General Election Television Debates

Ian Swales Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dodds]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point to which I shall return. Indeed, our motion states that the matter has been so badly handled by the broadcasters—undoubtedly political self-interest has raised its head as well—that steps should be taken, as a result of this debacle, to ensure a fair and equitable basis on which to agree proper and fair debates. This experience makes that point very strongly—although whether it should be done through legislation is another matter.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case, and he makes his point about regional differences very well. Of course, the BBC and commercial stations can put on regional programmes involving regional politicians—regional parties are emerging in England, such as the North East party now standing in my seat, and Cornwall has a tradition of regional parties—but does he agree that the broadcasters need a model that fits all future purposes, whether for regional or national broadcasts, and that can determine which parties participate? They need to express a model that makes sense.

[Mr Dodds]

Until now, the broadcasters have made it up as they have gone along, responding to pressure here, there and everywhere. They have responded to the latest opinion polls—the exclusion and then inclusion of the Greens was done on the basis of opinion polls—but polls go up and down, so a decision on whether someone should be included will depend on when one takes note of the polls. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. A model needs to be designed in good time, well before a general election—especially because with fixed-term Parliaments everybody knows when the election will be—and with maximum agreement, setting out fairly and squarely the rules that will apply come what may. It needs to be fair to all parties and all regions and countries of the UK. We cannot have one country excluded and one major party in the House disadvantaged compared with other smaller parties. It cannot go on like this—he is right about that.

The broadcasters came up with their first formulation—three debates, four parties—but then they changed their minds and told us that seven parties would be invited. Not only did they completely change the proposed format and bin the nonsense about dissidents being “empty chaired”; they came up with proposals that, among other fascinating things, told us that the Liberal Democrats and Plaid amounted to pretty much the same thing—I mean no disrespect to either party when I point out to the broadcasters that there is quite a big difference between them in terms of size and appeal across the UK.

Until last week, no one had agreed even to that second unsustainable debate format—Labour had not agreed; UKIP had not agreed; the Liberals were vigorously denouncing the prospect of being relegated to football conference status; and the DUP had not agreed either. We have been absolutely consistent. As I said in response to earlier interventions, we can entirely see the case for the parties that Ofcom deems “the big four” debating with one another. One can debate whether Ofcom is right, but that is what it has said, so we can see the case for the broadcasters organising the debates on that basis. At a stretch, we can see the case for including the Greens—it is arguable, although it would make for much better television, from the broadcasters’ point of view—but we do not accept that the BBC and other broadcasters can pick and choose which parties from the countries and regions of the UK they deem fit to attend.

[Mr Dodds]

The hon. Lady raises the point I referred to about Ofcom’s definition for deciding which the main parties are. It is for Ofcom to make its own decisions and explain its rationale, and she certainly has a point, but we are where we are with that decision. It goes back to the point made earlier by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales). We cannot go on making it up as we go along. We need a set of rules, well in advance of the elections, that are clear, rational, fair and understandable.

[Ian Swales]

I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is coming on to the issue later in his speech, but the question of thresholds is relevant. Will such arrangements or models contain some sort of threshold, based perhaps on current representation in this House or some other method? Such a system would have various features, which could be explained in advance, and then used on every occasion.

[Mr Dodds]

The hon. Gentleman is right. That is certainly part of the debate that should happen, but it should happen well in advance—not in the heat of a general election and not in the run-up to the election when so many vested interests are at stake. As we have discovered, people who were previously enthusiastic have become less enthusiastic, depending on their particular vested interest. Likewise, others who were not so keen have suddenly become very keen indeed.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) for giving us an opportunity to debate this matter, and for making such a powerful speech. I also thank him for evoking the spirit of Lord Molyneaux, whose presence, given the respect that he enjoyed in this place, would no doubt have been very welcome during these rather turbulent discussions.

This may be a debate about debates, but it still matters. Millions of people watched the televised debates at the time of the last general election, and I think that it was a positive step for our democracy that the electorate were able to reflect on the choices that were put before them. However, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), television debates are not the only feature of a general election campaign, and the intensity and concentration of their sequencing tends to generate a close interest which, as the Prime Minister put it, sucks some of the life and vitality out of the campaign itself. That was certainly the case last time. Three years ago, the Prime Minister proposed that we should agree on a set of debates that would, ideally, take place before rather than during the short campaign, so that campaigning in the constituencies would not be overshadowed by the very important aspects of the debate.

[Ian Swales]

Does the Minister believe that such debates should take place before the publication of party manifestos?

[Greg Clark]

As was made plain today during Prime Minister’s Question Time, there is plenty to talk about. I think that the choices between the parties are pretty clear, and I see absolutely no reason why we should not have a debate. The Prime Minister proposed that we should have one during the week beginning 23 March, and I hope that his proposal will be taken up.

The right hon. Member for Belfast North was ingenious in drafting the motion. This is not, of course, a matter in which the Government have any direct legislative say. I think it important for the press—and broadcasters specifically, as part of the press—to be recognised as being robustly independent, and I would not want to breach that in any way

The Government have no direct role in the conduct of the leaders debates, which, in my view, is entirely proper. Government policy extends only to the framework by which broadcasters are regulated in the United Kingdom. Under the Communications Act 2003, Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s independent communications regulator and competition authority, is required to set the standards for programmes on television and radio, which are embodied in the broadcasting code. The code applies to all broadcasters who are licensed by Ofcom. Crucially, it contains specific rules that apply during election periods and require licensed broadcasters to ensure that their coverage is duly impartial. That includes the requirement for due weight to be given to the parties.

In parallel the BBC, whose output is overseen by the BBC Trust, has editorial guidelines and election guidelines that set out the requirements for impartiality and accuracy generally, and specifically within an election period. The role of the press has been debated extensively during this Parliament and I know that all Members will support me in recognising the principle that independence and the requirements for accuracy and impartiality should be at the heart of broadcasting in this country.

Let me say a little about the particular contention in this debate. The aspect that the right hon. Member for Belfast North raised is who gets the power, in effect, to decide who gets a platform and who does not, and the way in which that has been conducted. He made a powerful case on behalf of his party and all parties in Northern Ireland. He expressed forcefully their concern about their exclusion from the arrangements proposed by the broadcasters. He referred to the fact that at the last election the Democratic Unionist party won more votes than one of the parties that is included in the seven-way debate, and more seats than four of them.

To try to cut through the logjam, the Prime Minister made an offer to participate in a seven-way debate before the start of the campaign. The leader of the Labour party said that he would debate the Prime Minister “any time, any place, anywhere”, as I understand it. The Prime Minister has proposed a time: he proposed that there should be a debate the week after next. The offer has been made; it is now up to the Leader of the Opposition to accept it.

As for the specific line-up of the parties, the Prime Minister has said, as the right hon. Member for Belfast North will be aware, that the leader of the DUP should be permitted to make his case for why he should be included, but that case should be made to the broadcasters rather than to the Government.

[Greg Clark]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. There is plenty to debate, as he is kind enough to acknowledge, week after week. There will be no shortage of points that can be made in the debate and it would be a good thing to get on with it. I hope the Leader of the Opposition will change his mind and agree to participate in the debate.

In every part of the United Kingdom, we are living through a time of rapid political change. Between one election and the next, we have seen major shifts in voter support, so it is vital that we do not see the result of previous elections fossilised in the format of the TV debates. It is for this reason that the Prime Minister objected to the exclusion of the Green party from the broadcasters’ original proposal. To people who ask, “Why should he care?”, let me give an answer that should appeal to all of us in the House. The more we are seen as turning our back on the legitimate expectation that people whose parties enjoy some support in the country should be able to make their case, the more we risk increasing the sense of alienation between this place and the country we represent. I also think it is a good thing to put the smaller parties on the spot. We know they can protest, and they often do so vociferously, but the question is whether they can propose workable solutions to the problems that they draw attention to. That is a different matter.

Speaking of workable solutions, it is clear, as the right hon. Gentleman affirmed in his remarks, that the broadcasters have failed to produce one in regard to the debates. Today’s debate demonstrates that the proposals made thus far have not achieved the breakthrough or the consensus that three years ago the Prime Minister said should have been engaged in ahead of the general election. Lord Grade’s letter, which many hon. Members have spoken about today, comes from a very distinguished and experienced broadcaster and regulator, who should obviously be listened to with respect. My party entered into negotiations with the broadcasters in good faith and repeatedly made the case for a more representative debate structure. Initially this was unilaterally disregarded, as the exclusion of the Green party made clear. The follow-up proposal was made without any consultation.

The motion before the House today proposes a new way forward—the creation of an independent body with responsibility for arranging the debates. The right hon. Gentleman would acknowledge that it is rather late in the Parliament to debate the proposal, but he proposes it to reflect his dismay at the arrangements that have been suggested. It gives us the opportunity to raise the key questions—most fundamentally, who would the independent body be independent of? How would it be established and how would it be funded? Which debates would it produce? Who would it invite and how would this stand up to challenge? How would it succeed in convening the parties at all? Would they be compelled to participate? How would it secure the distribution of the debates by the broadcasters?

[Ian Swales]

The Minister mentions the possibility of parties being compelled to participate. As a great student of politics, he will know that rule 101 for incumbency is, “Don’t give your opponent a platform.” Does he accept that those in power will try not to have such debates, as we are seeing right now?

[Greg Clark]

I can only speak for my party, but a platform for the Leader of the Opposition is something devoutly to be wished for by those of us on the Government Benches. I do not know whether that breaks rule 101, but I very much hope that the Leader of the Opposition will accept the invitation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Swales Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady will find that the wages in the public and private sectors are growing ahead of inflation, which is good. As we have raised to £10,000 the amount of money people can earn before they start paying taxes, they are better off. In Scotland, there are 175,000 more people in work today than when I became Prime Minister. As a result of growth in the jobs market, growth in wages, cuts in taxes, and an increase in the minimum wage, things are getting better for families in Scotland.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

For years, the supermarket chain Aldi has been sitting on an empty supermarket that it acquired in the centre of Eston in my constituency. Does the Prime Minister agree that the supermarket chain should be forced to release assets that it does not need rather than allow them to be a blight on the community?

[The Prime Minister]

What we need to see is successful development going ahead and brownfield sites being used. If those sites cannot be used for retail, they should be made available for other uses. One change we have made is to liberalise the use classes in planning so that we do not have the long-term planning blight of development not going ahead in towns and cities where houses, jobs and investment are needed.

Higher Education Funding

Ian Swales Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Sheerman]

I have a close relationship with Northampton university and its excellent vice-chancellor and know of its commitment to social enterprise. I am astonished by how few Members are in the Chamber for this debate. Huddersfield university is the biggest employer in my constituency, the biggest bringer of wealth, and it is what makes my town so vibrant. It has 25,000 students, and growing, and a massive number of staff. Think what that means for local businesses and supply chains. It pays very fair wages and sticks to all the principles. Indeed, not only was it last year’s university of the year, but it has just been given an award for the best level of employability of graduates. I will say more about that in a moment.

What Harold Wilson said 50 years ago is even more true today. If we do not produce the high skills we need in this country to compete and earn our living, we will be in dreadful trouble. Out in India, Brazil and China there are masses of people getting high-level and very practical qualifications. In every area where we have expertise we will find more and more competition as time goes on. We have to become brighter and smarter all the time. There is no place in our society for people without skills. That is a tragic aspect, but it is also a hopeful one. We have built up a fantastic university structure.

When I got the “Too Good To Fail” report going, what I wanted to say was that we do not want to throw everything up in the air. I do not want another Browne report, and I do not want to have to go back to the LSE and have another Robbins report. It is time that sensible men and women get together, as we have today, and say, “The system is working fairly well, but there are some real problems—can we fix them intelligently by co-operating?” The interesting and remarkable thing about the way in which higher education policy was produced, as Members might remember, is that it came out of an all-party agreement not to discuss the subject during a general election. We said that we would set up an inquiry agreed by both sides—Opposition and Government—and let it get on with its job.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful speech that I agree with. He talks about the fantastic system we have. However, it is basically a market-based system that is not delivering the balance of skills that the country needs. For example, we need 500 power engineers a year but we have only 100 undergraduate places. What does he think we should do about how the market delivers what the country needs?

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the second part of my remarks, and I do not want to detain the House for much longer.

I wanted to begin by setting the scene in establishing how important universities are to towns, cities and communities. Our higher education system is pretty marvellous. People come from all over the world to see it. I show them around and they marvel at its quality. However, it is not perfect; the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in many ways. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) said, we are not delivering the right product in our universities. All my vice-chancellor friends will disown me for saying “product,” but it is a product.

Are we delivering the kinds of graduates our country needs? In lots of cases, we are—they are brilliant. My own university has one of the best design departments in the country. Young people who do its fashion degrees are snapped up by fashion houses all over the world. Indeed, the head of Burberry is one of our graduates. Mechanical engineers and design engineers are snapped up by Formula 1. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) has a son who is a graduate working in F1 because of the fine quality of the department. We do loads of things right—of course we do—but often not in a way that is appropriate to what is really needed.

That is not to say that things are not happening. There are people doing two-year degrees in Coventry. Skoda Coventry has people doing degrees either only in the morning so they can work in the afternoon, or only in the afternoon so they can work in the morning. The diversity of what is being done around the country is much greater than we might think.

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[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who said that one of the advantages of speaking towards the end of a debate is being able to reflect on the quality of the speeches so far.

As we head towards a general election, it is fitting to debate an issue that was central to the last one; I very much feel that as the Member of Parliament who, according to the last census, represents more students than any other. It was certainly an issue on which the Liberal Democrats, who are conspicuously absent from today’s discussion—

[Ian Swales]

indicated dissent.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Liberal Democrats are absent in terms of their contribution. They put the issue at the very centre of the campaign in my constituency. My political neighbour, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), was very busy at both the universities in Sheffield—they are both in my constituency—emphasising the pledge that he subsequently quickly forgot.

The debate in the early days of this Parliament arguably introduced the biggest changes to higher education funding since those introduced in 1962, following the Anderson committee report. I have enormous respect for the right hon. Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), but I do not agree when he says that the Government simply in some way tweaked the system that they inherited. The fundamental changes introduced in 2012 effectively removed all public funding from the majority of undergraduate courses in most of our universities, which was a very significant alteration to the model that had been in place for the previous 50 years.

As other hon. Members have mentioned, the changes have put huge debts on students. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Sutton Trust—I think this is the most recent calculation—we are talking of a debt of about £44,000, when maintenance costs are added in, for an ordinary three-year course, and the debt is clearly much higher for medicine, dentistry and other longer courses.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield was right to view such debts in the context of the other burdens we are placing on the generation graduating this year, who face such debts for the first time. They are also having to deal with a housing market in crisis, and all the costs associated with buying or renting. That generation will not be able to enjoy the benefits of final salary pensions, which many of us expected to have in our careers, and will have to put aside very substantial sums to provide for their old age. We have created a real financial crisis for them.

The problem is not just one for that generation, but one for the public purse. That is the key point of our Select Committee’s report. I underline and echo many of the points made by my good friend and Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley). In the unanimously agreed report we said that we were

“concerned that Government is rapidly approaching a tipping point for the financial viability of the student loans system.”

Our point about the tipping point is based on our assessment of the RAB charge. We have discussed that a great deal, and I will talk about it a bit more. The Government, like the right hon. Member for Havant, are keen now—it was not always thus—to talk down the importance of the RAB charge. He said earlier that we are not talking about spending, but about a forecast. That is absolutely right, but it is a forecast of costs that will fall on the public purse, and we cannot get away from that.

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was much more cavalier at last year’s Liberal Democrat conference, when he said:

“These losses crystallise in 30 or 40 years’ time—when I’m well over 100. I shan’t be sitting round, spending the rest of my life worrying about what happens in the year 2000 and whatever it is.”

Actually, the responsibility of this place is to worry about such issues.

It was a very different story when, back in December 2010, we debated proposals to treble fees and to shift the cost of higher education from the Exchequer to students. The Secretary of State was keen to justify the measure by reference to cost savings, and he talked a lot about the RAB charge. Of course, he talked about a RAB charge of 28%, which was subsequently amended to 30%.

At the time, many of us questioned the Government’s assumptions. Most notably, the Higher Education Policy Institute—now led by the former special adviser to the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Havant—argued that the Government had significantly underestimated the RAB charge, and published its own analysis suggesting that it would be about 40%.

When the Select Committee questioned the Secretary of State in October 2012, soon after the introduction of the new system, he was very quick to defend the RAB charge assessment. He refuted HEPI:

“We do not accept that they are right… We had the HEPI view put to us two years ago, when we were thinking of the current changes, so we are aware. But they are an outlier in this whole debate.”

At least in one respect, he was right and HEPI was wrong—not because it overestimated the charge, but because it underestimated it.

We now know that the Government have assessed the RAB charge at 45% and, in an exchange in the Select Committee last year, BIS acknowledged that it is modelling a RAB charge of more than 50%. That is important because once it exceeds 48.6% the new system will cost more than the system it replaced. The new system, introduced in response to the Browne review, was supposed to last for a generation, but after less than three years, it is broken.

The RAB charge is only one part of the problem. In the debate back in 2010, the Deputy Prime Minister desperately tried to save some face on the fees issue by saying that one of the new system’s benefits would be the introduction of loans for part-time students. He said that it was an important initiative and a progressive development, but he did not say that it would be linked to an increase in fees. It has contributed to a 50% fall in the number of part-time students between 2010-11 and 2013-14, according to Higher Education Funding Council for England analysis.

There was also a miscalculation of how fees for full-time students would be set. The assurances given to the House back then have proved worthless. In particular, I remember that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) sought reassurances that fees of £9,000 would be exceptional. The Business Secretary gave him a clear pledge, saying that he would not allow another

“migration of all universities to the top of the range”.—[Official Report, 9 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 547.]

Where did we end up? We saw precisely such a migration. Far from being exceptional, £9,000 became the norm, because universities needed to cover their costs, as they told the Government they would.

The Government’s objective was to create a market of fees set between £6,000 and £9,000. Rather than universities meeting their costs, the Government somehow expected them to set their fees in order of perceived quality, presumably with Oxbridge at the top and the rest neatly ranking themselves below. When that did not work, they started tinkering with the controls on student numbers. More recently, they have made an unfunded commitment to lift those controls altogether.

When the Chancellor announced that policy, he suggested that it would be funded from the sale of the income-contingent loan book. As it has become clear that the sale of the loan book is unachievable, the report asks how the Government will fund the expansion of student numbers—however desirable that objective might be—without creating a further £5.5 billion black hole in the Department’s books. Of course, there is already a smaller, but significant, black hole of some £650 million on loans and grants to students in private colleges. That is because of a lack of Department control, which the Select Committee has consistently raised.

There are other issues. Although it is not part of the report, we should not forget the way in which the Home Office’s approach to international students is limiting our ability to maximise university income and the wider economic benefits of a growing worldwide market, preferring to let our competitors benefit by increasing their market share, as the United States, Canada and Australia are doing. I particularly congratulate the right hon. Member for Havant on his comments about the further Home Office proposals that seemed to appear before Christmas but are now retreating.

Where do we go from here? We clearly need to look at alternatives to the current system, and that was the conclusion of the Higher Education Commission inquiry into the sustainability of the current funding model which, as the Chair of the BIS Committee pointed out, was co-led by Conservative peer Lord Norton of Louth. The inquiry involved Members of both Houses from all main parties and experts from the sector and from business. Over nine months they considered the risks to sustainability for student numbers, students, institutions and government, and concluded that it was

“the cumulative impact of these risks that is most concerning. The current funding system represents the worst of both worlds. We have created a system where everybody feels like they are getting a bad deal. This is not sustainable”.

The report went on to argue that we must look at alternatives. The first of those is tweaking the current system, which I guess is probably closest to the Minister’s thinking. I would therefore be grateful if when winding up the debate he answered three questions. First, there will be growing and understandable pressure from universities for an increase in fees. He suggested soon after taking his job that he did not accept that there was a case for increasing fees during the next Parliament, but is that still his view? Secondly, some top universities argue, as they always have done, for a substantial increase in the fee cap—I think the latest argument from the vice-chancellor of Oxford is for a cap of £16,000 a year. Does the Minister rule out any such increase? Thirdly, some have argued that the RAB charge could be reduced by lowering the salary threshold for repayments or increasing interest rates. Will he rule out any such changes?

The Higher Education Commission report offers six options. There are clearly more, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) made a convincing argument for a different approach. The commission’s second option is one that many of us have supported for years and has been mentioned in the debate, which is that of breaking with income-contingent loans and moving to a more progressive model that replaces fees with a graduate tax.

Although it does not endorse any of the options, the commission highlights the work of London Economics in providing strong evidence to back a graduate tax. That would break the link between the cost of tuition and repayments from students, moving to a graduate contribution that we all accept and that would be based on ability to pay and not on what a student needs to borrow to get through university. The right hon. Member for Havant will know that the modelling by London Economics is specific in the percentages it proposes for different levels of income and the period for which such a model might work. We would need to consider hypothecation and seek a system that covers all tertiary students, addresses the problems with undergraduate maintenance costs, establishes viable support for postgraduate taught courses, which risk becoming the new barrier to social mobility, and deals with issues of transition and historic debt. Those challenges have to be faced because we need a system that is fair and sustainable, and that is why the report calls for, and why we need, a comprehensive review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Swales Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

That’s a bit harsh. I do not think anyone would disagree with clinicians in Devon and elsewhere urging patients to look after themselves and prepare themselves for operation. My understanding is that the decision—or the announcement mooted—in Devon is about patients preparing for operations, but of course I disagree with the idea of, in effect, rationing in this way, which is one of the reasons we have announced, in total, £3 billion of extra money for our beloved NHS.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

On 13 November, the people of Switzerland voted overwhelmingly to retain freedom of movement with the European Union, because their politicians talked about the economic benefits of being in the single market. Will the Deputy Prime Minister continue to do what the City, the CBI and companies in my constituency want, which is to talk about those benefits for the UK and reject the politics of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend that freedom of movement, which is a privilege and entitlement that more than 1.5 million British citizens benefit from across the European Union, is something we should defend. But freedom of movement is not the same as, and is not synonymous with, the freedom to claim, which is why there is now a very healthy debate about how we ensure that freedom of movement can be protected while the rules on access to benefits can be changed.

Recall of MPs Bill

Ian Swales Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris]

At the end of the day, it depends upon trust and the view that we take of the electorate. I trust the electorate to make sense of what is written and to make a sensible judgment. The public have to deal with all sorts of comments and accusations in the media every single day. They do not believe everything that is written. I dispute what the hon. Gentleman says because he completely underestimates the trust and intelligence of the British electorate.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

More than 50% of the electorate voted against most Members of the House, including myself and the hon. Lady, when we were elected to this place. Does she not see the trap that political opponents will cause petitions to be raised to try to overturn the results of elections?

[Anne Marie Morris]

Anything is possible. We live in the real world of good and bad, but if we make decisions about introducing such legislation on the assumption that the worst will happen, rather than looking at the best that will happen, and we do not focus on trust, we will be giving the wrong message to the electorate. It should not be a message about us being concerned about some political group ganging up against us—that is the wrong message to give to the electorate. The message should be, “We trust you to make sensible decisions.” That for me is imperative.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Swales Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. She talks of cuts in the science budget. Let me put on record again the fact that the Government have protected and ring-fenced the science budget. Let me also take this opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), who achieved that success in conjunction with the Chancellor. As for the two Departments that currently do not have scientific advisers, Sir Mark Walport and the Government Office are actively in the process of recruiting and putting in place arrangements to ensure that adequate scientific advice is available.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

Scientists at Teesside university have come up with a unique method of detecting and ageing blood traces at crime scenes. Will the Minister ensure that that technology is fully used throughout the criminal justice system, and will he join me in congratulating Teesside university on once again being a finalist in the entrepreneurial university of the year awards?

[George Freeman]

I certainly join the hon. Gentleman is congratulating his constituents on the work that they are doing. Let me also emphasise the importance of Government procurement in supporting innovation, which is one of the Government’s key priorities.

Youth Employment

Ian Swales Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing the debate from the Backbench Business Committee. I commend the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash), for not only her speech, but her work on behalf of the all-party group.

Underemployment of young people is a scourge; it is clearly bad for the individuals, but it is also bad for the country in many ways. Social disaffection is bound to occur when large numbers of people are under- employed; we see that in countries such as Spain, where unemployment rates for young people have reached figures like 50%.

Is it surprising that people feel socially disaffected when society seems not to want them? In areas such as mine, that feeling can start even before being underemployed, because a person’s prospects can look poor from a much younger age, which affects how they approach education. We have to sort that out for many reasons, one of which is the economic capacity of the country, as the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts said. That is an issue in my area. When I was elected, 1,135 people aged 18 to 24 were unemployed; others were kept out of the numbers in various ways, so the real figure was huge. I am pleased to say that that the youth unemployment figure has been reducing quickly; it has gone down by 36% in the past 12 months. I checked the figures, and only about 30 constituencies in the country have seen a bigger fall in the past year. That is because the Government are doing a lot to help the north-east. The local enterprise partnership in particular is focusing on bringing jobs to the area, and on helping young people.

Many schemes are going on, but I commend the Government on what they have done about work experience. When I was campaigning in 2010, I met a young man who was caught in a classic Catch-22: he had been offered work experience at the nearby chemicals site through a contact, but he was unable to take it, because he could not afford to lose the benefits. I am pleased that the Government have freed the system up so that young people may take work experience when it is offered to them and not be caught in a bind.

The Youth Contract is having success. I visited my local provider, Pertemps, to discuss how it was getting on with the Youth Contract. To my surprise, I found that lack of opportunities was not its biggest problem; transport for young people was the biggest problem. The Government need to look a lot harder at how young people can get to the opportunities that might be available. If for work experience we are offering people low amounts of money, or sometimes no money, how do we expect them to get to the workplace if they come from homes with insufficient funds? That needs to be looked at.

The Government have had massive success with apprenticeships. I have an apprentice, Jordan Brimble, an outstanding young lady who is developing quickly in my office. She is an apprentice business administration person, not an apprentice MP—not yet, but one day perhaps. Apprenticeships have doubled in number in my constituency. Since I was elected, more than 5,000 people have started an apprenticeship contract in my constituency.

Another reason for the fall in youth unemployment is the fall in overall unemployment. In the Tees valley we have seen a fall of more than 7,000 people in the past 12 months—in seven constituencies alone. A lot is going on, including a lot of improvement, but we have issues, one of which might be described as employability. Any employer will say that there is a problem with hard skills—particularly in science and technology, but also in other areas—as well as soft skills. I talked to my local council about its scheme for taking on young people, and it has to train some of those young people even in the very soft skills of getting out of bed in the morning, getting to work on time or understanding that they have to do what their boss tells them to do. That prompts the question: what on earth has been going on in their previous 15 years plus of education? It is important to ask employers what they see—not that we should educate people simply to be employed, but it ought to be very much a part of the equation.

We also need to get young people interested in the right things. I was at an apprenticeships event just last week and heard a story about Aston Martin. It had presented a fantastic display to young people about its products and the cars it makes—a very exciting world of fast cars and engineering. There were 200 young people in the room, and at the end of the presentation they were asked, “How many people want to come and work for Aston Martin?” Nobody put their hand up. Aston Martin’s management, unsurprisingly, is saying, “How can we operate in the UK if nobody wants to come and work for us?” That goes back to the question of what skills we are teaching people and what we are getting people interested in from an early age.

I have my own story. Two weeks ago, I was living the dream as an MP when I got to open a new crematorium. I have a stone memorial on the side of a crematorium now, long before I am dead. The people at the crematorium told me that there are four jobs there, and they had 500 applications for those jobs. That afternoon, I went to a company that has just won the Queen’s award for exports. It makes some really innovative measuring products, cameras and other things that can be used for gas and oil measurements on oil rigs. It is making a fortune and yet cannot find enough people to assemble the cameras and work in its small factory. Five hundred people want to work in a crematorium but no one wants to assemble hi-tech equipment for oil rigs. I do wonder what our system is producing. Are we telling young people the right story about what the future holds?

I go around all the employers in my area trying to encourage them to take on young people and train them. I do that for their own future; it is a hard-nosed economic decision. Sometimes we see employers on TV saying, “My growth is limited because I can’t get skilled people.” My answer to that is always, “What are you doing about it, then? There is an economic case for you to do something about it.” It is a sad fact that only 10% of employers today take on apprentices.

I pay tribute to George Ritchie of Sembcorp in my constituency for driving the Tees Valley apprenticeship programme. That programme sits above employers, in recognition of the fact that because there was such a decline in heavy industry a lot of employers had effectively stopped training. Now, however, there is a lot of growth and inward investment, and the programme looks to see who will train the thousands of young people required for the new opportunities that are coming, and replace the thousands of people who will be retiring from those industries in the next 10 years. The Tees Valley apprenticeship programme has been having success in that, and has been backed by the Government, for which I thank the Minister and the Government.

What more should the Government do? As a Liberal Democrat I did not think I would ever use the word “Stalinist” in a speech in Parliament, but I think we have to get a bit more Stalinist about the skills that we teach young people. The market in education is simply not producing skilled people in the proportions that the country needs. For example, I understand that Darlington college trains 100 hairdressers a year. I do not know a lot about Darlington, but does it really need 100 hairdressers a year? Meanwhile lots of businesses in the local area simply cannot find the skilled people they need. The Government should keep on finding ways to steer the market—let us put it that way—to educate people and educators to produce what the country needs in the future.

There are lots of stories of that kind. Aerospace companies are affected; my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) has talked about how a company in his constituency had to turn away work for 300 people for 15 years because it got only four applications for the 300 jobs. Again, that is a massive skills problem.

The Government should be much more rigorous about why we need immigration to this country. This is not about being anti-immigration, but about making sure that people born and brought up in this country are ready for the jobs on offer. We need an inventory of the skills that we are lacking that mean we need immigration for various jobs. My particular hobby-horse when it comes to this issue is the NHS. We all know the NHS would fall over without immigration, but what has it been doing about training people over the past 20 years or so? Redcar and Cleveland college in my constituency used to have a course called “pre-nursing”, which led on to nursing, but the local NHS stopped training nurses, so the course now has to be called “introduction to nursing”, because the NHS finds it far cheaper to import nurses from the Philippines, South Africa and various other places. We need to address that scandal and expose how much of that is going on—how many people come to this country simply because we have not trained our own people properly?

We need to encourage employers to take on trainees. In certain sectors—the oil and gas sectors spring to mind—employers seem pathologically not to want to train their workers and simply go out and poach each other’s workers; that is why pay levels are so high. In those sectors, we may need to bring back training boards. A few still exist, but training levies have largely gone. However, if we cannot get industries and sectors to invest sufficiently in their own training we may need to force them to do so.

Finally, we should continue to spend Government money in this area and make full use of the European money that is available for skills, particularly in places such as the Tees valley, which are classed as intermediate areas. Those areas have a lot of European social fund money directed towards young people in particular.

Speaking for my own area, there has been a lot of progress and a lot of good things are going on, but there are still 705 young people aged 18 to 24 claiming jobseeker’s allowance, and that is 705 too many.

Points of Order

Ian Swales Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We will leave that exchange there.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In yesterday’s Finance Bill debate, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) said that the tax gap was £32 billion when the previous Government left office and that it has now gone up to £35 billion. Official Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs figures show the tax gap was actually £42 billion when Labour left office, so there has been a fall of £7 billion under this Government. I know the Opposition are keen to regain some financial credibility, so I hope the hon. Lady will correct the record and also find time to congratulate this Government on their progress in—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just say to the hon. Gentleman—and I say it in a cordial spirit—that that was another action replay? We have now had two action replays today, and I must strongly counsel colleagues against raising as attempted, but actually bogus, points of order what are really political points. Otherwise this phenomenon will multiply over the next nine months or so, which is undesirable. The hon. Gentleman has made his point and it is on the record, and we will leave it there—and I am grateful for his nod of assent to my ruling.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Swales Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am unapologetically enthusiastic about a measure that will do a great deal to safeguard the integrity of the democratic process. All we are saying—one would have thought that the hon. Gentleman might support this—is that we do not want to go the way of the United States, where big money distorts and subverts the political process. Under our current rules, we would see big money spending more in constituencies than political parties can spend. Given that his party is run by the trade unions and big money outside political parties, he thinks that that is okay; millions of British voters do not.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

T12. The Tees valley is already an industrial powerhouse. What progress has my right hon. Friend made in delivering a city deal for the Tees valley?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Again, a meeting was held last week about the Tees valley city deal. As my hon. Friend knows, we are considering having up to 20 city deals if we can cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. There is a willingness across the coalition Government to ensure that when local areas, local authorities and local enterprise partnerships say to us that they would like to draw down powers that are hoarded in Whitehall, our answer is yes, unless there are clear reasons why it should not happen. That is the thinking that will inform our approach to the Tees valley city deal.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Swales Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The whole Government stand up for the north-east of England. If the right hon. Gentleman wants some news about the north-east of England, you have Hitachi building the new train plant, Nissan expanding in Sunderland and the new Tyne tunnel. There is plenty of good news in the north-east.

Let me answer the right hon. Gentleman’s specific question about NHS funding. This year’s funding for the north-east clinical commissioning group is going up by £170 million, a 2.3% increase. That is what is happening under this Government. Of course, under Labour’s plans health spending would be cut. The shadow Health Secretary, the man who they have decided—inexplicably—to keep in the shadow Cabinet has said that increasing health spending is “irresponsible.” That is the Labour view. We do not agree with that and that is why we are spending more money, including in the north-east.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

I congratulate the Government on ending the unfairness in free school meals for 16 to 18-year-olds. Will the Prime Minister look to end the similar unfairness whereby sixth-form colleges have to pay VAT whereas schools or academies with sixth forms do not?

[The Prime Minister]

I will look carefully at what my hon. Friend says. It is good that we will now have the same system for free school meals for sixth-form colleges and for secondary schools and I also think that it is very welcome that children in infant school will not have to pay for school meals. I will look carefully at his point about VAT.