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The Tory Education Secretary today refused to 'guarantee' no school would see its funding cut after repeatedly being challenged by Labour.

The Conservative Party manifesto committed to ensuring no school lost out, and Hinds had previously told the House of Commons that every school in England would see a cash terms increase in their funding, while the Chancellor had said it was a ‘guarantee’.

But today when Damian Hinds was asked to repeat the guarantee, he declined.

And asked whether he would consider standing down if a school ended up seeing its funding cut but he refused to stake his career on the pledge.

Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Education, accused the Tories of being in "full-scale retreat from their own commitments".

She told MPs parents felt "let down" by the Conservatives' "broken promises" on school funding .

Ms Rayner said: "The fact is the national funding formula does not guarantee every school a cash increase per pupil in fact it permits a cut."

In March Damian Hinds was rapped by the official statistics watchdog after he claimed that school spending is going up when it is in fact frozen.

And because it has been left to local authorities to decide how much money to allocate to each individual school the amount a school gets could be cut.

Labour's Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) said Mr Hinds had "made a commitment that no school will actually see a cut in funding".

He added: "I want to know what the strength of that guarantee is, so can he be clear if it turns out to be the case that a school actually has had a reduction in funding, would he consider that a resignation matter?"

Mr Hinds said the national funding formula "allocates money in respect of each school and that is subject to set minimum cash increases but there is flexibility for local authorities... to be able to reallocate money up to a certain limit".

Mr Perkins pressed the Education Secretary on whether he was guaranteeing that no school will lose money, adding: "If there isn't a commitment then he should say - if there is a commitment then he shouldn't hide behind councils."

Speaking in the Commons at the start of an Opposition Day debate on the issue, Ms Rayner called on the Government to "implement the commitment in their own manifesto".

The Tories, she claimed, had lost hundreds of thousands of votes at last year's general election "due to their school cuts".

She said: "Many parents up and down the country are feeling quite angry and upset and particularly those parents of children with high needs and special educational needs because they feel let down by this Government and their broken promises."

Ms Rayner said the environment that schools increasingly faced was "completely unacceptable", adding that every part of the education system was experiencing a "squeeze" on funding.

Cuts to school funding she argued had left more children "crammed into supersize classes", fewer subjects on offer and even the school day being squeezed.

She said: "£1.3 billion from (the) existing education budget does nothing against the mitigation of the £2.7 billion cuts that schools have already faced."

She added: "But the Government have to understand that their commitment in their manifesto said that (in) cash terms they wouldn't be cut, yet the IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies), they've already said that 1.5% potentially cuts to schools and that's what this motion is about today, it's about making sure that we hold the Government to account on their promises in the last general election."

Mr Hinds also faced questions from his own benches, with Tory former cabinet minister John Redwood saying that schools in his Wokingham constituency were receiving "too little" per pupil.

Mr Redwood asked: "Will he please have some urgency in getting us a little bit closer to the average because we simply do not have enough?"

And Labour's Wes Streeting (Ilford North) said: "Does he understand that when he stands at that despatch box and talks about the figures as if everything is rosy the parents know it's a load of rubbish because they are seeing it with their lived experience for them and their children?"

Mr Hinds earlier stated that the Government were "overall protecting schools' per pupil funding in real terms over the next two years".

"It is a moral imperative to strive for the very best in our country and education plays a central role in that quest - that is what the 450,000 teachers in English schools are dedicated to, is what we are dedicated to supporting them in," he said.

"And to achieve that takes many things, but high on that list of course is money - so there is more money going into our schools than ever before, rising from almost £41 billion last year to £42.4 billion this year and then rising again to 43 and a half next year."

Labour's motion, calling on the Government to meet its guarantee that every school will receive a cash increase in per pupil funding over the coming years, was passed unopposed by MPs.