The prime minister insisted the Sure Start budget was "going up" from £2.2m to £2.3m at PMQs today - yet it is the Early Intervention Grant that is increasing.
Ed Miliband accused David Cameron of cutting funding to Sure Start by 9 per cent at Prime Minister’s Questions today, citing research from the Daycare Trust which warned 250 Sure Start centres face the axe; however, the prime minister insisted the Sure Start budget was “going up” from £2,212 million to £2,297m, saying:
“We have maintained the money for sure start. We have maintained the money for children’s centres… The budget is going up.”
And yet it is not the Sure Start budget that is being protected – it is the Early Intervention Grant (EIG) which is increasing from £2.2 billion in 2011-12 to £2.3 bn in 2012-3.
The EIG is provided to councils to pay for Sure Start, but it is the pot of money from which councils also pay for the careers advice service Connexions; disabled children’s short breaks; the youth opportunity fund that supports community projects; and several other programmes.
The total expenditure that would have been allocacted to these programmes in 2010-11 had the EIG not been created was £2.5 bn. As the Department for Education explains:
“In 2011-12, the overall amount to be allocated through the EIG is 10.9% lower than the aggregated funding that makes up the notional baseline in 2010-11. In 2012-13 it is 7.5 per cent below 2010-11.”
Sure Start may indeed see spending rises – if councils decide to cut so deep elsehwere in EIG programmes as to be able to make up the reduction required overall. But if Sure Start faces an equal fate to those programmes it is now competing against, it will face 11% cuts in 2011-12. Either way, the prime minister’s robust statement in the house, that Sure Start spending is rising, is a misleading description of reality at best.
47 Responses to “Cameron: Sure Start budget “going up”; the reality? Sure Start is under threat”
Anon E Mouse
scandalousbill –
1. There are no upfront tuition fees. That must surely be better?
2. No one from a poorer background will pay the £9k.
3. Payment is only after graduation.
4. The minimum wage to start payment is up to £21k – some students will never pay.
Why should the dustman or steelworker pay to educate some lazy student in Media Studies or pay for classes for David Gilmour’s son? It isn’t fair.
What these things indicate is a bigger problem for the government in that they cannot get their PR right. It’s not the policies. HIP’s, Runway 3, Control Orders, 92 Days blah blah are all better.
What people on this blog do is attempt to advance the very same policies that have just been rejected by the electorate and four years from now they will all be forgotten.
As each day passes Labour looks more and more irrelevant.
It’s over until the party once again becomes one of aspiration and ditches the unelectable Ed Miliband. For sure the scaremongering from Labour is just being totally ignored by a public keener to read about Peter Andre and Jordan.
Until Labour gets another Tony Blair they can keep sniping and being negative but never again will the frowning Yvette Cooper be taken seriously – she tried it again on Sunday about police numbers. What she said wasn’t true and even if it was no one is listening…
scandalousbill
Anon,
A debt is a debt, whether its frontloaded or backfilled. I do not feel that the statement you made in bullet 2. “No one from a poorer background will pay the £9k” is exactly true. The National scholarship program provides a one year funding of at least £3000, but this is only a one year payment, not a reoccurring stipend.
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/higher-education/docs/n/11-730-national-scholarship-programme-year-one
However, perhaps other funding measures will take up the slack, there is not much detail on that
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/higher-education/docs/g/11-728-guidance-to-director-fair-access
Why should you or I pay for another person’s education if they or their parents have money? Why should I pay for Surestart when my children have grown up? Why should I pay for roads if I do not drive a car? Why should I pay for the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan or Trident if I am a pacifist? Why can’t Lizzie or Charlie pay for Willies wedding?….
It seems to me that all of the above have a social value that goes above our individual opinions, although we may collectively change them. I believe that Surestart has been shown by independent assessments to be of significant benefit and should be supported
As for your comments of Blair or Brown or Milliband or Clegg or Cameron, none are paragons of virtue, all are politicians and expression of opinion on their capability is simply part of an ongoing discourse which this blog among others promotes.
Anon E Mouse
scandalousbil – It’s clear we won’t agree although I fully concur with your last paragraph.
We clearly differ on the size of the state. I want the smallest state possible and politicians to just get out of my life and to do that one has to pay for personally beneficial services themselves.
Or where does it end? The Royal Family should pay for their kids wedding and after thirteen years in office Labour should have done something about it. As a republican I expected that. Which brings me neatly to agreeing once again with your final paragraph.
As for Surestart just wait and see what happens. I remember Maggie Thatcher claiming she was cutting the state and did nothing of the sort…
(PS. “none are paragons of virtue” should read “none is a paragon of virtue”. I did actually pass English Lang and Lit first time round…)
Another broken Tory promise: 31 Sure Start centres have already closed | Left Foot Forward
[…] in March this year, he told PMQs: “We have maintained the money for sure start. We have maintained the money for […]
Shamik Das
@alexhern @trouse11 Sure Start – that cd b the headline story. http://t.co/RbF5zshg http://t.co/3pEmVzle http://t.co/yhDmQJiR