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Primary School Places (London)

I am happy to confirm that. The matter goes across parties. Despite my comments about Labour colleagues being absent, I want to make the campaign a cross-party one. The people about whom we should be concerned are the children and parents involved. Whatever party runs any particular borough, we need the cash—we need the investment. I hope that all parties will get behind the campaign. What can local authorities do? Most, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), are looking an option—one that will be unnecessary if Ministers step in—of diverting cash meant for school modernisation projects into school expansion projects. That will still fall far short of the cash needed in areas such as Kingston and is anyway deeply undesirable, but boroughs might have no choice. I would therefore like the Minister to consider basic need safety valve funding—a wonderful title for a scheme that is supposed to help councils where unexpected changes occur during the three years of the spending review. The problem is that the Department allocates all the safety net money for the whole three years of the spending review period at the beginning of the period, which rather undermines the scheme's raison d'être. Could that be changed? Finally, there is the revenue side of the matter. Longer-term revenue needs will sort themselves out, because eventually the cash will follow the child and there will be no problem. In the short term, however, two annoying aspects of the current finance regime prevent councils from getting the support that they need when they need it. The first is the inadequacy of the revenue safety net known as the exceptional circumstances grant, which is designed""to help those authorities who experience significant pressures on their Schools Budgets from increases in overall pupil numbers"." The problem is that it is difficult for councils to obtain that funding, because the criteria apply across the whole school population and not just to the reception class population. Even next September's predicted increase of 300 extra children in Kingston is far short of the 500 that we would need to qualify for the grant. I ask the Minister to consider that problem. The second is the crazy rule whereby additional pupils starting reception classes in September 2009 do not count for funding purposes until the April 2010. That means that for seven months, the local education system receives not a penny towards the costs. Kingston's 10 additional classes for 2009-10 will cost more than £480,000. Because we will receive no help from Government during those seven months, that money will have to be top-sliced off the budgets of all other schools, meaning that other children will lose out. It should not be like this. When banks get bail-outs while schools get temporary classrooms and no revenue support, parents understandably get angry. Families in Kingston and across London are not asking for the earth. They want a place in a quality local primary school. They do not want to return to the large class sizes that we witnessed under the Conservative Government, when class sizes in Kingston were some of the largest in the country; nor do they want demountable temporary classrooms to become part of the longer-term fabric of our schools. We will be spared those fates only if Ministers are prepared to think afresh, ask their civil servants to reconsider the numbers, acknowledge the problem and find the funding.