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Health and Education

I will try to speak for only seven minutes as well, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not usually seek to catch your eye during an education debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, which has perhaps endeared me in the past to colleagues who are in the Chamber today, even if that will not be the case this evening. However, I strongly support a proposal in the Queen's Speech that I believe is one of the most radical measures brought forward by the Government since 1997. I think that the extension of the participation age to 18 will be warmly welcomed in my constituency. My constituents say to me, ““Why can't these youngsters get a job?”” It is sometimes difficult to find the answer to that. The economy has been buoyant—unemployment in my constituency is much less than half what it was in 1997—and many extra jobs have been created, so people wonder why youngsters are not getting jobs. The situation has crept up on us. It is perhaps in only the past year or two that many of us have become aware of the phenomenon, although we were focused on the issue by the statistics on immigration that were being thrown about between Front Benchers two weeks ago. I firmly believe that people have the basic human right to move about. People have the basic human right to try to get the best employment that they can, wherever they can, although I recognise that there must be some regulation. A lot of these youngsters have not been able to find employment because employers in my Newcastle constituency who are looking for new labour find it far easier to take on someone from an east European country or, in some parts of the economy, an irregular worker—one who is illegal and works in the black market. People want to get the best labour for their business. Of course, employers should be prevented from using the irregular market, but in the regular market it is absolutely legal for an employer to take on a young Polish person. Such a person might be full of ambition and with a lot of previous training. That person might be taking a job that initially requires a skill level that is lower than the skills that they hold. They might also be disciplined, used to work, and with a work ethic. An employer in Newcastle will say that employing such a person will be an easier option. Although I am someone who believes firmly in people's right to migrate and to move around—I will defend that to the end, and nothing boils my blood more than people who try to make racist advantage out of immigration—that creates a problem for a lot of youngsters in my constituency. When the economy was buoyant in the 1970s, employers had no option but to try to get people to aid their production processes, so they had to take on those they could get locally. It was not easy to tap into other groups of people, so employers would put in place the training that they thought was necessary to get the show on the road. However, that is no longer the case because there are other options. Although the economy in Newcastle is buoyant and more jobs have been created, we still have a problem with getting the indigenous—I do not like that word, but I cannot think of a better one—labour supply into the labour market. If we do not achieve that, a lot of tension will be created in our communities because some ambitious young people will say, ““Why are we not getting a job when they are?”” The answer will be that those young people will not have the necessary skills. A number of young people come from families in which no one has worked for generations and there is no work ethic. They are co-existing in society because, in a sense, their welfare benefits are being financed by the growth of the economy that is partly created by the migrant community, so the situation thus has a beneficial aspect for them. As we raise the participation level, we need to drag those youngsters into the labour market so that we give them an opportunity. I am not quite sure about the legislative status of some of the proposals, but I am told that the Government have a scheme—I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) referred to this—whereby youngsters from poor families can get a bit of extra tuition in basic arithmetic and English at school. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, who is sitting on the Front Bench, was a strong supporter of that scheme in a previous life, and I hope that the whole House recognises that that radical proposal is an excellent idea. We all know that if middle-class parents have a little bit of extra cash and think that it can help their kids, they will get a bit of extra private tuition. Poorer families do not have that option, which is why the proposal is radical. When I visited my local Tyne and Wear fire brigade last Friday, I saw that it had a scheme whereby it offered a course for youngsters—young girls in this case—who found discipline and school difficult and had no ambition. This Pheonix project brings youngsters into the fire station, and they do all the things that firefighters do for a week or so. I was extremely impressed. I said to the girls, ““The bosses are telling me that this is a great scheme run by Tyne and Wear. They say that you came here last Monday with no intention of co-operating, and now—by Friday—you want to be firefighters when you leave school. Is that true?”” All of them said that they enjoyed the scheme and it improved their motivation, and about five of the seven said that they wanted to be firefighters. That is the sort of innovative scheme that should be taken up by the Department as it works on proposals to increase participation. I should have liked to say more, but I shall stick to my seven minutes. I shall certainly vote against the Opposition amendment, which does not give the Government due credit for a radical scheme which I believe can benefit many people in my constituency who would otherwise lose out badly.