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The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Mr. Eric Forth): Ah.
Mr. Meacher: I am glad that the Minister says, "Ah." Perhaps he is paying attention for once.
The money to deliver the output is simply not available. As a result, basic and higher skills training has been severely reduced, to the extent that in many areas it does not exist, even where there is labour market demand and skill shortages. A national survey of TECs carried out recently in my constituency of Oldham found that the number of places last year decreased by 21 per cent. compared with the previous year. I could go through the whole list--33 per cent. in Manchester and up to 34 per cent. in Barnsley and Doncaster. That has happened not just over the past year; funding has continuously declined for the past five years.
In that time, the budget for adult training has been halved, while the level of unemployment has marginally increased. In 1991, the budget for employment training, which was the forerunner of training for work, was just over £1 billion. Unemployment in that year was just under 2.3 million; last year it was, on average, slightly over 2.3 million. Yet the average payment per trainee has fallen, year on year, from £50 in 1992-93 to £28 last year.
I am even told that one provider who has had a contract since 1991 for the same provision shows that the contract price per trainee per week has been reduced from £84 to
£30. It is impossible to provide a quality skills training programme with cuts on that scale.
The debate has exposed fundamental weaknesses and failings in Britain's current training system that Government policy, especially the continued funding cuts, has clearly exacerbated. Several radical changes are urgently needed. First, output-related funding dominates all other measures of performance. It is distorting the system away from providing longer-term skills and quality in favour of short-term jobs. Moreover, a successful outcome is assumed even if the job lasts only a week and irrespective of what sort of job is involved, how much is to be paid, and whether the person is to work full time, part time or whatever. The system needs to be dropped or at least radically changed.
It is also unacceptable that almost two thirds of youth trainees leave schemes before they end; half find no job at all; and another half have no qualifications to show for it when they leave training. We need a new criterion of performance that takes much more account of the qualifications gained.
Mr. Rowlands:
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Meacher:
I am reluctant to give way because I have so little time. I do not intend to take more than a few minutes. There is an urgent need for stable funding-- a point about which my hon. Friend waxed most eloquent, when he said that there is constant chopping and changing and great uncertainty in TEC budgets for that reason.
The Government's continually changing funding criteria for TECs make it difficult for them to plan ahead. Knowing the Government as we do, nobody was surprised when it emerged a few weeks ago that their latest wheeze for compensating for fresh cuts in the TECs budget was to start to fund special training needs courses from the national lottery.
I shall quote from a letter to the chief executive of the National Lottery Charities Board from the director of policy at the TEC National Council. It states:
One would have thought that even this Government would regard that as more of an eccentricity, or even a joke, than a serious policy.
Special training needs must be better safeguarded. Several options should be urgently considered, such as a separate programme for the most needy, ring-fencing of money for their training and greater concentration on basic skills training. One or other of those should be adopted.
Lastly--
Mr. Meacher:
I am taking less time than did some Conservative Members.
Lastly, we strongly deplore the premature closure of the community action programme, which offers 40,000 to 50,000 people a year work experience, individually tailored help with finding a job, work projects of benefit to the community that would not otherwise be done and priority access for people with disabilities. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) said at the start of the debate, only a year ago the then Secretary of State for Employment announced that it would be extended for a further three years at a cost of £70 million a year. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Government are now much more motivated to make savings for tax cuts than to preserve employment programmes, when even the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo) of all people, regarded the programme as valuable enough to extend for another three years.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. James Paice):
Today's debate, albeit brief, has provided the House with a wonderful opportunity to highlight the contrast between the Government's successful and real policies to help the unemployed and promote training with the dearth of policy suggestions from the Labour party.
I shall start by examining the central issue of cuts in training in the Labour motion. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment said, in real terms there will be more money in the budgets for TEC programmes next year than there is this year. [Hon. Members: "They have been cut."] There has been no cut in the overall amount of money for TEC programmes.
Mr. Blunkett:
That is not true.
Mr. Paice:
There has been no cut in real terms; rather, there has been a 5 per cent. increase in the overall amount of money for TEC programmes.
We are proposing to shift money between programmes because of the shifting priorities in the needs of the unemployed, because of the fall in unemployment and the increasing value and importance that are attached to modern apprenticeships, to which we are adding another
£115 million. The Government have always recognised that we must catch up with the skill levels of our competitors, which was why we have concentrated on reforming the education and training system to deliver better results. We have merged the Department for Education and the Department of Employment, because we recognise that they go hand in hand in meeting the competitive challenge from the rest of the world.
We have achieved great things. More than 90 per cent. of 16-year-olds are now in education and training. Almost one in three of our young people go on to higher education, compared to one in eight in 1979, and twice as many of them get A-levels as in 1979.
Of all the accusations and challenges that have been thrown at the Government by the Opposition this evening, the accusation that an approach has been made to use the lottery to fund training for special needs must be resolved immediately. The TEC National Council has already made it absolutely clear, publicly and for all to hear, that that accusation is totally without foundation. That fallacious story has arisen because the National Lottery Charities Board approached one TEC for the names of organisations that are involved in helping the disadvantaged.
I must confess that I was somewhat surprised when I heard that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) would sum up for the Opposition. He has never made any secret of his disagreement with what, we are led to believe, is Labour party policy. In his remarks this evening, he referred critically to the deregulation of the labour market. One can assume from that that he opposes it, but I have heard absolutely no pledge from the Labour party in recent months that it intends to reverse the deregulation that we have carried out. The hon. Member for Oldham, West has said:
He went on to say:
Only last month, the hon. Member for Oldham, West appeared on "Kilroy" and was challenged about Labour's proposal to give employers £60 a week to take on the long-term unemployed, while the long-term unemployed would receive only £45 in benefit. According to the Oldham Evening Chronicle, which I am led to believe is a learned journal, the hon. Gentleman's reply was:
Why is he on the Front Bench?
The intervention that the hon. Gentleman made in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about our exit from the exchange rate mechanism begs another question: why is it that Italy, which came out of the ERM at the same time, has seen unemployment continue to rise while ours has been falling dramatically? Could it have more to do with the state of the labour market than the ERM?
The hon. Gentleman also referred to unemployment figures and suggested that the real ones were much higher than those which we announce. If that is so, why do the labour force survey figures, which we also announce regularly and which have gone along closely with the claimant count figures, meet the requirements of the International Labour Organisation, to which the Labour party and the Trades Union Congress have signed up?
A number of hon. Members have rightly emphasised the need for this country to improve and increase our training and to meet the national training targets. The Government have never made any secret of their intention to achieve that. I wish to deal with a misunderstanding-- a fallacy--promoted by the hon. Members for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) and for Bath (Mr. Foster) that programmes for the unemployed can, on their own, address the need to meet our training targets.
We should remember that only 3 per cent. of the work force are long-term unemployed--the figure is still too high, but it is 3 per cent. Some 92 per cent. of the work
force are in work. If we are to meet the targets for the year 2000, we shall do so by providing encouragement, exhortation and help to all the work force.
Business spends about £20 billion a year on training and education. The Confederation of British Industry estimates that the figure is £28 billion, but I shall settle for our figure of £20 billion. We must develop a culture that is based on better schooling and achievement in compulsory education through our education reforms. That process will lead to the understanding that training is, as the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney said, an investment, not a cost.
I must take issue with the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney for suggesting that the private sector had been cutting training. That is a historical fact, but it has not been the experience of the recent recession, when training expenditure by the private sector held up far higher than in any previous recession. That demonstrates that the message is getting through to the employers that they must invest.
My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Luff) made what must be considered as one of the best speeches in the House for a long time when he emphasised the fall in unemployment and described in graphic detail the tremendous successes and developments of the Government's training policy.
"The Earl of Stockton has provided my office with a copy of the correspondence between David Sieff"--
the Marks and Spencer chief who chairs the National Lottery Charities Board--
"and himself concerning the possibilities of TECs working in partnership with local eligible organisations to develop programmes for re-skilling the disadvantaged that might be considered for grants from the National Lottery Charities Board."
"Mrs. Thatcher's abiding achievement has been to turn the Opposition into a variation of the Government's theme."
"People want real change, not a paler shade of the same."
"Let me make it clear to you. I am embarrassed by that point."
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