assume that the council will spend up to its capping limit, that means a total this year of £305.5 million.

The total resources available for personal social services will amount to £123,322,000 in the current year. That represents no less than an 81 per cent. rise in real terms since 1990–91, compared to an average of 68 per cent. for the whole of England. Even over last year, there was an 8 per cent. increase in cash terms. The total resources available for community care have risen by 100 per cent. in real terms since 199–91.

Some confusion has arisen because of the relationship between the special transitional grant and the SSA, and the switch from the one to the other. The STG was always intended to be temporary, as its name suggests. Also, we must see all those points against a background of dramatically increasing resources for personal social services.

Since 1994, all the new resources given to local authorities for their new community care responsibilities have been distributed according to the SSA formula. It follows that there is no difference between the amount that authorities receive when the additional funds are paid via the STG, and the amount they receive when it is transferred into their baseline resources and paid according to the SSAs. It is possible to identify a small difference in resources for 1994–95, but it is essentially a presentational rather than a real difference. This is a complex issue, and I imagine that my hon. Friend the Minister will want to expand on it.

Actual spending in East Sussex has swung wildly back and forth in recent years. An underspend of £3 million on community care became a £4.22 million overspend in the current year, with the forecast of an overspend of £7.3 million next year.

Is there not a disturbing contradiction between the misleading claim of the chairman of social services that the county is actively encouraging independent care bed provision by the private sector, and the legitimate complaint of the Registered Nursing Home Association that none of the Government-funded increase is being passed on to the private sector? Has not the director of social services admitted to my hon. Friend, and to other colleagues, that private care beds in East Sussex cost much less than beds in care homes run by the county council? He has not grasped the nettle, however.

May I point out to my hon. Friend, on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait)—who, being a Government Whip, is prevented from speaking by parliamentary rules—that the social services department in Lewes is refusing to meet the cost of referring patients to St Augustine's nursing home, thereby putting the management of St Michael's hospice in further jeopardy? Is that not a gross dereliction of responsibility?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I intend to develop those points later in my speech, but let me say now that, even if the Government could be persuaded to give a few million extra pounds to East Sussex, there would be no guarantee that the money would find its way through the system to independent care home owners.

How wisely are these substantial sums being spent at present? East Sussex prides itself on hitting what it calls the Government's "target" for spending in the independent care sector. That, of course, is based on a false premise. The Government set a minimum figure of 85 per cent., but, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made clear:

"The local authority's primary role is as an enabler and commissioner of services."

Is it really sensible for this or any other council to insist on keeping its own part III accommodation going, when it is often aging and unsatisfactory compared with provision in the private sector?

It is clear from correspondence I had last year with Mr. Holbrook, the director of social services, that, at long last, the council has begun to consider seriously whether to transfer provision from the public to the private sector. According to figures that I have seen, there is a disparity of at least £150 per bed per week between what the council spends on its own homes and the amount spent in the private sector. Only last year, Mr. Holbrook accepted that there was a potential net saving of £2 million, which is almost certainly an underestimate.

In any event, that money could be immediately available to meet other pressing needs in my constituency and elsewhere. May we be told what plans the county council now has to transfer provision from one sector to the other? It is significant that there is no provision in the capital programme for upgrading the council's part III accommodation. Does that perhaps show a lack of commitment on the part of the current administration to keep the homes open for much longer? As recently as 11 February, Mr. Holbrook confirmed in a letter to me that the council was engaged in

"a reappraisal of the services which the County Council should continue to provide and a determination of those elements which are no longer needed."

Another issue is the cost of domiciliary care. I am told that, in the private sector, that can be provided at a cost of about £7 an hour, whereas in the public sector the cost is roughly double, at £14 or so. No wonder councils such as Kent—by no means a beacon of Conservative administration—contract out all their home visits, thus making significant savings.

The private care sector is a vital part of the local economy in Sussex. It is said to involve 10,000 jobs. I am indebted to Mr. Terry Fribbens of the East Sussex independent care group and his colleagues for pointing out to me the seriousness of the problem.

In my constituency, a number of homes have already gone out of business. We are told that the social services department is now operating a "one in, one out" policy. One distraught residential home owner contacted me a few days ago to say that he had been told by the department that it was freezing new referrals for at least two months. Stop-start policies of that kind can spell ruin, especially for small operators.

I think I am right in saying that the figures that my hon. Friend has just quoted are for East Sussex as now constituted. As he and my hon. Friend the Minister will know, the Labour-controlled unitary authority of Brighton and Hove will shortly be taken out of East Sussex. Is he aware that all the indications are that that local authority, if controlled by Labour as opposed to the Liberal Democrats—it is a matter of choice which is worse—is threatening to behave in exactly the same way as East Sussex in regard to care homes? That will have an equally damaging effect both on residents and on care home owners.

I suspect that, in those circumstances, my right hon. Friend's worst fears will come to pass.

I hope that my hon. Friend is also aware that Wealden contains the largest district authority in East Sussex, and that the value of residential homes—in terms of the employment they provide, as well as the services they give—are highly prized.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right.

In a recent letter, Councillor Tutt, the chairman of social services, had this to say:

"Crudely this will mean a new client will not be provided with a service until the service to an existing client is terminated (usually on death). Inevitably the impact on the quality of life of people needing services, and on their carers, will be significant indeed. Legal challenges will doubtless materialise, and the businesses of a number of independent providers will be under very real threat."

On any view, those are pretty breathtaking admissions. Indeed, so lacking has financial discipline been under the present administration that, for the first time in living memory, officers of the council have had to take executive action, without prior reference to elected councillors, to try to bring the budget back under control. I hope that that point, among others, will not be lost on those who brought about a Liberal Democrat administration, either by voting for them, or more likely by simply staying at home on polling day.

Councillor Tutt goes on to say:

"Regrettably it will be impossible to avoid hospital bed blocking."

In addition to a self-imposed crisis in social services, East Sussex seems resigned to causing longer waiting lists in our local NHS.

I have long argued that one of the problems with social services in East Sussex is the council's mind set, which can be best summarised as "public sector good—private sector bad". Care home proprietors are incensed that the council, while freezing the weekly rates it pays them, will be adding to its overhead costs by allowing for a 2.5 per cent. rise in pay. On the other hand, the private sector will not be able to afford pay rises for staff, and in some cases will be looking at redundancies. That is not only wholly unfair, but makes no economic sense when the private sector is in a position to provide care that is at least as good as—if not better than—the public sector, and at significantly lower cost.

There are any number of examples of the strange priorities adopted by East Sussex. I have a letter from the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, which expressed considerable concern about the budget proposals in East Sussex.

I was recently visited at my advice surgery by Mrs. Ho, of Communicare, who runs a successful psychiatric day centre. She had been told that her funding from social services is likely to be cut. All that that would achieve is a reduction in the number of days when she should open, with a knock-on effect on hospital admissions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye, who is in her place, has passed me a letter from Mrs. Longbottom, one of her constituents. Mrs. Longbottom relates, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Mr. Wardle), that St. Augustine's nursing home has had to advise 10 of its residents that their contracts are being terminated. How many other examples are there around the county?

The net result of all this is that, despite the very substantial sums being channelled into social services in East Sussex by central Government, the funds are not being spent in the most sensible and cost-effective fashion, and residents of East Sussex will end up with a council tax that has increased by 9 per cent. in one year, or three times the rate of inflation—in other words, poorer services at greater cost. Perhaps that should be the Liberal Democrats' epitaph in East Sussex. Contrast that with the figure of £410, which was the equivalent band D tax level in the last year of a Conservative administration.

It is particularly timely, therefore, that, only yesterday, the Department of Health published "Better Value for Money in Social Services", which asks such pertinent questions as:

"Are we making deliberate, well informed decisions and priority choices about the development of our services?

Have we in place the appropriate tests to demonstrate that resources are being used to maximum effect?

What is the cost differential between placements in our own homes and residential care placements in private and voluntary homes? If our own homes' costs are higher, how do we justify the extra expense?"

With other colleagues, I eagerly await the forthcoming White Paper about the provision of social services. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Minister is in a position to trail any of its likely proposals today. We already know that one issue that will be addressed is the relationship between social services departments' providing, commissioning and regulatory roles.

In East Sussex, the present administration at county hall is characterised by a lack of leadership, a sense of drift and an organisational nightmare. That means that, despite very substantial Government funding, there is a chronic inability to deliver the care that is needed when it is needed to the local people who need it.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) on his success in securing this timely debate on funding for social services in East Sussex. He performs a singularly important function on behalf of his constituents by raising this issue today.

The importance of the issue and the concerns that it is causing people in East Sussex can best be demonstrated by the fact that my right hon. Friends the Members for Hove (Sir T. Sainsbury), for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith), and my hon. Friends the Members for Bexhill and Battle (Mr. Wardle), for Brighton, Kemptown (Sir A. Bowden) and for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait) are present today.

I know, not only from their interventions during the debate but from the way in which they have raised issues in their constituencies, at ministerial level and through the avenues that are open to them in the House, that they are as concerned for their constituents as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne at what is going on, and the way in which a political party in this country is playing grubby political games with the most frail, vulnerable and elderly people in society.

It gives me no pleasure to say that I also have the misfortune—although, fortunately, not on the same scale as my hon. Friend—of having to face the tactics, the cheap ploys and the rather unpleasant soundbites of Liberal Democrats in my constituency. We all know the tactics, some of which were so eloquently described by my hon. Friend.

We know that Liberal Democrats have a handbook that advises their parliamentary candidates what to do. If local councillors see an issue on the agenda for which a popular decision will be taken, Liberal Democrats start a campaign calling for it, and, lo and behold, when the decision is taken, they claim the credit, even though they had little to do with it.

My hon. Friend highlighted what has become a despicable annual game for the Liberal Democrats in this country at this time of the year, in the run-up to the budget. They say, "Let's cause some scare stories. Of course, it won't be our fault—it's the Government's fault—so let's try to score some political points out of it." They then create stories of cuts here and cuts there. They say that there is a lack of funding, but that is not based on any reality or truth. They raise fears simply to try to win votes; then they place the blame for their own inadequacies and failings on someone else.

I should like to put that into perspective by setting the record straight. I make no apology for beginning my reply to my hon. Friend's speech by quoting some impressive statistics to underline the Government's commitment to funding social services fairly, so that the elderly, the frail and the vulnerable in our society get the best deal possible. That is what government is about: providing the funds for the best services, the best care, the best provision, so that the vulnerable and those who are often confused by the political rhetoric that is dredged out of the gutter by the Liberal Democrats, can have peace of mind and security, either in their own home through a domiciliary care package or in a residential or nursing home.

At the start of the 1970s, expenditure on social services in this country was just over £243 million per annum. That increased rapidly through the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, and spending is now more than four times more in real terms than it was in 1971–72. I think that all my hon. Friends will agree that that is an extraordinary record over such a sustained period.

East Sussex council alone has budgeted to spend more than £124 million on social services this year. That is £616 for every man, woman and child in that county. It is almost four times the level of net spending on personal social services by the county council 10 years ago, and more than double its net spending at the beginning of this decade. No area of the council's business has seen such a rapid expansion in its funding from central Government.

The Government have shown their commitment to people who need social care by the provision of almost £8 billion for personal social services in the forthcoming year nationwide. The amount provided for social services in East Sussex has increased from £56 million in 1990–91 to £123 million this year, which is an increase of 81 per cent. in real terms, and is noticeably above the national average increase of 69 per cent. in real terms.

The amount provided by Government for community care has grown from £41 million in 1990–91 to £101 million this year, which is an increase of 100 per cent. in real terms. In case the Liberal Democrats do not understand that, it is 100 per cent. over and above the rate of inflation during that period. Anyone who does not accept that that is a substantial increase is, quite frankly, living in cloud cuckoo land.

Is it not entirely predictable that not one Liberal Democrat is present to hear my hon. Friend's indictment of the party's performance in East Sussex?

As usual, my hon. Friend is extraordinarily perspicacious. He will probably have noted that, seven minutes into the debate, the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) ambled into the Chamber, sat down and listened to the searing indictment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne. He did not like what he heard, because he was ashamed of it, and he scuttled out fairly quickly afterwards.

It is worth pointing out that, when the Government provide a local authority with funding for personal social services, it is based on its standard spending assessment. It is up to local authorities, within their overall capping limits, to prioritise the services on which they want to concentrate more spending. A local authority can, if it wants, spend more on personal social services, education or some of the airy-fairy policies that are more akin to the demands and desires of the Liberal Democrats, even though they bear little resemblance to the desires of real people in the real world.

Cycle paths.

My hon. Friend mentions cycle paths, and I can think of others.

In 1994–95, East Sussex county council underspent on its personal social services SSA by 1.2 per cent. In 1995–96, it spent over its SSA by just 1 per cent., and in 1996–97 it spent over its SSA by a mere 0.3 per cent. It is up to local councillors to take local decisions, but those figures seem small—there was even an underspend in 1994–95—given the crocodile tears they shed and the accusations, smears and scares they try to arouse in East Sussex.

The issue of special transitional grant is complicated, but let me try to put it into perspective. An SSA is set for personal social services, and above that there is the STG, which the Government introduced at the beginning of the community care programme. The STG provides additional money to fund the new community care programme and is ring-fenced, so that 85 per cent. must be spent in the thriving independent sector to protect it from the encroachment of a local authority. At the end of the year, that money goes into the baseline for the SSA, and the next year a further STG is ring-fenced.

That measure was introduced for four years, and I am sure that my hon. Friends will be delighted to know that our right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has extended the provision for a further year from April 1997. That is important. In his speech to the Association of Directors of Social Services, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health said that we see the role of local authorities as enablers, and the private sector as the providers of the services that we need for our frail and elderly people.

Is my hon. Friend aware that a great number of dedicated independent care providers in my constituency are raring to go? They can provide residential care, respite care, domiciliary care packages, day care and the whole gamut of social services provision, but their ambitions are being blocked by the rather old-fashioned attitude of East Sussex social services.

My hon. Friend is right. I pay tribute to the successful, dedicated and thriving private sector, not only in his constituency but in the constituencies of my other hon. Friends. He makes an important point. I commend to East Sussex county council the paper published yesterday, "Better Value for Money in Social Services". The council should study it carefully: the questions in each chapter are not difficult, so it will be able to understand them. Let us hope that it will come up with some constructive answers to enhance its performance in that area.

I am afraid that I must disappoint my hon. Friend, because I shall not be tempted to trail or leak the White Paper that my right hon. Friend will publish shortly. However, as a titbit and an inducement, I will say that the document will be extremely interesting and important. I strongly recommend that my hon. Friends read it, and that they ensure that their constituents are familiar with its contents, because it will be a good read.

My hon. Friend referred to bed blocking. I suspect that East Sussex social services have not made much of the extra funds to be spent on priority services next year to help with bed blocking. East Sussex health authority will receive £428,000, most of which is available to meet pressures arising from delayed discharge from hospital. Those funds are intended to be used to alleviate the most serious pressures and to focus on underlying problems, and they should bring long-term benefits to my hon. Friends' constituents.

In April 1997, East Sussex is to be reorganised. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Sir T. Sainsbury) mentioned, the Brighton and Hove area will become a unitary authority. I should like to say in passing that the Government have increased the provision for personal social services next year nationwide by a further 5 per cent., which brings the total resources up to £8 billion. Both East Sussex county council and the new authority of Brighton and Hove will benefit as a result of that increase.

I have a great deal of sympathy with my right hon. Friend and his constituents. I fear that his suspicions about the way in which the Labour local authority will run services may well prove correct.

I have sought to explain the vast amounts of money that have been made available for personal social services, but how that money is used to provide the best service is equally important. Social services departments are big business with large budgets. It is crucial that they obtain the best value for money to provide the best service.

It is telling that a local authority which complains that it does not have enough money to provide a service has advised me that the cost to a prospective elderly resident of an in-house placement in one of its homes is £355 a week, whereas the maximum cost of an independent residential sector place purchased by East Sussex is £203 a week. The difference is a staggering £152 a week, which has to be met by local council tax payers.

Last year, East Sussex had about 600 residents in its own homes. That represents a potential saving of almost £5 million, if my mathematics is correct. That high-cost difference is sadly not unique to East Sussex. When a local authority is complaining that it does not have enough money, I cannot understand how it can justify spending about £152 a person a week extra just by placing them in its own homes. There are similar problems with domiciliary care. By being competitive, the private sector can and will charge less, as well as incorporating its management costs into the overall charge.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne once again for bringing this important debate to the House, and for representing the interests of his constituents against a local authority controlled by a party that has always been most comfortable when it is scrubbing around in the gutter with its scares and smears. I hope that all my right hon. and hon. Friends will use their undoubted talents to get the message across.

We now move to the final topic this morning.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this matter in the House. I thank the Minister, the right hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), for attending the debate to respond on behalf of his ministerial colleague Baroness Denton, who is in charge of the Department of Agriculture in Northern Ireland.

The farm and countryside enhancement scheme is the most bizarre scheme that I have ever seen coming out of any Department in Northern Ireland. Its acronym is FACES; its result is bound to be red faces in the Department of Agriculture. The purpose of the scheme was to grant-aid for certain environmental improvements in the rural countryside of Northern Ireland, and, according to the press release, it

"provides an excellent opportunity for the farming community to contribute to the development of rural tourism, protect wildlife and preserve the Province's heritage."

The scheme is most unusual, because it was announced by press release on Monday 27 January and closed by press release at 5 pm on Thursday 30 January. The notice of closure appeared on the Friday, so the scheme commenced on 28 January, was ended by press release two days later, and lasted for three working days.

Advertisements inviting applications for the scheme first appeared on 1 February, two days after the scheme had closed. During the period, some of the agricultural offices throughout the six counties that open on a temporary or part-time basis were closed. Applications had to be made to the Department of Agriculture in Deny, so they could not possibly have arrived before the scheme was closed. There must have been an enormous courier service running from various parts of the north to the offices in Derry.

More strange and fundamental is the fact that qualification for this agricultural scheme is based on the incidence of terrorism. What that has to do with agricultural and environmental improvement must be beyond the ken of any sane man or woman.

Under the scheme, according to the press release, assistance would be provided in

"District Council areas which have suffered most from terrorist violence to encourage the adoption of environmentally sensitive countryside management and thereby maintain, improve and protect the landscape and habitat of the countryside."

Does that mean that, if one area has suffered more terrorist activity than its neighbour it can benefit from the agricultural grant scheme, but areas that have suffered less are cut out? Are we saying that communities that have striven over the past 25 years to keep terrorism at bay, keep the paramilitaries out of their communities and encourage good community relationships, should be penalised and completely excluded from the scheme? I do not think that there is any logic in that.

Funding for the scheme, which is not huge—I think that it is about £4.5 million—comes from the peace and reconciliation fund. I must ask once again whether landscape enhancement improves community relations. Does the improvement of wildlife habitats enhance community relations? I suppose that that depends on one's interpretation of wildlife in Northern Ireland. Does the improvement of water quality enhance reconciliation and peace in Northern Ireland?

The scheme is a ludicrous one of the first order. It includes such things as the preservation of traditional gates in fields and the thatching of houses, yet there are very few thatched houses in Northern Ireland. Such is the predication on which the scheme has been built.

Twelve of the 26 district councils have been totally excluded from the scheme. Is not that in itself an in-built injustice? They are excluded because they have not suffered sufficient terrorist incidents. Is not that a crazy basis on which to allocate public grant aid? How does one measure the incidence of terrorism? I do not want to enter a sickening argument, but I must ask whether one death in one district is equated with 10 knee-cappings in another, or found to be less worthy under the scheme? Getting into such areas is very peculiar.

My constituency is partly in and partly out of the scheme, but I hope that I am talking for the entire rural community in Northern Ireland that has been excluded by the manner and basis of the scheme. My home district of Down has suffered some of the greatest tragedies and massacres during the terrorism of the past 25 years, yet it has striven mightily against retaliation to retain good community relations, which is acknowledged. What is its reward? Exclusion from the scheme. There is no real justification for that.

The city of Belfast is included in this rural environmental improvement scheme, yet there is perhaps one farm in the entire environs of Belfast district council. There is, of course, a high incidence of terrorism. Is that a qualification for the improvement of ditches, water supplies and agricultural heritage in Belfast? Why does Belfast qualify but not other areas such as the conurbation of Craigavon and the extended urban sprawl of Lisburn, even though they include rural communities that can benefit? It is nonsense. I hope that the Minister will take cognisance of the facts.

I should like to prove my point. Many of the areas of highest deprivation are in the areas to which I have referred. The farmers who reside in some of the electoral wards of Down, such as Tollymore, are considered eligible for help under other schemes and are considered to have the highest level of deprivation.

No cognisance has been taken of the Robson statistics, which highlight the multiple nature of deprivation, and in every other respect are used as a basis on which to go forward by the peace and reconciliation fund—the very fund supplying grant aid under the rural scheme. The parts under both the old and new less-favoured areas qualify on the basis of special need, yet they are specifically excluded from the rural scheme.

I am asking the Minister to consider seriously the flaw in the decision on how the scheme should be administered, and the grave injustice that occurred as a consequence of the time frame. It is remarkable that 2,532 applications were made within that time frame, which was published on 28 January and closed at 5 pm two days later. I subscribe to the argument current in Northern Ireland that details were leaked before the announcement, and that certain people were made cognisant of what was going to happen. They took advantage of that, which meant that other applicants did not have a level playing field.

It is obscene to use terrorism statistics as a basis for making an agricultural grant. I can think of no argument to justify that. It is also wrong and unjust that many areas are excluded from the scheme on that basis. That wrong is compounded by the manner in which the advertisements were made and withdrawn. The notice stating the closing date could not have been published until the next day. That administrative nightmare has caused grave injustices.

I have tried to address the issues honestly. My office and many others have been inundated with complaints about the injustice of what has happened under the scheme—the basis on which it was predicated, the manner in which it was administered, and the suggestion, believed by many, that there was foul play in that administration. That is why I call it the red faces scheme.

I ask the Minister to take on board five points to address to the Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland. First, an inquiry is needed into the administration of the scheme. I am not looking for a full-blown judicial public inquiry, but the issue needs to be addressed seriously. Secondly, the late applicants should be admitted. Even with the 5 pm deadline on 30 January not notified, a further 1,612 applications were made that will not be considered. Thirdly, funding should be found in the near future to reopen the scheme, so as to address the injustice perpetrated on those who were given no information about the scheme and were not able to apply.

Fourthly, the basis on which the grant aid scheme for rural improvement is made should be amended sensibly. There can be no logic in basing it on terrorism. That is an obscene concept, which should never have been brought in. Fifthly, when the inquiry takes place, and if the scheme can be reopened, proper notice and advice should be given to all farmers in Northern Ireland, so that they have a reasonable opportunity to make a submission. They know that their success depends their submission and the funds available, but there should be an even playing field for every small farmer.

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) on securing this debate and on the manner in which he has presented this important subject. I notice that the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) is also in his place, and is taking an interest.

Before going into the details, I shall touch on the five points that the hon. Gentleman raised. He asked for an inquiry into the way in which the scheme was devised and set up. As he understands, that is a matter for my noble Friend, Baroness Denton of Wakefield. I shall certainly draw his remarks to her attention. The need for an inquiry depends on how the scheme was set up, which I shall deal with in a moment.

The hon. Gentleman also suggests the admission of late applicants. One of the difficulties, to which he has already alluded, is the fact that the scheme is inevitably limited by the amount of cash available. I am sure that he will wish to consider that. He suggests finding other sources of funding. Drawing an extra pound from me, as the Minister responsible for finance, is, alas, very difficult. Whether my noble Friend is able to find extra capacity in her tight budget is a matter for her. The hon. Gentleman also asked for proper advice and other matters to be considered.

To help the hon. Gentleman, I shall deal with some of the details of the scheme. The farm and countryside enhancement scheme was formulated by the Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland as part of its portfolio of schemes under the European Union special support programme for peace and reconciliation. That programme was designed to help the areas of Northern Ireland that had suffered most from violence over the previous 25 years.

Herein lies the difficulty, which I think the hon. Gentleman will readily comprehend. He reproved the Government for the test of violence. It is not within the gift of the United Kingdom Government to change that requirement, because the scheme was devised under the European Union peace and reconciliation programme, which specifically targeted those areas that had suffered most from violence. That is a requirement of the peace scheme. The Government's hands are therefore tied: any scheme devised under that programme had to be targeted to meet that requirement.

The farm and countryside enhancement scheme was targeted on the basis of a unique violence indicator, which combined Royal Ulster Constabulary regional statistics on violence with a deprivation index. That was possible on a district council level, and, as a result, 14 district council areas became eligible for the scheme.

It is acknowledged that other district council areas, and areas within other district councils, have also suffered from violence. However, the programme has a specific targeting requirement, and it was not possible to open the scheme to the whole of Northern Ireland. The scheme is additional to the range of grants and subsidies available throughout Northern Ireland through a number of national and European funded programmes to support the farming community.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned that the scheme is known as FACES, although my face is not particularly red as I account for it. It provides financial incentives and training for farmers in countryside management, and has the overall objective of enhancing rural tourism through environmental improvement. Eligible farmers will be involved in landscape enhancement, protection and restoration of heritage features, water quality improvements, innovative agri-improvement projects and a rural training programme. Department of Agriculture officials will carry out a farm audit for each applicant and agree a plan of action. The financial incentives are attractive, at 60 to 80 per cent. grant rate, but considerable commitment is required from participating farmers in their role as custodians of the rural environment.

The hon. Member for South Down mentioned the publicity for the scheme, and its early closure. The scheme was opened on 27 January with a press release from my noble Friend Baroness Denton of Wakefield, who is Minister of Agriculture in Northern Ireland. The announcement followed a long period of scheme development, during which farming and environmental interest groups were extensively consulted. That consultation may have given rise to the rumour mill that gave advance notice of the scheme, but the views and many of the ideas put forward by those groups were included in the formulation of the scheme.

As the hon. Gentleman told the House, the scheme was announced by the normal press release, which was followed by radio and television coverage on 28 and 29 January. Staff in the Department of Agriculture at all six county agricultural offices received 184 applications on 28 January, 897 on 29 January, and 1,451 on 30 January, giving a total of 2,532.

By 30 January, it was clear that the volume of applications could easily exhaust the available budget of £4.25 million. It was, unfortunately, necessary to close the scheme immediately and without notice. Any time extension would have created insurmountable financial difficulty for administration of the scheme, because it was limited by the amount of money that was available.

Some 740 further applications were received and date-stamped on 31 January, but it was made clear to applicants that the scheme had been closed. Given that 2,532 applications have already been received, it is highly unlikely that any of the 740 can be considered for assistance. I appreciate that many people will be disappointed that they have not been able to take advantage of the scheme. With a finite budget, that was unavoidable.

I assure the hon. Member that all applications will be carefully scrutinised by Department of Agriculture officials to ensure their authenticity and eligibility, and to ensure that there is no duplication with other schemes. Only plans that make a tangible contribution to the aims of the scheme, and which are completed satisfactorily, will be approved and funded by the scheme. The scheme will be closely and continuously monitored and evaluated.

While I acknowledge the disappointment felt by some, I am pleased by the uptake, and I look forward to seeing the results of the scheme for one of Northern Ireland's greatest assets—its rural environment.

I appreciate that the Minister is trying to be helpful, but he has not addressed the injustice created by the situation. The scheme is predicated on terrorism. If that is the only criterion for the allocation of the resources for peace and reconciliation, the 12 additional district councils cannot qualify for that funding. The announcement was made on 28 January and the scheme closed on 30 January, and it was promoted by a lovely, glossy magazine. Within that time scale, how could that magazine be distributed and understood, and how could applications be made? Is the magazine now just waste paper? Who received it, and when?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his further points. Extensive consultation about the nature of the scheme was carried out by the Department of Agriculture, but he has rightly identified some of the shortcomings of the scheme. He also mentioned the leaflet that has been printed, published and distributed.

The hon. Gentleman called for an inquiry into the scheme. I undertake to draw his remarks to the attention of my noble Friend Baroness Denton, and I will seek to ensure that she inquires into the matter carefully.

The scheme was limited by cash, and it is always difficult to administer such schemes. There have to be some criteria that are understood publicly and to which people can respond with confidence. The Department of Agriculture, through its consultative arrangements, sought to achieve that, but the hon. Gentleman has a point about how the scheme was publicised by the press release and radio and television coverage.

I also understand the frustration that people felt when they realised that their applications would not be examined because they had not been made before the cut-off point. However, I cannot promise to reverse the scheme, because we have commitments to those who successfully applied.

I will invite my noble Friend Baroness Denton to consider the methodology used to set up the scheme and the lessons that can be learned to improve such schemes in the future. There may be implications for European peace and reconciliation funding which, by its nature, ties the hands of the United Kingdom Government. The Government are limited in their ability to spend that money, which originally came from the taxpayers of the United Kingdom, practically and sensibly for the benefit of the people of Northern Ireland in the special circumstances they face.

I take the hon. Member's comments seriously. They were honourably meant, and clearly presented. I will ensure that the matter is pursued in the way I have described.

It being two minutes to Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Sitting suspended, pursuant to Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings), till half-past Two o'clock.