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Mr. Spencer Batiste (Elmet) : It is particularly fitting that we should have the debates on education and employment on the same day, because education is a continuing process throughout life upon which employment is heavily dependent. What is more, any forecast about the way in which industry will develop within the United Kingdom and the European Community in the remainder of this century suggests that national prosperity will depend to an increasing extent on the successful skilling up of the national work force to meet the new demands that will be made by industry, technology, the professions and academia.
Anyone who studies academic standards in our schools over the past 20 years must recognise that there have been considerable improvements. International comparisons are of relatively little value because they tend to highlight the different priorities and practices of different countries. We are better than other countries in some things and they are better than us in others.
Mr. Batiste : That sedentary intervention illustrates how the Opposition always look for the things that damage Britain most. Not unnaturally, we always look at the things in which we do rather well.
We must not undermine our centres of excellence when we try to improve the system as a whole. I believe that we have paid a heavy price for some of the flawed theories that were adopted by the educational establishment of the 1960s. Those theories have led to great under-achievement among our population.
The first of those flawed theories was the myth of parity of esteem between schools. The idea that every school produced a similar standard of education and that parents regarded every school in their area as equal was nonsense. It was also dangerous. If one could not identify the differences in the quality of education between schools, there was no incentive to put things right. If parents did not have reasonably objective information from which to make a judgment between schools, they made that judgment on whatever inaccurate information was available to them. That myth has caused us great harm.
The second flawed theory was the commitment to the objective of mixed- ability teaching. I accept that in some schools such teaching may be necessary--in village schools with a small number of pupils, it is inevitable. Those teachers engaged in mixed teaching tell me that it can work, to a degree, if one puts a great deal of effort into it. However, for the same effort, much better education could be provided if schools were to stream effectively on abilities where possible. The third flawed theory was the idea that to encourage the competitive spirit among children and to get them used to competitive pressures was in some way undesirable.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Robert Atkins) : Especially in sport
Mr. Batiste : I know that my hon. Friend has a great interest in sport and that is the best example of why that
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crass theory fell down. However, just because its crassness was so obvious in sport does not mean that the theory has not caused equal damage throughout all subjects.I strongly suspect that many able people drop out of university early in their careers because, as much as anything else, they have never been brought up to face competitive pressure in life. They find it difficult to make that adjustment. But once we leave the world of education, we must face such competitive pressures in almost every walk of life. Surely our educational system should encourage and train people to face up to them.
In the past 10 years, the Government have taken great steps to correct those flaws. We have introduced parental choice, the local management of schools, grant-maintained schools--there will be a flood of applications to become such schools after we have won the next election--the GCSE, the national curriculum and testing. All those changes are beginning to remove the bases of the flawed theories so that we can address the reality of education and put right existing problems.
The Queen's Speech maintains the momentum. We plan to enlarge the inspection of schools to a scale hitherto unknown. That is essential. Some Opposition Members have criticised the fact that the inspectors will not be Government officials, but I look upon such criticism with amazement. If the Opposition had a shred of justification for their attack it would mean that they would nationalise all chartered accountants. Surely the same logic should apply--no one could provide a fair and independent audit of a limited company unless he was a Government official. That is nonsense and it is just as much nonsense when one applies it to education.
Mr. Straw : What about the Bank of Credit and Commerce International?
Mr. Batiste : There we have it once again--the moment we have such discussions the Opposition start sniping at independent professions. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) should note that chartered accountants display considerable commitment and dedication when it comes to providing a high standard of independent auditing. If the Opposition believe that nationalising the audit system and putting in paid civil servants to audit the industrial world would improve it, standards of integrity and the quality of accounting, that is laughable and beyond belief.
Mr. Straw : I can only cite to the hon. Gentleman the experience of local authorities when it comes to dealing with district auditors and auditors from the private sector. Most authorities would say that they get an easier ride from private sector auditors, for one good reason : private sector auditors depend on being retained by their local authority for their continuing profits.
Mr. John Bowis (Battersea) : There is no proof of that.
Mr. Batiste : Methinks the hon. Member for Blackburn protests too much. Some local authorities may have a vested interest in trying to undermine independent auditors for the very reason that was obvious from the hon. Gentleman's intervention--because profit is involved. The new-look Labour party always slips back into its old ways. Profit is a dirty word whether in relation to
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industry or education. Whenever one probes beneath the surface of the Opposition one witnesses the same reflex reaction.When the inspection of schools takes place on a wider scale it will provide the data upon which action can be taken to improve the quality of schools.
Another important piece of proposed legislation will allow further education colleges to float free from local authorities. That local authorities merely provide a straitjacket for such colleges was evident from the dramatic improvement in the quality and performance of polytechnics once they were freed from local authorities a few years ago. I strongly welcome the proposal to free further education colleges.
I also welcome the opportunity to remove the binary line as that will allow polytechnics to apply for university status. It will be particularly welcome in the context of European grants, because the term "polytechnic" as we use it is not well understood in Europe. I believe that, as a result, our polytechnics lose when it comes to the allocation of grant and when applying for research funding. I make two suggestions for inclusion in the legislation on higher education. The first relates to the outrageous scandal of the delay by some local education authorities in paying students' grants. I am told that in Leeds, for instance, four to five weeks after the beginning of term, up to one third of students at universities and polytechnics have still not received their grant cheque. One can imagine the anxiety of a young person, possibly away from home for the first time and being called upon to pay the fees for a hall of residence and to buy books, who expects as of right to have received a cheque on the first day of term, but who finds that more than a month later it is still not there. If LEAs are not capable of living up to their statutory responsibilities, why not cut out the middle man altogether and let the money flow directly from the Government to the institutions? I can see no purpose in continuing this system. The second issue that we will have to scrutinise in Committee will be how research and development funding is to be distributed after the binary line is removed. It is important that current overall levels of Government spend on R and D--which are consistent with best practice around the world--be maintained, even if the Ministry of Defence R and D spend is reduced. We must ensure that overall Government spending is maintained at the same levels, with defence spending moving over to the civil sector.
At the same time, we must encourage the links built up over the past 10 years between industry and higher education institutions. If this country falls down in any area, it is in the comparison between what is spent by private industry here on R and D and what is spent in countries such as Germany and Japan. So the questions that will have to be answered are how the R and D spend will be allocated and how companies will be encouraged to spend more on R and D once the binary line is gone.
Great progress has also been made on employment over the past 10 years : trade union reform, the creation of TECs, youth training, employment training and training credits were all innovative and imaginative steps forward. I am only sorry that the step-by-step approach to trade union reform did not continue in this Queen's Speech, because I thought that the Green Paper on further trade union reform was excellent. The right of people to join the
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trade union of their choice, the restrictive practices of the Bridlington agreement notwithstanding, should be quickly implemented.Compared with this array of novel, imaginative and successful measures, the Labour party's intentions with respect to employment present an entirely different picture. It is committed to a return to secondary picketing. How that will help industrial relations I do not know. The Opposition are committed to a statutory minimum wage which will wipe out about 1.5 million jobs. Earlier, I asked the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) where the evidence was for saying that no jobs will be lost as a result of the statutory minimum wage. His only response continues to be a flat denial of a fact which virtually every independent observer confirms. That is cold comfort for my constituents whose jobs would be at risk.
Shadow spending Ministers are promising £35 billion spending at the same time as shadow Treasury Ministers deny it. But the threat of that overspend will create inflationary pressures and put pressure on sterling. Within the exchange rate mechanism, those pressures would force up interest rates and put further pressure on employment. The areas of spending that are not popular with the Labour party will come under increasing pressure, too. The Challenger tank is made in Leeds. A world-beating piece of defence equipment, it has won the competition to supply the British Army and it has a good chance of selling well overseas. With Labour in office, pressures to spend on health and education would build up and a Labour Government might ask whether they really needed any tanks. That would jeopardise the contracts that had been placed. The employees who work in the defence industry must feel a cold chill down their spines when they realise that the shadow defence spokesman is not even in the shadow Cabinet, so what weight can he exert on behalf of their interests or those of our defence? There will be a carve-up.
The contrast between our actions and the Labour party's promises is clear. The Queen's Speech is an excellent programme of legislation for the coming year, and I believe that our Green Paper on trade union reform will provide a necessary and successful ingredient of a winning manifesto at the next election.
7.54 pm
Mr. Jack Thompson (Wansbeck) : I had intended to concentrate on education, but I agreed with all but a couple of paragraphs in the speech of the hon. Member for Pudsey (Sir G. Shaw), whose presentation was exceptionally good, so I shall concentrate more on unemployment, especially in the north.
Tonight's interesting debate has covered a wide range of subjects including Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland. Tomorrow, however, thousands of people in this country will be unable to learn about our discussions here, because many of them will be unable to afford a newspaper or a television licence. I refer to those who do not have jobs and whose priorities are to feed and clothe their children and keep a roof over their heads. Not all of them are succeeding in doing even that, but it remains their priority.
Problems of unemployment in the south-east have been mentioned, but concentrating on that area is to some extent illusory, although I sympathise with people who have lost their jobs in London and the south- east in recent times. In my part of the world, in the north, we have lived
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with unemployment generation after generation. We have suffered from it for 150 years, with three notable exceptions. Unemployment fell considerably during the first and second world wars, when most of the guys from my part of the world were in the trenches on the Somme and in the desert of El Alamein. Unemployment was fairly low just after the second world war, too, when there was a major programme of reconstruction and the mines were working flat out to produce coal for the power stations. They continued to do so until the mid-1970s.In the 1970s, a number of mines closed in my constituency. There were 20 there in the 1960s : there are none left now. Most of them closed because they were exhausted, but both Labour and Tory Governments in the 1960s and 1970s applied regional policies that were fairly successful. We had industrial development certificates which advised industries of areas of the country where they could expand and of others where they could not.
Then came development area status and the various grants that went with it. That had a significant effect on my whole county. Many mines were replaced by new industries, many of them pharmaceutical industries of which no one in my area had any previous experience. An aluminium smelter was also built --until then, our only experience of aluminium had been with the pots and pans on the cooker. The smelter started operating and men were retrained to work in the industry. At the peak of its operations about 1,100 people were employed in it, supporting another 5,000 jobs outside the plant.
That was deliberate policy, and it worked extremely well. At that time, Glaxo and Searle came to my constituency, and Boots and Merke Sharp and Dome went to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell). They are all pharaceutical companies. They are still there, well settled and doing a good job. The employees, who are predominantly ex- miners, have settled in well.
Since about 1975, no new industries have come to the county, only one or two small businesses. On Tyneside, which neighbours my constituency, the rapid decline in the shipbuilding and heavy engineering industries has affected employment prospects. That, too, has affected my area.
Since 1979, Government policies have been of no help whatever in my area. For example, development area status is given to the city of Newcastle and runs up the Tyne valley to the west--I can understand why Newcastle has that status--to the towns of Ponteland and Darras Hall, which is predominantly executive housing attached to an agricultural village. Its reason for having development area status is nil. The problems of the county run, not east-west, but north-south. That is recognised in the county structure plan, but not by the Government.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has said that there is no link between unemployment and training. In 1965, the National Coal Board employed 500 apprentices in the two counties of Northumberland and Durham. Exactly 20 years later, in 1985, the figure was 50--one tenth of the number trained 20 years previously. As I understand it, now there is none. That reflects the changes that took place when a major industry disappeared from the county. There was no employer to create training opportunities for young people.
The NCB had an extremely good training programme, of which I was a product in my earlier life as an engineer. That has all gone, but the facilities remain. There is still an engineering workshop in my constituency which could
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take 60 or 70 young people and train them in engineering skills. British Coal cannot fund that. Funding should come from Government sources, but I am afraid that the training and enterprise council arrangements do not cover such a proposition.We need proper regional policies in an area such as mine. The Labour party has advocated that. I have been involved in discussions on how that should evolve in the northern region. We should devolve powers and responsibilities to properly established regional assemblies, which would begin to overcome some problems in the north. There should be greater emphasis on retaining jobs and introducing new ones.
I am not against inward investment. Earlier, it was said that the TUC was against it. In my area, there is a factory that used to be owned by Glaxo and used to produce primary penicillin. Glaxo decided to dispose of the factory and sold it to a Taiwanese company, Synpac. In the past two or three months, it took over the factory and now produces primary penicillin- -exactly what Glaxo produced. Somehow Synpac can find the market which Glaxo could not.
Another factory in my area produced power packs for television sets. It had various owners, including Gresham Lion and Dowty. Then there was a management takeover, but I cannot remember the name as it lasted such a short time. It, too, has been taken over by a Taiwanese company, Lite On. It is producing power packs for television sets. It has found the market which, again, British companies could not. I congratulate the Taiwanese on their marketing skills, which somehow we do not have.
I am not critical of foreign companies that come to this country, except in one or two cautious respects. British Alcan has a smelter in my constituency. Less than two weeks ago, it announced a further reduction of 300 jobs. It has already reduced its manpower little by little, but this time it is in one fell swoop. There are compulsory redundancies and people have to go. When I discussed the matter with the management, they claimed that there was a slump in the international market for aluminium and that stockpiles were increasing. I understand that, because it has been happening elsewhere.
The management also said that there were two major problems : first, the construction industry, which used tremendous amounts of aluminium, had been badly affected ; secondly--this relates to some of our foreign policies-- the Russians were dumping aluminium on the metal market to the tune of about 75,000 tonnes, which is equavalent to the output of four major smelters. Obviously, that affects the smelter in my constituency. The decision to get rid of 300 jobs was made not in London or Newcastle, but in Montreal. External influences determine what happens in my constituency.
Recently, Blyth power station, which is owned by National Power, decided to cut 250 jobs. It removed completely two generating sets. I suppose that that contributed to the increase in senior executive salaries. Both Alcan and the power station depend on coal for fuel, so what they do has a knock- on effect on the one colliery left in Northumberland. Now 100 jobs are to go there. In the past two months, more than 1,000 jobs have been lost in my constituency--they are all male jobs--and that is pushing the unemployment figure close to 20 per cent.
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How do we overcome these problems? There is a way. Look at some of the policies that were applied in the 1960s and 1970s, adjust them for the 1990s and reintroduce them. I am sure that, come the general election, when we get a Labour Government, that is exactly what we shall do.8.7 pm
Mr. Bob Dunn (Dartford) : I am grateful for this opportunity to speak on the Loyal Address tonight. I want to direct one small remark to the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley), who is not in his seat. He called for an all-Wales elected body--I presume that, by the same token, he would also want an all-Scotland elected body--which would have powers devolved from Westminster. If there were such a body, the over- representation of Scotland and Wales in this House could not be sustained. It will not escape the notice of Opposition Members that only twice since 1945 has the kingdom of England failed to have a Conservative majority. Therefore, the quid pro quo of devolution, if some future Parliament should so decide, must be a more equitable distribution of numbers and seats.
I also want to address some remarks to the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). It has always been an ambition of mine to take part in a debate to which he has contributed. He is respected and held with affection on all sides of the House because he is a man of great principle at a time when we are deafened from within the parliamentary Labour party by the sound of principles crashing to the floor like so much glass. He has remained true to his principles. It has cost him--he has always been on the losing side--but he has kept true to them. The Conservative party pays tribute to the singular contribution that he made in 1983 to the successful re-election of the Conservative Government.
The right hon. Gentleman is big on style. He has a cultivated manner. He always ends a sentence on an upward inflection and bounces and rises like a disconcerted Harlem Globetrotter. However, the substance is nil. It is a bit like eating a Chinese meal--good at the time, but soon leaving one with an empty feeling. We note his progress, his contribution and the completely unprincipled stand of the party of which he is a senior member.
The right hon. Gentleman said that he did not see that a minimum wage would increase unemployment. That is his view. Ours is that a minimum wage would create unemployment. Interestingly, over the weekend, the Labour party candidate in the Langbaurgh by-election conceded in the Sunday Times that a minimum wage would increase unemployment. Who is right ? Is it the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent or the Labour party candidate in the by- election ? The latter at least has one advantage over many Labour Members in that he has worked in private industry, and he will do so again from Friday 8 November. I should like an answer on that point from the hon. Member for Blackburn.
I welcome the Queen's Speech ; hon. Members may remember that, in 1982, I seconded the Loyal Address. The debate on the Gracious Speech not only enables the Government to enlarge upon their intentions for the parliamentary year that lies ahead but gives the Opposition an opportunity to lay out their stall of policies so that they can be seen, perhaps for the first time, in
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public. The Conservative party knows that, if one wants to get hold of the policies of Labour, one does not ask their spokesmen. Mr. Mandelson has tied them up, dragged them along, put them in a cupboard and sanitised them. One gets the Labour party's policies from its minders who, like a heavenly chorus, come into play every now and again, especially for the media and the soundbites. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) has been criticised, despised and sat upon by Labour Members. His one compelling virtue is his honesty. No one can deny that, for all his wealth and connections, for all his aristocratic pedigree, the right hon. Gentleman always tells the truth. In an interview with Mr. Anthony Bevins in The Independent on 30 September, the right hon. Gentleman said :"If we've changed our mind to win, we could change our mind when we've won. What's wrong with that ? We could not talk about nuclear disarmament because we might not win. But we've won, so we change back again."
That position strikes a chord in the heart of every Labour Member. The shedding of principles like leaves in autumn is in pursuit of power. We know that, in the end, they will revert. As the right hon. Member for Chesterfield said, once
"we've won, so we change back again."
The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), who I hope will wind up the debate for the Opposition, made a speech over the weekend which was reported in an article in The Independent on Sunday yesterday, headed : "Labour fast track' for gifted children". It says : "Mr. Straw said We have to get away from the over-rigid application of age rules which may serve to trap a child in an educational environment which cannot adequately serve his or her needs'."
Mr. Janman : That sounds like a grammar school.
Later in the article by Ngaio Crequer, the hon. Member for Blackburn was reported to say :
"gifted children would not be helped by a return to selection, which had stamped many pupils of great ability as failures. The Labour Party would make education authorities abolish selection at 11."
There we have it--the Labour party wants to help but will help by abolition.
Significantly, the article also said that the hon. Member for Blackburn had said :
"master classes would be encouraged, to extend the brightest pupils ; schools with strength in music, ballet and performing arts would be encouraged to develop specialist centres ; teachers would be better trained to spot gifted children."
I could have said that--I probably did when I was a Minister in the Department of Education and Science. The point is that, within the comprehensive system where children are taught en bloc, where differentiation is not liked by the education establishment, the hon. Gentleman wants "master classes", although he has said also that "gifted children would not be helped by a return to selection". However, he is prepared to divide children between the bright and not-so-bright. This has more to do with a general election than with a genuine change in conviction.
Interestingly, that statement has come from an hon. Gentleman who wishes to help the more able child by abolishing grammar schools, the CTCs and the assisted places scheme which the Government brought into operation.
Mr. Janman : And grant-maintained schools.
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Mr. Dunn : As my hon. Friend says, the hon. Gentleman wishes to abolish grant-maintained schools.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) said that the Labour party wanted neighbourhood comprehensive schools, the hon. Member for Durham, North-West (Ms. Armstrong) said, "Hear, hear." She has now been packed off so that she cannot say anything more. I know that, if she were to speak at the Dispatch Box, we would have an honest statement of the Labour party's intentions. Last December, the hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) visited Gravesham, my neighbouring constituency, and said that selective schooling would end under a Labour Government. North-west Kent, which has grammar schools, high schools, 11-to-18 comprehensive schools and a CTC would find all those choices swept out by a Labour Government, although the Labour party has said that it is committed to helping the bright child. What utter nonsense to make that statement. Mandelson should be sacked for forcing the hon. Member for Blackburn, who is fundamentally a nice guy, to utter these contortions of the truth.
I especially welcome the following part of the Queen's Speech : "Action will be taken to improve quality and choice in education and to make information available about the performance of individual schools."
That is important to me. It is also important that we have a radical reform of Her Majesty's inspectorate of schools. I am probably the only hon. Member present who has worked with HMI. If every school were to be inspected by HMI on a cyclical basis, the cycle would be 20 years. That is totally inadequate for measuring the impetus of education reforms.
Furthermore, in the 1960s, the HMI was captured by the educational left and it has never let go. There is a self-perpetuating oligarchy which is a creature of its own making. That is why, a short while ago, I introduced a private Member's Bill dealing with this problem, which was voted against by the hon. Member for Blackburn and his colleagues. Therefore, I welcome the introduction of outside business men, people from commerce and perhaps even from some of the Churches, although not the Church of England, into the inspectorate. That will enable us to get a positive measurement of what education is about, what the product that has been created is like and what the world of work wants. The reforms of the way that schools are inspected are sensible.
I hope that, ultimately, the Government will abolish, once and for all, the Department of Education and Science and give all the responsibilities to the Department of Employment in the form of a department of training and education. This is my last political objective. Once it has been achieved, I can smile again.
I know that we have won the education ground, as it were, and have held it for the past decade. The Labour party is running behind us all the time. It is tied to the chariot wheels of radical education reform, and the important thing for Labour Members is not to get their feet squashed. The Labour party must come clean about what it wants for education. A simple but significant fact is that the Labour party and truth are becoming strangers. My constituents enjoy a choice, variety and range of schools that is second to none, and they know that support for what would become a Labour Government would be support for ending that choice. I ask my right hon. and
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hon. Friends to fight and fight again against the policy changes that have been adopted by the hon. Member for Blackburn.8.20 pm
Mr. Tony Worthington (Clydebank and Milngavie) : We cannot choose who we follow in the Chamber.
I shall talk mainly about the proposal in the Gracious Speech to introduce a Bill dealing with higher and further education in Scotland. The proposal provides my only chance to talk about the issue during the debate.
My hon. Friends and I welcome some parts of the proposed measure, such as the transfer of control of the universities of Scotland. It is a pity, however, that the transfer will take place as a matter of expediency and not on a principled basis. It will happen only because there was a decision to unify the control of polytechnics and universities within England and Wales, when it was realised that that would involve taking over control of the central institutions in Scotland and transferring it to Bristol. As that would have been unacceptable within Scotland, responsibilities for the Scottish universities had to be transferred to Scotland. It is better however, to do the right thing for the wrong reason than not to do the right thing. We hope that the proposed Scottish Higher Education Funding Council will be fairly formed and will be able to do a job that will unify the Scottish education system for the first time.
Having been told that the binary divide will be abolished, many of us have tried to think about what abolition will mean. The two key issues in the White Paper are differences in teaching practices and ratios in polytechnics and universities, and differences in research funding. When the Labour party submitted its proposals to abolish the divide--it has been doing so for some time--I hoped that we would be moving towards a common system of funding that would allow the colleges or polytechnics, which have been at a relative disadvantage in terms of funding, to move closer to the levels of funding that have been enjoyed by the universities. It was thought that abolishing the divide would mean that the status and resources of the college system would have to be strengthened if there was not to be a two-tier system in higher education.
We are concerned that there will be a two-tier system and that, in abolishing the binary divide, we shall be creating another divide. It is a pity that the proposals for Scotland amount to a thorough botch when it comes to abolition. For some months, colleges in Scotland were left in complete uncertainty about their future position. They did not know whether they were to be universities. Robert Gordon's college in Aberdeen, Paisley college and Dundee college, for example, had never been classified as polytechnics although they shared almost all their characteristics. That was for various reasons, many of them to do with the Scottish Office.
The White Paper was produced without thought for the colleges to which I have referred. Accordingly, they spent the summer in a difficult situation. They have to recruit students and be able to tell them at the end of the day whether they willl obtain a university degree or a polytechnic degree. I know that, last week, about 10 students who had enrolled at Robert Gordon's college left
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and went to a university because they could not be satisfied about the degree that they would be awarded, which means that the college has lost about £150,000. That happened because the White Paper was half-baked or half-finished. No English college was uncertain about its future status.Mr. Kenneth Clarke : But for the White Paper, the colleges in England and Scotland that are funded by the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council would have had no prospect of university status. The White Paper touched on whether degree-awarding powers should be given to colleges that are currently not designated as polytechnics under the PCFC. We have recently issued a consultative document on how we shall handle applications from these colleges. There are English colleges in that position. Bolton institute comes to mind immediately. The Government have made it clear how they will handle these matters, and the colleges have the same attractive prospects as face the polytechnics and colleges under the PCFC, so long as they can satisfy everybody of the quality of their awards. I have no doubt that Robert Napier college, for example, is confident that it will.
Mr. Worthington : Robert Napier seems to be an amalgam of two colleges--Napier and Robert Gordon's.
Mr. Clarke : I meant the two, Robert Gordon and Napier. It is no good the hon. Gentleman resorting to pedantry when faced with the answer to his question.
Mr. Worthington : I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for going into such detailed and wise consideration of these matters. It will come as something of a shock to a college in Aberdeen and another in Edinburgh to learn that tonight they have been amalgamated and now have university status. I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for the wisdom of his intervention. There is real concern about the binary divide and what it means. We are told that we shall abolish it, and there are considerable fears not about a division between polytechnics and universities but about one between institutions that call themselves universities. What is in a name? What does it mean to call something a university? My definition--I think it is the definition of the majority--is that a university in this country is a place where research and teaching are inextricably mixed and part of the same institution.
If the Government have their way, it seems that many institutions that will be overwhelmingly teaching-oriented will call themselves universities. There is already a considerable concentration of university funding--that may be inevitable, but we need to debate where universities are going in future--and some figures suggest that about 70 per cent. of research funding from research councils and charities, for example, is going to 15 universities in this country. It appears that about 54 per cent. of science funding is going to 11 universities. There may be good reasons for that. For example, if we are to compete on a European or American scale, it may be necessary to have a concentration of funding.
Against that background, we should be not abolishing the binary divide but creating a framework in which all universities and colleges would be equal. We would be
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seeking to create or ratify a super-league of universities that would be on one plane, while the remainder would be fundamentally teaching institutions.What is disturbing about the Government's White Paper--and therefore their higher education policy--is that all those issues are not tackled. We need seriously to tackle the issue of whether sufficient money is going into basic research. We know that about one third of universities' income from the Universities Funding Council goes into basic research. However, it is a falling percentage, and there is a policy to transfer money to research councils. Britain's funding of research and development as a percentage of gross domestic product, lags behind that of Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. Therefore, we must ask whether this is the right time to be cutting the amount of research money going to higher education institutions.
The 1991 Cabinet Office annual review of Government funding for research and development shows that expenditure on civil research and development is at its lowest level, as a percentage of total Government expenditure, since 1984, and that the Government's funding for basic research lags behind that of Italy, France, Germany, Japan and Sweden. I hope that, in the discussions on the proposals for higher education, the Government will tell us what they think should be the level of funding for research in our universities. I fear that there will be further cuts in the money devoted to basic research and that there will be a further concentration of resources among particular universities. Until now, students at universities have had the benefit of a mix of teaching and research, but I fear that that will be denied to students attending the 90 universities of the future.
The funding of the higher education sector does not relate solely to research but extends to the basic facilities in our universities and colleges. There have been a number of disputes at Scottish institutions during the past few weeks because students feel that the facilities are not adequate. At Glasgow polytechnic, students have legitimately protested about the canteen facilities, which were built when the institution had 1,700 students, and which are not adequate to deal with the current 7,000 students. There have been protests about libraries. In Aberdeen, students are sleeping in tents because of a lack of accommodation. They no longer receive housing benefit, but they have to compete with oil workers for accommodation. Any Government can stuff colleges full of students ; it takes a wise Government to ensure that standards are not damaged and that students are educated in decent conditions. The Government's sudden conversion in 1984 to an expansion of higher education was welcome, but not if it means an underfunding of our universities and colleges. If the quality that has been built up is destroyed, it will take a long time to put that right.
The further education document is an appalling document that whittles away the role of local government. It is a foolish document because it does not attempt to put the case, to analyse or to rationalise. Mercifully, the Government have been driven back in one or two areas. They have withdrawn their proposals for the careers service. They wanted it to be taken over by employers, who naturally have their own interests at heart.
There is a fundamental philosophical divide between the Opposition and the Government on the further
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education proposals for both sides of the border. The Government quite literally refer to the customers of the colleges as the employers. If the word "customers" has to be used, it must surely mean the students. To say that further education colleges are about local employers is to diminish the role, status and vision of further education, so I hope that the Government will back away from that. It is foolish even to think of transferring the control of further education colleges to Edinburgh. In many regions, links have been built between secondary education, community education and further education. It now appears that, in future, there will be the absurdity of schools having to charge colleges for the use of school facilities, and colleges having to charge schools for the use of college facilities. Colleges will have to have the support of architects, accountants and lawyers, independent of that which can be provided by the local education system.There has been a foolish divide between vocational and non-vocational education, and that has led to the Government getting into a tangle in Scotland. In the first flush of the White Paper, the Secretary of State said that local authorities might be allowed to continue to provide some social recreational educational provision in their areas. After an uprising on both sides of the border, The Government had to back down and agree that more could be provided. The Government are in a tangle because the Secretary of State for Scotland is causing a number of problems, and not just those relating to the highland regiments. He has now agreed that he might have to fund vocational training through education authorities if local employers leave gaps in the proposed management of the service. he also conceded that local government would still be allowed to provide vocational training, even after further education authorities had been taken out of their control. The right hon. Gentleman said that because his constituents wrote to him. School board members at the Douglas-Ewart school feared that the proposed new arrangements for business people to take over the running of their nearest further education colleges, 25 miles away in Stranraer, would leave them without the courses currently on offer.
We see complete muddle in the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Bill presented today, with its proposals for an inadequate further education sector dominated by "local" business men, many of whom will not be local to Scotland. They will provide an inadequate service that will not reflect or respect the further education needs of many people in Scotland. It will have to be supplemented by local education authorities, which, under the Bill, will be given powers to provide vocational education.
The Secretary of State says that that does not represent a change in the Government's original policy, but it does. Previously, it was proposed that only social and recreational education would be provided by local authorities at further education level. The Government realised where their half-baked proposals were leading, and backtracked.
We will back the transfer of the control of universities in Scotland, but we will want to ensure that the binary divide will genuinely be dispensed with and that further divides are not introduced. In addition, we promise outright opposition to the proposal to take colleges of further education out of local authority control.
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