House of Commons Hansard Debates for 4 Nov 1991

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tries to sabotage any plan--great or small-- to deal with the problem. I am proud of the fact that, when I was Secretary of State for Employment, I introduced legislation to provide maternity leave--I was probably the first Minister in this country's history to do so. One of the first mean-minded actions of the Conservative Government in 1979 and 1980 was to diminish the effect of the maternity leave provisions that we had introduced, even those that were not far reaching. Our measures were just the beginning of reasonable, intelligent, humane legislation.

The Government object to extending maternity leave legislation. I do not know which countries have a worse or better record than Britain, but in the main this country lags behind most other western European countries in introducing such legislation.

Mr. Howard indicated dissent.

Mr. Foot : The right hon. and learned Gentleman shakes his head. We shall see. He is not always right in these matters.

If we are not lagging behind, why do we not lead the way, as we started to do under the Labour Government? Some countries are now well ahead of us. We should try to catch up. If the Government are so mean-minded as to think that we do not need modern legislation to provide proper maternity leave, that is a shameful state of affairs, particularly as they said recently that they were in favour of doing something for women. However, I saw no reference in the Prime Minister's statement the other day to this latest mean-minded approach.

Many of us--not only in the Labour party but throughout Europe--believe that shorter working hours may help to deal with long-term unemployment. Good employers in this country are eager to have shorter hours. Indeed, most of the best employers have always been ready to discuss such measures and many have discovered that, if there is decent control over working hours, they will get a much better response from their workers.

I believe that the Government are even contemplating doing away with the restrictions on miners' working hours. We shall tear the Government apart on that plan, just as on everything else. I do not know whether they dare go ahead. Miners led the way in calling for a shorter working week. The limit on miners' hours was one of the great triumphs of legislation secured by the trade union movement. As engineers and others know, similar rules and similarly intelligent provisions apply to other trades.

Are the Government seriously saying that it is a good idea not to have such an agreement on working hours? If it is a good idea to have some agreements, most of the arguments that the Secretary of State for Employment constantly uses about the minimum wage are blown out of the water. His first lot of figures were torn to tatters by Mr. Peter Kellner in an article in The Independent. Many hon. Members will have read that article and I am sure that I have advertised it well for those who did not. I plead with hon. Members to read the article and the reply by the Secretary of State, which virtually confirms Mr. Kellner's case. The Secretary of State seems to think that the purpose of the debate is to extract apologies. He would

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have to apologise non-stop if he had to tell the House the truth about the minimum wage, rather than distorting the argument as he goes around the country.

Unemployment is a worldwide problem. One way to deal with part of the problem is to have policies in Europe and further afield, including regional policies. The Secretary of State taunted the Opposition, asking whether we had any plans for the money that was to be allocated to restore regional policies. I believe that such policies should be promoted over the proper period. I come from an area where unemployment problems were grossly intensified by the Government's removing almost every regional advantage that it ever had.

The Secretary of State does not seem to understand some of the main policies which were built up by the Labour Government after 1945--regional policies that made comparative advantages possible for the most heavily hit areas in Scotland, Wales and the north-east. The Labour Government introduced effective regional policies which played a major part in ensuring the full employment that generally existed in the country between 1945 and 1970. Without such policies, maintaining full employment would have been inconceivable. Those policies were generally sustained until the first of the great recessions for which the Conservative Government have been responsible.

The Government started to remove regional policies that had worked effectively. They distributed some of the money in income tax reductions, but, whatever they did with it, they took huge sums from areas which had received funds before. Each time they did so in Wales, we put the case to the relevant Secretary of State for Employment. Each of them said, "You'll find our new regional policy will be just as good as the one you had. We know what we're doing. Don't worry too much." What happened ? The bitter, harsh experience is that 12 per cent. unemployment has been translated to 14 or 15 per cent. and male unemployment is again back to more than 20 per cent.

Not only are we afflicted by the general atmosphere of the Government's economic policy, but we are being hit even more by the way in which the Government are withdrawing any sensible regional policies.

When the Secretary of State charges our Front-Bench spokesmen, asking what amount of money we will devote to regional policy, I hope that he will get an answer from a Government in power who understand that it is essential for the well-being of the United Kingdom, including Scotland, Wales, the north-east and the rest, that a full-scale regional policy be properly restored.

I hope that the Secretary of State will never again jeer about that as he has done today. If he thinks that this is prejudice, he need only read the front page of the Western Mail today. It used to be called the "Conservative Party Advertiser" but it is not quite like that now--the party does not have much to advertise. In an article headlined "Factories lying idle" it states :

"More than 1,000 factories are now lying idle across Wales as massive amounts of industrial space fall vacant every week, it has been revealed.

In go-ahead Gwent"--

that is my county, which is go-ahead, as we seek every advantage in trying to assist our people and to provide jobs--

"alone there are more than 400 units waiting for occupation, and top of the list in the county which has attracted more businesses than most is an 80,000 sq ft. building in Tredegar."

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Tredegar is in my constituency, but there are 400 units vacant throughout Gwent.

I am not sure whether the Secretary of State voted against the programme that we wisely introduced--the Welsh Development Agency--but I think that the Secretary of State for Education and Science, who is sitting beside him, must have voted against it. He remembers everything in his past so well. Indeed, I had a debate with him in Oxford the other day when he thought that he had invented the national health service. We had to put him right about such simple historical facts and I hope that, he will have the chance to correct that.

That Government have not invented any good regional policies. All that they have done is demolish the good policies that we introduced. I hope that, when we get that new Labour Government, a regional policy will be one of the major measures introduced. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith), who will be Chancellor of the Exchequer, knows about these matters very well, because he has spoken about them. I am sure that one of the ways in which we can tackle deep-seated mass unemployment is through an intelligent regional policy.

Mr. Janman : I certainly do not doubt the sincerity of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks, but throughout modern economic history, when any Government have sought to misdirect national resources in a manner that goes completely against the grain of the marketplace, has not the result of such a regional policy been exactly the opposite to what the right hon. Gentleman has sought to achieve? There is no better example than the fact that every Labour Government since the war have increased unemployment.

Mr. Foot : I am glad to be able to enlighten the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Janman), especially when he talks in terms of what has happened to the numbers of unemployed during Labour Governments. There has never been a Labour Government who have had to face unemployment on this scale. Never in the history of recorded figures have a Labour Government tolerated unemployment on this scale, whether in the United Kingdom as a whole or in Wales, Scotland or anywhere else. So I hope that that lie will never be preached again. The hon. Member for Thurrock asked whether I did not know that if one took economic resources from one area and instilled them into others that was merely a way of upsetting the ordinary economic mechanism and that it did not result in any advances. The last time that I heard that argument so brazenly presented was by Mr. Neville Chamberlain's spokesman before the war. That is what they said in the 1930s. They said that one could not solve unemployment on such a scale and that if one invested £1 million in one area, having taken it away from profitable Birmingham or wherever, it would leave us worse off in the end. It is partly because of that false economics that the Conservatives have never had a regional policy. That policy does not work and if one applies it in that way one can only deepen slumps--just as the Government are doing now.

Every time the Secretary of State comes to the Dispatch Box to reaffirm that laissez-faire doctrine, about 100,000 people are added to the unemployment figures.

We can deal with mass unemployment on this scale only if we have a Government who are determined to do so, and

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we can deal with it better if, internationally, Governments are determined to do so. I hope a new Labour Government will not only apply those policies but will lead the rest of Europe instead of squabbling behind them or relinquishing the whole of the case. We have the chance to do that.

The idea that one cannot do anything about unemployment is the real gospel of despair. This country is not prepared to accept the gospel of despair in mass unemployment, which is returning on such a scale today.

4.56 pm

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent) : I am always interested to listen to the long-extending memory of the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). His memory goes back further than I could possibly hope to remember.

I was interested in his reiteration of the value of regional policies, because the criteria on which such a policy would be administered is of interest to one who comes from a county which is probably being hit by a more rapidly rising rate of unemployment than almost anywhere else. One must ask whether, in those circumstances, if a regional policy of the kind that the right hon. Gentleman had in mind were in place Kent would be a prime recipient of assistance. Such questions have become much harder to answer as a consequence of the Government's astonishing success in closing the north-south divide, which was thought to be wholly irremediable when they came to office. The Government have seen an increase in prosperity throughout the United Kingdom and a sharing of both good times and bad.

Mr. Tony Worthington (Clydebank and Milngavie) : Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the rate of male unemployment in Glasgow is 20 per cent.? What is it in his constituency?

Mr. Rowe : The rate of unemployment in Glasgow has been very high for a long time, and I accept that that is unfortunate. However, the truth of the matter is that the Scottish economy is in a better state now than it has been for many years and is continuing to thrive. I realise that it is constantly in the interests of the Opposition to belittle the Government's successes, but that is certainly one. Two things were said when the Government took office. It was said, first, that the country was ungovernable, and secondly, that there was an unbridgeable north-south gap. Neither of those points is true after the years in which we have been in office.

I especially welcome the sentence in the Queen's Speech which points to the privatisation of British Rail. This is not the occasion for a detailed analysis for the evaluation of the alternative proposals for a high-speed rail link to the channel tunnel. As some hon. Members may know, I have some interest in that subject, and I hope that I shall be able to have an Adjournment debate in which to discuss the process by which we arrived at the present stage of the project. The confusion, the inappropriate pressure by British Rail, the flawed methodology of the evaluation and other defects in the system merit a debate, but that is not appropriate in the context of the Queen's Speech.

It is essential to draw to the Government's attention the extraordinary misery of some of my constituents who are still in complete confusion about where the route is to go. The changes in alignment which will be necessary to meet

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the new criteria leave those constituents wholly confused and able neither to buy nor sell their properties, or to do anything that they should be able to do.

It is appropriate to this debate to raise two general points. The first is the need for a serious rail freight strategy. It is incomprehensible to me that I should have gone on Thursday last to a seminar at which the chairman of British Rail, a man for whom I have considerable admiration, was able to tell us that British Rail had great difficulty in competing in the freight market because all that rail freight was really equipped to do was to carry aggregates, heavy metals and traditional Victorian freight cargoes. He must be almost alone in that belief.

It certainly is not a belief shared by the freight manager of SNCF who is busy setting up and running a freight operation for carrying highly sensitive cargoes, such as chilled foods, at great speed around France. It is not a view shared by the managing director of Charter Rail, a company in which British Rail has a 20 per cent. holding. He told me that he has an operation that would be able to deliver chilled foods to the centre of town at 3 am in time for them to be on the supermarket shelves if only British Rail did not think that it would be more satisfactory to carry gravel. That will not be a tenable position for much longer in any circumstances.

Switzerland and Austria have insisted on having a major investment project because they believe that their ecology is too sensitive to be battered constantly by heavy lorries. Does any hon. Member seriously believe that Switzerland and Austria will be the only two countries in Europe to take that view about their environment in the next few years?

Mrs. Dunwoody : Does it not occur to the hon. Gentleman that the difference is in investment? No one doubts for a moment that British Rail is perfectly capable of running high-quality services. However, at present the freight division is turning in a considerable loss. It is the Government whom the hon. Gentleman supports who do not want British Rail to invest.

Mr. Rowe : I have considerable doubt about British Rail's capacity to run a profitable freight strategy, because it has no interest in doing so. The chairman of British Rail has just said that it is not the kind of operation in which he wants to be. As he said last Thursday, he is willing to have the operation taken off his hands. I believe that it will be taken off his hands by private entrepreneurs such as Robin Macleod of Thamesport, who is already interested in running his own freight services because he cannot get the service that he wants from British Rail.

If my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Transport were here, I would say to him that one does not have to be a Daniel to interpret the writing on the wall. The writing is that the heavy lorry will no longer be the darling of all Secretaries of State for Transport. The day of the heavy lorry as the principal mover of long-distance freight is under threat because people think that it is environmentally unsound. It will gradually find itself taxed to a point at which the railways will become wholly competitive--and high time too.

We should get British Rail out of the lead position on the channel tunnel link. It is extraordinary that British Rail should once more be given the lead role in developing

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a link in which it has no confidence and which it fought against with unmitigated ferocity. I am not being hostile to British Rail in particular, but I believe that British Rail is in the wrong place to take such a role.

British Rail is bound to look at the issue with its interests in mind. We need someone to look at the issue with the interests of the country as a whole in mind. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Transport believes that, too. If we could find a private consortium to take the lead role and to run with it, we should do so. I find it extraordinary that Ove Arup, whose project is to be worked up, is somehow relegated to being a company with which British Rail sometimes has conversations. That is an extraordinary position.

I turn now to the main topics of today's debate. We have achieved a remarkable turnaround in training and in education. There has been an extraordinary change from a system under which we had time-linked apprenticeships which meant that no matter how clever one was or how well one did, one had to take the whole time, to a system under which people will be assessed on what they can do and not on how long it has taken them.

The coming decade will see a considerable acceleration of the involved society. Like all developed industrialised countries, we have somehow managed to fragment our society far more than is good for it. The number of broken homes, the number of single parents and the number of people living on their own has grown disproportionately large. It is time to start changing that, and we are beginning to do so.

I draw the House's attention to, for example, the charitable activities of the Lord Mayor of London. This year, he has chosen to support tutoring in schools. The project involves students from colleges, universities and polytechnics chosing to spend some of their time working in schools that welcome them with pupils who are either in need of special educational help or who are well ahead of the rest of the class. What is so striking about that is that not only do the children who are helped do better in their exams, as one might expect, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the students who help them also do better in theirs. That is a consequence of an increase in their self-esteem and their understanding of how to teach and relate to other young people. I should like a tremendous acceleration of that programme.

The days are over when the professionals believed that, if only they had enough resources, if only there were enough of them and if only they were sufficiently well trained, they could solve all society's problems. It is beginning to be understood that such volunteers can extend the professional's reach and be of real assistance to them. In that respect, I draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment to the enormous reservoir of people who are leaving full-time paid employment with another 30 years of active life ahead of them? What a tremendous resource that is. We have only started to scratch the surface of what such people could do to help, if they so chose.

For example, one has only to think of the number of young, isolated mothers with a child or children. They are often terrified of their babies and unclear about how to bring them up, thinking that every time the baby cries it is their fault and feeling that they have no one to whom to relate. If they could be assisted and befriended by someone who has brought up her own child--someone who would read to and play with the child--in most cases that work

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would be welcomed and better done purely by volunteers. However, in many parts of the country volunteers receive expenses and some receive slightly more than their expenses, which helps them if they have a limited income-- [Interruption.] I dimly perceive a muttering that suggests that there is a protagonist of the old belief that everything should be left to the professionals. That is fair enough, but I think that that belief is outmoded.

Mrs. Dunwoody : Will the hon. Gentleman give way ?

Mr. Rowe : I am delighted to give way to someone who is at last standing up.

Mrs. Dunwoody : As a mother and grandmother, I should prefer any support to be given to young mothers who do not know how to bring up children to be professional, qualified and paid. I am afraid that that marks me out from the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Rowe : It not only marks the hon. Lady out as someone who has a tremendous belief in professionals but, uncharacteristically, as someone who is unrealistic, because there is no possibility of the numbers that we are talking about being reached by the medicine which she prescribes.

We must pay tribute to the Government for the development of the national vocational qualification. It is an innovative and valuable method of validating the experience of large numbers of people. I am slightly anxious that the original reason for its introduction--to validate experience in ways that could then be assessed, compared and used as building blocks for further advancement in a professional career--seems to have taken second place to the creation of NVQs as an alternative qualification ab initio.

In the health service, which seems to have a strange reluctance to embrace NVQs with the enthusiasm that they deserve, the value of NVQs is that someone who has been caring for an elderly relation for many years and who has learnt all kinds of practical skills, such as bathing and feeding, could have those skills validated when the relative dies and could be accepted on the first rung of the professional development ladder. I hope that that will not be lost. The Government's actions in the polytechnic and university sectors are long overdue and very valuable. Having been a teacher at university for a while, I well understand the anxiety of some university staff that amalgamating the polytechnic and university sectors could result in a dilution of quality. But most people in the universities understand that the polytechnics have won for themselves a place in the education system that makes such anxieties out of place. Provided that quality assurance for courses is kept in place--it is vital that is--we shall be safe. Many university courses seem to be extremely poor and I hope that they will be subject to a more effective peer audit than the external examiner sometimes achieves.

In a debate that spans employment and education, it is valuable to say that, if we are to have more people entering engineering, science and mathematics as opposed to the arts, we must move on both sides of the equation. We are doing our best to make recruitment to those courses as attractive as possible, but the disparity between the amount of work required of students on arts courses in many colleges and universities, compared with that required of students on engineering or technical courses, is

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so huge that any student who is ambivalent about which side of the divide to fall is bound to choose the arts course, which leaves students endless time to enjoy themselves in other ways. That needs to be looked at seriously.

With only 4 per cent. of the population entering retirement with any form of pre-retirement education, the difficulties of adjusting to that long period without a framework of work or a regular income have been greatly underestimated. Retirement is one of the peak moments for divorce and many people need assistance with what to do with their money, how to handle the extra time and how to cope with changing family relationships. I suggest that, on the day of their retirement, as part of a retirement package, retired people should receive a voucher entitling them to go to a recognised one or two-day course--however much we could afford--on pre- retirement or retirement education. Thus they could learn about the opportunities as well as the challenges ahead of them.

5.18 pm

Mr. Ron Leighton (Newham, North-East) : Britain is an open market-- we are open to western Europe, the United States, Japan and many other countries--which means that we must have world-class industry, technology, investment and an educated population trained to world-class standards. Without that, we can neither compete nor survive. We shall lose not only our markets overseas but also our domestic markets to foreign imports. Our factories and industries will close and we shall have long-term mass unemployment. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has written a letter to the Department of Employment in which he states that there is no connection between training and unemployment. How wrong can one be? How cynical can one get? In public, the Government pay lip service to training, but in private they do not believe that one should waste money on it.

The Government have been in power for 12 years but they have still not got it right. They have not tackled the problem adequately. We are still falling behind our competitors, and the skills gap between ourselves and overseas countries is still widening.

Over those 12 years, the Government have chopped and changed their policy. We have had the youth opportunities programme, the training and opportunities programme, the youth training scheme, the job training scheme and the community programme. All those programmes were lauded on their introduction and subject to much hype, but many of them have since been scrapped. In the past 12 years, the Manpower Services Commission has been replaced by the Training Agency, and now we have the training and enterprise councils.

Now, when we ask questions about training, the Government hide behind the TECs. We cannot get any answers from the Government, because they say that everything has been handed over to the TECs. They are now responsible for running the Government's programmes for the unemployed and, perhaps more importantly, for stimulating enterprise, regenerating local economies and increasing the skills levels of the employed work force. They are supposed to bring about the so-called training revolution. That is the raison d'etre of the TEC movement--it does not exist solely to run programmes for the unemployed.

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Although the Government have given the TECs the responsibility, they have not given them the tools to do the job. In fact they have taken those tools away and, as a result, the TECs are being strangled in their first year of operation. A year ago, the launch of the TECs was accompanied by swingeing cuts in their budgets. What a way to launch them. The Secretary of State is well aware that the reduced the expenditure on employment training by £365 million.

The employment training programme was always underfunded, it was a penny- pinching scheme. The Government did replace one third of that cut. We do not hear much about that programme nowadays, but the previous Secretary of State never stopped hyping its benefits. We used to read all the advertisements about

"training the workers without jobs for the jobs without workers", but we do not hear much about that now.

We were told that the ET programme was the greatest retraining scheme ever attempted, but it was underfunded and the training offered was of poor quality. Now, we are told that it had a 70 per cent. drop-out rate and that, of those who completed their training, fewer than 50 per cent. got a job. However, instead of increasing the funding to improve the quality of training, the Government propose to reduce such funding even further.

The Government claim that all those aged between 18 and 25 who have been unemployed for six months are guaranteed a training place on ET. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) has pointed out that the Select Committee on Employment has already received about 60 letters from local TECs about the problems with those guarantees. It is absurd and preposterous for the Secretary of State to claim that those letters are out of date. Those letters are only a few days old. Many of the TECs have written to say that they are unable to implement the guarantee that the Government have given.

When it comes to youth training, the Government also hide behind the TECs. They pretend that every young person without a job is guaranteed a youth training place, but that is not true. There are hundreds and hundreds of young people across the country to whom that guarantee is not being delivered. In my borough, 615 people are without such a place. Hundreds of young people are now left in limbo and thrown on the scrap heap at 16 and 17. They are told that there is no chance of a job, but now there is not even the chance of a place on YT.

It is not long ago that we used to hear about the demographic time bomb. We were told that employers would be fighting one another to get young people. Perhaps that is why the Government made large cuts in the amount of money available per place on the youth training scheme. Perhaps that is why they expected the employers to pay more. Many employers do not want to know, because they are now suffering from the Conservative-induced recession. Many have gone out of business and the rest are struggling to survive. They have made many redundant, and they are not taking on young people. It is therefore becoming impossible for the TECs and trainers to find employer placements for young people.

The employers who are supposed to pay more towards training are making no contribution at all. Many trainers are now trying to provide project places, which are often

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more expensive, with no contribution from employers. The sums do not add up. As a result, the quality of training is suffering because such project programmes are cheaper and inferior in comparison with employer placements. It is all to do with getting more bums on seats and lectures. It has nothing to do with quality training. Young people are also unable to attain NVQs because of insufficient employer placements.

I have paid the Secretary of State a great compliment by listening to what he says. He stands up regularly in the House and says that the Government are committed to the guarantee of training, but what do those weasel words mean? What the right hon. and learned Gentleman says sounds good, and one imagines that that guarantee will be delivered, but not so. The Government say that all the responsibility rests with the TECs, but they do not give them the necessary resources.

The Select Committee on Employment has received letters from those responsible for the TEC in Dorset to say that it is not delivering the employment training guarantee. The same is true of YT and ET guarantees, judging from letters received from the TECs in greater Nottingham, the heart of England, Lincolnshire, Manchester, Milton Keynes, north-east Wales, north Nottinghamshire, south-east Cheshire, Teesside, west London, and central London. In east London, where I come from, they are unable to deliver the guarantee. What sort of commitment is that?

The Secretary of State may stand up and say that the Government are committed to the guarantee but someone else must deliver. However, those responsible have had to admit that they are not delivering the goods.

Before this debate, I got in touch with the careers service office in my borough and asked about the latest figures on employment placements. The latest figures available cover September and October. In September, in Newham, 615 people had no YT place. In Redbridge, the fiture was 537, in Tower Hamlets, 724 and in Barking 443. In the October count, there were 820 young people awaiting a placement in Havering and 577 in Waltham Forest. What sort of guarantee is that? Those young people do not have a YT place because the local TEC does not have the placements and it does not have the resources to find them.

I do not know whether the Secretary of State is aware that he has given extra resources to the east London TEC for 1,000 more places, but that is not nearly enough. However, the east London TEC has had to tell the careers service that it does not have the resources to find those placements. It has said that it is up to the careers service to find those placements.

The Secretary of State is allegedly committed to guaranteeing placements-- whatever that means--but he has put the responsibility on the TECs. In my borough, that means that, when the careers service produces the bodies, the same TEC says that it cannot do anything about it, because it does not have the resources to find the placements. It has turned to the careers service and said that it is up to it to canvass for those placements. It has undertaken to canvass for 1,000 places.

In the vain struggle by the TECs to deliver the guarantees, all their time is being monopolised--so are all their efforts and all their money. They have had to raid all their other budgets in an attempt to implement the guarantees to the unemployed. They have had to abandon their business plans and their other key projects. They

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have had to restrict themselves to reacting in the short term, to wrestling with the Government's programmes for the unemployed. They have been failing in the attempt. But this was not the job for which they were set up. The Training Agency could have done it. The job could have been left to that agency if these Government unemployment projects were all that were at stake.

Business people from the private sector were called in to perform the other tasks--meeting the needs of the local economy, developing enterprise and regenerating the local economy. That was the raison d'etre of the TECs--but it has all had to be abandoned, with a consequent loss of morale and growth of cynicism in the TEC movement.

Over the past year, unemployment has risen by more than 750,000, but the money for the TECs has not increased commensurately, so they are trying to cope with demand-led programmes on cash-limited budgets. That cannnot be done.

The Secretary of State's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) set up the TECs ; this Secretary of State is strangling them.

I believe that we are about to have a public expenditure statement. Last year, the Secretary of State acquiesced while the Treasury stamped all over him. There were major cuts. The right hon. and learned Gentleman let his Department down ; he let the TECs down and he let the work force down. What about this year? There has been a phenomenal increase in unemployment, an increase that continues with the loss of 5,000 manufacturing jobs every week.

The TECs are virtually overwhelmed by the recession. If there is not to be a major collapse of morale--I hope that the Secretary of State takes what I am saying seriously, because I intend to keep in close contact with the TECs--the right hon. and learned Gentleman must obtain a very substantial increase in the funding for his Department and for the TECs. I do not expect him to tell me now whether he has got such an increase, but unless he obtains one, morale will collapse.

There could be no better use of public money in a recession than counter- cyclical expenditure on training. We should spend the money on training instead of wasting £20 billion on dole queues. We should take £1 billion of that money and use it to put people back at work, so that we do not have to pay them unemployment benefit and they can begin paying taxes. That is what the Secretary of State for Employment must do. Unless he does, the TECs will be overwhelmed by this recession and he will do great damage to them and to the country.

5.33 pm

Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth) : I hope that the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) will forgive me if I do not follow his line of argument. I should like to concentrate on education today.

I welcome the Gracious Speech, particularly the part about the introduction of the parents charter. I also welcome the part referring to making more information about schools generally available.

Just as war is too important to be left to the generals, so education is too important to be left to the educationists. I firmly believe that most parents know best what is right for their children. We need to provide them

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with a vehicle that they can use to improve school standards, and the charter provides the engine for parental ambitions.

One of the main thrusts of Government policy has been to involve parents in the education of their children. Grant-maintained schools are an example of greater parental involvement. The requirement for better school records is another. The charter brings together a number of differing strands and helps to weave a policy formalising parental involvement.

Since knowledge is power, according to Chairman Mao, the charter puts power firmly into the hands of parents by giving them, perhaps for the first time, real knowledge about their children's educational progress and about the schools that their children attend. I welcome the new inspection arrangements--

Mr. Dunn : Hear, hear.

Mr. Pawsey : I am delighted to have the support of my hon. Friend and I am not at all surprised that he, as a former Education Minister, joins me in welcoming the new arrangements. They will ensure that schools are inspected a great deal more frequently. Regular school inspections lift standards and show teachers where things are going wrong. Because the inspections will be frequent, they will ensure that standards do not slip too far.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) : Does my hon. Friend agree that another great advantage will be that reports will no longer be written in jargon, so that parents will be able to understand what is going on?

Mr. Pawsey : I endorse my hon. Friend's wise words.

A new organisation headed by the chief inspector of schools will be set up. The new inspectorate will be wholly independent of Government and will be able to discharge its new role without, as Opposition Members would say, interference from Ministers. The independent inspection teams will be chosen by governors from a list approved by Her Majesty's inspectorate. There will therefore be no soft options for schools, no comfortable inspections by a friend of the headmaster or even by a friend of the school -- [Interruption.] Inspectors will be approved and will be required to undertake a rigorous and thorough inspection-- [Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Member for Durham, North-West (Ms. Armstrong) finds the issue of school inspections a laughing matter. Most of the nation's parents think it a matter of the utmost seriousness and will support the Government's proposals. The principal difference under the new system will be the frequency of inspections. I have no doubt that the new arrangements will bring with them great benefits as compared with the present system, under which full inspections occur infrequently, if at all. We know that some schools have never had a full inspection. Local education authorities can organise their own inspections, which are much less rigorous than full HMI inspections--a point emphasised by the fact that they are usually undertaken by staff known as advisers, not inspectors.

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