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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

My Department's budgets. The shadow Education Secretary will have to cut either those budgets by about 50 per cent. or the schools budget. That was his dilemma before, and that is why up to now he has not been willing to match me on the school leaver's guarantee. He cannot make that guarantee. He has not matched me on Sure Start children's centres; he will not match me on the schools budget; and the Opposition voted against the one-to-one tuition guarantees in our recent Children, Schools and Families Bill. Now, however, the hon. Gentleman faces an extra complexity, as the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury will know: unfortunately, the shadow Education Secretary has been asked to contribute to the £6 billion of extra savings, which were announced yesterday, to pay for the national insurance tax freeze. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, as I am sure the shadow Chief Secretary knows, calculates that that would involve a 2.8 per cent. cut for unprotected Departments. That would mean cutting a further £1.7 billion a year from the Sure Start, schools and children's budgets—were the Conservatives to be elected. As I said, it is no wonder the shadow Education Secretary cannot match our pledges.