Chancellor unveils spending plans

Chancellor Gordon Brown tonight pledged a £15 billion boost for education - as part of a £61 billion spending package across Whitehall tied to a raft of new reforms to stop the cash being wasted.

Virtually every institution from schools to prisons faces being taken over or having new management foisted on it, if it fails to meet targets set by the Treasury.

Transport, housing, defence, law and order and rural affairs were also among departments best rewarded in the spending round that will determine the battleground for the next election.

And Mr Brown made clear his determination that the massive cash hand-outs would be given only if tied to reform.

"For this Government, reform and resources go together," he told the Commons.

But shadow chancellor Michael Howard said the Government had already failed on healthcare, violent crime, and truancy despite a "panoply" of targets.

He told MPs: "Isn't it abundantly clear that the Chancellor and his colleagues simply do not know how to bring about real reform and improvements in public services?"

Schools were the biggest winners from the Chancellor's 36-minute speech to MPs unveiling his Comprehensive Spending Review - during which he accounted for how Government cash announced in the Budget will be spent over the next three years to 2005-2006.

Overall spending will rise from £240 billion to £301 billion, with education rising by 6% from £45 billion to £58 billion.

Labour MPs cheered as Mr Brown announced the "biggest sustained rise in education spending in a generation".

Every secondary school in England is to get a £50,000 boost each April and primary schools an extra £10,000-a-year, Mr Brown confirmed.

Spending on school buildings was set to reach £8 billion a year in the final year of the spending review period, compared with £1 billion in 1997, Mr Brown said.

As the Chancellor hinted recently, education maintenance allowances, under which 16 to 19-year-olds are paid up to £30 a week to stay at school or college, are to be extended to cover the whole of England, at a cost of about £600 million.

A typical secondary head's direct funding from Whitehall would reach £165,000 next April when the £50,000 payments were taken into account, rising to £180,000 for the next two years.

In "the most challenging areas" 1,400 secondary schools would get another £125,000-a-year providing heads matched "demanding new performance targets".

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