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9.43 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. James Paice) rose--
Mr. Paice: Well--if the hon. Member for Stockport (Ms Coffey) had done the House the courtesy of replying to the debate, perhaps I would. She delivered a pre-prepared speech and made no reference to speeches from hon. Members on either side of the House.
It has become apparent from the debate--it was clear from the speech of the hon. Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell)--that the Opposition seem to believe that only women are interested in or able to talk about the family.
Mr. David Jamieson (Plymouth, Devonport):
At least my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ms Coffey) wrote her speech.
Mr. Paice:
Before the hon. Gentleman makes any more pathetic little interventions, I can tell him that I wrote my speech. Perhaps he should have listened to the debate.
The hon. Member for Dulwich also said that mothers do not stop being mothers when they go to work, and she was right. What I found offensive was the suggestion behind that comment that fathers stop being fathers when they go to work. Both sides of a family are important to the upbringing of the children. There have been grounds for dispute about the Labour party's policies over the past few years, but there is no dispute between the parties about the importance of the family as a central part of our society. We differ on how to address the needs of the family.
The Opposition cannot accept the central point of the debate. There is no dispute about whether there are business advantages in modern employment practice, whether it relates to staff turnover, return on training or the number of hours worked. We part company with the Labour party on whether the Government should make the decision and remove the right to make it from businesses and employees, or whether those businesses and individuals should have the freedom to decide and do what is best for them.
Earlier in the debate, some Opposition Members suggested that the cost to business was the same whether the matter was dealt with in a voluntary or statutory way. Those suggestions demonstrated the fundamental lack of understanding of business in the Labour party. If one adopts a voluntary approach to improving standards of employment practice across the board, as the Government have, it is possible for individual businesses of all sizes and disparate abilities to decide the best way of adapting their circumstances to meet the needs of the changing world of employment and business.
For example, businesses should be able to respond to urgent demands that may require sudden bursts of work with little notice owing to the nature of the business. If businesses are hamstrung with regulations, they cannot make that response.
Mr. Geoffrey Hoon (Ashfield):
Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Paice:
No, I shall not give way.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) spoke with knowledge of the labour market and gave clear examples of the individual's right to choose the rate for which he or she is prepared to work. He also emphasised the fact--central to the issues behind the debate--that to legislate to deal with a tiny minority is to disadvantage the vast majority of society who act in a way that we believe to be right.
The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) referred to employment rights for part-time workers. In its proposals, the Trades Union Congress, which obviously advocates those rights, accepts that they will result in a burden on business of £1.6 billion--that is hardly a marginal cost, and is bound to have a significant effect on employment.
My hon. Friends the Members for Waveney (Mr. Porter) and for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) made thoughtful, forward-looking speeches on policy. I cannot go all the way on the European issues with my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney, but he referred to the importance of lowering taxes. He made it clear that what matters to a household is its take-home pay. He did not have time to say that, under this Government, a quarter of all taxpayers pay tax at only 20 per cent.--a record of which the Government are extremely proud.
The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) suggested obtusely that 45 per cent. of women who work part time want full-time work. I do not know where he got that figure from.
Mr. MacShane:
May I enlighten the Minister? The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 1995 employment report, page 189.
Mr. Paice:
I would refer the hon. Gentleman to a more recent labour force survey, which apparently is accepted by the Labour party, which showed that only 11 per cent. of women in part-time work wanted full-time work.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) has been a Member of the House longer than many of us in the Chamber at present. [Interruption.] He is indeed a very distinguished Member of the House; I have no problem with that. I do not wish to sound patronising, but his speech was much more thoughtful than many others, because he accepted that there are no glib and easy answers.
The Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), has read the report to which the hon. Gentleman referred and of which he reminded the House, and has taken those points on board. The hon. Gentleman mentioned what are known as latchkey kids--children who go home to an empty house. Of course that issue worries us, and that is why we have made the child care initiatives that my hon. Friend proposed, from which 71,000 families now benefit. She described the proposals for continuing and developing the scheme.
Mr. Soley:
Conservative Members rightly say that an increasing number of women are going out to work. If, as they say, that is a good thing, who will look after children of school age during the school holidays? That is why kids' clubs are important.
Mr. Paice:
That is precisely why the Government have introduced the out-of-school child care initiative that my
Surprisingly, much has been made by the Labour party of its proposals for a minimum wage. I remind Labour Members that the vast majority of research supports the Government's view that a national minimum wage would lead to considerable job losses, especially among the young and among unskilled workers. The only issue in dispute is the extent of those losses. The OECD, the International Monetary Fund, The World Economy and the European Community White Paper acknowledge that statutory minimum wages adversely affect employment prospects.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle and others challenged the Labour party on the level of a minimum wage. The Labour party may escape by saying that it has not set the level so we cannot estimate job losses, but we know that the Labour party's trade union paymasters want a minimum wage of more than £4 an hour. At that level, we believe that 900,000 jobs would be lost, assuming that only half the differentials were restored. With full restoration, 1.7 million jobs would be lost.
How would the hon. Member for Rotherham apologise to his constituents and others in the north-west--I am sorry, north-east--and in Yorkshire and Humberside? [Laughter.] The hon. Gentleman may wish to laugh, but, in Yorkshire and Humberside alone, 176,000 jobs would be lost as a result of the implementation of a minimum wage of only £4; and if, as he said in a sedentary intervention, it were £4.26, obviously considerably more would be lost.
Much has also been made of the issue of parental leave. The Government do not mind if an employer gives his staff parental leave for a week, a year or any other period. We object to the imposition of those rules on every employer.
Unlike the Labour party, we do not believe that we know what is best for every individual. Has not the Labour party learnt that increasing protection destroys opportunity? It destroyed the rented housing sector by increasing protection, and it will do the same for jobs as it did in the 1970s.
Mr. Hoon:
Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Paice:
No, I shall not give way.
Because we are outside the social chapter, our businesses can do what is right for them. That means that they decide on parental leave, which would otherwise cost British businesses £200 million a year. Let us also be clear about the social chapter, which means qualified majority voting on many issues. We know to our cost that even issues that, in theory, require unanimity could be forced through under majority voting, just as the Commission has spuriously used the qualified voting provision for many other employment issues.
Mr. Paice:
I wish that the hon. Gentleman would stop behaving like a jack-in-the-box.
It is therefore unacceptable for the Labour party to claim that it could block any proposals that would be detrimental to Britain. It could not. Moreover, it has supported all the measures that we have blocked or attempted to block: parental leave; works councils; and the working time directive. I wonder what is the Labour party's definition of a detriment to Britain. Perhaps somebody will tell the House after this debate.
One issue that we have not heard about this evening is child benefit. Why does the Labour party, in apparently espousing the cause of the family and professing its support for young people, now propose to abolish child benefit for over-16-year-olds? We have heard nothing tonight about the confiscation of more than £1,000 from the family budget for every child who does a two-year course. The motion refers to "individual learning accounts", when what the Labour party really proposes is an individual learning tax.
Another issue is that of getting people back to work. Basic skills are a top priority for the Government in getting people back to work, which is why one of our most successful initiatives in recent years is the family literacy initiative. Ninety per cent. of the parents involved, many of them women, have chosen to receive accreditation for their work, and 70 per cent. have gone on to further education. That initiative is an innovative way to tackle the literacy needs of children and their parents, which is why we are about to consult on extending the scheme to 36 local education authorities.
On nursery education, however, we have seen the real Labour party. Nowhere has its opposition to choice been so clear. We want parents to choose what is best for their children, not what some bureaucrat in shire hall or Whitehall decides. That is why we shall enable all parents of four-year-olds to buy with a voucher the provision that suits their children, their wishes and their circumstances. Already in the pilot area we are seeing a huge uptake by parents and a surge in supply of a variety of different forms of provision.
This evening, we have seen the real danger that is new Labour--a party that believes that it alone knows best. It knows what is best for business, for employees, for families and for nursery education. Whatever the issue, it knows better than the individual. Throughout the new Labour document, the word "choice" appears just six times--[Hon. Members: "As many as that?"] Yes, but wait for it: in four of those times it is the Labour party, not the individual, that will make the choice. Just twice does the Labour party suggest that the individual might have a choice. That is hardly surprising, given its consistent opposition to every measure that we have introduced to provide that choice.
Not for the Labour party the bright free world of empowered individuals and the chance for individuals to choose their destiny and accept responsibility for themselves. That is the Conservative way. We want a society made up of individuals, each with his or her own talents, needs and preferences. We believe that they have the right and should have the opportunity to choose.
The Labour party cannot accept that each individual is different. It believes that individuals are just components of a homogenous mass that it calls society--in that world only the Government have the right to choose. The world that it espouses is a world of dreary and drab uniformity,
with a single prescription to the problems of every individual. That is the world that Labour proposes--that is the world that the House will reject tonight.
Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:--
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