13:44 Rushanara Ali (Labour)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) and the other co-sponsors for securing this important debate on school funding. There are few subjects more important to this House than the future of the nation’s children. They will be the inheritors of a post-Brexit Britain. They will be digital natives, as unfazed by digital technology as we are by electricity. We will bequeath to them the big challenges facing the country and the world, such as climate change, new kinds of labour market, and many more. That is why it is so important to invest in our young people’s talents and ensure that they are among the best educated in the world.

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14:18 Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)

Compounding all that is this Government’s utter shamelessness. As the chair of the UK Statistics Authority and the Institute for Fiscal Studies have said, school funding is being cut, and this Government will not admit it. I said earlier that no politician got elected saying that they were going to spend less, but that is what is happening. This country needs a different Government. It needs a Labour Government who will put the education, care and mental health of children and young people at the top of their list, along with tackling climate change. For the children of Bristol West, that cannot come a moment too soon.

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15:37 Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)

The pressures that schools face are growing. We know it across this House, and we hear it from heads, teachers and parents alike. The message—just like the message that many of us have heard about the climate crisis this week—could not be clearer. As some hon. Members have said already, the special educational needs of pupils are increasingly challenging. Heads have told me directly that they do not know how their secondaries will cope when the numbers of younger children who are now being diagnosed start to come through. I have heard estimates that genuinely shock me.

Adam’s primary school in Newham has got to the point where it simply cannot meet his needs. Between 2015 and 2018, it lost more than £100,000 from its budget every single year—more than £400 for every pupil. How foolish will Adam’s generation think we were because we did not invest in them or him and left his and their potential unfulfilled? Like climate change, this is an issue where we are letting our children down. What kind of country are we living in?

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