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12 Feb 2003 : Column 912—continued
Kali Mountford: I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not saying that the vast majority of public sector workers are incompetent or unable to do their job. There is, quite rightly, a case for introducing measures to make a work force more effective, such as mechanisms for dealing with a teacher who is not delivering in the classroom, a nurse or doctor who is not treating patients well, or a police officer who is no longer fit for service. However, that is not what the Opposition are talking about. They are saying that a new infrastructure is needed for privatisation, as nationally delivered services are incompetent and incapable of delivering. The Wanless report, however, clearly showed that the NHS is the most efficient and cost-effective way of delivering services to the vast majority of people.
I cannot imagine why the Tory Government in 1996 thought that cutting 7,000 nursing places could increase capacity in the NHS or improve standards. To improve nursing standards, we should give nurses a clear career path and incentives in their pay structure. They should have ways of demonstrating clinical skills so that they
can have enhanced job satisfaction and improve delivery of services to patients.That is the sort of reform that we want. We do not want reform ensuring that one of part of the population gets one sort of service, while another part—those who can afford to pay—gets the cream of the services. The people who are in the middle and have managed to put away a little bit of money should not suddenly find that that money does not cover all the health provision that they hoped it would. That is not the sort of health delivery that I want.Nor do I want a mixed-market economy for education in which people get their children into classes of 12, 13 or 14 if they can afford to do so, while the children of people who cannot afford such provision end up in a class of 50 or 60 pupils at primary age. That is the situation that we inherited in 1997. It was not some sort of Utopia, but a nonsensical education system that did not deal with the basics. It was a system in which not one or two children came out of each school at 11 to contribute to illiteracy levels; in some areas, 25 per cent. of children were unable to read and write before they went into comprehensive education.
How could we possibly expect a child to develop, grow and be able to gain some sort of advantage from their secondary education if we never got the basics right? Merely to consider a one year downturn in standards without looking at all six years under this Government and the year-on-year improvements in literacy and numeracy is simply ridiculous. Hon. Members talk about a 1.6 per cent. decrease this year, but let us have a look at the 25 per cent. increases in standards year on year.
I am proud of pupils in my constituency, who have this year lifted standards beyond anybody's expectation. That has happened not only in well-off areas, but everywhere. Children who have a history of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles being out of work now have the prospect of work. In my constituency, nobody leaving school in the past three years has been incapable of getting a job. That even includes people leaving education with special educational needs and disabilities. The new deal programme has ensured not only that the majority can get jobs, but that those who previously found it hard to be placed in a job can gain employment. We are now saying to employers—this is the sort of measure that the Opposition do not want—that we will be fair to people with disabilities and find ways of ensuring that they get the same opportunities as everybody else.
Of course, that is the so-called new red tape that we are all supposed to be throwing away. That red tape, which the Opposition hate so much, is the very protection that people need. Let us think back to the situation when we had the sort of Government who hated red tape and did not believe in the public sector. What did they say? They said that they would cut red tape, which would instantly mean cutting civil service jobs.
Roger Casale: Will my hon. Friend comment on the bombastic rant that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell), who was not gracious enough to accept my intervention or to remain in the Chamber to hear the next speech? He was
gracious enough, however, to remind the House that he had been the Member of Parliament for Gedling between 1987 and 1997—
Dr. Fox: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is only fair to say to the House that I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) has told those on both Front Benches, both Whips and you that he is attending a Select Committee sitting.
Roger Casale: That may be the case, but I am sure that the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield would have had time to accept my intervention. Indeed, his having to leave the debate after making his speech was perhaps even more of a reason why he might have accepted interventions.
Will my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) comment on whether the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield lost his seat in 1997, as he reminded the House, because the verdict of the electorate at that time—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should bring his remarks to a close. His contribution is very lengthy for an intervention.
Kali Mountford: I assume that my hon. Friend was rightly reminding the House that the Opposition lost the election because of the very measures to which I have been referring.
As I said, the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield is simply suffering from false memory syndrome. He has forgotten what it was like in those dark old days. He said a great deal about the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), but what did he do? Immediately before the election, when everybody thought that interest rates should have gone up, what did the former Chancellor do? He sat on his hands. Why did he do so? He was worried about the election, but even that decision did not buy the election result for which the Conservatives hoped.
That is why the current Chancellor rightly dealt with the Bank of England and said that we must be independent and that interest rates should not be tied to the electoral benefits or disbenefits of the Government of the day. It was perfectly correct to do that and it is right that that freedom exists for the Bank of England, but the Conservative party never had the guts to introduce it, as they had to have control to fool the electorate repeatedly and bribe them by saying "We should not take this measure now, but we need to deal now with taxes, interest rates and the retail price index." At each general election, they had to buy off the public. In the end, the public saw through that approach and showed that they cannot be bought off with short-termism. That is what we are hearing today—short-termism and a failure to look to the long term. People are looking only at what affects us today.
Let us consider the long term and Britain's overall performance. It is uncharacteristically unfair of the Opposition to say that Britain is in doom and gloom and is about to be in a slough of despond. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let us consider some fair comparisons. On every economic indicator, Britain
performs well against all its major competitors. It is easy for the Opposition to denigrate the Japanese performance, but let us remember Japan's position in the past. It was the envy of the world and it had the economy to which we all aspired, but now that economy has slumped. Have no lessons been learned from that?
Kali Mountford: I see that the hon. Gentleman is twitching in his seat.
Mr. Flight: I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. Does she have any worries at all about the crowding out of the private sector, which produces the money and wealth to pay for the public sector, after we have seen a halving of the stock market in the past three years?
Kali Mountford: The hon. Gentleman raises a very interesting point. Indeed, it is a point that I raised when the Labour party was in opposition. At a party conference, I expressed concern about the same issue with regard to the then leader of the Conservative party, Margaret Thatcher. At that time, we saw absolutely desperate measures being taken, and she told us that we were going to be the shopkeepers of the world and that that was how we would support our economy. I could not understand how an economy based on only one strand of activity could possibly be successful and believed that it would be wrong to let all the manufacturing base simply dwindle away.
Two parts of the manufacturing base are under particular stress—textiles and steel. It is false to say that the whole of manufacturing is declining at the same rate or that it is declining only in the UK. We must consider the whole world economy and the changing economic base. We must look at the new industries, which are not only service industries. In the 1980s and 1990s, I was terribly worried about the growth rate of hotels and the disappearance of the steel and coal industries. Perhaps Opposition Members should be giving us some lessons about what they did wrong at that time, but in similar circumstances, we must ask what is different today.
Let us consider new measures and issues such as the amount of equity release, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield and was also part of the total collapse of the economy under the Tories, when house prices were fired above inflation so that people could not afford to keep up. What is different now is the stability that we have in the economy. We do not have the soaring interest rates of 15 or 20 per cent., the rocketing inflation rates or the massive unemployment that we used to have. We have greater confidence in people's own abilities to sustain themselves, and that matters a great deal. If we keep talking down people's confidence and the confidence in the markets, and if we keep talking down Britain, that will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. It is madness, if we look around the world today and see how Britain is faring, even against the strongest economies such as the United States and Germany—
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