Glasgow (Hansard, 12 May 1976)

§ 14. Mr. Gordon Wilson
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will pay an official visit to Glasgow.

§ Mr. Millan
I am frequently in Glasgow on official business and will meet the General Council of the Scottish Trades Union Congress there on 28th May.

§ Mr. Wilson
When the Secretary of State visits Glasgow, will he take the opportunity of visiting the teacher-training colleges and explaining there, as well as in other parts of Scotland, including Tayside, why it is that jobs are not available for so many teachers who are coming from the colleges this year? Does he not understand that it seems to be the planning policies of a madhouse to budget for so many teachers without providing employment for them?

§ Mr. Millan
I have just answered a Questions about that, and I said that there is a serious problem. The bulk of the teachers coming out of the colleges this year went to them in 1973. If there is a lack of planning as far as they are concerned, it does not actually rest with this Government. But that does not mean that there is not a serious problem with which we must try to deal as best we can.
There is no point in the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) shouting about this, because he is a member of a party which is asking us to make immediate and drastic cuts in public expenditure. Education is the most expensive of local authority services and, within that, expenditure on teachers is the most expensive component. I have already said that I am well aware of the seriousness of this situation and we shall do everything we can to ameliorate it.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I must ask for shorter answers as well as shorter questions.

§ Mr. Teddy Taylor
Does the Secretary of State accept that we on this side, as well as asking for cuts in Government spending, are asking for the right cuts and the right priorities? How on earth can it make economic sense to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on extending State control when we are not able to employ all our teachers and when yesterday in Fife there was a redundancy raffle of teachers because that county is faced with the problem of bringing down its teaching standards to the Government's own standards?

§ Mr. Millan
The hon. Gentleman's colleagues in the various education authorities concerned are calling for even more drastic cuts in education expenditure as well as in other kinds of expenditure.

§ Mr. Buchan
Is my right hon. Friend aware that if he visited Glasgow, and went round the city, he would recognise that there is a great need for more and more education? We have a moral obligation to the people in the training colleges and it is imperative that we find room in the classrooms for the teachers we have trained. We dangled the prospectus before them and they accepted it.

§ Mr. Millan
I do not wholly agree with my hon. Friend, but I repeat that the schools in Glasgow will be better staffed this year than they have ever been and for the first time for many years there will be no part-time education in my hon. Friend's constituency or mine. I hope that my hon. Friend will take account of this, too.