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Age Discrimination
4. Mr. Winnick: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will make a statement about Government policy on legislation to combat age discrimination in employment. [193]
The Minister for Employment and Disability Rights (Mr. Andrew Smith): The Government are strongly opposed to age discrimination at work. We shall be consulting widely to obtain a consensus on how we can best proceed to achieve that.
Mr. Winnick: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his appointment. As there is no age discrimination in this place--there are hon. Members of 24 years of age and upwards, and I shall not mention my own age--why should age discrimination be allowed to continue? It undoubtedly causes much hardship among those in their
40s and early 50s who find tremendous difficulties in getting another job and are discriminated against simply because of their age. As we promised legislation and I introduced a private Member's Bill which was wrecked by the Opposition, would my right hon. Friend agree that a law should now be passed in much the same way as we legislated against discrimination on grounds of race, gender and disability?
Mr. Smith: My hon. Friend is right to say that discrimination on the ground of age must be ended, and he is right to say that the role of legislation must be examined. I pay tribute to the efforts that he has made and the energy he has expended on campaigning to end discrimination on the ground of age. Before we proceed to legislate, we shall need to consult interested parties, groups that would be affected, including those representing elderly people, employers and those with expertise such as my hon. Friend. We strongly believe that age discrimination is wrong, and we shall implement proposals to stop it, with the support, I hope, of the vast majority of hon. Members.
Mr. Ian Bruce: I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his appointment to the Front Bench and on his rapid reversal of the Labour Government's pledge to legislate. I warn him that the legislative route, while seeming attractive, has many pitfalls. Someone has to be 21 years of age to enter the House, but that age limit would be illegal under such legislation, as might requiring people to retire at 65. I urge the right hon. Gentleman genuinely to consult rather than to go straight ahead with the proposals of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick).
Mr. Smith: We certainly shall consult. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his congratulations. He is right to say that the subject involves many complexities, but there were complexities relating to legislation against racial and sexual discrimination--arguments similar to those that he advanced were used against such legislation. The fact that the matter is complex is an argument for careful consideration and consultation, but it is not an argument for doing nothing.
International Labour Organisation
5. Mr. MacShane: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what steps he is taking to support the work of the International Labour Organisation. [194]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Alan Howarth): My right hon. Friend the Minister of State will be representing the United Kingdom at the annual ILO conference next month. We shall give the ILO full support for its activities, particularly its promotion of international labour standards and human rights.
Mr. MacShane: I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment as Minister and on his election as Member of Parliament for the great steel-producing town of Newport. You and I, Madam Speaker, who have held only one party card in our lives, will know how difficult it is to switch to another party. After the putsch by the
old Etonians and anti-Europeans of the 1922 Committee yesterday, may I invite the remaining one-nation and pro-European Tories to come across and join us before it is too late?
I welcome my hon. Friend's strong statement in favour of the ILO, particularly as only two years ago the Conservative party, when in government, sought to take Britain out of it. It now needs a British-led agenda on employability, not over-regulation. We need a strong ministerial presence in the ILO. Britain has not had that presence in recent years; such a presence will give the ILO new leadership from a new Government--leadership which it needs and to which he and other Ministers can contribute.
Mr. Howarth:
With friends such as my hon. Friend, it is so much easier. Of course the United Kingdom should support the International Labour Organisation, whose aims are to encourage productive employment and to improve standards and conditions of work worldwide.
Mr. Howarth:
The hon. Gentleman says that is rubbish, but he will now have plenty of time on his hands to reconsider the simple view that deregulation to the ultimate degree, a cult of low pay and the absence of employee rights lead to some sort of economic nirvana. That view has been extensively disproved in the Conservative experiment of recent years, in which the poor and the unemployed in this country have been the victims.
6. Mr. Llwyd:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what proposals he has for increasing opportunities for training for people between 16 and 20 years of age; and if he will make a statement. [195]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Dr. Kim Howells):
We have a wide range of proposals for improving young people's participation in high-quality education and training. In England, as in Wales, the Government will take these forward in a positive and open manner.
Mr. Llwyd:
I congratulate the Minister on his appointment and wish him well in post. Obviously, it should be a priority to get youngsters back into work, and one avenue for doing so is through high-quality training. May I remind the Minister that there are some places in Wales where youth unemployment is as high as 33 per cent? May I therefore urge on him the need for quick and telling action in this particular field?
Dr. Howells:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks. I am very much aware of the problems of youth unemployment, especially in his constituency, which suffered the closure of the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station and a number of other staple employers in the area. Under our new deal arrangements, we shall put 13,000 young people either to work in the voluntary sector or
Mr. Barry Jones:
After such welcome training, does my hon. Friend believe that there is a real chance under his policies of future jobs in manufacturing?
Dr. Howells:
In Wales, we have been fortunate in attracting a great deal of inward investment, especially in the manufacturing sector. That is due mainly to the setting up of the Welsh Development Agency, which Labour set up and which the Tories opposed right from the beginning. We recognise that, in order for us to take that forward, to attract more investment and to do something that the last Government were incapable of doing--grow indigenous industry in Wales--the next tranche of investment will go to the best trained, best educated work force, and that is what we aim to create.
Mr. Paice:
I add my congratulations to the hon. Gentleman on his assumption of his new responsibilities. His and the Labour party's determination to reduce unemployment among young people is an entirely admirable aim; however, when he spends the money from the windfall tax, how many real jobs will that create? How many other people will lose their jobs because of job substitution? How many of those young people will end up back on the dole, because the voluntary force that he has decided on will not create a single job?
Dr. Howells:
It is rather ripe for former Tory Ministers to get up and talk about people going back on the dole, after the carnage that they created in constituencies like mine over many years, when unemployment rose to more than 3 million and probably to more than 4 million. I will tell you this--
Madam Speaker:
Order. This is not an election campaign.
Dr. Howells:
I beg your pardon, Madam Speaker--I forgot myself for a moment.
I tell the hon. Gentleman this: we shall not allow people to languish on the dole; we shall use the windfall tax to get young people off the dole and back into work. That is the whole idea of it; if the hon. Gentleman has not grasped that yet, he had better do so soon, because it is going to happen.
7. Mr. Baker:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what steps he intends to take to allow local authorities greater freedom to tackle the backlog of repairs to school buildings. [196]
Mr. Blunkett:
We greatly sympathise with the position in which schools and colleges throughout the country find themselves, with a legacy of more than £3 billion of disrepair. Shortly we shall make proposals for a
Mr. Baker:
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Is he aware that he has inherited a terrible situation from the previous, Conservative, Government, in that one in five secondary schools and one in seven primary schools have substandard accommodation? In my constituency, Lewes, at Wivelsfield primary school, more than 60 per cent. of children are in so-called temporary buildings--ramshackle buildings that have been up for more than 10 years. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that reliance on public-private projects alone will not necessarily produce the answer? Can he estimate the likely value of private finance initiative projects to repair crumbling buildings in the next 12 months?
Mr. Blunkett:
I agree with the first part of the question. There is a chronic situation in schools throughout the country, with leaking roofs, window frames that do not fit, temporary classrooms that have been temporary for the best part of 40 or 50 years and remaining outside toilets. We are determined to tackle that backlog and that legacy. We shall have a considered programme, which we shall want to discuss with the local authorities and the financial institutions. I of course accept that that will not be the sole answer to the question; we must apply existing capital resources and permission to borrow sensitively and carefully, to ensure that, together, the partnership and the borrowing requirement enable us to tackle that backlog during the present Parliament.
Mr. McNamara:
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the second part of his answer today--PFI plus borrowing requirement--is an essential part of the attempt to solve that problem? It is a particular problem for flat-top schools built in the 1960s and 1970s and it is a considerable problem for schools in the voluntary sector. Will he ensure that representatives of the voluntary sector are included in any decisions?
Mr. Blunkett:
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. The flat roofs that exist throughout the country are a bit like the flat earth policy of the Conservative party--it has many leaks in it and consequently requires urgent repair. The need for repair exists regardless of the status of school or its category in terms of aid, and we shall discuss, with the Churches and others, ways in which they might join the partnership and work with us to tackle that backlog of disrepair.
Sir Patrick Cormack:
How does the right hon. Gentleman propose to tackle authorities like Islington, which, whatever the date of their buildings, provide a lamentable education?
Mr. Blunkett:
After 18 years of Conservative rule--[Interruption.] After 18 years of Conservative rule at national level, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that, in the first three weeks in government, we have acted decisively where failure exists to ensure that every child in every school--in Islington and elsewhere--receives the standard and quality of education that we would expect for our own children.
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