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Mr. MacShane: Especially from Australia.
Mr. Rowe: Yes, it also appeals to young people in Australia. Garages which maintain vehicles are not regarded as a burden on the state, yet the health service, which is engaged in maintaining human beings and returning them to work, is regarded rather differently.
One of the Minister's colleagues said recently in Edinburgh that it is vital to use the new technologies for those currently excluded by the system. There is a danger of using them only to enhance the prospects of those who are already secure in their training or employment. We need to ensure that the enormous opportunities for self-improvement that the new technologies offer are used by young people who are not especially successful.
The Government should be proud of the fact that the TECs are at last beginning to bed down. At Kent TEC, 3,880 young people achieved NVQs last year. Kent's target for modern apprenticeships is 1,936 starts this year, and we also have the first transnational youth work qualification, which is being set up with the assistance of the European Union.
The Labour party has produced a document containing some excellent ideas. It is, for instance, right that there should be no penalty for voluntary work or for part-time study. One of the absurdities of the present system is that people who do more than 16 hours of study a week put their benefits at risk. That is a mistake.
A lot of Labour's rhetoric, however, is pretty empty. At a press conference, the leader of the Labour party said:
I want to end with a word about child benefit. Anyone who wants to trace the evolution of new Labour from old Labour could not find a more satisfactory route than the one offered by child benefit. The hon. Member for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid), a Labour Front-Bench spokesman, has said:
Mr. Rowe:
I am deeply grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is a paragon of new Labour. The media, and sometimes even a few doubting Thomases on the Conservative Benches, occasionally question the extent to which new Labour differs from old Labour. I should have thought that the Labour party would welcome the clear demonstration of the yawning gulf between old and new Labour characterised by the quotations that I have just offered the House.
The subject of 16 to 19-year-olds is one of the most important that faces our nation. It involves the whole question of how we create a society in which, under all the pressures of modern life and the fragmentation of households, young people can enter school and enter training sufficiently self-confident in themselves to be able to take full advantage of those opportunities.
Mr. Brian Jenkins (South-East Staffordshire):
First,I wish to inform the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) that working with others and decision making are core skills that are included in GNVQs. We may need a little more publicity to let employers know what is included in GNVQs.
The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) mentioned average European youth unemployment. Did he mean the arithmetic mean, the median or the mode? If he told us which he meant, he would clarify his point. Most people tend to mean the arithmetic mean by the average, but the median is a more honest approach to averages. Let us not confuse one another, because another part of the core skills is numeracy.
Mr. Tim Smith:
I was quoting from Government statistics--well, the source is Eurostat, so I am not sure that they are Government statistics--and they are based on the International Labour Organisation measure of unemployment. It gives the figures as Spain, 38.2 per cent.; Italy 36.5 per cent.; France 27.7 per cent.; and the United Kingdom, 15.7 per cent. As I said, the average is 20.8 per cent., and that shows how good the United Kingdom's record is.
Mr. Jenkins:
But which average is that? The arithmetic mean distorts the average, and people should use the median. What is the median figure and how does the UK compare with that? If the median is not in the statistics, it should be there in future.
One of the reasons why I attended the debate today is a letter from a group of my constituents--small business men--called the M42 Breakfast Business Club. They wrote to me because they have discussed a document issued by the Government office for the west midlands, and they wished to comment on it. The document shows that the west midlands today falls below the national average for manufacturing output. That area used to be called the workshop of Britain. When the Government came to office, that area was the manufacturing heartland, but it is now below the average.
The business club brought to my attention the widespread skill shortage and the related shortfall in education and training opportunities. Those small business men point out that they want to try to increase inward investment. Surprisingly, the west midlands has a strong tourism industry, but as a potential site for inward commercial investment it is very poor. My constituents are most concerned about the shortage of skills and disappointing educational achievements of young people. Several members of the business club give examples of experiences in their companies when they have not been able to find appropriately skilled personnel. They find that youngsters have low levels of basic education and expectancy problems. The business men are worried that if there is no improvement in the situation, the skills level of their manpower will continue to fall.
A few weeks ago, I had a discussion with the Further Education Funding Council. The FEFC's view of Britain and our work force is that we face a future of short-term, casual employment in which individuals invest in their own human capital and improve their own skills base. Anyone worth his salt will know that in business it is unacceptable to take an order and promise to deliver, only to find that the work force is too small to enable the production to take place. Unfortunately, that often happens these days. The future for our industry lies in a highly skilled and efficient work force. Against that background, it is possible to take orders and deliver. That is what we should be working towards.
Many companies in my constituency are extremely small. They represent, however, the sector from which growth will come. They are so small that they cannot
assemble a training programme for themselves. They look to the local college to put on such a programme. They will be prepared to take someone on and send him to the college one day a week to improve his skills level.
British industry has relied for so long upon "sitting next to Nelly" as a training initiative. That is fine as long as Nelly knows the job. Unfortunately, over the past 20 years we have seen the demise of our skills base. Employees have been leaving industry, including members of our skilled work force. The youngsters who are going into industry can no longer learn from their peers. Lack of skill is placing our industrial base in a crisis. The Government still seem not to understand what is happening.
Schoolteachers are dedicated to their profession and should be applauded. Anyone who reads the report of my speech should thank his or her teacher for that ability to read. I do not know of a harder-working or more skilled group than our teachers. I would not do their job, even for a Member's pay. Most teachers earn nothing like that which we are paid.
We know that many youngsters are staying on at school. Far more are doing so than 20 years ago, for example. But 20 years ago, they had the opportunity to get a job. Unfortunately, jobs are no longer available for them. As a result, more youngsters are staying on. They believe that in so doing, they will enhance their opportunities in future to find employment.
We have been told that 72 per cent. of youngsters are staying on at school, but we have not been told about the social class factor. The lower a family's income level, the greater the pressure on youngsters to leave school to find a job. I remember one of the students whom I taught a few years ago. She is just about to complete her course. She prepared a CV for a university, but did not submit it. I discovered that since 15 years of age, she had been getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning and spending two hours cleaning the local supermarket before getting ready for school. I asked her why she had not submitted her CV. She told me that she felt ashamed because she had had to do early-morning cleaning work. I concluded immediately that anyone who knew what she had been doing would invite her for an interview. Such dedication can only be applauded. There are so many young people with that dedication.
I know of students who have had to leave courses, especially A-level courses, because they had no grant. They moved to a youth training scheme because that brought money into the family. Income is a vital ingredient for young people who continue on a 16-to-19 education programme.
"We will show how we can provide jobs for the 265,000 people aged 18 to 25 who have been unemployed for more than six months."
Well, show us. Then there are Labour's destructive proposals for a windfall tax on the utilities, proposed by the shadow Chancellor. Such a tax will affect either the amount of money that the utilities invest--an amount that the Labour party continually says is not enough--or investor confidence, with consequent effects for the price of shares and for the ability of the utilities to operate effectively. It will also affect jobs--the very jobs which the Labour party claims it is raiding the utilities to provide.
"the one universal, most effective and most important instrument for the alleviation of child poverty"
is child benefit. He continued:
"Labour will restore the cuts in child benefit because that is right, just and long overdue."--[Official Report, 6 June 1990; Vol. 173, c. 726.]
Next, that stalwart of the shadow Cabinet, the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), said:
"By letting child benefit wither on the vine, is it not manifest that the Government still have no family policy worth the name? Uprating child benefit for all children . . . is the litmus test of commitment to the family".--[Official Report, 24 October 1990; Vol. 178, c. 354.]
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood(Ms Short), another Labour Front-Bench spokesperson--for how long we are not sure--said:
"The erosion of child benefit traps"
people on low incomes
"into poverty. It also deprives women of income. Giving the money to mothers ensures that it is spent on children."--[Official Report, 3 April 1990; Vol. 170, c. 1138.]
Mr. MacShane:
The hon. Gentleman must understand that the idea that has been launched is not to remove child benefit per se, but to take a look at child benefit for 16 to 18-year-olds in order to target that part of welfare more directly. I believe that the hon. Gentleman shares my concern about the lost generation. If we want to help those people, we shall have to find the money somewhere--and giving child benefit to the mothers of children who go to the hon. Gentleman's old school is perhaps not the best way of arranging matters.
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