Jobs and Growth

Phillip Lee Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[David Miliband]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who makes a perfectly intelligent point. It seems to me to be a good thing to raise university participation levels up to international standards, which is between 45% and 50%, but it is crucial for those who do not go to university that we have high-quality options for them. High-quality apprenticeships are an important part of that.

[Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify what he means by international standards?

[David Miliband]

The leading countries of the world for higher education are, first, the United States, which has a 55% participation rate, and, secondly, France, which most people would recognise as having an outstanding higher education system. It has 48% participation. Korea, one of the new countries growing up in the world, has 80% participation in higher education. By the way, Scotland already has over 50% participation in higher education, so I do not believe that somehow English or UK young people are unable to benefit from higher education in the way that people in other countries can.

The Robbins report of 1963 said that higher education should be open to anyone with the ability to benefit, and that seems to me to be the right test. For the 50% who do not go on to higher education, we of course need high-quality apprenticeships, but I say to the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) that he should work with us to raise the quality of apprenticeships, because too many apprenticeships are at too low a level and are not leading to the kinds of life chances that we want to see.

It is true that our levels of youth unemployment are not the levels of Spain and Greece—thank God for that —but in 600 wards in this country one in three young people are not in education, employment or training. It is not the 50% or 55% of the Greeks or the Spanish, but one in three. I do not believe that Europe should be the benchmark for levels of youth unemployment.

I also say to the Chancellor that Europe cannot be the alibi for the collapse of our economy at home over the past 18 months. If we look at the growth measures since his first spending review in the autumn of 2010, we will see that we are actually doing worse than comparator countries, and I do not just mean Germany. In the 18 months since the 2010 spending review, we have had worse growth than France, Poland, Sweden, Austria and Slovakia. I will compute the Spanish figures announced today, but until those figures were announced we even had lower growth than Spain. Our growth was worse than the EU 27 average, the eurozone average and the G7 average.

The Chancellor’s claim about the problem that the eurozone mess is causing for our economy is actually undermining his own promise to rotate our economy from domestic demand to external demand. The question is: what should we do about that? He says that the lesson is to stay the course. I say that when the external environment changes, we should change course. The storm in Europe is not a reason for us to stick to plan A; it is a reason to shift to plan B. There is a warning in the travails of the eurozone, but not the one that the Government claim there is. Debts are rising today in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland because fiscal policy is exacerbating the downturn in the economic cycle. The Prime Minister said in his speech today that we are “on track”, but Conservative austerity is not working at home and collective austerity is not working in Europe.

I believe that our absolute requirement in the light of the real and serious risks we face is to pitch policy—fiscal policy, monetary policy, industrial policy and banking policy—against the tide of the economic cycle. We need to argue for that abroad and at home. We heard a shift today from the Chancellor about what should happen abroad. We should be embracing President Hollande, not snubbing him. We should be anti-austerity and pro-reform. That is the right position for Europe and the right position for Britain, because there are no islands in the modern economy. It is not ideology; it is maths. And judging by the Gracious Address, it is time for the Government to go back to the classroom.