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1.11 am
Mr. Ian Bruce: I had the good fortune in my first Parliament to serve on the Select Committee on Employment. It was interesting to see the transformation of view among Labour colleagues on the Committee about TECs being a good thing. When the previous Government abolished the Manpower Services Commission, which was a great employer in the Secretary of State's constituency, the TECs were at first universally condemned by the Labour party. Realising that those bodies were doing an extremely good job, however, Labour became wedded to the idea of co-operating with them, and trade unions became involved.
The Government are obsessed with modernising--as they describe it--everything in sight, particularly when it comes to anything created by the previous Government that was successful in improving training. Therefore, the Government have to rebrand the TECs and come up with a new proposal.
I am the first to acknowledge that when we introduced TECs, there was a lot of bureaucracy. The Treasury, in particular, wanted to re-audit the figures three or four times, whereas in a normal business, people would just get on with it. Abolishing the TECs and going through the rigmarole of removing their assets and creating a new body with new assets and employment rights means that the bureaucracy that had to be dealt with in the previous scheme must be dealt with all over again.
Many people from other countries came to the United Kingdom to discover how we cured the British disease and reinvigorated our work force. Ministers consistently tell us how unemployment has gone down--and it has. Yet it appears from what they say that all the changes made under the previous Government that led to the creation of jobs and the training that people have had within companies, colleges and universities can be dismissed as though nothing has happened.
The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), who I understand earned his living as a professional in the educational establishment before coming to this place, told us what an awful job he had done. I do not agree with him--I think that he probably did a very good job. I am grateful to all those in my constituency who develop training and enterprise.
I am particularly concerned about sixth forms. There is an interesting situation in my constituency. When the grammar school was abolished, a sixth-form college was created in the further education college. It was the only sixth-form college in the Weymouth and Portland area of my constituency. Local schools decided that it would be a good idea to have sixth forms as well, which led to the college complaining about the amount of money being given to schools for sixth forms. The college wanted equality of funding.
The Government announced that they would provide equality of funding and the college rejoiced. Indeed, I congratulated the Government--it just shows how foolish one can be. We now know what that equality of funding means. The Government looked at the cost of sixth forms in further education colleges or other sixth-form colleges and realised that they could get the same provision for the same price through schools. They then froze the amount that schools will receive. The Bill contains mechanisms to abolish sixth forms, so as they become more inadequate because the funding has been frozen, the Government can then decide to abolish them.
When I challenged the Under-Secretary of State for Wales about unemployment, he produced the standard line that is no doubt produced by all the spin doctors and the people in Millbank tower. I shall explain why the Bill needed to do something about the failure of the new deal. The hon. Gentleman was probably looking at the figure of 115,000 two years ago for the long-term unemployed. He looks at those claimant figures now and he probably says, "Look, only 45,000 claimants." However, the new deal statistics, which are produced for us constituency by constituency across the entire country, show that in addition to the 45,000 who are classified as long-term unemployed, who are on the gateway, 65,000--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has gone a long way from the Bill. This is a Third Reading debate and he should return to that subject.
Mr. Bruce: I am sorry to have gone on at some length, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If I could just finish the last two figures--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has finished what he was saying on that matter. He should deal with Third Reading and then sit down.
Mr. Bruce: I am grateful for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sorry that I will have to give the Minister a seminar outside this place. Clearly, he has been misinformed by his own statistics.
The Government claim that unemployment is down, and it is, but not on the long-term side. They have said that they are looking to train people and to develop new ways of training. I would not for one moment suggest that, as an economy develops, one can simply set systems in aspic, but with companies crying out for employees and having more vacancies than there are people to fill them, the Bill should have ensured that they would train their own staff. It should have done more to get employers involved in the training councils.
The previous Labour Government had one very successful feature--they introduced the Open university, which is universally acknowledged as a way for people to take responsibility for their own training. The more we can get individuals to do that the better.
Many of us congratulated the Government on the university for industry, which we thought would be another pillar of the Bill. In fact, the UFI has become a UFO: no one has seen it: it has disappeared.
We are looking to see what the Government intend to do. The Bill is a wasted opportunity. It is very long, but, frankly, it was a waste of the Government's time and it was certainly a waste of an opportunity to help people to get the training and skills that they deserve.
1.18 am
Mr. Hayes: I do not want to detain the House unduly, but I wish to return briefly to the city academies. They have been broadly welcomed--Conservative Members certainly welcome them because they build on the fine tradition of the city technology colleges and specialist schools, which are so greatly revered by hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.
However, the many criticisms of city technology colleges and specialist schools remain unanswered in respect of the city academies. I refer to three matters. The first is the precise status--the nature--of these new schools. I hope that when the Secretary of State sums up he will confirm that, to all intents and purposes, they will be private schools. The second matter is their relationship with other schools within their area. The great criticism of specialist schools and CTCs was the impact that they would have on neighbourhood schools. We want to know, and we have not heard it yet, what obligations city academies will have towards other local schools; what responsibilities they will have for school places and numbers; and about their possible impact on neighbourhood schools in those respects.
Thirdly, precision is required in respect of the funders of the city academies. My hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn) referred to that. However, he did not mention the transfer of assets. When that matter was discussed in Committee, there was a lack of clarity.
I feel that we certainly need from the Secretary of State an assurance about the nature of the transfer of assets and about who those assets will ultimately belong to if they are transferred back to a private body and might become involved in a city academy. I suspect that, without that clarity--although I am sure it will be forthcoming from the Secretary of State--it will be very difficult for Members on either side of the House to vote for Third Reading.
1.20 am
The Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. David Blunkett): All the remarks of the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) were dealt with in the first two hours of this afternoon when he was not present, and had I known that the hon. Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) was going to go on at such length at this time of the morning, I would personally have carried 78 people to the polls in 1997.
My friends know that I am totally in favour of timetabling all major Bills, and tonight's antics merely reinforce the argument that that is the most sensible thing that we could do in modernising this place for a 21st-century legislature.
I want to thank hon. Members for being here at this time of the morning and for supporting Third Reading, and to reinforce the very generous words of the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke), who was kind enough, on the last Standing Committee on which he will serve before he retires, to pay tribute to the Ministers who served in Committee, who did a sterling job. I thank them and the Whips for what they did on that Committee.
The judge and jury of the Bill will be those who, in years to come, benefit from it.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.
DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
Criminal Law
- That the draft Criminal Justice Act 1993 (Extension of Group A Offences) Order 2000, which was laid before this House on 12th June, be approved.--[Mr. Betts.]
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