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Mr. Michael Clapham (Barnsley, West and Penistone): You will be pleased to hear, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I am not going to follow the rant of the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess). First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) on the way in which he moved the Loyal Address. He did so in a witty way, and he was complemented by the seconder, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Dr. Clark), who made an eloquent speech.
The Queen's Speech shows the Government's commitment to the agenda that they set out 18 months ago, and the Bills that are outlined in it show that the Government have distinguished themselves from the Opposition in the policies that they have put forward. On productivity, the Queen's Speech makes the point that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has, over the past 18 months, set out to stabilise the economy. In doing that--and in avoiding the boom and bust that we experienced over the previous 18 years--he has referred to how he will concentrate on productivity and improve it, and how he will address the issue of competitiveness.
In the previous Parliament, I was a member of the Trade and Industry Committee. In 1994, we considered the issue of competitiveness to identify the features that make it up. The Government of the day responded to the Committee with a White Paper--the first on competitiveness for 10 years--and noted the points made by the Committee. In so doing, the Government drew attention to the need to tackle the issue of competitiveness, which they had neglected for so long.
The Trade and Industry Committee identified a number of characteristics that make up competitiveness--for example, education, training, innovation, marketing and management. Innovation was also badly neglected over the previous 18 years. Although the previous Government acted and introduced business links--on the initiative of the Labour party in opposition, whose idea they were--they failed to connect them to a conduit which would have linked them to universities and colleges. We couldhave had a technology transfer that would have been enormously helpful to small and medium enterprises.
In considering competitiveness, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will take on the suggestion that we may be able to link business links into technology transfers by connecting them to universities and colleges.
The Government have started to deal with education, and £19 billion has been made available to it. The hon. Member for Southend, West was rather churlish about Labour's improvement of the education system. He knows full well that, for the first time ever, nursery education is available to all parents who want it for their four-year-old children. By 2001, it will be available to parents who want it for their three-year-old children. The improvements are there. At the same time, the Government are determined to get class sizes down to 30 and, in so doing, to increase pupils' opportunities by making better attainment levels possible for them.
Improvements have been made in education, which is so important in respect of competitiveness. For example, the education systems of our main competitors--Japan, Germany, America and France--have been so much better than ours, especially the German system, because of the way in which the Germans have been able to link academic education to vocational education. We need to consider that.
Mr. Malcolm Moss (North-East Cambridgeshire):
Is the hon. Gentleman therefore vouching that we go down the road of the German education system, which of course has grammar schools?
Mr. Clapham:
I am vouching for our need to develop that better connection between vocational and academic education, which is something that we have never developed. The hon. Gentleman will know that, in the 1960s, the Robbins report suggested that we should have separate universities--the polytechnics were universities that would deal with the practical application of knowledge. We had to go down that route, because the established universities did not want to take on what they considered to be education for mechanics.
The Germans have developed a system in which they have been able to connect vocational and academic education. The hon. Member for Southend, West talked about history and said that Labour was not interested in it, so the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) may be surprised to hear a statistic from 1870: in Germany, there were 111,000 pupils in secondary education; in this country, there were 11,000. The Germans started to realise education's importance to competitiveness way back. We are beginning to deal with that, although we have also had to deal with the legacy of the past 18 years. Consequently, we have had to concentrate a great deal of resources and effort on the education system, but things are beginning to move.
For example, because of the legacy that we picked up, Labour has had to introduce the new deal to give young people an opportunity. Many young people who are benefiting from the new deal were previously thrown on the scrapheap--they did not have an opportunity. It has given people opportunities and, as we heard today, we have created 30,000 new jobs through it.
The new deal is working, and I can tell the hon. Member for Southend, West that in my constituency--where there is a considerable rate of unemployment, as there is across Barnsley--employers have been quick to work with it. Young people who would not otherwise have had an opportunity are beginning to be given skills that they can use in the market.
The new deal is beginning to work, and I should like training and enterprise councils to ensure that there is also an element of education where the new deal connects with the training that they provide. Instead of there being only specific training on the job, there should be a link to education to create the opportunity for the worker who is being given new skills to be much more flexible in the market.
The features of competitiveness were well identified in the Trade and Industry Committee report. Innovation is so important for competitiveness that we need to develop a conduit from university to company. A recent study by the Coalfield Communities Campaign shows that real unemployment is as high as 24 per cent. among mining communities in Barnsley, which has high unemployment. Income per household in my constituency and Barnsley generally is just 55 per cent. of the national average and productivity is 64 per cent. of the national average. In the current global economy, it is clear that new jobs and foreign investment will not be transplanted to areas like Barnsley, but that we need to develop our home-grown industries. We need a link with local universities such as Sheffield and Leeds so that both marketing and innovatory skills can be transferred to the production line. It is extremely important to develop the transfer of technology link.
My constituency and Barnsley generally have enormous problems, but the Government have already started to tackle them. Although it is not mentioned in the Gracious Speech, the coalfield task force has reported. At its conference on Monday 1 December, the Deputy Prime Minister will make an important statement on the implementation of the task force's recommendations. Eighty recommendations form a package that will be enormously helpful to coalfield areas. The moneys can be drawn from the surpluses that were paid to the previous Government. In 1994, the previous Government drew up a formula whereby half the surpluses from the mineworkers' pension scheme were taken by the Government. During that period, the Government sold off British Coal's land, which raised well over £1 billion. The money is therefore available to regenerate the coalfields. Thus the Government are taking positive action to help areas that were badly neglected by the previous Government.
It would be helpful if, instead of being churlish, Opposition Members would read the Gracious Speech and recognise that substantive issues are outlined in it. On reform of the House of Lords, it is clear that the hereditary
principle is totally out of step with a modern democracy. The Government propose to withdraw the hereditary principle. In the transitionary stage, before implementation of an elected second Chamber, the second Chamber could be composed of people who representthe regions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) suggested. Regional development agencies and regional assemblies will soon come into being and people elected to those could be appointed to the second Chamber. A number of alternatives could be considered while the royal commission decides on an electoral system for the second Chamber. It is therefore churlish of Conservative Members to say that the Government want a controlled second Chamber. That is simply not true.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby):
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham), whom I believe to be a man of principle. He resigned his important position in the Government over a matter of principle, so I hope that he will accept that many Conservative Members object to the proposed changes to the House of Lords as a matter of principle. It is not acceptable to scrap hereditary peers without knowing what will replace them. I am happy with change to the second Chamber if we know what is coming along the road. We do not seek to defend outdated practices, but we do not want a second Chamber that is less independent than the hon. Gentleman has already been in this Parliament.
It is a sad reflection on the manner in which the Government have treated this House that both sides of the Chamber are extremely empty for this debate. I suspect that some Labour Members have been pressed by their Whips to make long speeches. I would exempt one or two, but I see from the smiles of others that they have been pressed.
I join other hon. Members in congratulating the proposer and seconder of the Humble Address, particularly the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton), who made an entertaining and wry speech.
The opening paragraph of the Gracious Speech says that Her Majesty's Government
Perhaps the Government want to modernise traditions. I suspect that many Labour Members do not like the carriages, the Household Cavalry and much of the pomp and circumstance that go with this morning's Queen's
Speech, for instance. However, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham)--the so-called "Cabinet enforcer"--said that he was quite happy with traditions as they form part of the country's history.
I suspect that "modernisation" is simply a slogan--slick, but meaningless. It is rather like the slogan "cool Britannia", which was trumpeted around the country, but has now been dropped because it was meaningless and became embarrassing. I fear that the modernisation slogan has little substance.
The Gracious Speech is practically empty. Let us look at what is not in it. It does not mention the proposed referendum on proportional representation. Personally, I am delighted, but why is there no mention of the so-called "independent" commission led by Lord Jenkins, which came out with the amazingly un-independent idea that we should have a voting system that favoured the Liberal Democrats--his own party. If Liberal Democrat Members do not understand why the Queen's Speech does not mention that commission, I must tell them that it is because of the 50-50 split in the Labour party--among Cabinet and Back-Bench Members--on whether to have proportional representation. The Liberal Democrats should understand that they are unlikely to get a referendum or proportional representation unless the Prime Minister can square it with Labour Members.
The Queen's Speech contains nothing on the Neill report's sensible recommendations, with which Conservative Members agree whole-heartedly. We particularly go along with the suggestion that a referendum should be fairly funded on both sides. Decent and honourable Members from both sides would agree that that is fair. I thought that the Queen's Speech would contain a commitment to legislate on the Neill report's recommendations on party political funding, but the Government seem to have dropped that measure. Why? Is it because they did not like those recommendations?
The Government are currently pouring money into a disingenuous propaganda campaign about preparing businesses for the euro. That should come under the Neill report's recommendations, and should be examined.
The Queen's Speech does not contain any mention of a rail authority or an integrated transport system. It refers to consultation, which I welcome, but we had a White Paper last year and I commented on it. It contained much that was good. I am all for improving our transport system, but sadly the proposal was too contentious, and the Deputy Prime Minister's measure was dropped.
"will focus upon the modernisation of the country".
The right hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) spoke about the need to modernise the country and catch up with the rest of the world. Perhaps I am not entirely awake on this matter, but I do not see what the Government want to modernise. Is it Heathrow, which is the busiest, or second busiest, international airport in the world? Is it British Airways, which has been voted the world's favourite airline? Is it the dealing rooms of the City of London, which make London one of the world's financial centres? Is it our armed forces in Bosnia or the Gulf? Is it the fact that we now hold, for good or ill, the world land speed record?
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