HC Deb 18 April 1989 vol 151 cc175-6
10. Mr. Favell

To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will provide comparable figures on training in 1979 and estimated for 1988; and if he will make a statement.

Mr, Fowler

In 1979–80 some 91,000 adults entered Government training programmes and 216,000 school-leavers entered YOP, of whom 31,000 were given off-the-job training. In 1987–88 about 887,000 adults and young people started on . Government training programmes.

Mr. Favell

Will my right hon. Friend spell out the significance of those figures to the Opposition, who, like a pushmi-pullyu, one moment condemn every measure brought forward by the Government for training and the next bemoan the lack of Government interest in training? Will my right hon. Friend say something about his plans for the training of the self-employed?

Mr. Fowler

The business growth training programme is certainly being introduced for helping with the training of self-employed people. I believe that that will be an important innovation for them. On the question of training figures, perhaps the most important aspect is that more young people are now undergoing training than ever before in our history.

Mr. Eastham

Is the Minister not projecting a jaundiced picture when he talks about the number of people being trained under this Government? Is it not a fact that very often training is a convenient cover-up for the massive unemployment figures? Is it not also a fact that the apprentice training schemes, which we used to have in 1979, are now practically non-existent?

Mr. Fowler

The hon. Gentleman is wrong on both counts. According to the labour force survey, something like 328,000 people are covered by apprenticeships. What is of even more importance is the quality of the scheme for young people and the latest figures show that 85 per cent. of those who have completed YTS go into jobs or into further education. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would welcome that.

Mr. Andrew MacKay

In spite of the impressive training figures, does my right hon. Friend agree that we still have serious skill shortages? With falling unemployment, does he agree that the best way to resolve that problem is to encourage people to stay at work longer and to cut out the tax breaks previously given to those who take early retirement?

Mr. Fowler

One future development will be that more people will stay on at work for longer, if that is their wish. The policies of companies should be engineered to enable that to happen and to put more value on the experience of older workers.

Mr. Fatchett

How does the Secretary of State reconcile his response, which was a typical exercise in self-congratulation, with the CBI's recent statement that there it an unprecedented shortage of skills in our economy and that, since the CBI has collected those figures, the situation has never been more grave? Is it not the case that the Government have always seen training as a means of massaging the unemployment figures rather than as a means of dealing with skill shortages and giving our people the skills that they deserve so that they can do proper jobs?

Mr. Fowler

The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The CBI backs in full—I regret that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) does not—the training and enterprise councils, which are designed to create more and better training.

I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman heard what I said about training for employment, because of those people on YTS, 85 per cent. are now going into jobs or into further education. I believe that employment training will have a similar success.