HC Deb 24 April 1990 vol 171 cc149-50
11. Mr. Favell

To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what measures the Government are taking to encourage donation of funds by companies to training and enterprise councils.

Mr. Howard

The Government are providing matching funding on a pound-for-pound basis against donations by companies and other private sources to training and enterprise councils up to a limit of £125,000 per TEC in the first operational year. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his Budget speech that any individuals or companies that donate funds to TECs to support their activities will be able to claim tax relief on their contributions.

Mr. Favell

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that companies are responding extremely well to the challenge of setting up local training and enterprise councils? Is he heartened by what has happened so far, and is not that far better than the Labour party's proposal in its recent policy document to set up a national network of quangos at a cost of more than £1,000 million a year?

Mr. Howard

My hon. Friend is quite right. There is a tremendous amount of enthusiasm surrounding the setting up of training and enterprise councils. I pay tribute to the Stockport and High Peak training and enterprise council, in my hon. Friend's constituency. I expect to receive its proposed corporate and business plans next month, and I look forward to that.

Ms. Armstrong

I am sure that the Secretary of State would not want to let hon. Members go away this afternoon without recognising the great concern among TECs throughout the country, particularly those setting up, at the major cuts in the training budget, which mean that they will be unable to carry out work of the quality and in the way that they would like. I particularly ask him to look at the problems in Durham county, where industries say that they will simply be unable to meet the shortfall. Where there are still high levels of unemployment and skill shortages, it will be impossible to deliver the quality and amount of training needed.

Mr. Howard

There are no major cuts, and what the hon. Lady said was entirely wrong. We have already signed contracts with 12 training and enterprise councils, which are now operational and delivering the services and training needed in their areas. This is an extremely exciting initiative, and instead of carping and whingeing, it would be nice, if only for once, if the Opposition were to recognise its importance.

Mr. Anthony Coombs

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that one of the principal benefits of training and enterprise councils is to allow local business men more adequately to focus the wide variety of training schemes, in both the Government and private sector, on the needs of their local areas? Does he further agree that crucial to this enterprise is the ability of the National Council for Vocational Qualifications to rationalise equally the 12,000 different technical qualifications available to the benefit of employer and employee alike?

Mr. Howard

I agree with both parts of my hon. Friend's question. Local employers are in the best position to know what training is needed to fill the jobs available in their areas and to match the training with the skills required. My hon. Friend is also right to draw attention to the part played by vocational qualifications in achieving those objectives.

Mr. McLeish

Is not it a pity that the Government have to rely on charity to tackle Britain's skills crisis? Will the Secretary of State admit that, as a result of Government cuts, his training and enterprise programmes are in a state of disarray? Will he come clean and tell the House why, in this financial year, £164 million has been cut from youth training, £40 million from the enterprise allowance scheme and £88 million from employment training? Is not the Government's flagship of training, TECs, likely to head for the rocks soon as a result of insensitivity, investment cuts and sheer incompetence?

Mr. Howard

The hon. Gentleman is talking absolute nonsense. What the Labour party cannot accept is that what it is proposing to achieve by compulsion—increasing employers' contributions to training—we are achieving through voluntary means. That is the great achievement of this Government; we have seen it happen over the past four years and we are seeing it happen increasingly. I should have thought that Opposition Members would recognise that and pay tribute to it instead of denigrating it as the hon. Gentleman just did.