House of Commons Hansard Debates for 26 Mar 1990

Mr. Howard : I entirely agree with the substance of my hon. Friend's remarks, but if he will forgive me for saying so, he has underestimated the amount spent by employers on training, which was £18 billion in 1987 and has grown since then.

Mr. Giles Radice (Durham, North) : What is the comparable figure for West Germany?

Mr. Howard : It is not altogether easy to make direct comparisons with other countries, but the hon. Gentleman ought to take some pride in the amount that has been spent in Britain. We can clearly identify the substantial sums that were invested in 1987 and have increased since then.

The new tax concession that my right hon. Friend announced for training and enterprise councils is urgently needed, because the initiative is running two years ahead of schedule. More than 600 business men and women on 66 TECs around the country are already drawing up business plans for their local areas. I hope very shortly to announce that the first councils have had their plans approved and are fully operational.

With the help of the training and enterprise councils, we shall be pursuing three major priorities in the coming year. First, we shall continue to encourage stronger links between business and education so that schools and colleges are more responsive to the needs of industry and turn out young people who are better prepared for work. My Department will be investing over £400 million in this process in the next three years through the technical and vocational education initiative and our support for local partnerships between business and education. That is in addition to the work of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science in reforming the curriculum.

Mr. Tony Blair (Sedgefield) : That is a very different story from that which we used to hear from the Secretary of State's predecessor, who described Britain's training

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performance as "mind-boggling", and said that we had a mountain to climb. Is the new Secretary of State disowning that analysis?

Mr. Howard : I am concentrating on addressing myself to the tasks which Britain faces. We would all do better to concentrate on those tasks rather than what the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends are so keen to do- -at every moment to denigrate Britain's performance. We shall also be looking to the training and enterprise councils to set targets for the training of 16 and 17-year-old school leavers which reflect the needs of the local labour market and raise the overall level of skills in the work force. We shall also expect them to look at how we can motivate more young people to want to train and to expect training as a normal part of their employment. A total of £2.5 billion will be available from Government over the next three years to support that process. In addition, we are looking to the TECs to draw out substantial and increasing employer contributions.

Mr. George Howarth (Knowsley, North) : Perhaps I can help the Secretary of State to follow the interventions by my hon. Friends. I understand that there are about 800,000 engineering apprentices in West Germany. What would be the right hon. and learned Gentleman's target in Britain?

Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman is quite right to recognise that his hon. Friends needed help, but I do not consider that facile comparisons are the best way of addressing the problem. We have to make sure that we are providing the training which meets the needs of employers in our country and in the local areas in which they operate. That, above all, is what the training and enterprise councils will achieve.

Mr. Donald Thompson (Calder Valley) : Does my right hon. and learned Friend realise that Conservative Members are sick of comparisons with 10 years ago, which are unnecessary as 10 years ago we had nothing in anything? All the Opposition can do now is selectively choose foreign countries where they can find something that comes near to Britain. Opposition Members have referred to Germany. Representatives from our textile industry went to Germany to look at training there and found it producing nothing but industrial peasants incapable of change and flexibility. The only thing to commend it to anybody, and especially to the Opposition, was that it was extremely expensive.

Mr. Howard : I would not presume to comment on the blunt point made by my hon. Friend. It needs no elaboration from me.

We shall be looking to TECs to widen the opportunities for adults to develop and upgrade their skills, particularly skills that are in short supply. Again, the Government will support this process with over £1 billion in each of the next three years. We shall expect the councils to focus this public support on retraining unemployed people, on improving training in small firms, and on other gaps in the labour market. Above all, we shall continue to look to employers to make the major contribution in developing the skills that industry needs.

Mr. Robert Sheldon (Ashton-under-Lyne) rose --

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Mr. Nigel Forman (Carshalton and Wallington) : My right hon. and learned Friend has been talking about the very important contribution made by the training and enterprise councils. Can he confirm that the Government are minded to look favourably on the whole idea of individual training allowances, which have been suggested by many people who have studied this matter as a good way of giving extra support to individuals who want to help themselves?

Mr. Sheldon rose --

Mr. Howard : My hon. Friend may be aware that that matter is being looked at. I am afraid that, at this stage, I cannot give him the outcome of our deliberations.

What I have described is a coherent strategy, which offers the prospect of creating a skilled work force for the 1990s. Perhaps we shall hear today from the hon. Member for Sedgefield how much of this strategy the Labour party is prepared to support. Will he acknowledge, for example, that the Government are spending about three times as much, in real terms, on training as did the last Labour Government? Will he now publicly support our programmes for training young people and unemployed adults, and encourage Labour local authorities to participate? Will he today make a commitment to retain the training and enterprise councils in their present form, with the leadership of senior business people?

Above all, will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge, and apologise for, the totally negative attitude taken by his party to every one of the training initiatives introduced by this Government in the past 10 years? No doubt the hon. Gentleman--who is turning his head away--would prefer to forget the fact that five out of the last eight Labour party conferences passed resolutions attacking the youth training scheme ; that its 1988 conference declared its total opposition to employment training and called

"on all Labour Councillors and Labour controlled local authorities to boycott the scheme in every possible way";

and that several Labour councils have obeyed that injunction to the letter. How dare the Labour party lecture us on training when that is its record of shame.

Mr. Sheldon rose --

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) : Order. If the Minister does not give way, the right hon. Gentleman must not persist.

Mr. Sheldon : Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Howard : No, I am not giving way.

The right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) had the effrontery to say last week that training had been "grossly neglected in the past decade".--[ Official Report, 21 March 1990 ; Vol. 169, c. 1131.]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has a certain reputation for mastery of the language. He certainly has an odd definition of the word "neglect". Given that the Government of which he was a Cabinet member spent three times less, in real terms, on training, I wonder what word he would have used to describe his own Government's performance. I shall give way if he would like to intervene. Mr. Sheldon rose --

Mr. Howard : I will not give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

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The Leader of the Opposition told the House earlier in this debate :

"there is a consensus that there has to be increased investment ... in training".--[ Official Report, 20 March 1990 ; Vol. 169, c. 1033.]

He does not seem to have told his hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), who told the House on 13 February that the only Labour promises were for increases in pensions and child benefits. Everything else, she said, is

"something that we hope to do as resources allow."--[ Official Report, 13 February 1990 ; Vol. 167, c. 179.]

Well, perhaps the hon. Member for Sedgefield will enlighten us. Is training, as the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East said,

"the area that stands out above all others"?--[ Official Report, 21 March 1990 ; Vol. 169, c. 1132.]

Or is it just one of many areas where Labour "hopes" to do more?

Mr. Blair : If the Minister cares so much about training, perhaps he will now explain why £300 million is being cut from the youth training budget over the next three years.

Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman may have overlooked the fact that, over the period to which he refers, there will be a substantial reduction in the number of young people coming on to the labour market. He may have overlooked the fact that employers have increased their contribution to youth training sixfold in the last two or three years and are expected to continue to increase that contribution. In overlooking those facts, he simply comes back with the knee-jerk reaction of the Opposition--that if any extra money is to be spent, it must come out of the taxpayer's pocket. That is the knee-jerk reaction that the Opposition always manifest when they make points of this kind.

Mr. Robert Sheldon : Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Howard : No, I am answering the right hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend, whose question would have considerably more force if he were prepared to tell us whether training is indeed a priority, as suggested by the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East, or simply one of the matters about which his party hopes to do more. There was a fascinating revelation in the House last week. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), under pressure from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, was forced to concede that the explicit pledge in the Labour party policy review to burden every enterprise in Britain with a training levy of 0.5 per cent. of payroll--in other words, a jobs tax--still stands as Labour policy. His remarks are reported in column 1259 of Volumne 169 of the Official Report for 22 March.

I hope that the hon. Member for Sedgefield--who might have the courtesy to listen--will therefore explain to the House in a moment why that pledge is not mentioned anywhere in his latest policy document on training, "Investing in Britain's Future". Did he forget to put it in? Does he think that an extra burden of at least £1 billion a year on British industry is not important? Or does he disagree with his shadow Cabinet colleague that it still represents Labour policy?

Just to help the hon. Gentleman, let me remind him of what the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East said :

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"of course the policy review proposals are still this party's policies. The policy review was passed by the party's annual conference."--[ Official Report, 22 March 1990 ; Vol. 169, c. 1259.] Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : Everything has been changed since then.

Mr. Howard : The hon. Member says that everything has been changed since then. Perhaps his hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield will tell us whether it has been changed since then.

Will the hon. Member for Sedgefield go on the record today to make it clear that the Labour party is still committed, as the policy review states at page 19, to setting up an enterprise training council with guaranteed trade union representation at every workplace? Does he believe that, as the review says at page 19, creating over 1 million quangos stuffed with trade union snoopers to "guide" and "monitor" every company's training policies will really help the competitiveness of British industry?

Will he explain why his new training policy document not only omitted both these policy review commitments but also, unaccountably, left out the pound sign? Perhaps it was merely a printer's error. Perhaps he will tell the House today how much Labour would spend on training. If his party has any claim to being taken seriously, it will give clear answers to these questions.

The Budget strategy set out by my right hon. Friend offers the clear prospect of controlling inflation, of renewed growth, and of a productive economy capable of competing with the best in the world. It provides the long-term framework for business growth and for falling unemployment. It is therefore a Budget that has the best interests of all the people of this country at heart. I commend it to the House.

4.59 pm

Mr. Tony Blair (Sedgefield) : After that speech, the only promotion lying in wait for the Secretary of State is the chairmanship of the Conservative party. It was a quite remarkable speech of complacency. The right hon. and learned Gentleman failed to realise that the most significant political event last week was not the Budget but the crushing defeat of the Government and their policies by the Labour party in the Mid- Staffordshire by-election. That is a reflection on not merely the heavyweight nature of our victory but the lightweight character of the Budget.

The Budget took refuge in small problems, because it shrank from the challenge of the large problems. Where it succeeded, it did so on issues that, although important, are not essential, and where it failed it did so fundamentally. That is why the cheers for it from Conservative Members were not echoed in the country. The gap between the popularity of the Budget in the Conservative party and its credibility in the country merely reminds us how great is the distance between the Government and the people whom they govern. We all support measures to help the blind, the Football Trust, the few children in workplace nurseries and the value added tax relief for small businesses, but the questions that the people asked the Chancellor were more profound. They asked why, if privatisation was supposed to mean lower prices, they are facing unnecessary and large price increases for water and electricity. They asked why, when many believed the talk of economic miracles two years ago and budgeted, planned and borrowed on

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that basis, they now face the agony of rocketing mortgages and cuts in their living standards. They were promised that the Government's rating reform would be fairer and simpler, but they now see this Tory tax--the poll tax--as so unfair that it disgusts even those who gain from it and so chaotic to administer that even long-serving Conservative councillors have resigned rather than implement it. They asked why, but they received no answers to those questions, except a concession on the poll tax which was so incompetently handled that the Chancellor must be the first in history to give away £100 million but be politically worse off as a result.

Business and industry demand an explanation of how, after 11 years of this Government, we have the worst balance of payments deficit in our history--a deficit in new and old industries--the highest interest rates in the western world, the highest inflation of any of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries and why they are being told by Ministers of the hard road ahead and the tough medicine that we should take, as if they were newly elected and not in the second decade of continuous government.

The Chancellor's forecasts show that unemployment may rise and that it is bottoming out at 1.6 million, or closer to 2 million on the old statistical basis. People recall that the Conservative party took office 11 years ago promising a reduction in unemployment, which was about 500,000 fewer than it is today. It should never be forgotten that this Government, alone among our competitors, have had the unsought bonanza of North sea oil. The money that could have been used in planning the seeds of our future prosperity was wasted. Our central charge is not just that the Government have squandered the opportunities of North sea oil and that they have committed serious errors of economic management but that, at best, they have neglected and, at worst, undermined Britain's industrial base and the long- term investment necessary for it.

That is evident above all in training. It is generally agreed that the key to Britain's success as a wealth-producing nation will lie in the quality of the knowledge base of the economy--the training and skills of its work force. The balance of payments gap is a reflection and product of the skills gap. Compared with our competitors abroad, that huge gap is widening. In Germany, 90 per cent. of 16 to 19-year-olds are in full-time training, in Belgium the figure is over 80 per cent. and in the United States over 80 per cent. and in Japan almost 80 per cent., but in Britain it is between 65 and 69 per cent.

There is an enormous gap between Britain and its competitor countries in the number of 16-year-olds who remain in full-time education. A report from the Confederation of British Industry found that British children are two years behind Japanese children in basic mathematical competence, that they have fewer foreign language skills than French or German children and that one third of our school leavers have no quaifications to show for their 11 years of education. In France and Germany, 90 per cent. of school leavers obtain some qualification of a standard higher than our O-level. Thirty five per cent. of French students achieve university

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entrance level. The figure in Germany is 30 per cent., yet in Britain it is 15 per cent.--less than half that of France or Germany. In Britain, about 100,000 young people leave school each year and take up work without any proper training. In many competitor countries, that would be unlawful and practically unthinkable. We demanded answers to those questions from the Budget.

Not long ago, the Conservative party said that manufacturing industry mattered little and that we could get by without it. We no longer hear that said. France and Japan train two or three times as many people in mechanical, electrical and construction occupations as Britain. We need 50,000 craftspeople a year simply to catch up, but the gap is increasing. What is the Government's response? They want to curtail the activities of the engineering industry training board. In Germany, 2,000 more people obtain degrees in engineering, there are 15,000 more technicians and three or four times as many craftsmen--120,000, compared with our 35,000. My hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) mentioned apprenticeships. In Germany, the number of apprenticeships over the past 10 years has risen to over 800,000, whereas in Britain they are down by one third. This weekend, an analysis was published by the National Computing Centre which shows that by 1995 Britain will have a 50,000 shortfall in the skilled people necessary for information technology. The hon. Member for Calder Valley (Mr. Thompson) said that, in the textile industry, the Germans were industrial peasants. I shall read a report on textiles from the National Institute for Economic and Social Research. It compared the performances of Germany and Britain and concluded :

"Over 80 per cent. of the German machinists in the plants we visited had completed a two or three-year day release course leading to an examination qualification similar to our City and Guilds course for skilled clothing employees. About 10 times as many pass such examinations each year in Germany as in Britain."

Mr. Donald Thompson : We found that the Germans' courses were inflexible, incapable of training and inadequate for Britain's needs.

Mr. Blair : The institute found that the courses produced higher qualifications than in Britain.

In case Conservative Members think that that applied only to manufacturing or textiles, I carefully considered the position on retailing, about which a comparison has been made between France and Britain. In retailing in France and Britain--the service sector which the Conservative party says will provide this country's future--the institute found that standards were lower in Britain. Nine times more people obtained qualifications in retailing in France than in this country, and the qualifications obtained in Britain were lower. The same position can also be found in the hotel industry, another service industry.

A recent study compared Britain with Germany, where similar numbers are employed in the hotel industry. It found that in the last decade, 35 per cent. of the staff in the hotel industry in Germany had craft-level qualifications, but in Britain only 14 per cent. of staff had them. Again, the qualifications in Germany were higher, broader-based and externally set and marked. Those qualifications gave rise to not merely a greater sense of qualification among those in Germany, but greater job satisfaction. It helps in every way to have the right type of training.

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Training is important not just in manufacturing or services, but in management. According to the most recent studies, management training is of a lower standard in Britain than in West Germany. It is proper to make such comparisons because that is the very sort of country against which Britain is competing. If we are unable to compete on the basis of greater skills, it is axiomatic, and accepted on both sides, that we shall lose the race in the 1990s as surely as we lost it in the 1980s. Therefore, it is no wonder that the head of the Training Agency, Mr. Roger Dawe, has admitted :

"At every level we are towards the bottom of the training league table, whether in education, youth training, higher level skills training or management."

The Labour party does not decry the activities of British employers who train. Within our constituencies we all know employers who train excellently, but only a few months ago the Confederation of British Industry said :

"Britain's skill levels are lower than those in most of its competitor countries and the gap is widening."

It talked of a "quantum leap in skills" or what is called "a revolution" in skills. That is not the language of complacency, but the language of challenge, which was absent from the Secretary of State's speech.

Even the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler), described Britain's training position as "mindboggling" and said, as was headlined in Employment News a few months ago :

"We have a mountain to climb".

No wonder he did so ; that B1 report on training in Britain showed that almost half the work force expected to receive no further training in their working lives, two thirds of all employees said that they had received no training in the past three years and 20 per cent. of employers gave no training. Therefore, according to the Government's own study, one in five employers are not training. When asked to describe the drawback of training, 38 per cent. of employers said that it was employees leaving for other jobs. The training study found that only one in four employers had a training plan and there was little evidence of planning in training.

The position that confronts us today is, first, that we have a massive skills deficit ; secondly, that deficit is in manufacturing, retailing, services and management training ; thirdly, it is a deficit not merely in the quantity of training, but the quality ; fourthly, the deficit is growing, not decreasing ; fifthly, there are major deficiencies in attitude in certain sections of employees and employers. It is in those circumstances, and against that background, that we examine the Budget to discover what it provides to achieve a training revolution.

The Budget offers a tax concession for employers who make charitable donations to training and enterprise councils. That is so modest a proposal that, where its cost should be listed in the Red Book, there is an asterisk because the cost is negligible. Less than £5 million is lost to the Exchequer through increasing the limits of the business expansion scheme, which is much less than the £120 million given away through the abolition of stamp duty on share transactions, and less than the £5 million cost of unchanged duty on pipe tobacco, the most expensive political joke in history. What is the Government's response to the call for a training revolution? On 6 December, the previous Secretary of State made a speech setting out what he called the "targets" that the Government should adopt for the

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training problems faced in Britain. That speech was entirely in keeping with his description of the training position in Britain as mindboggling. He said :

"By the end of 1992 no young person should be employed without training, two thirds should get to national NCVQ level 2 and one quarter of them to level 3, by 1995 all of them should be at least at level 2, half at level 3."

At page 10 of his speech he said :

"Unless we set ourselves those kinds of stretching targets, we shall not meet the need for upgrading and multi-skilling in a decade of continuing rapid change."

We therefore asked the Minister to say how we were progressing towards those targets under the new Secretary of State. I received the following reply on 8 March :

"My predecessor offered a framework of objectives for the development of training in the 1990s. Progress on meeting the objectives depends primarily on action by organisations outside Government ; they cannot be specific Government targets."--[ Official Report, 8 March 1990 ; Vol. 168, c. 804. ]

That was the first response of the new regime, and we heard it again today, which is why I intervened earlier.

It is perfectly clear that we are now experiencing the classic Tory trick. When the Government come up against a problem that they cannot solve, they deny its existence. There has been a subtle but important change of rhetoric, and the Government are now talking about how well they are doing, whereas the previous Secretary of State accepted, as did many others, that the problem was serious, indeed mindboggling. The Government's second response is to cut the training budget. It is scarcely credible that against that background, and with the need for a training revolution, the Government should cut the training budget for young people by more than £300 million in the next few years--£150 million next year, £120 million the year after and £60 million in 1992-93. We are told that the reason for that is the falling number of young people and the fact that employers are carrying more of the cost. Surely we should see the falling number of young people as an opportunity not to cut spending, but to improve the quality of the training we provide. We should view the demographic changes as an opportunity to upgrade the level of Britain's skills, not cut them. Many training and enterprise councils will start by having cuts in their funding, cuts in spending per trainee and even cuts in spending per trainee week. It is not merely a cut in the overall budget, but a cut in expenditure on each trainee.

Mr. Howard : What has the hon. Gentleman been doing since 13 February, when his hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) said that the Labour party had only two firm spending pledges, pensions and child benefit, and for all other sectors it would merely have to hope and do as resources allow? Why does not he have a word with his hon. Friend?

Mr. Blair : The right hon. and learned Gentleman should have read the speech more carefully. My hon. Friend called on the Government to restore the cuts in training. The last thing that any responsible Government should do is to cut training. How do we address the revolution in training by cutting training? In addition to youth training, we must also consider adult training. Adult training is critical because it is estimated that 80 per cent. of what will be the work force in the year 2000 are working now.

At the business and cities conference on 6 December, the former Secretary of State for Employment said that by the end of 1995 all employers of whatever size should have

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the seal of approval of the CBI for such things as training plans and upgrading the skills of their work forces. He added : "By not later than 31 December 1992, there should be in place a comprehensive and effective framework of sector training organisations capable of establishing and monitoring standards and capable also of providing information and advice to employers in their sectors about labour market and occupational trends and training techniques and technologies in use or development both at home and abroad."

That would seem to be an enormous task.

Mr. Robert Sheldon : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me an opportunity to raise the question that I wanted to put to the Secretary of State earlier. It was a pity that the Secretary of State would not respond to me. When a new programme is announced, the Public Accounts Committee likes to know the clear objectives and, at the end of the programme, to compare the objectives with the achievements. I want to know how the Secretary of State plans to do that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) was saying, an attempt will be made to compare objectives with achievement within a set time scale.

Mr. Blair : My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was extraordinary that in a Budget debate the Secretary of State would not give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) who is a Privy Councillor and the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. The Secretary of State was prescient in not giving way because the answer to the point raised by my right hon. Friend is that the Government are dumping the targets that the former Secretary of State set out in his important speech. We have been looking at the sector training organisations and we have used some of the parliamentary answers secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Employment. We have examined the comprehensive bodies that are supposed to provide a wide range of advice across the spectrum. The notion that we can provide such a sector training strategy with the kind of organisations listed in a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East on 5 March is frankly laughable.

We have been checking up on some of the sector training organisations to discover what resources are available to them. Earlier I said that by the middle of the 1990s, we would have a shortfall of 50,000 in information technology. At present, the computer services industry training council covers 44,000 people and that number will soon increase to almost 300,000. At present, that council has five full-time staff. The national retailing training council, which covers 2.5 million people, has only five full-time staff, but that is more than many other councils. The United Kingdom Agricultural Supply Trade Association has only 1.25 people covering the whole association. Only 0.6 of a person covers the National Association of Master Bakers, Confectioners and Caterers. The idea that that amounts to a comprehensive sectoral strategy is, as I said, laughable.

That is the background against which the Government are abandoning targets, making cuts and trying now to

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deny the extent of the problem because they lack the will to solve it. That is the context in which the Budget's negligible contribution should be set.

Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman has been addressing the House for nearly 25 minutes. Conservative Members have been waiting patiently for him to answer the questions that I put to him during my speech. When will he tell us whether the jobs tax still forms part of Labour party policy? When will he tell us what the Labour party would do?

Mr. Blair : We would not be cutting the training budget when we should be investing more. We would be providing every young person with an entitlement to train. We would be integrating post-16 education and training, upgrading our qualifications and skills and ensuring that we have a proper legislative framework to ensure that training occurs in this country. We would ensure that there are sanctions against employers who do not train, because that is important. It is important that we set the kind of targets that are now being undermined by this Government's strategy.

Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman has just made an extremely important statement. He has told us that the Labour party would impose sanctions on employers. What will those sanctions be?

Mr. Blair : They are in the policy review. We will require a training investment contribution from employers that are not training.

Mr. Howard : That is a jobs tax.

Mr. Blair : If the Secretary of State believes that the mood of the country is one of complacency towards employers that are not training, he is wrong. It is vital that we have a policy to deal with the one in five employers who do not train. That is why the TECs were appalled at the decision to cut training funding.

Of course employers must do more. To answer the Secretary of State's specific point, it is excellent that employers are showing more signs of commitment. However, as the employers admit, their contribution is in addition to, and not in substitution of, the Government's contribution. If TECs are seen simply as the means of the Government disengaging from their responsibilities, the whole project will fail.

That is why the Budget does nothing for training. It does nothing for the plight of the millions of low-paid people. It does nothing for the problems of families living on reduced child benefit and it does nothing to alleviate the hardship of millions of our citizens who face the poll tax.

As constrained as the Chancellor of the Exchequer was by the errors of the past--

Mr. Hind : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

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