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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I have acknowledged that the pension protection plan is welcome, but I am talking about people who, for reasons of mis-selling or poor advice, took out occupational pensions that up to now have paid them no money. I welcome the Government’s belated recognition that those pensioners have a fair case, although the amount is not enough. I welcome both the consultation on looked after children carried out by the DFES earlier this year and the Budget provisions for additional funding in that sector. Provision for looked after children is extremely poor at present. I am due to meet the Minister for Children and Families after Easter to discuss a private sector company, Green Corns, which runs homes and provides education in several areas. In my view, the company’s staff are inadequately trained and supervised, so in the Government’s response to the consultation I look forward to proposals for tightening up that sector to ensure that looked after children have the education and support they deserve. I welcome the commitment the Secretary of State gave earlier about adults and young people with special needs. Whatever the Government may have been saying for the past few months, the Learning and Skills Council, in its drive to ensure that most of the money for adult education goes to courses that provide accreditation, has failed to take into account the fact that young adults with special needs often need different provision. They do not progress at the same rate as other people and courses for them have been lost. At my local college, the number of places for those young people has been halved and the situation is similar at Oldham college. There is a lack of support and provision for young people with special needs, so I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to look into the matter. I hope that later in the year there will be concrete proposals to ensure that they have the education they deserve. The Budget and the Green Paper published today include commitments for 16 to 19-year-olds, which I very much welcome. The measures on the statute book go back to 1918 so it is good that at last they will be implemented. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) questioned the Secretary of State about the figures. Clarification is important. What will the capital investment of £200 million deliver and what is the time frame? The same questions apply to the £700 million. From the revenue figures we have seen, those amounts are nowhere near adequate to deliver the commitments. I hope that the Secretary of State will implement in full the Dearing review recommendations about courses. If more young people remain in education and training, there must be appropriate provision. I have been involved in introducing diplomas. Back in 1992, when the Conservative Government allowed schools to introduce BTECs, my school was one of the first to do so. I greatly welcome the use of diplomas and other vocational education and training, but there must be proper funding and, as Dearing recommended, there must be a continuum so that young people can move from and between various forms of education, otherwise the whole system will fall down. Over the past 10 years, Rochdale council has been Liberal Democrat, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative working together and is now Liberal Democrat again. Nevertheless, there has been a strong commitment throughout that period to improve education. When this year’s results came out, I was delighted to see that Rochdale, building on our earlier success at key stage 3 and key stage 4, topped the league for key stage 2. One area where we have not performed so well—and there remains a huge amount to do—is in post-16 provision. I met representatives from the Aimhigher consortium from Greater Manchester last week. They produced figures on the number of young people in Rochdale going into higher education. Despite seven years of Excellence in Cities and Aimhigher funding, numbers in the Heywood and Middleton constituency went up by only 5 per cent. and those in the Rochdale constituency by only 10 per cent. That 10 per cent. means only an extra 50 young people going on to higher education, which is not good enough. One of the first things I did when elected two years ago was to meet the Learning and Skills Council to see whether we could develop better sixth form education in Rochdale. I was delighted when a consultation was carried out last year, with the majority of people saying that we needed a brand new sixth-form college. A scheme was put out to consultation and has now been evaluated. It will mean improvements at Hopwood Hall college as well as the building of a brand new sixth-form college. It will cost upwards of £75 million, which is why I asked earlier for clarification of what exactly the £200 million was for. If Rochdale is to perform as well as other constituencies and districts, I believe that investment is vital, so I hope that the Minister will give an assurance that we will see the right level of investment. Rochdale was also successful this year in securing Building Schools for the Future funding for our secondary schools. Ministers are making massive claims. Yes, the £150 million is very welcome, but it will not rebuild every secondary school in the borough of Rochdale. It will carry out a partial rebuild of some schools, but it will not compete the job. It is welcome, but people should not run away with the thought that everything is developing as we want. I hope that Ministers will also be able to begin to address the backlog in primary schools. Probably like many authorities, Rochdale has more than its fair share of Victorian primary schools. Although we have been able to refurbish some through a private finance initiative agreement, we have not gone far enough. In conclusion, as usual with this Budget and this Chancellor, the devil is in the detail. The Chancellor has wasted opportunities to tackle some of the problems that he spoke about. I referred earlier to environmental taxation, but very little has been done about that. We have had a broad commitment to tackle Government waste, but why for goodness’ sake could we not do something about getting rid of the number of targets that the health, education and other sectors have to meet? Then there are schemes for ID cards, Trident and nuclear power that will all suck in vast sums of money, which cannot then be spent on improving core services. I welcome some of the commitments in the Budget, but if this is an indication of what new Labour is likely to be like under Gordon Brown, I am not impressed and we should be quite worried.