So you have a frustrating position – the Government says we have provided more money but the people in the schools say we have less money. Sometimes the people in the schools are right because the authorities have held back the money.”What we propose to do is legislate to make sure the money is not held back by education authorities but make sure it goes through to the school, the headmaster, to the governors in the way they think is most efficient.”The Government first announced plans to force local authorities to increase the amount of money they passed on to schools in a White Paper last summer. It said it would raise the level from 85 per cent to 95 per cent, a move which would increase schools’ spending by pounds 90 per pupil, according to Gillian Shephard, the Secretary of State for Education.Last night, a spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Employment said it wanted to consult fully before putting forward proposals. No formal consultation paper would now be published before the general election, she said.The plans, under existing arrangements for local management of schools, would be bound to cause some discomfort among local authorities because they would eat into the remaining services which were still held centrally. Although schools now have control of their own budgets, councils have so far been allowed to keep back 15 per cent to pay for such things as education welfare officers, special needs advisers and school admissions services.It is likely under the Conservatives’ plans for 95 per cent delegation that the education authorities would have to turn most such services into independent agencies and invite schools to buy into them with the extra resources that they have been given. Both the Conservative and Labour parties are committed to local management of schools, although the Government’s previous attempts to force councils to delegate 90 per cent of their budgets were dropped.Labour has said that it wants to raise the proportion dispersed to schools from 85 per cent to 90 per cent, and that within that figure, the amount which should be spent on administration should be no more than pounds 50 per pupil.. John Major yesterday tried to draw a line under the controversy over the Downey report, but he found he could not get away from sleaze.

Having brushed aside questions about financial improprieties, he did a walkabout in South Street, Braunton, Devon and walked into a hardware shop with the name “Slees” over the door.
Party managers looked aghast when they spotted the error, and Mr Major quickly made his exit. Winners need luck and it appeared to have deserted Mr Major yesterday at the end of a determinedly upbeat tour.A few paces before stepping into Frank Slee’s shop, Mr Major had comforted nine-year-old Simon Murray, who complained about being knocked in the eye by one of the photographers covering the trip “Life is like that. Occasionally you take a knock, Simon, and then you bounce back,” Mr Major said.The Prime Minister sought to bounce back from last week’s setbacks by campaigning in Paddy Ashdown’s back yard where there are a string of key marginals which the Tories are defending against the Liberal Democrats, including Exeter, and Devon West and Torridge, the seat of Emma Nicholson who defected from the Tories to the Liberal Democrats.”We are beginning to deal with the real issues Last week we saw quite astonishing economic figures. Today we saw the balance of payments returning to equilibrium .. all the economic indicators are set extremely fair.

I don’t think you can drown that out throughout the whole campaign,” Mr Major said.There was little evidence of a swing back to the Tories around the Green Lanes shopping centre in Barnstaple, in the North Devon seat of Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat MP.Janet Sanders, a housewife, said she had switched from Tory to Liberal at the last election and would be sticking with the Lib Dems again. North Devon is a traditional Liberal seat, which returned Jeremy Thorpe.. Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party yesterday issued a libel writ following allegations that a former Tory agent was paying individuals to persuade people to vote for the party. A report in yesterday’s Express said an undercover reporter was offered pounds 6.50 an hour by Charlotte Blacker, the Referendum Party agent in Putney, south-west London, to carry out promotion work allegedly described as “canvassing”.
According to the newspaper, Ms Blacker, in whose constituency Sir James is to stand as a candidate, told an undercover journalist not to tell anyone that he was being paid for canvassing.In a secretly taped conversation, she reportedly said: “It’s our word against theirs.”Under the 1983 Representation of the Peoples Act, it is illegal to pay someone to canvass on behalf of an election candidate. It is not against the law to be paid for general party work.After serving a writ on the newspaper, a spokesman for the Referendum Party said a claim that they had paid anyone to canvass illegally on behalf of Sir James was “wholly false”. The article was part of a dirty tricks campaign against them, the statement said.It said literature and videos given out in Putney referred to Sir James as the leader of the party and not as a prospective candidate for the constituency, and that so far there had been no canvassing for votes.The penalty for paying canvassers is a fine of up to pounds 5,000 and a five- year ban on being allowed to vote.Tessa Hilton, deputy editor of the Express, said the newspaper would defend the action fully: “It is rather depressing that the Referendum Party, whose slogan, after all, is ‘Let the people speak’, should act against a newspaper bringing an issue as important as this to public attention.”We are confident that our account of procedures of the Referendum Party in Putney, the chosen seat of Sir James Goldsmith, deserves full scrutiny.”The Tory party chairman Brian Mawhinney said there should be an investigation into the claims.Ms Blacker, 40, who was said by workers at the Referendum Party office near Putney Bridge to be unavailable for comment, spent 12 years as the Conservative agent for Kensington.

She joined Sir James’ party last year.In 1989, she helped steer the Tories to a rare by-election victory when Dudley Fishburn was elected. According to former colleagues, Ms Blacker, whose sister, Lulu, is a friend of the Duchess of York, had already established a formidable reputation as a blunt speaker.One said: “She is a domineering character who says exactly what she thinks. If she disagreed with someone at a meeting with senior officials at Central Office, she was liable to say ‘That’s bollocks’.”On one occasion, she responded to what she regarded as a dull speech by a party official by getting up and handing out biscuits as he was in mid flow. Another ex-colleague said: “Frankly, she doesn’t give a shit. She has that public school, Sloane Square kind of confidence.”At one time, Ms Blacker, whose family are landowners in Hampshire, had a relationship with the armed robber turned social commentator, John McVicar.. Tony Blair is a conservative – not really because of his politics, more the way he and Cherie furnish their sitting room.