Mr Redwood’s intervention during the Statement on a new National Funding Formula for Schools,14 December

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): West Berkshire and Wokingham educational authorities that service my constituency are some of the worst funded and are finding it very difficult to keep going with their excellent education and their current teaching work forces, so we welcome the statement. Can there be any transitional relief in 2017/18 as our need is now?

The Secretary of State for Education (Rt Hon Justine Greening): My right hon. Friend will know the transitional relief that we had from the previous years has indeed been carried over to this forthcoming year and, of course, beyond that I am now setting out the steps that we are going to take to make funding fairer.

It is important and, in spite of the debate that no doubt will be kicked off on the back of this consultation, I just don’t think we can accept a situation where the same or a similar child with similar needs will get such a different amount of funding put into their education and their school for no other reason than that they are in different places.

This simply cannot and should not be accepted and that is what we are setting out the solution to today.