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8.40 pmMr. John Bowis (Battersea) : Sometimes it takes a change of administration to improve education--
Mr. Bowis : The hon. Lady says, "Hear, hear"--and just such a change occurred in inner London. With the departure of the not much lamented Inner London education authority, my borough of Wandsworth was able to improve standards. Under ILEA, Wandsworth's education costs were twice the national average, but produced half the national average results. It inherited a situation in which 40 per cent. of parents sought secondary education for their children in other than local schools.
The borough had 12,000 empty school places costing £8 million a year. Nineteen per cent. of pupils were leaving school at 16 with no GCSEs, and only 17 per cent. with five A to C grade GCSEs, against a national average of 8 per cent. Fifteen per cent. of secondary school pupils practised truancy.
Now that Wandsworth's teaching posts are being filled, the borough's secondary school enrolment has increased by 7 per cent., truancy has fallen to 10 per cent., and 20.5 per cent. of pupils leave with A to C grade GCSEs. The number staying on for sixth form education has increased by 10 per cent. to 42 per cent., and a further 20 per cent. of pupils go on to further education. Those improvements have been achieved during a very short time under Conservative management of inner London education. They run alongside innovative moves to introduce two city technology colleges, two grant-maintained schools, a new Church of England school, and free nursery education for every child for whom it is wanted. Labour offers little to the people of inner London--only the destruction of everything that is good in education. It would destroy the grammar schools that remain, grant-maintained schools, city technology colleges, the assisted places scheme for the less well-off in society, and even A-levels. I ask the Opposition to think again. Of course we want to bridge the gap between vocational and academic qualification, but A-levels lead to degree courses that are shorter, and that finish sooner, than their equivalents in other European countries. The system produces a much lower university drop-out rate of about one in six, compared with France or Germany, whose six or seven-year degree courses produce a 50 per cent. drop-out rate. I welcome the pledges on higher education in the Gracious Speech and the bringing together of academic and vocational qualifications. I look forward to the establishment of the ordinary and advanced diplomas, provided that they are accompanied by flexibility in higher education in terms of admissions policy. I welcome also the expansion of training credits.
I must declare an interest as an adviser to the Association for College Management and the Association for Colleges for Further and Higher Education, in welcoming, with other right hon. and hon. Members, in the Further and Higher Education Bill, the ending of the binary divide, and the conferring of university status on polytechnics--which have proved their value in offering efficiency, quality, and student throughput at cheaper cost than universities.
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Over the past few years, polytechnics have benefited from their independence and now lack only the status that would help them to attract funding and students from overseas in particular. The views of the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington), who spoke and fled, are wholly opposed by the colleges themselves. The hon. Gentleman speaks only for certain Labour town hall bosses who want to keep control of further education. The colleges' representative bodies are much in favour of my right hon. and learned Friend's proposal to give them independence.Any right hon. or hon. Member who has served on an education committee, as I have, will know what nonsense it was for local education authorities to take decisions on the priorities between capital equipment projects. The problem was also that colleges of further education had no ward councillors, whereas primary and secondary schools did. The funding that the Department sent down the line to further education rarely, if ever, reached the colleges. That can now be put right, which is why the colleges are so pleased with my right hon. and learned Friend's proposal.
I hope that the transfer of assets will be made through the Education Assets Board, which could resolve any disputes that might arise between colleges and LEAs. I hope also that planning blight can be avoided as LEAs, understandably, seek to protect their own budgets and colleges strive to plan for their futures. I hope that we will soon see the establishment of a shadow public funding council, to advise colleges on their plans.
I am pleased that my right hon. and learned Friend clarified the situation in respect of adult education, and hope that he will examine the role of adult education colleges in the provision of further education. AE colleges provide adult returners with the second opportunity that they need, but such students often cannot be full-time. I hope therefore that funding will be provided in terms of full-time equivalents, and not only for full-time FE students. If not, the only opportunity to provide adult education will be the crumbs from the rich man's table, by way of franchises from FE colleges. I welcome also the change of criteria. Adult education provides access to the second chance that so many people need. One of my local adult education colleges ran a cake decoration class for 16 students. One might not consider such a course particularly vocational, but four of those students returned to take English as a second language, four to take BTEC courses, and four to participate in a business start-up scheme course. Only four of the 16 students used it as a leisure course, which shows the access to further education that adult education can provide.
I join forces with the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) in respect of students with special needs. Their interests should be examined and the cost of provision should not exclude such students from the opportunities that exist for others.
I ask my right hon. and learned Friend whether he will start to examine the funding system, in terms of support for students in further education. At present, only higher national diploma courses qualify for mandatory grants. Some BTEC courses qualify for discretionary grants while others do not, but, even if the courses qualify, local education authority policy often excludes them. The fact that an applicant may have failed to complete a course in the past when he or she had a grant does not
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necessarily mean that that failure was for academic reasons. It could have been for all sorts of personal reasons. Perhaps the original course was the wrong one ; perhaps a second course is needed for the applicant to take up the existing job opportunities. In any event, such people should be given a second chance. The worst problem of all, especially in London, is that experienced by students whose parents have moved across LEA boundaries and are excluded by residence qualifications that they cannot meet.I ask my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State to consider all those problems as he takes his excellent Bill through the House. There is a stark contrast between the educational opportunity provided in the Gracious Speech and the lack of opportunity, and ending of choice, proposed by the Opposition parties. I support my right hon. and learned Friend and his colleagues and hope that the Bill will soon be on the statute book. 8.50 pm
Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South) : The Gracious Speech contains 504 words, and about three positive ideas. I have yet to find anything in it that will help St. Helens. I note that the Government intend to continue to prepare for the privatisation of British Rail and British Coal. When I first became a Member of Parliament, we had two pits and shared in a third ; now we have nothing left. The sites are being taken away.
Similarly, when I first became Member of Parliament for St. Helens, South, we had between 10,000 and 12,000 employees in the glass industry. In the past two months, we have lost nearly 1,000 jobs, which has reduced the number to 5,000 or 6,000. Industry is dying away. Who is being trained to replace those employees? Where is retraining being carried out?
St. Helens has seen a marvellous example of privatisation. It is a pity that the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry and for Employment are not present ; they might have been able to explain. Eighteen months ago, the skill centres were privatised. The Government gave TICC £2 million, telling the employees to take this brand-new opportunity and assuring them that, as civil servants, they would be protected. Eighteen months later, TICC is bankrupt. What has happened to the 27 people who work in my skill centre? They are down the road, at 50-plus. Will they receive any compensation? No : they will receive the standard redundancy pay. If they had indeed gone down the road as civil servants, they would have received £40,000 or £50,000. Where is the morality of all that?
No one but the Government wants to privatise British Rail--not even its chairman. Of course, he knows something about British Rail. He is not stuck in the dogma of party politics, as Conservative Members are. He is not stuck in the "rat race" belief that, if a concern is sold off, it will do well.
The Government are saying, "Let us have a go at British Coal. At present there are about 40 pits." According to the Rothschild reports, there are 14, and 14 pits cannot supply our needs. The Government have closed all the good pits. Sutton Manor had 14 miles of seams, but the Government got rid of it, putting 400 or 500 people on the dole. Some of those people will never work again in St. Helens, because there are no jobs. The unemployment rate is rising, no new industry is coming in
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and there are no grants. The Government would not even back the European Coal and Steel Community's campaign so that we could get our fair share.That is a disgrace in European terms. The Government are the pariah of Europe, but they cannot see it, because they are stuck in dogma and stupid beliefs. [Hon. Members :-- "Order."] With great respect, those Conservative Members are stuck in the same stupid beliefs. [Interruption.] The children will play, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but their tenure on the Government Benches is very short. It is time that some of them grew up and entered the real world--for instance, the hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn), who began his speech with four minutes of diatribe against my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). Why? I notice that his recreations are American politics and canvassing. I hope that we shall not be introducing into our political system the black propaganda campaigns that we see in America. That would be a disgrace. [Hon. Members :-- "It is happening in Langbaurgh."] Indeed, it is happening in a constituency not too many miles north of here.
Why can we not have some honesty in politics? Why not simply say that we have a moral duty to the employees at the skill centres. The Treasury says no, although I think that one or two Ministers would like to say yes. Why not give some help to St. Helens council by providing a rescue package? We need a skill centre and we need the education and training that come with it.
In St. Helens the other day, the central heating system in Bleak House school was so good that it collapsed on a child. We have not received enough money to provide the educational and property maintenance that we have needed for the past 10 to 15 years. We shall always be the poor relation. It is surprising what is received by those in Sefton, West Lancashire or other areas that happen to have Conservative Members of Parliament. It is different in Labour areas, however. We have the lowest proportion of beds for geriatrics--about five per 1,000, when it should be 10 per 1,000, as it is in Sefton and other such areas. That is not fair. Why are none of those evils rectified in the Gracious Speech ?
Let us take the glass industry. Because the Government no longer provide grants for insulation and regeneration, the glass and insulation industries begin to go downhill. Once factories and skills are gone, the continentals come in to replace them when the grants start to come back, because our local industry has already gone. Why should we not invest ? Where does the Gracious Speech tell me that the Government will invest ? Where does it mention a single measure that will help St Helens ?
As a practising lawyer, I am more than a little concerned about the proposals relating to refugees. When can we have an undertaking to help genuine asylum seekers ? Like everyone else, I accept that economic migrants should not have the right to political asylum, or leave to remain for an indefinite time. However, no adequate proposals have been made to protect the real refugees.
I encountered a case--not professionally ; I was approached as a Member of Parliament--of a man who was sent back to Zaire, possibly to imprisonment and possibly, as happens in some cases, to death. If we do not provide proper representation for them, on whose conscience does it lie ? It lies not on the conscience of those who it on these Benches ; it lies on the conscience of those who sit on the Conservative Benches. My only hope is that
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the general election will take place long before this legislation passes into law. If, however, it is passed into law before the election, I am sure that we shall repeal it, simply because it transgresses international human rights. That has been done often enough during the past few years by this Conservative Government. The number of times that they have had to appear before the European Court of Human Rights is a disgrace. The Government have nothing to be proud of.What, again, does the Gracious Speech contain for the vast majority of people ? What does it contain for the millions of people who are out of work, for the millions on hospital waiting lists, for the poor and the elderly and for England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales ? Nothing but trite doctrinaire rubbish. The Government's time is up. Go. 8.59 pm
Mr. Tim Janman (Thurrock) : I intend to concentrate on the two subjects of today's debate, education and employment. I shall deal mainly with the latter subject, but I intend to spend just a few minutes on education.
Tremendous proposals are made in the Queen's Speech, in particular the proposal to provide information to parents. Without proper and relevant performance data about how a school is performing, it is not possible for parents to make an informed and therefore correct choice about a school. I welcome also the introduction of annual written reports, which I hope will contain grading for each child. Parents wish to see not just how their child is doing but how he or she is doing when related to a grading benchmark. I hope that the Minister will confirm that a child's performance will be measured by grading. Probably the most important of our education reforms concerns grant-maintained status. It is essential that we should do all that we can to take as many schools as possible out of local education authority control and place them under the control of governors and parents.
My right hon. and learned Friend will be pleased to know that Torrells comprehensive school in Grays in my constituency is conducting a ballot. I hope that, at the end of that procedure, there will be a majority in favour of grant-maintained status. If that is the case, I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will approve the application. He will be even more interested to know that, through the grapevine, I have heard that one Labour county councillor in my constituency supports the application and that another Labour county councillor, who publicly opposes it, privately supports it because she has a child at Torrells comprehensive school. The Minister will be pleased to know that unemployment in my constituency fell by 41 last month. Unemployment is still only just half of what it was seven years ago. It is important that we should evolve out of this recession and out of rising unemployment and that we should not create a false boom by lowering interest rates too quickly or by Government over-borrowing. Although the current rise in unemployment, now slowing down, which we are witnessing is frustrating and to some extent avoidable, the Labour party's criticism of the Government's record is both hypocritical and deceitful.
There are four main reasons why Labour's criticism is hypocritical and deceitful. First, the policies of every Labour Government under which this country has
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suffered since 1929 have led to higher unemployment when they left office than when they took office. However, this is the party that goes on about unemployment as though it had a good record on unemployment. It has an appalling unemployment record, just as it has had since the war an appalling national health service waiting list record.Secondly, the Labour party tried to blame my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) for the recession. In the autumn of 1987 and during the early part of 1988, some of us, it is true, questioned the lowering of interest rate levels, but the Labour party did not criticise the lowering of interest rates to under 8 per cent. It asked for interest rates to be lowered even further.
Thirdly, the Labour party's support for the social action programme of the social charter and for a minimum wage represents a political double- barrelled shotgun aimed at the working population, particularly those in lower-paid jobs. For millions of people, a Labour Government would replace low wages with no wages.
The fourth reason why the Labour party's hypocrisy and deceit on unemployment is incredible is that the Labour party--I shall not talk about its Common Market Safeguards Committee, of which eight members of the Shadow Cabinet are still members--and the Opposition Front Bench are just as committed as the Government to membership of the exchange rate mechanism. As their only specific spending pledges are on child benefit and pensions, I do not see how a Labour Administration would make one iota of difference to unemployment. No doubt Labour's answer would be training, but the Government are already pumping billions of pounds of taxpayers' money into training, in addition to the £20 billion that is spent annually by the private sector. Labour's training levy--the introduction of yet another socialist tax on industry--would either reduce profit margins and therefore investment or, if it expanded the money supply, would lead to an increase in prices. Those are the four clear reasons why, whatever the rhetoric and sincerity, a Labour Government would make no difference to the economy in the next 12 or 18 months. Nowhere in the world has a minimum wage not caused higher unemployment. In France, which has a minimum wage, unemployment is about to peak at more than 3 million. Extremely high youth unemployment in Germany is being blamed on its minimum wage. When a minimum wage was introduced in the United States, it caused only large increases in black unemployment.
Many people have summed up the effect of a minimum wage. On 5 June, Gavin Laird of the Amalgamated Engineering Union rightly said on "Channel 4 News" : "It has never worked in the past ; there is no logic for it ; it does not work in any other country and it certainly will not work in Great Britain."
I could not have put it better myself. Eric Hammond of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunication and Plumbing Union said in The Daily Telegraph :
"It is so fundamentally wrong that it will increasingly threaten Labour's prospects of a national victory."
The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), in "The Minimum Wage : Its Potential and Dangers", which was published in 1984, said : "The employment consequences will be little short of disastrous." No wonder the Labour candidate in the Langbaurgh by-election has admitted that a statutory national minimum wage would increase unemployment.
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Neutral commentators may disagree about exactly how much a statutory minimum wage would increase unemployment, but they all agree that it would increase it by between 64,000 and 500,000. They agree that it would have a negative impact on growth in the economy of between 0.5 per cent. and 2.5 per cent. and that it would add between 1 per cent. and 3.1 per cent. to the retail prices index. That is only if stage one of the Labour party's proposals are implemented ; it does not take into account the effect of stage two. The social action programme is another example of the Labour party's naive employment policies. It is further evidence that its policies are merely the result of what its paymasters, the trade unions, say. That is why it will try to con the public that it will not repeal most of the trade union reforms that we have made in the past 12 years. In a quantitative sense, in terms of the number of laws that have been passed in the past 12 years, that is correct, but if the totality of the laws represent a house, it will ensure that the laws that it changes will result in the foundations being decimated, with the result that it will fall down. What is the point of maintaining a proper legal framework for trade unions if law-breaking unions cannot be properly punished by the courts? What is the point of a legal framework if companies cannot get a court injunction to stop illegal strike action?The crucial question on secondary picketing is the definition of the wording in Labour's policy document :
"where there is a direct interest between two groups of workers of an occupational or professional nature".
That means power and coal workers bringing the country to its knees once again. It means COHSE and NUPE members stopping the sick being admitted to hospital, and it means rail, tube and bus workers striking on the same day and bringing our capital city to a grinding halt. That is what the wording of Labour's policy document really means, and that is what will come about if we are mad enough to elect a Labour Government again.
Conversely, Conservative Members wish to protect the public further from trade union activities. I welcome the proposal in the Green Paper "Industrial Relations in the 1990s" to extend to the general public the same legal right to request an injunction from a court of law to stop illegal industrial action affecting a public service or an essential utility as is available to companies in law. If such court injunctions are ignored, sequestration of trade union assets will follow--but not, of course, if the Labour party is elected. We can contrast the Government's approach with Labour's approach, which goes in the opposite direction, once again leading industry and the public as lambs to the militant trade unionist slaughter. 9.10 pm
Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn) : This has been a wide-ranging debate. We heard an eloquent and powerful contribution by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) about the situation in Croatia. We also heard an interesting contribution by the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), who strongly criticised the Government for what he described as their extraordinary "confusion" over the channel tunnel route and their lack of strategy for rail freight. It was a quaint speech, telling us of the Government's "astonishing success" in bringing the north and south of the United Kingdom together. The way in which the Government
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have brought the north and south together was well spelt out by my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy), for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson) and for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham). Essentially, especially during the past four years, the misery and unemployment which the Government inflicted on Scotland and the north and west of this kingdom have been inflicted on the south as well. That is one more reason why, across the south, there has been a greater swing to Labour than in any other region and why, I must point out to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Janman), who seeks to speak for my native county, we look forward to a smashing victory in his constituency at the next election.I regret the fact that I was not in the Chamber for the speech of the hon. Member for Pudsey (Sir G. Shaw), but my hon. Friend the Member for Durham, North-West (Ms. Armstrong), who was here, told me that he made a heavily veiled criticism of Government policy for its lack of recognition of progress as a key measure of the effectiveness of schools, and expressed concern about the morale of teachers who, he said, were not sufficiently recognised by society.
The hon. Gentleman spoke for himself, which cannot be said for the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey), who is not in his place, the Back-Bench chairman of the Conservative party education committee. I listened to his speech and thought that I had heard it before. Suddenly I realised that I had not heard it before but read it before--word for word in the article that the Secretary of State for Education and Science wrote last Friday in The Times Educational Supplement. He was almost, but not quite, word perfect. There must have been some error in the Conservative Central Office word processor as it churned out yet another brief for the hon. Gentleman to repeat.
The hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn) let the cat out of the bag about the Government's true intentions towards Her Majesty's inspectorate. The Secretary of State has been trying to say that he is a friend of the inspectorate, despite his proposal to cut it to a third of its current size, and he has created pandemonium. If he is a friend, he has not communicated that fact to any member of the inspectorate.
The hon. Member for Dartford--who, as ever, was frank--did not speak any honeyed words about the inspectorate but said that it had been captured by the left in the 1960s and remained captured, and that it was a self- perpetuating oligarchy . I am sorry that the Secretary of State was not in the Chamber when the hon. Gentleman ended by saying that his last ambition in politics was to abolish the Department in which he served for eight years.
Mr. Robert Atkins : Including me.
Mr. Straw : The hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr. Atkins) says that he will be among those abolished, but he has already abolished himself-- there has never been such a secret and silent Minister for Sport.
Mr. Atkins : Answer the question.
Mr. Straw : All he has to do is talk to the Whips, and we will have a debate on sport any time he likes.
The hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn) raised an important matter--the quality of education in Dartford and the part of Kent that he serves. He often raises that
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subject, and we understand his desperation about what will happen to his seat at the next election. We have seen the bloodcurdling letters that he has sent to electors about what may happen if Labour is returned.The reason that we have a different policy--we want good comprehensives in Kent--is because we are concerned about the standard of education there. I shall quote Mr. David Brown, Kent secretary of the National Association of Governors and Managers :
"Kent youngsters are being short-changed with an education fit for peasants".
He went on :
"when comparing Kent with 13 southern counties it had the lowest number of school leavers with five GCSEs grade A to C the second highest number of pupils leaving with no qualifications, the 12th lowest number staying on at 16."
The Secretary of State for Employment opened the debate and has given my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) and myself his apologies for the fact that he is now absent. Of course we accept his apologies with every grace. He has gone to Kincardine and Deeside to put the Government's side on the amalgamation of the highland regiments. We very much hope that on his way there he works out which side of the Government he is on with regard to that amalgamation. The Secretary of State for Employment and the Secretary of State for Education and Science, in an interesting double act at the Dispatch Box, sought to challenge my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield about Britain's position in the league tables of numbers staying on between 16 and 19. League tables of international comparison are one measure by which the Government's education record can be judged. There are others, such as the number of children who have received a nursery education, where we are very near or at the bottom. There are measures of expenditure, which has dropped from 5.5 per cent of gross domestic product to 4.8 per cent. in the past 12 years and also the whole issue of the quality of the education service provided.
Mr. Dunn rose--
Mr. Straw : I shall give way in a moment.
The Secretary of State for Employment sought to protest when my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield suggested to him that we were near the bottom of the league tables, saying that we should not take too much account of them.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke : He did not say that at all.
Mr. Straw : He did. He said that they were not terribly reliable. Whichever way one considers the league tables, Britain is at or near the bottom for the proportion of pupils staying on. Figures provided by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys show that, except for Portugal, we would be bottom of the league in Europe. Those are figures for the number of 14 to 18-year-olds staying on for training or full-time education.
Education participation rates--
Mr. Clarke : I shall give the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) time to read the newspaper cutting that he was trying to wave at us to make his great point. The figure for 14-year-olds in full-time education is 100 per cent.--that is difficult to beat in any country in the world. I think that he will find that the number of 15-year-olds is the same.
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According to latest figures, 93 per cent. of 16-year-olds are in education or training. I do not know what he is waving about, but he ought to read it before he does so.Mr. Straw : The figures that I am quoting come from the Government. The number of 14 to 16-year-olds is indeed 100 per cent., but in the case of 14 to 18-year-olds the position is even worse than that emerging from those figures. It makes matters worse that the Secretary of State for Education and Science cannot even understand that.
Let us take the number of 16 to 18-year-olds. The source is "Education Statistics" for 1990 from the Secretary of State's own Department. If he wants the figures, he can have them. Britain is second from bottom of the league according to the figures for 16 to 18-year-olds published by the Secretary of State's own Department. Let us consider the education participation rates--
Mr. Straw : For 16 to 18-year-olds in education and training. The source is the education statistics for the United Kingdom for 1990. The Secretary of State should apply himself to his own evidence. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development education statistics show that for 18-year-olds staying on in education, Britain is fourteenth out of fifteen. Let us take table D1.1 in the "Training Statistics 1991", which the Secretary of State denied existed earlier in the debate. They show again that Britain is second from the bottom, with only Spain below it.
The Secretary of State sought earlier today to suggest that this comparative survey "Youth and work : transition to employment in England and Germany" somehow backed up the Government's record. It does nothing of the kind. Indeed, the author of the work was so outraged by the Government's claims about what was said in the work that he wrote to the Evening Standard on 1 October and said : "We found much to criticise about the British arrangement for training young people. Far too many of them lost all contact with the education system after the age of 16 and far larger numbers in England than in Germany were in dead-end jobs without any training at all."
Mr. Dunn : I want to go back to a comment made by the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor), which led the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) to go into a spate of incontinent muttering. The Leader of the Opposition apparently said in the campaign for the Langbaurgh by-election that £2.6 billion extra would be spent on education by a future Labour Government. Could we have the truth of it? Was the Leader of the Opposition right and, if so, does the hon. Member for Blackburn agree? Or was the Leader of the Opposition wrong and does the hon. Gentleman agree with that?
Mr. Straw : It would help the hon. Gentleman--because it is unusual for him--to check his facts or to read his Conservative Central Office brief before he speaks, or at least to memorise it. The Leader of the Opposition simply pointed out in an article that he wrote just before the party conference that the proportion of gross domestic product--national income--devoted to education since 1979 had dropped, and that if it had remained the same, the difference would be the figure to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. Our commitment is very different from the Government's. Our commitment is that there
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should be a steady increase in the share of national income devoted to education and training over the lifetime of a Government. There are four main elements to the Government's proposals in the Queen's Speech : on higher education, on further education, on adult education and on the so-called parents charter. On higher education, we will support the transfer to a single funding council because that was our policy. We argued for it and voted in favour of it in 1987 and in 1988. The Government refused to accept our arguments then and we are delighted that they accept our arguments now.We will not support the Government's proposals in relation to the maintenance of quality in higher education because we think that it is wrong for the people who determine quality in higher education to be the same as those who determine funding--
Mr. Straw : Because there is every possibility that if the fund payers determine quality, they will tend to overlook areas in which quality is going down as a result of financial pressures--
Mr. Straw : I cannot understand the Secretary of State is looking perplexed. The reason is the enormous pressures that the Government, through the funding councils, are imposing on higher education to take in ever more numbers without at the same time being concerned about quality. If the Government are confident that quality will not be affected by the financial pressures that they are imposing on higher education to cut the inward resource year after year, the answer is to ensure that the inspectorate for higher education is wholly independent of the funding system and solely concerned with the issue of quality.
Mr. Clarke : With the greatest respect, I must say that I am puzzled and that I could not follow the argument as first expressed. For the sake of argument--and I do not concede this--I recognise that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) is asserting that there are downward pressures on university funding. I think that he refers to our attempts to get cost- effective expansion. If those pressures exist, as the hon. Gentleman asserts, they are spread evenly across the system and do not affect one institution more than another. The argument for separating judgments of quality from the funding have been put to him by some people in higher education who are afraid that quality judgments might have a practical effect on the universities. Making quality separate would merely make quality control ineffective and of no practical consequence. The hon. Gentleman always gives in to lobbies and should not have given in to that one.
Mr. Straw : That is an absurd argument. It fails to take account of the practice of the Council for National Academic Awards and the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council. One of the reasons why the polytechnics have done so well in the past 21 years is that a clear decision was taken by Governments of both parties to separate funding and quality control. That was accepted even by the Secretary of State's predecessor but one, who introduced the Education Reform Act 1988. Had a system of funding and quality control been merged, I doubt
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whether the polytechnics could have achieved such high quality and cost-effectiveness. I want to ensure that, in pursuingcost-effectiveness, there is independent arbitration on quality. Besides the higher education proposals, many of the Government's proposals are damaging. The Government have done nothing to reassure the public that their proposals for adult education will not be highly damaging if the Bill goes through. Their proposals for further education will transfer elected local authority control over further education to control by seven or eight appointed regional boards. Elected people will no longer have an influence on local further education ; instead, the position will be similar to that set up by the Secretary of State for Health, where appointed quangos are in control. That too is unacceptable to us.
By far the most damaging proposition which the Secretary of State has advanced in his 12 months in office is likely seriously and adversely to affect the standard and quality of education in our schools. That is his plan to dismember Her Majesty's inspectorate of schools and to privatise the local inspectorate of schools so that inspectors are picked and paid by their own schools. That proposition was suddenly launched from nowhere on 30 July 1991 at a curious press conference which the Secretary of State gave in the Adelphi hotel, Liverpool outside a meeting of the Professional Association of Teachers. It has been condemned from all sides ; there is virtually no advocate for it outside Government and there are precious few inside.
The chronology of the proposal tells its own story. In February, the then senior chief inspector, Eric Bolton, decided to resign. On 4 March, the Secretary of State told me in a parliamentary answer that he was setting in train a new procedure for the appointment of a successor to Eric Bolton. He said that the post would be advertised, which was duly done at some cost to the public purse. Then, on 8 May, the Secretary of State suddenly announced out of the blue that the advertising of that post was to be put on ice. He said that instead there would be a thorough internal review of the inspectorate, which would report by July. In answer to further questions from me, he said that no formal evidence would be sought but that there would be wide informal consultation.
The Government say that they believe in open government. They have published such reviews of the machinery of government in the past--in 1983, they published the Rayner scrutiny of the HMI--but the Secretary of State has refused to publish the latest internal review. Indeed, it has been kept so secret that no summary or abstract of the review is to be made available -- [Interruption.] If the Secretary of State wants to say that he will publish the review so that the House can measure the current proposals against his madcap scheme for dismembering the inspectorate, he should say so now. It is my belief that the right hon. and learned Gentleman's refusal to publish the review--this is from the man who believes in open government --stems from the fact that it bears no relationship to the scheme that he is now putting forward. If that is not true, let us have the review. The only evidence of the proposition's authorship that we can find is a pamphlet written by the chief inspector of Wandsworth, Mr. John Burchall, for the Conservative Centre of Policy Studies. That action is in clear breach of the Local Government Act 1986 and the Widdicombe rules. If that had been done by a chief inspector of a
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Labour local authority for a Labour think tank, Conservative Members would have been the first on their feet to complain about Mr. Burchall. The scheme with which the Secretary of State has been landed is almost word for word the proposition set out in the pamphlet in 13 rather badly argued pages.It is proposed that HMI should be reduced from 500 inspectors to 175. Allowing for those to be transferred to the higher and further education funding councils, that is equivalent to a cut of almost 50 per cent. The Secretary of State says that HMI will achieve greater independence. However, the independence that HMI has had up to now has been deeply embarrassing to the Government. Each year it has produced a report setting out the state of the education service, and each year Ministers have treated that report as though it were a piece of stinking fish.
In the past 11 years, the publicity budget for the Department of Education and Science has gone up 28 times. In the past two and half years it has risen four times in real terms to pay for the publication of more and more glossy pamphlets such as the parents charter--party political propaganda produced at the taxpayers' expense. None of that money has been used on the HMI reports--not a penny piece.
The annual report published by HMI has always been a loose-leaf, photocopied document, shoved out at a time designed least to embarrass Ministers. Is it the Secretary of State's intention that the current senior chief inspector should publish his annual report in February, as has been done in the past, or is it his intention, as Secretaries of State managed to do in 1983 and again in 1987, to delay publication of that report until after the general election?
Mr. Kenneth Clarke : I have not given much thought to that question, for the simple reason that I do not follow the elaborate paranoid theory advanced by the hon. Gentleman who believes that I am so worried about those annual reports. The hon. Gentleman may have noticed that my proposals increase the independence of Her Majesty's chief inspector. They leave him free to publish his own report. I believe that he should be more independent of the Department and of the Government of the day. I assume the present senior chief inspector will produce his annual report next year. I do not fear that report. I believe that the hon. Gentleman and his friends have misused those reports in the past, but cutting down the scope for reports from the inspectorate has nothing to do with my proposals.
Mr. Straw : I shall table a parliamentary question about that and I look forward to confirmation of what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has just said.
When the inspectorate is reduced to 175, it will be virtually impossible for it to produce a report with anything like the quality of those produced in the past.
Mr. Clarke : I hesitate to intervene again, as the hon. Gentleman is getting near to the time left for my contribution. However, in future, the inspectorate will have the results of 6,000 inspections each year from which to draw the basis of its report--and that is in addition to the inspecting that the inspectorate will carry out. One hundred and seventy- five people is the best estimate that the senior chief inspector and I could produce between us of the numbers required to carry out the functions of the
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new independent HMI. There will be more information on which to draw and the reports will still be available. What the hon. Gentleman is spelling out about the proposals is an elaborate, but nonsensical, theory.
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