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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

No. It is not fair to the shadow Business Secretary: why should he be here answering on the details of education policy when he does not know the facts? The £1.1 billion of efficiency savings are efficiency savings within the overall schools budget, which are being recycled from the back office in schools to the front line in schools. They are not reductions in school budgets; they are recycled efficiencies within the overall budget. The only reductions in budget that I have agreed to are the—[Interruption.] I will finish the point. I do not think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should intervene from a sedentary position. He is much more experienced in the rules of the House than I am, and he knows that he has to intervene if he has something to say. I have a half a billion pound cut, and I have told the House how I am finding £300 million of that. The £1 billion of efficiency savings are going back to the schools, not being taken away from them. Schools are seeing their funding rising per pupil in cash terms by 2.1 per cent. a year. And when we add in 80,000 extra places, we have made it clear in the document "School Funding 2010-13"—the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not have read it; why should he?—that projected cost pressures are 1.6 per cent. in schools over that period. That is a real-terms rise; it is not a real-terms cut. It is a real-terms rise compared to inflation as well. We are raising spending, and I shall come in a moment to what the choice is after taking an intervention from the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns).