Pressure is growing on the Prime Minister to abandon plans to cut per pupil funding in years to come by protecting school funding by an additional £1.2 billion. There was no mention of whether schools would receive extra funding in the has requested a public statement over the coming weeks so schools know where they stand before they break up for the summer holidays.
The Telegraph reports Ms Greening has been alarmed at the way Labour was able to exploit the Conservative manifesto on education during the election campaign. "There was no getting away from the fact we were cutting funding per pupil,” said a senior government source. “We need to recognise that in the wake of the election, and we must address the concern."
The Conservatives promised to increase the schools budget by £4 billion by 2022 in their election manifesto, published in May. However when inflation and rising student numbers were taken into account, the promise amounted to a cut in per pupil funding, a fact attacked repeatedly by political opponents. Ms Greening has told the Prime Minister and the Treasury that she wants to change tack after the election and make sure that per pupil funding does not fall. That means an extra £1.2 billion spending by 2022, according to the Institute For Fiscal Studies [IFS], with similar amounts in the years between now and then.
Public Services Pay
This demand has led several of Theresa May’s own ministers to speak out in adding more funding into the public sector. Pressure is mounting on the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to relax austerity and put an end to the pay cap after the party disastrously lost its majority in the General Election to anti-austerity Labour, which has pledged to scrap the 1% cap. Theresa May faces a chorus of demands from her own MPs over public spending. After a decade of public pay freezes, the average pay of teaching professionals has dropped by £3 an hour in real terms, £2 an hour for police officers, £8 per hour for doctors, £1 per hour for prison officers whilst nurses’ wages have stagnated. In a speech to the Confederation of British Industry on Monday night, Chancellor Philip Hammond said the government’s approach to balance the needs of public workers with those who had to pay the bill hadn’t changed. Hammond said he recognised that “the British people are weary after seven years’ hard slog repairing the damage of the great recession.” He also said the time had come for a conversation on the level of funding of public services but it had to be a “grown-up debate” – arguing that borrowing was simply passing the bill to the next generation and that taxes couldn’t always fall on someone else. The governments approach has always been to balance the needs of the public workers with those who had to pay the bill.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is set to demand a salary boost for NHS workers who have suffered for years under the Tories’ one per cent pay cap. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is the latest senior cabinet minister to put pressure on the chancellor Phillip Hammond and the PM to change the policy.
Boris Johnson believes the 1% public sector pay cap can be lifted in a responsible way. Michael Gove, who has re-joined the Cabinet as Environment Secretary, urged the prime minister and the chancellor to listen to independent bodies that review public sector. He told the Sunday Times: "You've got to listen to the public sector pay review bodies. When they made recommendations on school teachers' pay I think I always accepted them. My colleagues who deal with these pay review bodies would want to respect the integrity of that process." A Number 10 source said the government was responding to the recommendations of public sector pay review bodies which are currently reporting to ministers "on a case-by-case basis.". But 1% rises for dentists, nurses, doctors and the military have already been agreed for this year, it added.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme Nigel Lawson, a former chancellor to Margaret Thatcher, said it was Mr Hammond's job to keep control of public spending to avoid "economic disaster.” “It's not easy but it is necessary. People understand we need to pay our way on the road to economic success." Lord Lawson called on ministers to formulate the policy behind closed doors, adding: "Stop having this debate in public, it's ludicrous."
When the matter was raised in the Commons, a minister said the government wanted to ensure "frontline public service workers" were "paid fairly for their work." Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said reports on the divisions within government over public sector pay revealed there was "turmoil" in the Conservative Party. "They're saying 'Wait for the pay review bodies', even though they're the ones insisting on a 1% cap," the Labour frontbencher told the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. "We're saying to the pay review bodies: 'Get rid of the 1% cap and give a fair pay rise.'" Asked what level of pay rise Labour thought was fair, Mr Ashworth said the pay review bodies should consider one in line with the rise in average earnings across the economy.
