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Mr. Nick Hawkins (Blackpool, South): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Blunkett: Certainly. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can add his own examples.

Mr. Hawkins: I have been following Labour education policy for many years. Is not the hon. Gentleman's attempt to rewrite history a complete travesty? During the past few months, he and the leader of his party have tried to apologise for everything that Labour and the militant teachers it has supported have stood for for over 17 years. Is he not really admitting today that the Conservatives have been right all along, and trying to rewrite Labour policy in the Conservative shadow?

Mr. Blunkett: I find it difficult to take anything seriously from someone who is abandoning his constituency for the chicken run because he knows that education policy, and Tory party policy generally, will result in his losing his seat. Let me deal with the issue head on, however.

Seventeen years of Conservative government have led us to announce a series of programmes and changes that the Conservatives have failed to introduce during those two decades. We are announcing programmes because the Conservative Government have not done so; we are talking about changes and improvements in standards because they have not happened. I could name many more improvements that are needed--for instance, the repair and renewal of buildings. It will be interesting to see whether the Secretary of State has anything to say about that, in the White Paper or elsewhere.

Let me repeat that we will ensure that the £3 billion backlog of repair and maintenance of schools throughout the country--a Tory legacy of neglect--is dealt with directly through a new public-private partnership which will not be exclusive to grant-maintained schools, but will be available to every school in the country. We will ensure that teachers teach, and children learn, in classrooms that are warm, safe and fit to work in, and that everyone has the opportunity of a decent education, wherever they live and whatever their background.

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We are talking about transforming the life chances of our people. We are talking about transforming access to further and higher education. We are talking about our "Target 2000"--our aim to ensure that by the year 2000 every 18-year-old will have reached at least qualification level 2. We will transform and replace youth training in order to achieve that goal, and offer every young person who has been out of work, education or training for more than six months the opportunity of a job, a learning place or a position in the voluntary sector.

With £1 billion allocated from a windfall tax, we will transform young people's life chances. We will tackle head on the skills shortage that the Government will reveal as the biggest own goal of Euro 96 when they announce on Thursday, that, after 17 years, they are falling further and further behind our European partners and our competitors across the world. There are skills shortages at a time of high unemployment; and the Government are failing to match, or even begin to match, their own targets. Forty per cent. of people have advanced qualifications, compared with a target of 60 per cent. That is a failure unequalled anywhere in the developed world.

We are not talking simply about revealing failure--about league tables and inspections that tell us what is going wrong, but do nothing to put it right. We are talking about rectifying as well as revealing: about ensuring that we intervene, and spread excellence and achievement from one school to another and from area to area. We will use the education authority as the voice and advocate of parents, not to control, but to support and to work with schools in achieving their goals. The family of schools should share resources and specialisms, and link through new technology to make it possible to ensure that, instead of rationing to a few, we are able to open up opportunities to the many.

Mr. David Lidington (Aylesbury): I accept the implication of the hon. Gentleman's comments that national initiatives must be translated into best practice, school by school and classroom by classroom. Will the hon. Gentleman take the opportunity now to say that he and his party have full confidence in the independence, integrity and programme of work of the current chief inspector of schools?

Mr. Blunkett: I am sorry, but it is not my job to answer questions about the chief inspector of schools. It will be my job shortly, God willing, and I will then answer questions. Is it not interesting that a Secretary of State under siege, who is doing her best to fulfil the mandate that she was originally given, is now taking second place to an appointed official? Is it not a shame that Conservative Back Benchers have to ask me, the shadow Secretary of State, what I will do about the chief inspector of schools? It is the chief inspector's job to reveal the inadequacy, the failure and the abysmal performance of 17 years of Tory government, and it will be our job to do something about those problems.

We will offer support as well as pressure. We will unite parents, teachers and governors with their education authorities, schools and central Government, to do the job. The Government have failed to do that job, as, I am sorry to say, has the Secretary of State. When we get the chance, we will unite this country to make education the key to economic prosperity and social cohesion. That is

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the pledge from the Labour party--not structure, not status, not muddle and not selection, but excellence and standards for everyone.

4.31 pm

The Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mrs. Gillian Shephard): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:

'welcomes the measures which Her Majesty's Government has introduced to raise educational standards through greater diversity and parental choice, the establishment of a common framework for the curriculum, assessment and regular testing, greater self-government for schools and colleges, and enhanced accountability through inspection and the publication of performance information; and welcomes the increases in achievement and participation which have followed.'.

I am grateful to the Opposition for tabling this debate. It is a pity that they thought fit to devote only half a day to educational standards, but of course they have always been rather half-hearted on the subject. Consider the double-speak we have just had to endure from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett). He has been so little in evidence over the past few days that The Times has taken to describing him as Labour's health spokesman. The hon. Gentleman may wish he was, because it is obvious that he has an impossible task.

In the confused shambles that constitutes Labour's education policy, the hon. Member for Brightside cannot reconcile the words or the actions of his Front-Bench colleagues or the structure of education with his own views, with those of the left-wing Campaign group of his party or with those of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) and the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg), or--since the hon. Member for Brightside talked a lot about polls--with those of 74 per cent. of Labour parliamentary candidates. [Interruption.] I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his sympathy, but he should save it for himself.

The hon. Member for Brightside is confused, and who can wonder? He opposes grant-maintained schools, but the Labour leader is sending his son to one. The hon. Gentleman opposes grammar schools, but now he finds that the shadow health spokesman--the real one--has chosen to send her son to one. To cap it all, the hon. Gentleman thought he was safe in opposing cuts to child benefit, until he found that the shadow Chancellor had overruled him.

Nor can the hon. Gentleman reconcile his new-found enthusiasm for standards with the practice of those town halls up and down the land where Labour has long held sway. The hon. Gentleman's seemingly interminable speech clearly demonstrated the hypocrisy and plain humbug of Labour's so-called education policy. It is difficult to know how the hon. Gentleman kept a straight face. He must surely know which party presides over the worst educational standards in the land. I will remind him.

Labour controls the boroughs of Islington, Tower Hamlets and Southwark, where 20 per cent. of seven-year-olds are illiterate--a fact exposed by the recent Ofsted report. Labour controls Islington, which also has the poorest GCSE results in the country. Some caring parents living in Islington--such as the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair)--choose schools for their children outside that borough, which is not quite a vote

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of confidence in the Labour comrades. One wonders who took part in the opinion poll about which we heard so much from the hon. Member for Brightside--not, I think, Islington parents, who vote with their feet.

Who is in power in Tower Hamlets, which has the highest truancy rates in the land? Labour, of course. Who controls Nottinghamshire, where last year the local education authority denied 11-year-olds the right to sit their standard assessment tests although that is the law of the land? Who deprived those pupils? It was Labour. At Hackney Downs, the LEA reduced a once outstanding grammar school to the state where it had to be closed--although there were only eight pupils per teacher and it cost nearly three times the national average to educate each pupil. Who is in charge in Hackney? Labour.

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