Opportunities for the Next Generation

Debate between Toby Perkins and John Denham

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

I was very pleased that we ended unskilled immigration from outside the EU and introduced a points-based migration system. I think the real issue now is the damage being done in higher and further education, for example, to the country’s economic prospects by restricting universities’ ability to offer courses that attract high-paying overseas students.

The point I was making a few moments ago was that the failures in apprenticeship policy have nothing to do with deficit reduction. They were calculated decisions that harmed young people, as, indeed, did the decision to let fees treble. That is why too many students and parents are now asking whether it is still worth going to university. That policy was not required by deficit reduction. If higher education had been cut in line with other public services, fees would have risen to less than £4,000 a year. This summer, more than 100,000 determined, hard-working and qualified students could not get a university place. The first action of the new Government was to stop 10,000 new places Labour had planned for last September. Another 10,000 places will go next year. Teaching and nursing places, too, will be cut. If the students who missed out this year get a place next year, they will pay a £15,000 lifetime penalty for having missed out this year.

All this has happened because the Government lost control of fees, with most universities wanting to charge £9,000, so they are now introducing a bizarre auction to cut fees at the expense of quality. Those students who apply next year will find not only that they are paying higher fees and that fewer places are available, but that many of the popular courses they thought about getting on to this year do not even exist. Over the next three years, 60,000 places will be taken from popular courses and popular universities and given to cheaper providers—irrespective of whether students want to study them.

A degree is a good thing to get, but recent reports have highlighted the difficulties too many graduates experience in getting a job, particularly one that rewards their effort in today’s sluggish economy. That is not because we have too many graduates, but because the economy is creating too few challenging, demanding and high-value posts. Instead of being plunged into the chaos of the last year and next, universities should have been given one priority—to play their full role in creating growth, getting their knowledge, research and skills into the businesses and companies of the future. That is what a Government with a single-minded focus on jobs and growth would have done, but it is where the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, too, is failing young people and the country as a whole.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is perverse that, at the very time a generation of students are about to go to university and pay huge tuition fees, setting themselves up for decades of debt, they see people who made that choice three or four years ago leaving university with a degree, but no opportunities to move into?

[Mr Denham]

There is a huge responsibility on the Government to respond to my hon. Friend’s challenge—to take the measures necessary, get growth going, create jobs and reshape our economy so that we can pay our way in the world in the future and make the full use of the talents of young people and, indeed, older people in this country. I say that because there will not be opportunities for young people unless we build an economy that can compete with the best in the world.

The truth is that we had to wait a year for a growth plan and it was so weak and useless that it is already being rewritten for October. When every taxpayer’s pound needs to work as hard as it can to build a new economy for Britain, the Government’s decision on Bombardier means that taxpayers’ money will needlessly be spent abroad. When every pound of taxpayer’s money needs to work hard to build the new economy, the Government are refusing to ensure that public sector contractors provide apprenticeships. When there is £200 billion-worth of infrastructure for the new economy that needs investment, the Government are dragging their feet. To see that, we need only look at the way they are doing broadband: slowly, in inefficient penny-package projects.

When we need the Government to be working with business to build the new economy, all we get is the tired mantra, “The less government does, the better.” If we are to be the very best at the things we are good at—advanced manufacturing, creative industries, business services, pharmaceuticals and renewables—government has to work in partnership with business. It must do so: to understand what technologies and skills we need in the future, so that companies have confidence to invest; to set clear priorities and stick to them, so that companies have the certainty they need to invest; to look at what government buys and how we buy it, so that innovative companies can grow; to must make sure that good regulation lets good companies win new markets; and to build, in every region and nation, the universities, the skills, the banking services and the leadership in cities and regions that will let companies grow and create jobs.

Local Government Financing

Debate between Toby Perkins and John Denham

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

I am sure we all wish the former permanent secretary at my Department well in his new position as permanent secretary to the Scottish Government. I took the right decision on Norwich and Exeter, and I was right to back the desire of those cities to run their own affairs. It was a decision that I reached after many months of careful consideration, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne. I have to say that it was all too typical of this Government that, within two days of the new Government being formed, the Secretary of State—who talks about localism—decided to quash the aspirations of those councils to run their own affairs, in a timescale that meant that he could not possibly even have read the evidence that had been submitted by so many councils. I will return to the attitude of the Secretary of State in due course.

On 10 June, the Secretary of State announced £1.165 billion of cuts in local government spending in England in the current financial year. Because those cuts were so big, the Secretary of State should have come here to defend them. They were part of the £6 billion of cuts proposed by the Tories during the election. We opposed them as too early and too damaging to economic recovery. The Liberal Democrats also opposed them. As the right hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne)—now a Liberal Democrat Cabinet member—said during the election campaign:

“If we took Tory advice and cut spending and raised taxes precipitately, growth would stop. Unemployment and benefit spending would rise further. Tax revenue would stall.”

But now he has taken Tory advice, and he will be held to account for what happens.

Now the Lib Dems support these cuts, and their credibility as a progressive alternative to the Tories is shot to pieces. These are cuts that no local council had any chance to prepare for, coming as they do well into the financial year. As the Tory leader of West Berkshire council told us,

“This is unprecedented. We have never faced cuts in the middle of the year.”

As the Tory leader of Telford said,

“this is money that we had planned to spend this year and will now have to be cut.”

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is right to be furious that the Secretary of State is not attending the debate. The Secretary of State seems to see himself as some sort of Conservative John Prescott. Does my right hon. Friend share my feeling that that fine gentleman would have been proud to stick up for his Department instead of letting it take the majority of the cuts, and would have come here to defend his decision rather than skulking off to the scene of former crimes?

[Mr Denham]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Despite some apparent superficial similarities between the two gentlemen, one thing is clear: John Prescott never ran away from a debate or argument, unlike the Secretary of State—[Interruption.] I did not say he never ran away from a fight; I just said he never ran away from an argument.

The truth is that the cuts were not only made too fast, but made without consultation. There was no discussion with local councils about whether or how they could be made. The Local Government Association initially put out a press release welcoming the fact that it had been promised consultation, but ended up sending a desperate letter two weeks later saying, “Will you please tell us what’s going on?” The cuts came ahead of the Budget, which sets out cuts of 25%, 30% or 35% to local council services.