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Health and Education

I am sorry, but I rather like the child trust funds. Earlier, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for North Norfolk, spoke about tobacco. Along with other hon. Members, I campaigned for many years on the smoking and tobacco issue. We were trying to change the culture associated with tobacco use and smoking, and that meant that we had to tackle advertising, education and every aspect of trying to get people to stop smoking so as to improve their health and development. The same is true with child development. We must try everything, but the Queen's Speech is absolutely right that we have to eradicate child poverty. For that reason, the child trust fund is one of the essential ways in which we will change children's life chances. No approach can work immediately, and the child trust funds are a long-term investment. Over five or 10 years, we shall be able to see whether they work. Many of the policies that we have embedded over the past 11 years will take a long time to evaluate. Over time, I think we shall see that child trust funds are very useful indeed. This will be my last point, because after criticising a previous speaker, I am going on for far too long—[Hon. Members: ““Yes””.] I am sorry, but normally Back Benchers and even Select Committee Chairmen have to listen the Front-Bench lot and are then restricted to 10 or 12 minutes, so I am speaking up for Back Benchers. There is no limit today, so I am taking a little longer than usual—[Interruption.] I shall go on for even longer now. I shall end on the point about culture. We are trying to change cultures and it is difficult. It has to be done in terms of tackling child poverty and in a variety of ways. Some of the things we do will not work—surprisingly enough. We are human beings so sometimes our responses to problems will not work or will not work as well as they should, but then we learn the lessons. Over the past few years, one of the things I have liked is that often when the Government recognise that something is not working too well they change it. Sure Start is a good example. Some of the Sure Start schemes were not very good when they started. I have to tell Members who like localism that it was often because the impetus was too localist—everybody came up with their own ideas and some of them did not work, so Sure Start had to be changed. As long as the Government continue to make pragmatic judgments—seeing whether things work and recognising that sometimes there are mistakes—they will have my support. On the other hand, when they do things in a bone-headed way and carry on regardless, they will not have my support or that of members of our Committee. Much in the Queen's Speech will give us plenty of work over the coming months. There are some interesting interventions and innovations for the qualifications framework. The Secretary of State must make sure that the framework is independent and seen to be independent so that it can speak fearlessly about the qualifications system. People will approve of that. The very last thing I want to say—[Laughter.] In that case, the penultimate—or rather pre-penultimate—thing I want to say is about apprenticeships. Only last Saturday, our Committee produced a report on apprenticeships. It was a good experiment, because the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills was producing a pre-legislative report on the draft Apprenticeships Bill at the same time. We did not collude, but we came to similar conclusions. We are positive about the apprenticeship route and about the expansion of apprenticeships. We are concerned that the targets will not be met, because as the economy is going through a slight hiccup—I shall not use the other word—and the tough times mean that the private sector will be challenged to produce enough apprenticeships, the real challenge will be to introduce them in the public sector. The largest employer in my constituency is the university—there are not many apprenticeships there. Health and the local authority are among the biggest employers—there not many apprenticeships there either. The sooner we can have apprenticeships in every part of our public sector system, the better. If we can achieve that, the Secretary of State and the Government will have my support.