THERE is much conjecture in Labour's claim today that the government's £1,1000 voucher scheme enabling parents of four-year-olds to buy nursery school places will wreck the local authority-run pre-school sector by taking huge amounts of money from it.

For, there is already some evidence from the pilot areas where the scheme began this week prior to its nationwide launch next year that it may pour money into the existing state schools - through a form of blackmail.

Labour maintains that pre-school services provided by local education authorities will suffer because their funding will be seriously depleted - by nearly two-thirds of Lancashire's £28.5million nursery budget, according to their figures - because parents will spend their voucher money outside the state system.

In short, the councils are footing the bill for the vouchers, but the consequent loss of revenue - calculated by Labour on the number of four-year-olds now in local authority-run nurseries - will undermine provision as parents are tempted to purchase cheap, low-quality private nursery education. And, indeed, this fear is backed up today by the East Lancashire head of a Lancashire County nursery.

Thus the scare is that the scheme will threaten existing state nursery schools and lower standards elsewhere. But contrast that with the experience in Norfolk, one of the pilot areas for the vouchers, where the fear of lowered standards arises because some council-run schools, it seems, are out to corner the market by threatening to close their doors to children of normal school age if they do not begin their voucher-funded nursery schooling with them.

It is a twist to the parental choice power that the vouchers are supposed to encourage. For while parents may shop where they please with them, many will want their children to go to particular primary school on reaching five. But in Norfolk, the experience has been that some primary schools are telling parents they cannot guarantee a primary place if they do not sign up for nursery classes.

Labour's fears about local authorities losing money through this scheme might, therefore, not be realised to the extent of today's scary estimates. But they are right to put the spotlight on the funding of the voucher scheme.

For, like its announcements in the past of pay rises for teachers and nurses, the vouchers plan is one of those government conjuring tricks whereby a scheme is pulled out of the hat and someone else has to pay for it - in this case the local authorities.

For while John Major is high-mindedly pledging a nursery place for every four-year-old whose parents want it, there is a risk that some existing ones may be lost so that others may be provided more cheaply elsewhere - and while it may be magnified by Labour today, there is a possibility that a form of creeping privatisation of nursery education gets underway with the help of public funding.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.