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Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Performance)

I have given way twice; I will not give way again. The corporation tax cut will help only companies with profits. We want to see strategic Government-led and business-led investment in the sectors that can most help us to progress out of the recession. I see no leadership from the Government on this issue. They constantly crow about tax cuts for business, but they have effectively handed profits back to the profitable bits of the banking sector and large companies, when they should be using that money to invest in high-technology manufacturing, such as that in my constituency. That message is coming to me loud and clear from the global corporations that invest in Merseyside, as well as from the small companies. They need investment now, not an across-the-board corporation tax cut. I now turn to the impact of all this on young people and on employment. Everyone in this House is concerned about young people, as well we should be. People will know that in the protests that have been taking place around the world, the action has been most pronounced in countries with extremely high unemployment. We have to face the facts. The Government's offer to young people in Britain has been massively diminished. We have seen an end to the September guarantee and an end to the future jobs fund, which I know was helping young people in my constituency to build their CVs, so that when the recession ended and growth returned, they would be able to apply for jobs. We have seen an end to the education maintenance allowance, which was helping young people in my constituency to travel to the best possible courses for them, and an end to the commitment of the previous Government to the level of funding for further and higher education. I was so concerned about what might happen to young people's employment prospects that I asked the Minister responsible for employment some parliamentary questions about his expectations for the number of 16 to 24-year-olds on the dole. By my calculation, once we have taken into account the population projection for the current cohort of 16 to 24-year-olds, the Government expect there to be a reduction in the number of 16 to 24-year-olds on the dole across the life of this Parliament of less than one percentage point. I must ask Government Members whether they think it is good enough that the Government's ambition throughout this Parliament is to reduce the number of young people on the dole by one percentage point. I do not think that is good enough. The only answer that the Government seem to have to the unemployment that young people are facing because of the global crash and the Government's inaction is their spurious figure of 75,000 new apprenticeships. We have already heard evidence that, even during the recession, the Labour Government were supporting a year-on-year increase in the number of apprenticeships of more than that, so the present plan seems wholly unambitious. There is a further problem for 16 to 18-year-olds, many of whom are the very people we want to get into industry and business. They might not want to stay in full-time education, for whatever reason. As far as I can ascertain—I stand to be corrected if the Minister wants to intervene—16 to 18-year-olds will not be eligible for the new adult apprenticeships that the Minister wants to fund.