How safe is Sure Start?
The claim
“Sure Start services will be protected in cash terms, and the programme will be refocused on its original purpose.”
Chancellor George Osborne MP, Spending Review statement, October 20, 2010
Cathy Newman checks it out
The chancellor couldn’t have been clearer. When he set out £81bn of spending cuts, George Osborne was clear that in cash terms – before inflation is taken into account – spending on the country’s network of Sure Start centres would be protected.
But will it? Combing through the fine print of today’s town hall cuts, there is serious room for doubt.
The analysis
During the election, Labour accused the Tories of planning to cut £200m from the Sure Start budget. We gave the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt in a previous FactCheck. Tonight, though, FactCheck has unearthed new question-marks about the government’s commitment to the programme.
This year, £1.1bn was spent on Sure Start, and the Chancellor promised in October that that figure wouldn’t change. But since then the education secretary Michael Gove said funding for Sure Start would be wrapped into a new “early intervention grant”. Today the government set out exactly which other programmes would be covered by the grant. They include measures to tackle teenage pregnancy and breaks for disabled children.
In the small print of today’s documents, the education department confirms: “In 2011-12, the overall amount to be allocated through 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% below 2010-11.”
The programmes covered by the grant were in total worth £2.5bn this year. Next year, they will only be worth £2.2bn. And an education department spokesman told FactCheck that Sure Start funding was not ring fenced. So if councils want to spend more of their early intervention grant combating teenage pregnancy, for example, and less on children’s centres, they are completely at liberty to do so.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
The chancellor’s promise on Sure Start rings hollow. It may be that councils decide to protect the children’s centres, but when the early intervention grant is being cut overall by 11 per cent, town halls have little room for manoeuvre.
By the end of next year, if I were a betting woman, I wouldn’t put money on £1.1bn being spent next year, as it was last year. By letting the programme take its chances alongside an array of other projects, it is hardly protecting Sure Start – more like throwing it to the wolves.
There are 6 comments on this post
The lies are one thing (one disgraceful thing), but the potential damage to Sure Start is quite another.
Sure Start centers save lives.
How many times do we have to make the case and say that, even in pure economical terms, every penny spent on an investment in a young life through Sure Start saves pounds later on.
And if Pickles thinks that we’ll blame the local authorities when services are cut simply because he is passing the buck (or as he would have it, championing localism), he is mistaken. We’ll know where the blame lies.
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Cathy,
Thank you for once again exposing yet another set of lies by ConDem commissar Gideon Osborne.
The liars would be comical if their organised actions didn’t lead to so much tragedy and hopelessness.
Please continue to give us the facts. It helps greatly in the face of Tory Daily Mail/Sun/Telegraph/Times/Express/Star/Evening Standard/BBC/ITV ultra right wing propaganda and lies.
Sooner or later the cumulative affect will get traction.
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As with Yesterday, another misleading fact check.
The money for Sure Start itself is still there, there is still 1.1 Billion pounds there to spend it, the difference is, local authorities now have control over that money.
If you really want to protect Surestart, get onto your local council and lobby them to keep funding the centres because its now their decision.
The Government has given them the money to do it, they just aren’t spending it on SureStart.
You call it passing the buck, I would call it letting local people decide local priorities.
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It’s not letting local people decide priorities if the money now has to cover disabled kids and other projects AS WELL as SureStart. I’d like to be able to lobby my local council to support SureStart at it’s current level (as promised) AND be able to say I want them to do that without cutting their funding for disabilities, pregnancy advice for teens and other programs for young people. The Govt is NOT allowing local people/councils to decide to support the young. It’s less money, therefore, something has to go. And we knew there would be less money, yes, but we were told some services would be protected, and that’s the lie that has got us annoyed! And they ARE passing the buck – send it to the councils, blame them. Since the media seem to be largely pro-Conservative at the moment, that’s probably what the press & TV will do, too. So frustrating!
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[...] I used the funding of Sure Start as an example. There has been quite a political argument today in PMQs as to whether Sure Start funding has really been protected or not. Channel 4′s Fact Check have investigated. You can read their report here. [...]
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“On Sure Start, the budget is going from £2.212 million to £2.297 million.”
Which number is wrong, Cathy?
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