§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. G. Campbell.]
§ 4.2 p.m.
§ Dr. Jeremy Bray (Middlesbrough, West)Last week, die House had the opportunity of debating the Government's proposals on industrial training as given in the White Paper. Today, I should like to examine how far those proposals are relevant to the needs of areas of high unemployment and, in particular, as an example of the general case and not as a specific constituency problem, to the needs of Tees-side. The same situation exists in Northern Ireland and in parts of Scotland, and no doubt elsewhere, where there is a nucleus of viable apprentice training schemes, many very well run by highly reputable firms, which are capable of expansion.
On Tees-side today unemployment among juveniles under the age of 18 varies from 15 to 60 per cent, of the annual age group, meaning that the child leaving school can expect to spend a full term unemployed. There is a pool of about 1,000 permanently unemployed young people. This will persist or grow worse as the reservoir of people staying on at school to the age of 16 begins to fill up and as the bulge continues to come forward. Next year the number of children leaving the schools in Tees-side will be even higher than this year.
Of the total of unemployed on Tees-side, which is tragically high, youth represents 10 per cent., which is considerably more in proportion than the total number of young people to the working population as a whole. In general, unemployment is due to a decline in the demand for steel and ships, the falling off in the very heavy construction programme of recent years and the replacement of obsolete plant in the steel and chemical industries by new, much more efficient, much more capital-intensive plant, which achieves the same volume of production with a very much smaller labour force. The whole situation adds up to one in which a great deal of new industry is needed and very radical measures are required.
In this situation which we on Tees-side have seen coming for some years 899 and which has become acute in the past year, a local youth employment committee last summer, having already asked employers to take on as many young people as they possibly could, again asked whether employers would make available training places in their own apprentice training schools which could be used by other employers who had not the training facilities or by the Government or in some way so that children who would otherwise be unemployed could be given at least a start in training.
In response to this request, Imperial Chemical Industries and Dorman Long offered 120 places in their apprentice training schools for a first-year course in full-time school training in a range of trades. The understanding was that the expenses of these firms would be paid by somebody else, preferably by other employers to whom the apprentices would be indentured. After a very considerable delay the North-East Training Council began to make arrangements at the suggestion of the Ministry of Labour for setting up a group scheme to take advantage of these offers.
This initiative is most worthy and everybody on Tees-side is most anxious to see it get going as fast as possible, but it is disconcerting to find that now only 50 places are likely to be taken up and these not for four to six months from the present day. There was hope of an intake of 120 last September. Now it is to be probably 50 by about June. The ceiling is not fixed by anything, but the ability of small employers and others in the area to offer places.
One hundred and twenty suitable boys could be found tomorrow. The places are available. The staff has been retained by these firms at the expense of these firms, out of good will and tolerance for the delays on the part of the Government. It is surely tragic that 120 boys should have had their careers sacrificed through delays in the Ministry of Labour.
The Ministry has now at last made a grant, not for the payment of these apprentices, not to enable another single boy to go into these schools who could not be found a job, but simply to pay the administrative expenses and the 900 salaries of instructors engaged by the North-East Training Council. The grant is £3,000, which is less than the money being paid out each day in unemployment benefits by the Middlesbrough Employment Exchange. So there is a grant of less than the amount of unemployment benefit paid out in one day to secure the future skill of the whole area. As things stand at present, there is no provision for the residue of these offers of 120 places to be taken up. There is no alternative scheme, though the local authorities are very anxious that the whole offer should be taken up immediately.
Even if the offers were taken up to the full, what is to happen to the remainder of the 1,000 unemployed young people, of whom over two-thirds are boys? It would be possible for the employers to be encouraged to go further with what they are already doing in recruiting from 16-year-olds rather than from 15-year-olds, agreeing not to take the cream of the 15-year-olds and leaving the 16 and 17-year-olds who are not such attractive employees to struggle, but to recruit no one before the age of 16.
The trade unions are very anxious that much more use should be made of the first-year training available in local technical colleges, and they are very keen for apprentices to begin not at the age of 16 for a five-year course, but at the age of 17 after a year's basic training in technical colleges for a four-year course. This is surely the kind of good will from the trade unions which the Ministry of Labour should be eager to seize and encourage the Ministry of Education and local employers to take advantage of.
But even if all this were done the catering for the needs of the unemployed young people of Tees-side would be nowhere near adequate. The measures would build up much too slowly. A great deal of talk is being given to this on Tees-side. We are not backwoodsmen. We have the most advanced and progressive firms in the country. We have individuals who have been concerned at national level, as the Minister of Labour well knows, and we have local authorities which have launched out on ambitious technical college development.
901 The Government once had friends on Tees-side, but the people there are now aghast at the inaction of the Government in the face of the human problems which beset us. The House would probably like to know the reaction to Lord Hail-sham's current tour of the North-East. A hit of lubrication here and there, some training and the scheduling of this area or that, is considered not merely by councillors and local representatives but by industrialists to be totally inadequate. It is not enough for the Government just to say that the main job is for industry and that they will make things a little easier here and there.
In this matter of training the Parliamentary Secretary seemed to infer last week, in the debate on unemployment, that new industries going to new areas without adequate skilled labour already in the area should have to train their own. He must realise that this impels firms to start in a very small way indeed. If, when a firm goes to an area and needs a skilled electrician, it must take five years to train him before that firm can expand, then it will be doomed to a slow start. The Parliamentary Secretary said that only industry had the resources to cope with training on the vast scale required. It is absurd, considering the volume of expenditure by the Government on school education and technical colleges, to say that the Government have no resources to meet this kind of problem on Tees-side It is the height of irresponsibility.
The situation is such that one is impelled to put forward proposals, but not with any very great hope of them being considered, because the Ministry of Labour seems to be strangely deaf to the suggestions of people from Tees-side; people who know the facts of industrial life, whether in relation to training, conditions of employment or anything else.
The White Paper speaks of industrial boards. In the small group training scheme being set up on Tees-side the question arises whether it would come under the board for the engineering industryߞxwhatever that might be—the steel industry, or the chemical industry. The suggestion was also made by the Ministry of Labour that perhaps a firm would associate itself in training matters with more than one board. Such a suggestion must lead to consternation when one thinks that a firm might have 902 to deal with half a dozen different industrial training boards for one, little apprentice training school. Complications also arise in trade union matters. Does one negotiate with the confederation, through the joint national machinery of the firm itself or, perhaps, at local level?
Since the question of industrial boards has been left as vague as this, cannot we introduce in areas such as Tees-side the idea of regional boards with the same powers for raising, receiving and borrowing money as proposed for the industrial boards? There is no reason why the actual mechanics of this work should not be set going now, in advance of legislation.
The Parliamentary Secretary knows, because I have told him, that it would require only the revision of an order made by the Ministry of Education for local authorities to be able to put money into a regional apprentice training board of the type I have mentioned. If one realises that in a little area like Teesside 10,000 new jobs are needed, and that the people will need new skills in trades that are not traditional to the North-East, there is obviously an immense and immediate training job to get on with.
I am glad to see from his speech last week that the Parliamentary Secretary has taken the point that a high ratio of apprenticeship in an area does not mean that all is well in apprenticeship training in that area. In the North-East, it is due to the predominance of trades that have apprentice training, but the hon. Gentleman should know that the ratio of boys taking apprenticeships this year has already dropped to 4 per cent., and another year such as we have just had will mean that the level of recruitment to apprentice trades on Tees-side will be down to the national average.
There is certainly an imbalance in the Tees-side labour force, and not enough is known about it. I hope that the Ministry of Labour will co-operate with measures of local research into the problem, but that is no reason for postponing action. Training has to be done with the promise of jobs to come. The trade unions will certainly insist that there shall be a firm prospect of jobs for these boys to go to. They will require evidence of that, but if they do 903 not find good faith, or something more than the vague talk that has led to the kind of delays we have had from the Ministry of Labour, one cannot expect co-operation from them.
Given good faith, there is not the least doubt that the trade unions will respond. I would certainly take the strongest stand against any trade union which, in the light of evident and established need for tradesmen in that area within a period of five years of a lad starting training, obstructed that training. I assure the Parliamentary Secretary that, if they are approached in the right way, that is the attitude of trade union members and officials themselves on Tees-side.
Even more drastic measures are needed to tackle this immediate problem of the 1.000 who are unemployed, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman would consider asking the Ministry of Education whether it is not possible to bring in a Measure to raise the school-leaving age to 16 in areas that are threatened by high unemployment. At present, of course, the jobs are snapped up by the brightest 15-year-olds, and employers, left to themselves, will not exercise a sufficiently firm discipline to make sure that children are taken in the order in which they leave school.
Government measures to deal with the natural increase in the numbers staying on until they are 16 would have to be backed up by fuller use of the local technical colleges and, more than that, by the opening of workshops in which people could be given training under industrial conditions, producing goods of use to the market, where boys could be trained and, after training, continue to work, and where their first experience of life would not be this miserable period on the dole.
I can see no reason at all why the Ministry of Labour should not commit itself to accept the aim, in defined areas such as Tees-side and Belfast, of setting up within a year the kind of training centres and workshops which would at least get this pool of unemployed juveniles useful training by September.
§ 4.20 p.m.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. William Whitelaw)In the time left available to me I shall do my best to reply on 904 the problem of apprentice training on Tees-side and to the particular case with which the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, West (Dr. Bray) and I have been dealing for some time. The subject of this Adjournment debate is not new to either of us. We have had both correspondence and discussion on it.
I want at once to acknowledge the determination with which the hon. Gentleman has pursued his case. I for one would say that I do not resent for one moment being cajoled, being regarded as lacking in energy or anything else. All I seek to do in reply to these charges is to set out the facts as they are.
I know the hon. Gentleman will agree that throughout all these discussions he and I have had a common purpose. Unfortunately, we now have to differ in this debate to some extent about the practical means of achieving it. He for his part feels that we in the Ministry of Labour lack a proper sense of urgency. Equally, I for my part consider that in his enthusiasm for his own area he tends to disregard some of the very real difficulties.
I do not attempt to underestimate the difficulty of the employment situation for boys and girls on Tees-side in present circumstances. The hon. Gentleman has reasonably said that the ratio of apprentices to the total number of boys depends very considerably on the shape of the industry in any particular area. Nevertheless, the opportunities of entering apprenticeship have remained at a high level throughout what has undoubtedly been a very difficult period. Last year, for instance, 38.6 per cent. of boys entering employment gained apprenticeships there compared with 36.2 per cent. in the country generally. I hope that his gloomy forecasts of the future will not be borne out. Nevertheless, I note what he has said.
I think I should also say to him, as I am sure he is the first to appreciate, that in the employment of boys apprenticeships are not the whole story. There is inevitably a need as well for vacancies for the unskilled and the semi-skilled because there are some boys who need that type of employment. I am assured that to a large extent on Tees-side this is one of the main needs. Indeed, I am told that Dorman Long is at present considering 905 a plan to enlarge operative training below the craft level, and I should hare, thought that this was a very worthwhile step.
It is against this background of a difficult employment situation that a joint committee of the youth employment committees on Tees-side met last July to discuss ways of increasing opportunities for training for boys. Following this, as the hon. Gentleman said, a letter was sent to 27 large employers in the area asking them if they had any surplus training capacity within their firms which they would be willing to make available for the training of young people. Twenty-two firms replied, most of them saying that they had no surplus training capacity.
Three undertakings, however—Dorman Long, and the Wilton and Billingham establishments of I.C.I.—offered to make certain facilities available. Dorman Long offered to train 40 boys for a full five-year apprenticeship, provided that the wages of the apprentices and the costs of training did not fall as a charge to the firm. I.C.I. at Wilton and Billingham offered 30 places at each establishment for basic first-year training, and linked this with the promotion of a group training scheme. Since then, Wilton stepped up the offer to 50 places. As in the case of Dorman Long, the costs of the operation would not fall on the firm.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman recognised that the best method of taking advantage of these offers would be for other employers in the area to take on the boys as apprentices and so form a nucleus of a group apprentice scheme, and this, in fact, has been our purpose from the start.
The officers of the Minister of Labour made a preliminary survey to establish what field existed for promoting a group scheme, and. Mr. Rowlands, the training officer of the Industrial Training Council, contacted a number of firms. Here I make the point that there is no bar to using the full 120 places provided that employers can be found to take the places; and this, after all, is up to the employers concerned.
To return to the history of the scheme, the North-East Training Council, having contacted I.C.I. and discussed the ways in which the facilities offered might be 906 used for the formation of a group scheme, was considering the possibility of extending to Tees-side its activities which had hitherto been confined to Tyneside. When the North-East Training Council also contacted a number of other firms and set about canvassing those which the Ministry's preliminary survey showed to be likely supporters for a group scheme, it was decided, rightly, I think, that Mr. Rowlands should withdraw to leave the field clear. The North-East Training Council was in touch with both the Ministry and the Industrial Training Council seeking financial assistance for the initial promotional work of launching a group scheme.
In the special circumstances of Teesside, and particularly in order to take advantage of the I.C.I. offer, my right hon. Friend, as he informed the hon. Gentleman on 28th January, proposed to make a grant of up to £3,000 and a loan of similar amount through the Industrial Training Council to assist the North-East Training Council in its work on Tees-side. The Industrial Training Council agreed on 30th January to make the grant and is now considering in detail the terms of the loan. The North-East Trading Council now has the appointment of the staff in hand and is proposing to press on with its project as swiftly as possible.
This leads me to the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that unnecessary delays have attended the handling of this situation. I cannot accept this view. Undoubtedly, it has taken time to decide in what way it was best to deal with the situation on Tees-side.
§ Mr. WhitelawNo, I have not time.
Inevitably, in considering the ways in which one can effectively help an area in difficulties, it is necessary to consult many people and consider a variety of methods. The hon. Gentleman himself has suggested that a group scheme would be best. I am sure that he appreciates that all this work in forming a group scheme inevitably takes time. If the Government are to consider making financial assistance available on special terms for the promotion of such a scheme, no one, least of all the taxpayer, can expect an ill-considered decision.
907 Of course, there was one way by which the Government could have taken immediate advantage of the offers of I.C.I. and Dorman Long. They could have agreed to pay all the expenses involved in the project. While this might have brought a quick solution on Tees-side, it would also have created a precedent for Government action to which there could be no effective limit. Few people who are familiar with the many problems raised by industrial training would seriously suggest that the Government should undertake to pay the wages of all industrial apprentices from public funds, yet this is the direction in which the logic of the hon. Gentleman's argument inevitably leads us. I have never heard it suggested by his party or by any other that this should be done.
Even under the arrangements envisaged in the Government's proposals in their White Paper, industry will still be expected —and, most people would say, rightly expected—to recruit, employ and pay its own apprentices and trainees. There has not been any suggestion that the Government should do this. What the Government are seeking to do on Tees-side by their exceptional assistance is to assist the more rapid promotion of a group scheme integrated into Tees-side industry.
Naturally, I appreciate and, indeed, admire the hon. Gentleman's enthusiasm 908 in this matter. It is so strong that I doubt that any arguments of mine can convince him of the very real difficulties.
Nevertheless, I will sum up by repeating my main contention. I.C.I. and Dorman Long made an offer to assist in the difficult youth employment position on Tees-side. The Government have responded and arranged, through the Industrial Training Council, some exceptional financial arrangements for the purpose of setting up a group apprenticeship scheme. It is true that the Government have decided in regard to the courses at Tursdale to train apprentices themselves and to pay the wages of those who have not yet been engaged by employers. But I suggest that the position there and the opportunities for a group scheme in West Durham were a very different proposition from those on Tees-side.
In the way of exceptional financial assistance, the Government have made a significant contribution. Whatever the hon. Gentleman may say, that is true. Now, surely, it must be up to the local firms, the local education authorities and, indeed, everyone else in the area to play their part in taking full advantage of this effort. In my view, only they can do this.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Five o'clock.