POLITICS is about choices and priorities: voters have a right to know what the different parties competing for office would do. And while the Tories may like to kid themselves that this is the run-up to 1997 in reverse, they have not yet been subject to anywhere near the same sort of scrutiny as Labour rightly was during that period. So let me explain why, on education policy, the past few weeks have been so revealing about David Cameron’s Conservative Party.
As the day of the Budget approached, we came under pressure from schools and colleges, and in the press, over funding for sixth form places in September. The recession has meant that many more 16 and 17-year-olds have decided to stay on in education or training rather than enter a difficult jobs market. And while we had budgeted for a record number of young people in post-16 education, it turned out there were more young people wanting to stay on than we had the funds to support.
This surge in student numbers meant more funding had to be found if we were to fulfil our “September Guarantee”, which pledges a suitable place at school, college, in training or an apprenticeship for every 16 and 17-year-old who wants one. So, in the weeks running up to the Budget and in discussions with the Treasury, finding the extra funding necessary was a top priority.
Tory schools spokesman Michael Gove leapt on this in the press. While those discussions with the Treasury were taking place, he strongly criticised me for not being able to guarantee funding for all the places. Yet when I replied by asking him whether the Conservatives would commit to funding all the extra places, he went strangely quiet. We didn’t hear a peep from him for weeks. And then, when last month’s Budget announced £655 million of extra funding so that every 16 and 17-year-old who wants to continue in education or training will have their place guaranteed and paid for by the Government, the Tories were equally silent. Cameron didn’t mention it in his response to the Budget and Gove didn’t rush out a press release. They didn’t even try to claim the credit.
How odd. Why could this be? The truth is that, for all their bluster, the Tories cannot and will not match our guarantee for young people. While we will fund all under-18s who want to stay on in education or training, the Tories are content to only fund some.
Schools minister Jim Knight and I have now written to Michael Gove four times asking him what the Tories would do, but our questions are falling on deaf ears. And the reason our letters are gathering dust in his office is because the Tories don’t support the extra investment we’re putting into the economy this year. In fact, they think we should be cutting spending right now in the middle of a recession.
Despite my opposite number lambasting me before the Budget, when the Government was not yet able to make a firm guarantee of a sixth form place for everyone who wanted one, it turns out he cannot make the same guarantee himself. That’s not just hypocritical, it’s pretty dishonest, too.
And just as they won’t match our guarantee for under 18s, the Tories won’t support James Purnell’s plan to ensure that every 18 to 24-year-old who is approaching 12 months of unemployment or more will be guaranteed a new job, training or paid work experience place.
On top of this, the Tories oppose our plan to raise the education and training age to 18 and won’t say whether they would continue to fund Education Maintenance Allowances, which have helped thousands of young people stay on in learning.
Week by week, we are seeing the Tories revealing more of their natural instincts. Last month, George Osborne said there had been an “age of excess” in the public sector and suggested that he would renege on the tough but fair three-year pay deals agreed for teachers, nurses and the police.
And when Cameron talks about an “age of austerity”, we should ask: “Who is the austerity for”? The Tories won’t commit to spending a single penny more on helping the unemployed or to keep more young people in education. Instead their priority is to cut taxes for those earning more than £150,000 and push through an inheritance tax giveaway of £200,000 to the 3,000 wealthiest estates.
Now we’ve set out our Budget, it’s time for the Tories to stop playing hide and seek. They need to be straight with people and say where they would make spending cuts to pay for their inheritance tax cuts for the wealthy few.
We won’t let abandon a generation of young people as the Tories did in the 1980s. We won’t let leave young people to languish on the dole for years with no hope of a job. While the Tories would repeat the mistakes of the past, we’ll make sure young people have jobs and training. That’s the choice, that’s the debate. And for all of us who remember the recessions of the past, it’s a debate we must have and a fight we must win.
Ed Balls is Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and Labour MP for Normanton
