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Mr. Paddy Tipping (Sherwood): Did my hon. Friend hear the "Today" programme this morning, on which it was suggested that there might be yet another flip-flop on pensions at 50? If that announcement can be made on "Today", why cannot the Minister tell the House the position now?
Mr. Pope: I heard that announcement on Radio 4; Ministers seem happier to announce changes of policy to the BBC than to the House of Commons. What the Government are doing over teachers' pensions is to saddle an incoming Labour Government with the problem rather than face it themselves in the run-up to the election--a squalid arrangement.
Major changes have been announced at very short notice. That means that much of the planning done by colleges is now worthless. Contractual agreements with companies mean that colleges have had to base their calculations on the DLE rates, which will be unavailable from September 1997. My local college, Accrington and Rossendale, has a successful collaboration with British Aerospace, a large employer in Lancashire, but the calculations that the college has made for contracts with, businesses and students are now rendered meaningless by the Government's actions. The nature of those changes in funding means that courses, especially those of a vocational nature, might end up being cut.
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield):
The experience on our side of the Pennines mirrors many of the same
Mr. Pope:
That is absolutely right. We are witnessing the consequences of Ministers in the Department for Education and Employment having consistently, year on year on year, lost the argument with the Treasury in the spending round. All they are doing is shifting cuts round within their Department's budget. Two or three years ago, cuts were in the schools--teachers were laid off and there was a crisis; now the crisis is in higher and further education.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West):
The hon. Gentleman is describing increased funding and increased activity in the sector as cuts. He is entitled to do so, but only if he tells us how much in his judgment--the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), is in America, so he will not hear--a Labour Government should give that sector.
Mr. Pope:
It really is pathetic that, after 18 years, Conservative Members are unable to take any responsibility for the disaster that they have created. All they want to know is what a Labour Government would do. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman accepts that there will be a Labour Government and, in two months' time, he can ask my hon. Friends at Education and Employment questions. I have no intention of trying to foresee how in the next financial year we shall right the wrongs of the Conservative Government.
Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr):
The stupidity of the question that my hon. Friend has just been asked is explained by the fact that the demand-led element is not cash-limited. It is like asking us: to how many pensioners will a Labour Government pay a pension? The fact is, we shall pay pensions because they are demand-led by the number of pensioners. In this case, the DLE operates on exactly the same basis--it is not cash-limited, contrary to the spin that was put on it in the early days.
Mr. Pope:
Not only is my hon. Friend right, but the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) is showing his ignorance of the system. Next month, the Further Education Funding Council will have to enter into funding arrangements for the next academic year, and it will do so on the basis that the DLE has been scrapped. It is therefore impossible for us to give a commitment on how we shall approach the DLE system in the next financial year, when we shall be in government. I should have thought that even the hon. Gentleman could grasp that.
The changes in funding mean that vocational courses are especially vulnerable and minority subjects, such as languages, may become entirely the preserve of the private sector. Student numbers will undoubtedly fall--an extraordinary U-turn in Government policy--and many of those could-have-been students will join the ranks of the unemployed, where they will be able to meet those who might have been their lecturers.
How can colleges make sensible forward planning decisions when the Government seem to be capable of changing funding allocations almost at whim and without any proper consultation with colleges? Given that many further education courses are two years long, should not proper notice have been given to the colleges of changes of such enormity? Alternatively, could not the proposed changes have been phased in, instead of it being announced, first, that funding would simply disappear halfway through this academic year, and then that it would disappear at the end of the academic year? Is the truth that the Government do not care about the consequences of their actions for colleges and students?
This is a sector in crisis. Since 1990, student numbers have more than doubled, yet at the same time funds have decreased by 34 per cent. Thousands of jobs have gone and thousands of lecturers are still in dispute over their contracts of employment. Part-time lecturers are replacing full-time lecturers and, in some colleges--my local college being one example--all the part-time lecturers have been sacked on the last day of the academic year and told that they will be taken back only if they sign up with an agency.
Is that how we want to run a stable further education system? Unsurprisingly, morale is at rock bottom: a recent independent survey showed that 60 per cent. of lecturers are thinking of leaving the profession permanently. The real victims are students, who are trying to learn and better themselves in intolerable circumstances.
Lady Olga Maitland (Sutton and Cheam):
I welcome the opportunity to respond to the remarks of the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope). His language is, to put it mildly, intemperate--he uses words such as "sector in crisis" and "fiasco", refers to no planning and no future and says that people are insulted. We should be asking whether he is making a spending pledge--if he is, the taxpayer should be told. It is all very well for him to criticise, but he has not come up with any answers.
I do not believe that we have anything of which to be ashamed--in fact, we have a record of which we can be proud. We have changed the landscape in offering opportunities to young people, and the climate has changed dramatically for young men and women. It is not only those from educated middle-class homes who have benefited, but those from deprived or impoverished backgrounds who have been given opportunities that are second to none to lift themselves up. The social pattern across Britain has changed entirely as a result of the new educational opportunities that we have created.
I recall the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown). He is factually wrong when he claims that 80 per cent. of children of unskilled parents leave school at 16 and make no further progress in education. The truth is that more than half the children of unskilled parents stay on in further education, becoming in the process professional people such as doctors, lawyers or accountants--even entering the House of Commons. That figure is changing all the time.
We have created a culture in which aspirations to acquiring more skills, qualifications and training are the norm; where opportunities are available to all those who seek them; and where parents are more supportive than ever in encouraging their children to develop. That is the picture of further education today.
The net result is that our further education programme is bursting with activity. It is the normal right and expectation of young people to continue their education after school. One in three go on to further and higher education, compared with one in eight in 1979, when we had a Labour Government. To put it a different way, the number of students has risen to more than 1.3 million--an increase of over 320 per cent. in 25 years--and we now have the highest graduation rate of any country in the European Union except Denmark. All that is in great contrast to the picture painted by the hon. Member for Hyndburn.
Mr. Rooker:
Does the hon. Lady realise that the figures that she is quoting relate not to further education but to higher education? There are more than 2 million students in higher education in addition to the million-plus in further education. Her lack of knowledge shows that she is simply reading from a central office brief.
Lady Olga Maitland:
That was a good attempt. The truth is that we are looking at the breadth of education--it is hair splitting to claim that we are examining only further education. Young people today participate in all sorts of education--they do not stop at further education.
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