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Mr. Bercow: The hon. Gentleman chunters from a sedentary position through most of my speech, and he now shakes his head in a bizarre fashion, ignoring the fact that, having gone through the training and education option of the new deal for young people, participants are twice as likely not to get a job at the end of it as they are to get a job. Only about 16 per cent. of the entrants to the scheme end up with qualifications.
The scheme is failing in the north, where it is most needed, and succeeding slightly better in the south, where it is less needed. The whole thing is a mess. The Government have got it wrong. The scheme is indiscriminate and badly judged, and it is not delivering.
Mr. Wicks: I was shaking my head because my head tends to do that when I listen to nonsense. We have heard much nonsense about the new deal. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that, at a human level, when, as I do, one speaks to the young men and women who have had an opportunity through the new deal--there is one in my office--one sees the benefits for young people, which will last throughout their lifetimes. The economic impact on the individual and on our economy is vast. The hon. Gentleman should be more generous about an extremely successful scheme.
Mr. Bercow: I do not know to which young people the Minister is referring. The number of letters that I receive from around the country from young people who have gone on the new deal and have found it miserably disappointing exceeds the number of letters that I receive about any other single subject. As my personal assistant can testify, like other Members of Parliament, I receive a very large mailbag indeed.
I politely suggest to the Minister that he ought at least to be aware that many people feel let down. The Government engaged in a great deal of hype about the scheme. People were led to believe that they would obtain sustained and unsubsidised jobs at the end of it. The Prime Minister, who repeatedly makes mistakes on the subject at Question Time, about which I have corresponded with him, does not seem to recognise that the great majority of people are not getting into sustained, unsubsidised jobs. Many people get jobs, which are usually subsidised, for approximately 13 weeks. They subsequently go through the revolving door of benefit dependency all over again. The Minister should know the facts. If he does not, it is a disgrace; if he does, he should be sufficiently candid to acknowledge them.
Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset): I am sure that my hon. Friend did not mean to be ungenerous to the Government.
In their first year, they had a commendable record of getting young people off the long-term unemployed register and back to work. Three times as many people per month went back to work before the new deal was introduced as afterwards. Surely the new deal is a busted flush. The Minister should consider why it fails young people.
Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend is correct; the figures clearly demonstrate that long-term youth unemployment fell at a faster rate between April 1993 and May 1997, under the stewardship of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) as Chancellor of the Exchequer, than under this Government. The Minister should know that.
To be fair to the Liberal Democrats, they made reasonable points about pension provision and the way in which the Government have let down many elderly people. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West spoke with great sincerity and I sympathised with much of what he said. However, he did not refer to some of the Government's more damaging actions. For example, their decision to abolish tax credits has been costly to many poor pensioners. The abolition of the widows bereavement allowance for 60 to 65-year-olds has been expensive and painful. The abolition of private medical insurance for those over 65 has been damaging. The Government who said that they wanted to scrap means-testing are increasing it.
The Chancellor, when in opposition, said as long ago as 1993 that it was his ambition to end means-testing for pensioners. However, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) has regularly observed, means-testing is increasing and the Government now acknowledge that it will increase further in future. They expect the proportion of pensioners who depend on income support to increase from one in five to one in three in the next 50 years. That is a serious problem, which requires attention. It needs more than the Government's smug self-satisfaction about what, to date, constitutes a mixed record at best.
The savings ratio has dramatically declined. That has imposed real pressures, of which the Government seem unconscious. The policies on social exclusion are not nearly as well developed as the Minister would like us to believe. Two years ago, the right hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson)--now Secretary of State for Northern Ireland--spoke about a proliferation of programmes that were insufficiently co-ordinated. Two years later, circumstances in health care have not markedly improved.
The Minister must know about the huge numbers of people, of all political persuasions, throughout the country who believe that they have to wait too long to get on a waiting list, that they have to struggle to see a consultant, and that they are not guaranteed maximum waiting times. He must know that the health service is creaking under the most unbearable strain from the Administration. Yet the Minister displays only insouciance and great satisfaction with the Government's achievements to date. The health service's predicament is serious. I receive letters all the time--as, I am sure, do Liberal Democrat Members--from people who do not care much about politics but care a great deal about the health service.
Some of the letters come from people who work in the health service. We meet health service staff all the time and they say that the pressures are worse than at any other time in their professional lives. I accept that pressures have always been great. That was true when my party was in power. I do not claim that we got it 100 per cent. right; it would be absurd and arrogant to make such an assertion. However, it is foolish for the Minister to behave as though Government policy does not have the fundamental weaknesses that people across the country pick up.
I shall deal with transport, which is relevant given that the Liberal Democrat motion, perfectly reasonably, refers to access to services in urban and rural communities. However, it does not refer to the breathtaking increases fuel duty that have been suffered during the past three years and the damage that those policies cause. I hope that the hon. Member for Bath will mention that in winding up for the Liberal Democrats. I found it worrying in preparing for the debate to observe that the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable)--who, sadly, is not in his place--said:
- I fully intend to support the Government on the principle of the escalator.--[Official Report, 6 July 1999; Vol. 334, c. 844.]
The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, who I discern is also not in his place, suggested on 27 April this year that our European competitors should raise their transport taxes to create a level playing field. He did not think that our taxes were too high; he complained--this is a rarity indeed--that the transport and fuel tax rates obtaining in European Union countries were too low. That is an extraordinary proposition, but the Liberal Democrats are all over the place on such matters.
In a welcome intervention on 9 June 1999, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) said that Liberal Democrat traffic tax policies were "unpopular with the public" and "unlikely to be effective" in combating climate change. That was a welcome outburst of frankness and candour from the hon. Gentleman, but it is intriguing that that was not even an example of Front Benchers disagreeing with Back Benchers. Those hon. Gentlemen are all Front-Bench spokesmen for the Liberal Democrats, but that is not a remarkable state of affairs because, so far as I can tell, virtually every Liberal Democrat Member is a member of the Front-Bench team. No particularly competitive test is involved in getting on to the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, but it would be helpful if there were a little joined-up thinking between right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on those Benches, given that they have the audacity to propose an all-embracing motion that criticises the Government, and implicitly criticises us, even though a lacuna has been revealed in their own thinking.
The Government's record is frankly abysmal, and the Liberal Democrats are not well placed to criticise it in the light of the fact that they want to tax, spend and borrow more, and the Government probably bow only to the representatives on the Liberal Democrat Benches in terms of political correctness. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West rightly said that it is wrong to criticise institutions on the basis of one case, but he did not say whether he thought that a general attack on the behaviour of those institutions was justified. I had hoped that he might be prepared to support the magnificent
efforts in which two of the finest universities in the country are engaged to improve state school access to them. Regrettably, he did nothing of the kind.The fact is that on education, the treatment of pensioners and the conduct of transport policy--not to mention the attitude to this country's future in Europe and the fact that we can best maximise opportunity through free trade, not federalism; co-operation, not coercion; and a Europe of nation states, not a single European state--neither the Government nor the Liberal Democrats are well placed.
The Government are getting it wrong, but I regret that the Liberal Democrats are fulfilling the Home Secretary's description of them. Although they may be perfectly agreeable individuals in private company, those characters are the scavengers of British politics. They do not adhere to a fixed position. They do not know the meaning of the word "principle". They are prepared to say wholly different things at different times in different places to different people for different purposes. They are not credible challengers to the Government.
The Conservative Opposition--committed to common- sense policies in education, health, social security, transport and in the conduct of international relationships--are the proper challengers to the Government. I look forward to the day when we remove the Minister from the Treasury Bench and my right hon. and hon. Friends readily take his place.
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