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The Deputy Prime Minister: May I say how much I appreciate the generosity of the right hon. Gentleman's tribute to the White Paper? He was fulsome in his welcome. It is an interesting contrast with what his hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) said three years ago when we introduced the concept. He dismissed the whole thing as a coffee-table document.
It is, of course, no small measure of the degree of cultural conversion achieved by the competitiveness agenda that there has been an internecine war in the shadow Cabinet for the privilege to respond to this White Paper. The shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the shadow Chancellor and the deputy leader of the Labour party have all been hoping to have the chance to take this issue on as theirs. At least I have achieved something: I have got the members of the shadow Cabinet talking to each other--even if it is at the top of their voices in a bar-room brawl.
I should like to help the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). I was intrigued by some of the statistics that he quoted. He was talking, for example, about the skills audit, which is arguably one of the most important things that we have done. We have said to ourselves as the Government that we shall analyse on a peer-group basis British education, which everyone knows has been a source of concern since the end of the 19th century, with a determination to drive up our standards to the best. That is what we have set out to do.
Every change that we have introduced in the education system since 1986 to drive up standards has been resisted by the Labour party--every single one. If Labour Members have the first idea how to drive up standards in our schools, and as they now control most of those schools, why do they not do it? Before anyone talks about undermining
confidence, they should consider that the person who has done more to undermine confidence in the local education system is the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), who moved his child out of Islington because he thought that standards were quite inadequate. The hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) moved her child from Southwark to Bromley because she knew that, under the Labour party, schools would never be properly run--[Interruption.]
Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South):
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I know that it is the season of the mad cow, but could the Deputy Prime Minister please explain what children's schooling has to do with efficiency, bureaucracy and time-saving? I thought that we were here to debate serious matters, not to have a knockabout, silly-billy session.
Madam Speaker:
Although I doubt that that is a point of order, I think that we should keep our discussion within the context of the White Paper. I have already made a statement this month about how Ministers might handle questions and deal with such matters.
The Deputy Prime Minister:
The deputy Leader of the Opposition referred extensively to the White Paper on the skills audit, which is published today. I am making a statement about that White Paper's central, new initiative. The idea that the competitiveness of our education and training is not the most vital ingredient after the macro-economic condition displays a degree of naivety that would terrify any observer of the scene.
I shall deal with what I regard as the most deplorable part of the Labour party's tactics in response to the White Paper. It has today put out a statement, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, that we have slipped from 13th to 18th in the prosperity league table while the Government have been in office. It has done that with the backing of the OECD and the Library of the House of Commons. In order to make the position worse, Labour has included Hong Kong and Singapore in the statistics, which of course are not members of the OECD. [Hon. Members: "You did last year."] They are not members. In order to make the position look as bad as possible, Opposition Members choose an arbitrary position so as to put those two countries into the chart, in which, as they are not members of OECD, they are not entitled to appear. The Opposition have decided to fiddle the figures.
Indeed, the Opposition have done worse than that. I have a certain sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman, because his difficulty is that the latest figures from the OECD do not include 1979. The document that I have here contains the latest figures. So the Opposition have had to rely on another document. The difficulty for the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East is that that other document was revised by the OECD.
Far from being 13th in 1979, we were 15th, so according to the OECD's analysis, our relative position has moved from 15th to 16th.
The Deputy Prime Minister:
Let me help the right hon. Gentleman, who patently has not read the OECD report.
The OECD report dated 1996 says:
The Deputy Prime Minister:
That is the OECD paper, referring to the prospects for the British economy. It continues:
That is not the judgment of the Labour party or of the trade unions, but the judgment of the men and women who have to invest their money in the best economic circumstances to earn profits and to make a return. According to their judgment, we are the best country to choose. That is why we believe that we are the enterprise centre of Europe.
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham):
Will my right hon. Friend write to all the poor-performing education authorities in the country drawing attention to the problems of numeracy and literacy? Will he ask them to introduce more whole-class teaching, better methods of teaching reading and writing, and more learning of tables and other traditional methods that work elsewhere, yet are being denied to the children in those authorities' schools? As new Labour is finding it so difficult to get its message across to its own supporters, perhaps my right hon. Friend will invite the Leader of the Opposition to co-sign the letter.
The Deputy Prime Minister:
We know what the Leader of the Opposition would do: he would opt out of the process. That is exactly what he does. I wholly agree with my right hon. Friend, and if the Labour party knew what to do, it could do it now. The Labour party controls most of the schools in this country. But the fact of the matter is that Labour has neither the will nor the ideas to take on the unions in those educational establishments and to take the necessary action to drive up standards. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment is so much to be admired. With her predecessors, she has reversed the decline in our education standards to a point at which we can look forward to closing those gaps.
Mr. Nick Harvey (North Devon):
The Deputy Prime Minister presented an upbeat picture this afternoon, but
The Deputy Prime Minister:
I would say that unemployment has fallen by 800,000 in the past three and a half years and that we have the highest proportion of our population at work. If one wants to prejudice that, the surest way to do so is to impose social costs or to raise income taxes, which both Opposition parties stand for.
Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent):
My right hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the extraordinary increase in the number of prosperous small businesses in this country. Will he spare a thought for very small village pubs, which are an essential part of the framework of our society? Will he consider including among the imaginative ideas that the Government have canvassed, for rate relief for post offices, a similar measure for small village pubs?
"by the end of 1978 British external competitiveness was at its worst level since 1966".
That was another Labour record, the record that we inherited, and we have had to address the issues. The difference today is that whereas we inherited a persistent decline in Britain's rating, we are now seeing an improvement in that rating. We went down from 15th to 19th and now we have recovered to 16th. That is the fundamental difference. Under the structural changes that we have brought about, this country is now improving its relative performance.
"UK economic performance remained good in 1995 following the previous year's strong results.
Mr. Prescott:
A Treasury forecast.
In the longer term, the economic outlook is good".
"International cost competitiveness remains sound."
After the structural changes of the past 17 years, we have now reached the position in which all independent analysis outside this country agrees that we are attracting 40 per cent. of all the inward investment coming into the European Union.
"We must now further raise the quality of our education system, training, innovation and a host of other factors if the UK's performance is to match the rest of the world."
After 17 years of Tory government and a raft of education measures, is not the right hon. Gentleman acknowledging that the triumph that he has proclaimed this afternoon is a long way from reality?
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