Damian Hinds

My right hon. Friend makes powerful points, including about the additional unfunded cost pressures for nursery providers—of course, that argument also extends to regular state-funded schools. The one thing I might quibble with is his statement that this Labour Government came in promising to do so much for education. Actually, the Labour manifesto was rather light on commitments on education. The biggest ones were, first of all, the commitment to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country. On closer examination, that commitment turns out to be not just similar to, but identical to, the policy of the previous Government, which was to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country. The second high-profile commitment was about breakfast clubs. The maths on breakfast clubs are something of a mystery to me, because I have heard Ministers repeatedly say that having a breakfast club is going to save parents £450 a year, but they are reimbursing schools £150 a year. Where is the rest of that money supposed to come from? It is also true that some schools—including some in my constituency—already have a breakfast club that is charged at a reasonable rate, so they will lose revenue from their existing breakfast club. Before anyone says, “You have to think about whether it should be charged for or not,” it is worth remembering that the breakfast club provision that already exists is typically reimbursable for families on universal credit at a rate of up to 85%, to the extent that it is childcare that is enabling parents to go to work. Then, of course, there is the famous—or infamous—commitment to 6,500 additional teachers. Colleagues might remember that that commitment was going to be paid for by the receipts on VAT from private schools. The Government now say that VAT from private schools is going to pay for housing, not for teachers. It is not clear that that policy is going to raise much revenue to spend on anything, given that the most recent figures show a fall in the number of children at independent schools. Those are the Government’s own figures. [Interruption.] I beg your pardon?