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1.50 pm
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham): I have enjoyed the debate and do not intend to contribute much to it. I should like to express my appreciation for some Conservative Members' speeches, especially that of the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), and that of the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Fabricant), who shares with me the view that there is nothing wrong with the English education system that making it a Scottish education system could not put right, and I speak as someone who was educated in England. The speech of the hon. Member for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen) shows that the lessons of social Darwinism have been taught thoroughly in university and taken to heart.
I put my name down to speak in the debate because, two weeks ago, I attended a meeting in my constituency with leaders of the council, officers and elected committee chairmen. At the end of it, the chief executive spoke movingly of the "lost generation"--the phrase came to his lips. He talked of the drug problem in my constituency. Rotherham has high unemployment--it is around 12 per cent. Twenty-five per cent. of people under 25 are out of work. Nearly half of the Pakistani population under the age of 25 is without work. That lost generation needs to be discussed. Policies need to be devised to try to help those people out of that world of darkness and into the world of work, where they can make a useful contribution to society.
In Rotherham, people are turning to drugs. There has been an increase in drug-related crime and most schools are reporting the selling or use of cannabis and harder drugs. In the past 12 months, there have been six drug-related deaths in a part of the world that has had many difficulties, but that is not--I think my friends in Rotherham would agree--part of the fast and loose world of big cities. The people involved in drugs are also part of the lost generation.
We are doing much good work in Rotherham to try to analyse the problem and to deal with it. I pay tribute to the business community and to the Prince's Trust,which does an excellent job. How pleased I was to see President Chirac in Easterhouse yesterday examining the initiatives undertaken by the trust.
Part of the analysis undertaken was the focus group's inquiry conducted in one of the comprehensive schools in my constituency. I should like to report what was said. Young people were asked what they wanted out of life and what they thought the reality would be. They said that they wanted to be a mechanic, a sports teacher, to work in a bank or to go to college--not high ambitions. What did they think would happen to them? They would go to prison or go on the dole and they said:
I apologise to the Minister if I am not here for the whole of his winding-up speech. I hope that he will remember the five-letter word "sorry", because 17 years of not taking responsibility cannot be dealt with in a 10-minute speech. The debate started with the absurd sight of a Scottish Minister praising the A-level system. If there is anything more ridiculous than a little Englander being a little Englander, it is a little Scot being a little Englander. The debate will finish with no concrete suggestion likely to be put into Government policy, despite the helpful suggestions by the hon. Members for Mid-Kent and for Mid-Staffordshire.
In my constituency, the college of education is this week in the process of dismissing 80 members of staff:it is happening as I speak. There is an increase in hopelessness in Rotherham. The careers service has been taken away from the council, which is not even allowed to bid for it, and a rigged bid by Nord-Anglia will ensure that there is reduced access to careers advice for my constituents.
Of course Labour is addressing those matters, but perhaps our suggestions were not put in the round. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East(Mr. Brown), the shadow Chancellor:
Mr. Stephen Byers (Wallsend):
This has been a valuable and important debate addressing the needs and concerns of a group of young people who all too often
My hon. Friends have delivered extremely useful, positive and practical speeches. The contributions by my hon. Friends the Members for Streatham (Mr. Hill), for South-East Staffordshire (Mr. Jenkins), for Lewisham, East (Mrs. Prentice), for Dulwich (Ms Jowell) and for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) revealed the needs of their communities and the way in which young people have been damaged and have had opportunities denied to them as a direct consequence of the Government's policies.
There has been a denial of skills, to the extent that people in the west midlands are proclaiming that there is a skills deficit. The Government's introduction of market forces to the careers service has caused problems, especially in south London. Those were clearly identified by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East. The South Thames training and enterprise council has been allowed to become bankrupt. When it was put into receivership, the Government did not lift a finger to help. As a result, private sector training providers are owed about £4 million to £5 million, which is unlikely to be repaid. They will compensate by cutting existing provision, thereby denying places to even more young people.
A common thread has run through Opposition Members' speeches--that we want to extend access for 16 to 19-year-olds. We want high-quality provision, diversity and excellence for all. That commitment and objective contrasts starkly with what we heard from the Government today.
The first industrial revolution relied on innovation and enterprise, and on investment in fixed capital, buildings, plant and machinery. The Opposition believe that the knowledge-based revolution of the 21st century will require investment in human capital--the skills and intelligence of our people. That will mean equipping men and women to cope with enormous economic and social change, to meet the needs that are all around us. For no age group is that more important than for 16 to 19-year-olds.
To meet the challenge of the future, we must enable our young people to cope with change. Otherwise, the demoralisation of job insecurity will threaten their employment prospects and the economic and social stability that underpins a socially cohesive and civilised society. Security resulting from the ability to cope with rapid change distinguishes Labour's proposals from the present Government's support for an insecure labour market that undervalues the skills and needs of the people on whom it depends.
We can meet the challenge of creating a high-tech, high added value, high-wage economy only by skilling our people so that they are able to provide quality products and services--in other words, we shall need a high-quality work force. That means paying special attention to the education and training needs of our 16 to 19-year-olds.
We should regard that age group as our biggest resource for future development, yet far too few people in that age group are gaining the skills and qualifications which they need and which are vital to the future well-being of our economy.
The Government are selling our 16 to 19-year-olds short. They are the innocent victims of the Government's neglect of this important area. The Government pursue policies that create the conditions for personal failure and despair. There is a direct link between the lack of quality training and education opportunities for 16 to 19-year-olds and Britain's crisis of youth unemployment.
Today's 16-year-old with no skills or qualifications is tomorrow's unemployed 23-year-old. The Government's most important role in that regard is to provide a secure framework in which young people can stay on in education and training to develop their skills and enhance their learning so that, when they leave education, they can get a job, be promoted in that job and improve their prospects of finding a new job if they lose the one that they have.
"If we get a job parents will lose benefit."
That is the living reality of our future citizenry, and it has not been addressed much by Conservative Members.
"Dare to be a Daniel,
If we can take money from the parents of children who are at Eton and use it to help the 16, 17 and 18-year-olds who are out of work in Rotherham, I would be prepared to defend that. We need a system that offers the unskilled a ladder out of poverty and we need to return value to work so that it is worthy of respect. Value needs to be returned to family life, to parenting and to the household. Above all, we need to return value to education through much higher and stricter standards. That is the way in which we might begin to help the lost generation which, under the Tories, will be condemned to keep losing.
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to have a purpose firm,
Dare to make it known."
1.56 pm
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