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Mr. Nigel Evans: The hon. Lady suggests that she wants increased expenditure. That money must come from somewhere else. Does she back the proposal by Labour Members to cut defence expenditure by £4.5 billion? If she does, what impact would that have on British Aerospace in her constituency, where there are many defence procurement jobs?
Mrs. Wise: Come on, that is more mischief making. This is not a defence debate. You would soon come down on me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I tried to turn it into one. I am on very good terms with the British Aerospace work force, as the hon. Gentleman knows. This is not the place for a constituency squabble between us. We can do that elsewhere in so far as it is worth doing at all--which is not very far. This matter does not affect only our constituencies, but young people at large. We must get back to that.
Young people cannot get jobs or, often, suitable training. They are treated with contempt. They cannot get social security payments. Even a pregnant 16-year-old is not entitled to financial recognition of the fact that she is unemployed. She has to prove that she is not only 16 and pregnant but suffering from severe hardship before she gets a penny out of the Government. From the party of the family, that is quite remarkable. We often get remarkable demonstrations of the meaning of "party of the family" through its impact on real families. To me, a pregnant 16-year-old has problems, and is already suffering hardship.
For the linguistic education of Conservative Members, I might say that the concept of "hardship" includes the concept of "severity". I once spoke for 20 minutes on that very point, but I shall not do so this morning.
I remind Conservative Members that they inflict such things even on pregnant 16-year-olds. They tell them to go on training schemes. They tell the people running training schemes to take such girls for three or four months, knowing that they will not be able to pursue it, that it dilutes the training scheme and is a waste of everyone's time and money.
However, unless a girl proves severe hardship--which, as I said, means that she must prove that her condition is doubly severe--she will not get a penny. Such youngsters cannot claim the dole. Even in that extremity, the Government have no compassion, and do not recognise what young women in that situation need. To me, a 16-year-old pregnant girl is in deep trouble, and her unborn baby needs to come into a world in which his or her mother has not been driven into more and more poverty as well as being over-young.
I have put that to Conservative Members, for instance, during Select Committee inquiries. On one notable occasion, I was given a shrug as an answer when I pointed it out. I have been told that such girls can go to local authorities. The sudden interest of Conservative Members in the plight of 16-year-olds would carry more weight if it was a little more regular, widespread and consistent and a lot more honest.
Lady Olga Maitland:
The hon. Lady has been going on about the unfairness of the system and how 16-year-olds who are pregnant and suffering hardship cannot get support. The latest published figures, for 1995, show that they get very good support--79 per cent. of those who apply for hardship payments get them. That amounts to 111,000 young people. How can she suggest that their plight is being ignored?
Mrs. Wise:
A pregnant 16-year-old should not have to prove that she is in severe hardship. The fact that 79 per cent. of them go through that charade and prove that their trouble brings severe hardship only illustrates the problems that face young people and the peculiarity of the Government's approach.
Conservative Members, from the humblest Back Bencher--such as the hon. Member for Ribble Valley--to the Prime Minister, have no regard for the welfare state. The welfare state is our welfare state, and that of the people of Britain. It is not the Government's welfare state, except in so far as they unfortunately have a great deal of power to destroy, distort and damage it, which they regularly do.
This debate was instituted not out of care for young people and their families but to make political mischief. I do not think that it will succeed. Labour is having a civilised look at provision for 16 to 18-year-olds with the intention of producing better arrangements.
I am prepared to show my Front-Bench colleagues that one option that was mentioned should be abandoned, but it was first raised in a throwaway manner. I have studied the speech of my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor. Its thrust was different from that suggested by the reports that came out. In so far as those reports were accurate, I think
that it will prove to be a temporary aberration, because the whole Labour movement is showing our Front-Bench spokesmen that it would be a mistake.
However, reviewing provision is not a mistake. To review the situation of the children of unskilled manual workers who leave education with no qualifications with the intention of improving it is good. I will forgive one or two mistakes along the way as long as they are corrected in due time, as I am sure they will be.
Let Conservative Members focus their beady eyes on the Secretary of State for Social Security. Let them consider the attack on those on family credit which will come into force on 2 July. People on family credit with 16-year-old children who leave school will cease getting family credit instantly, instead of having it run to the end of the six-month period. There are problems with that. It might be said that they have ceased to have a dependent child in the family, but that is not so. The 16-year-old will not cease to be dependent, and will not have an income, as I have explained.
The family will have to say whether the child will return to school in September, but they may not know. Some families may lose their family credit, then their child returns to school after all. Will they get a refund? Others may claim family credit thinking that their child will return to school, but, by September, some other thing has supervened and they will no longer be entitled to family credit. Will they be accused of having claimed unfairly?
Lady Olga Maitland (Sutton and Cheam):
Over the past few weeks, young people in their hundreds of thousands have been going into their school examination halls to sit A-levels. More students have been sitting A-levels than ever before in British history. They have been doing so with the justifiable aspiration to go on to further education and university to improve themselves. They have been able to do that because their parents have been receiving child benefit, which is worth, over two years, £1,000. It keeps children in education to improve their chances instead of having to try their luck in an unskilled world. The Government are trying to improve young people's chances, not hinder them.
The proposed removal of child benefit is a sixth form tax; it is punitive. Those who are being punished are the young people on whom our hopes and the good of the country rely. We do not want to return to the dark ages of throwing them into low-paid work. We want to give them the opportunity to improve themselves, and we want to facilitate their progress.
Labour's muddled, totally misconceived scheme attacks the wrong people. Of course we want to support those who in the lowest incomes groups, and they have such support. Labour's scheme attacks hard-working, middle-class parents who scrimp and save and do everything possible to give their children the chances that they themselves never had. The Conservative party is giving such people that chance. As I said in an
intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), this sixth form tax is a dog in the manger tax, killing chances and opportunities.
Surely it is more important to ensure that, at a vital stage in many young people's lives, they are properly skilled in the three Rs. We are living in a very competitive world. For Britain to have a chance to compete in the world, we must ensure that we have the best skills and the most educated people available. We are not part of the unfortunate skivvy world of third-world nations. We want to ensure that we can compete in the most effective way, and we must therefore prepare our young accordingly.
The other day, I spoke to the headmaster of one of the schools in Sutton--John Vaughan of Cheam high school. The school is interesting and non-selective, and aims to help what I call master and miss average--not obviously academic high flyers. Such young people are being given chances that their parents never had. The school is pushing them forward and giving them the chance to go on to higher education and improve themselves.
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