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Manufacturing and Employment

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, which was, as ever, very helpful, fair and reasonable. In the short time left, I shall try to address the point that I think he wanted to get to in the debate, which is his debate, after all. I am referring to wage subsidies. That is something that the Government have carefully and extensively examined. There are two reasons why currently the Government have not decided to proceed with the idea. First, there is the question whether such schemes can be effective and would be value for money. Secondly, there is the experience of that idea in the past. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud mentioned the 1970s, when wage subsidies were in place. The question is whether what happened represented value for money or whether firms took the subsidy and did what they would have done anyway. That said, the Government do understand the anxiety and difficulty faced by people who find themselves out of pocket on shorter working weeks, so we are ensuring that there is support for them. We have expanded the Train to Gain scheme. Hon. Members acknowledged that during the debate. That is the Government's flagship skills service that supports employers of all sizes and in all sectors to improve their employees' skills. From January of this year, struggling small and medium-sized enterprises have been able to access increased training provision to help them to emerge stronger in the upturn. That includes bite-size qualifications in business-critical areas and more funding for second qualifications. In the meantime, individuals and families on tax credits will see an automatic increase in the money that they receive, to compensate for the loss of income. In March, for example, 355,000 families were receiving on average £35 a week more support through tax credits. Where there are significant redundancies in the manufacturing sector, the rapid response service is working to move people quickly into new jobs, preventing them from becoming detached from the labour market. We have doubled the funding for the service already and will double it again. As we are particularly concerned to help the long-term unemployed, we are also making available 75,000 further education training places for Jobcentre Plus referrals after six months' unemployment, taking on board the important points that hon. Members made about further education. I would like to go on and outline how we are preparing for the upturn, which we hope is coming—many hon. Members referred to that—but I fear that time will not allow me to do so. Our challenge now is to ensure that our manufacturing sector is ready to lead the industrial revolution of tomorrow, just as this country led the industrial revolution of the past.