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Treasury and Work and Pensions

It is interesting that I can give the hon. Gentleman figures for his constituency but he cannot give them to me. When the Welfare Reform Bill and the Further Education and Training Bill go through the House of Commons, we shall also be considering the Leitch report on skills. Since 1997, we have trebled apprenticeships; through educational maintenance allowances, we have increased the number of people staying on at school to 300,000; and the national employer training programme is forecast to reach 350,000 employees. In addition, the Further Education and Training Bill will deliver accountability of further education colleges. It will borrow from the community colleges model in America and will mean that there is greater individual choice. At the same time, more money will be spent on learning and skills as a result of the record investment in further education colleges—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) has new figures on unemployment, I shall be happy to hear them. The new deal has helped 3.6 million people to find jobs. It has helped 1.8 million people into work and 980,000 people—[Interruption.] What is the point of abolishing the new deal when it helps people to get jobs? I turn now to the issues at the centre of any economic debate: tax and spending as a whole. In 1992, when I became shadow Chancellor, we decided that we must have discipline in our party about public spending commitments. We decided that no shadow Minister should make public spending commitments that were not approved, and that we would freeze public spending for the first two years of a Labour Government to achieve the stability necessary for the economy. The Conservatives have adopted a fiscal rule that suggests that they would cut public spending by £17 billion this year and by £16 billion next year. If it were across the economic cycle, the figure would be even higher and nearer to the No Turning Back group’s £32 billion or £31 billion. I would like to read out some of the commitments made by the Conservatives on public spending. The Conservative shadow Chancellor says that he wants stability and to keep spending low, yet there are promises of more money for the Home Office, more money for the police who should have higher basic salaries, more money for border police, more money for 24-hour security at ports, more money to invest in drug rehab, more money for what are called ““relationship centres””, more money for roads, for voluntary bodies, for occupational therapists—and those are the commitments made only by the Leader of the Opposition. It sounds awfully like a Liberal party shopping list. I have also looked into the Queen’s Speech debates and at the discipline that the shadow Chancellor has been able to exercise over his colleagues. We should remember that this is the party whose fiscal rule requires cuts in public expenditure, yet there is more money for the NHS promised by the health spokesman on 22 November, more money promised for the Home Office by the shadow Home Secretary on 23 November, more money from the shadow Transport Secretary on 23 November, more money demanded by the shadow Defence Secretary, the shadow children’s Minister, the shadow Energy Minister and the Opposition Whip. There is more money for hauliers and for rail, for example. Clearly, none has any discipline in respect of the commitments made and it is no use the shadow Chancellor press releasing his commitment to stability if at the same time all his shadow Ministers are announcing that they have to spend more. The Conservatives put up a website last week about borrowing and people personally getting into debt. It said that it might sound ““boring””, but that people should remember to keep to their ““spending budget””—and I suspect that that is what the Conservative party should be doing. The problem is that the Tories want to tell people who doubt their credentials that they are in favour of public services so they will spend more, but then they want to tell the No Turning Back and Cornerstone groups that they are in favour of tax cuts so they will spend less.