Free Schools

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 24 September 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:12, 24 September 2019

Llywydd, the Member's contribution is a tissue of outdated, and therefore highly misleading, assertions. The figure that he quoted is from 2011. You'd think he might have updated his figures a little since then. You'd think he might have read the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who said that the gap between funding in England and Wales had been virtually eliminated, and that was because of cuts, cuts—[Interruption.] The gap had been virtually eliminated because of the cuts that had been made to education budgets in England. [Interruption.] Well, you can say 'nonsense', Darren, if you like, but it's the IFS who said that, not me. [Interruption.] The IFS—and they reported again yesterday. Good idea, I think, to update your figures and, perhaps, your understanding.

Were we to get money on the scale that you suggest—and we're certainly not guaranteed to get it; we have a one-year settlement here in Wales, whereas your Government has been prepared to offer three years in England, but not to Wales or to Scotland. If they hadn't spent some of the money before we got it—£50 million to fill the gap in teacher pension contributions, which should have come from the UK Government and which they've refused, despite the rules of the funding formula, to provide to us—and if we did get that money, Llywydd, we will not waste £140 million on free schools that never opened, or opened and closed. If we get money here, we will be investing it in a way that will support those young people in our schools who delivered those record results in A-levels and in GCSEs in August of this year. That's the truth of the matter, and the Member's attempt, as ever, to throw some pall over the achievements of children in Wales does them no good, but it does his party no good at all.