With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on today’s Green Paper, “In work, better off: next steps to full employment”. Ten years of progress under this Government have transformed work and opportunity in Britain. We have seen the longest and most sustained period of economic growth for over 200 years, the fastest falling child poverty in Europe and the highest employment in our country’s history.

Today, the achievement of full employment and the eradication of child poverty are seen no longer as simply aspirational rallying calls, but as real targets that people expect to be delivered in our generation. But to achieve them, especially at a time when the global forces of economic and demographic change present new and ever greater challenges for our economy and labour market, will require a step change in our reforms.

We must reignite the jobs crusade that started in 1997 and renew the partnership between Government, employers and individuals by focusing now on those who remain furthest from the labour market and on those whose potential is untapped—on the 3 million people of working age who have been on benefit for over a year, many on incapacity benefits; on lone parents and ethnic minority groups still without the right support to work; on 16 and 17-year-olds not in education, employment or training; and on those remaining pockets of poverty and worklessness concentrated in some of our major cities, yet often close to thriving labour markets and great prosperity.

I said that we needed a step change to tackle these entrenched problems and today’s Green Paper delivers it, based as it is on values and principles that go back to Beveridge and Attlee, and on to our new deal. I refer to the belief in equality and opportunity and in rights and responsibilities; to the principle of work for those who can and support for those who cannot; to the idea of working in partnership with employers; and to the belief that an active, progressive welfare system should provide people with the skills that employers need to fill some of the 600,000 vacancies that come up in our labour market each month.

The reforms will build on our progress with the national roll-out of pathways to work. They will see the development of support that is ever more personalised and responsive to the needs of individuals. They will focus on job retention and progression, not just on job entry. They will devolve power to local areas by incentivising local solutions and making the best possible use of expertise across the public, private and voluntary sectors.

We propose, first and foremost, a renewed partnership with employers to ensure that those on welfare applying for jobs have both the skills and the work attitudes that employers need, underpinned by a new jobs pledge aimed at finding opportunities for 250,000 people currently on benefit. Building on the cutting-edge local employment partnerships announced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in the Budget earlier this year, major employers—in both the public and private sectors—have given a commitment to offer guaranteed job interviews for people who have been on benefit and who are ready and prepared to work. Employers will ensure that such people can compete more effectively for vacancies and have the support then to progress within the workplace, adding to last month’s employer skills pledge in which 150 leading employers made a public and voluntary commitment to train all their staff to level 2 in the workplace. This will be a two-way process, however, and through the new local employment partnerships, individuals on benefit will be expected to do all that they can to help themselves prepare for work.

Our second area of reform will be to introduce a more personalised, flexible and responsive new deal, with a more integrated approach to skills and wider support for the family, but matched by new responsibilities for jobseekers to do all that they can to help themselves. Those facing particularly severe barriers to work will now get fast-tracked help, while others who have a history of long-term benefit dependency could face tougher responsibilities from the start of their claim. There will be an earlier and more focused assessment of the skills needs of those who are out of work, to inform the development of a back-to-work plan. Agreed activities will be mandatory, however, with clear sanctions for failure to comply.

Eradicating child poverty lies at the heart of the Green Paper. Following the recommendations of Lisa Harker’s report last year, we are already changing Jobcentre Plus systems and targets to ensure that the delivery of our employment programmes is more family-focused. We are introducing mandatory work-focused interviews every six months for partners of jobseeker’s allowance recipients with children. As with lone parents, work offers a powerful route out of poverty for many of those families.

For lone parents, we will introduce a new social contract which promotes the value of work as the best route to tackle child poverty. We know that the children of lone parents in work are more than five times more likely to be in poverty than the children of lone parents in full-time employment, and that they are three times more likely to be in poverty than the children of lone parents in part-time work. Given our record investment in improving the quality and supply of child care, together with measures to ensure that work pays, lone parents will be expected to make an eventual move into the labour market in return for new and more personalised support.

From October next year, lone parents with a youngest child aged 12 and over will no longer be entitled to income support simply because they are a lone parent. Instead, supported by the new job opportunities made available by the local employment partnerships, they will be eligible to claim jobseeker’s allowance, on which they would be expected to look for suitable work in return for personalised help and support. Because we are serious about tackling child poverty, we intend that the relevant age be reduced further to seven from October 2010, backed up by the local availability of high-quality wrap-around child care.

Finally, building on the Freud report, this Green Paper makes greater use of expertise across the private, public and voluntary sectors at both national and local level. Private and voluntary sector providers already play a crucial role in delivering programmes, such as employment zones and the new deal, and we intend to build on that. After 12 months on jobseeker’s allowance, or in some cases probably even sooner, we will move customers to a specialist return-to-work provider, who will offer an intensive outcome-focused service, funded on the basis of results; we will push forward with a City strategy, offering local consortiums of providers new funding and flexibilities in return for outcome-based payments; and we will pilot an approach where providers who are successful in moving people into sustained employment are rewarded with increased funds to invest in further activity.

The publication of our proposals today will start a 15-week consultation process. We encourage contributions from both sides of the House and from all those who share our commitment to delivering full employment in Britain. The contrast with 1997 could not be greater: then, record unemployment and the worst child poverty in Europe; today, 2.6 million more people in jobs, more women, more lone parents and more disabled people in work than ever before, and already 600,000 children lifted out of poverty. We must now rise further to the challenge of going further.

The Green Paper lays the foundation for the eradication of child poverty; it builds on the progress that we have made in extending the right to work to all; and in reaching out to the hardest to help, it aims to offer true social mobility and social justice for every individual. I commend it to the House.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for observing the usual courtesies in providing me with an advance copy of the statement. What a shame it is, though, that he did not observe the courtesies that were promised to the House when the new Prime Minister took over less than three weeks ago. We were told then that major policy announcements would be made in the House and not the media, as you have so often demanded, Mr. Speaker, so let me start by asking the Secretary of State why details of the statement were on BBC breakfast television this morning. Is this just a one-man rebellion by the Secretary of State against his new leader, or is it just that the promises made by our new Prime Minister have a shelf-life of only a fortnight?

The statement contains much that all of us can agree on. That is hardly surprising, as parts of it, such as the changed approach for lone parents, are things that we have already argued for—but with this Government, nothing is ever quite what it seems. For a start, there is a distinct feeling of déjà vu in all of this. This is the Government’s 11th announcement in 10 years about getting people off benefits and back into work. The last Green Paper was published less than 18 months ago. At that time, the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), was scathing about the Government’s record. She said:

“I think that the whole system has left people languishing on benefit... We need to provide the infrastructure of support that helps people break down their barriers and enables them to exercise their rights. So far we have done sweet nothing.”

Well, it is now a little over a year later, and what has happened? I think that the House would agree, to judge from today’s employment statistics, that the answer is still sweet nothing.

The number of single parents stuck on benefits is barely changed on a year ago. According to the Secretary of State’s own figures, 7.93 million people of working age in this country are economically inactive, and that figure is rising, as is youth unemployment. The Government’s response is to publish yet another Green Paper—another set of headlines to try to reassure people that Ministers are actually trying to do something, while in the real world too many people are being left behind in our society.

Last year, the Government asked David Freud, chief executive of the Portland Trust, to make recommendations about how to tackle the blight of economic inactivity in this country. His report sets out a radical agenda for change in the way that we help people off benefits and into work. The last Secretary of State said of the report, back in March:

“David Freud’s report presents a compelling case for future reform.”

We agree with him, but the new Prime Minister clearly does not. He gave David Freud short shrift when they met. In April, a leaked letter from the then Chief Secretary said:

“As the chancellor made clear, it is not possible to develop or pilot a new funding model in the immediate future”.

So much for the Government making real use of external advice, or the former Chancellor’s big tent. It is obvious that while the Prime Minister is perfectly happy to get in external advice to help him with public relations, he clearly has absolutely no intention of actually using that advice. Let me ask the Secretary of State why the Prime Minister has ordered so much of the Freud report to be watered down. How much extra funding does he really have to implement these changes?

The truth is that after 10 years of broken promises on welfare reform, we still have more than 750,000 lone parents on benefits. We have far more—16 per cent. more—young people who are not in education, employment or training than in 1997, despite all the billions of pounds that the Government have spent on the new deal. Today’s figures show that youth unemployment is getting worse. Despite years of promises, we still have more people on incapacity benefit than in 1997. The Secretary of State talked about falling child poverty, but I put it to him that his Department’s statistics show that the figures for child poverty in the UK have been rising over the past year.

Neither this Government nor this Prime Minister have shown any sign of being able to get to grips with these problems. Their solution is always to launch yet another consultation, yet another Green Paper, yet more legislation and yet more initiatives, but they never actually get the job done. The truth is that we face a massive social challenge in Britain today. After 10 years in office, there is no real sign that the Government have any idea of what to do about it.

I could not disagree more strongly with the rhetorical end to the hon. Gentleman’s response. First, let me say that I gave no interviews before making this statement to the House. The details about the publication of the Green Paper have been given to the House before anyone else—certainly the media—has received them. Many of the details that appeared in bits and pieces in the media this morning were wrong.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to trumpet today’s fantastic employment figures, which show record employment, unemployment down, and the number of people on benefits falling. Since he probed me, let me remind him of the figures. Employment is now at more than 29 million, which is 93,000 up on the quarter and 180,000 up on the year. International Labour Organisation-measured unemployment is down. The jobseeker’s allowance numbers are down by 91,000, and the number of people on incapacity benefits is down by 38,000, which can be compared with the miserable record under the Tories when it kept rising. The number is now at its lowest level for more than seven years. The number for lone parents is down by 3,000 on the previous year. There are now 317,000 more lone parents in work than there were when we came to power in 1997. I will happily talk about our record any time that the hon. Gentleman likes, including in relation to today’s very good employment figures.

The hon. Gentleman made some points about youth unemployment, although they were not specific. Actually, youth unemployment has been all but eradicated—[Interruption.] However, as I identified in my statement—this is also identified in the Green Paper—there is an issue in relation to 16 and 17-year-olds who are not necessarily in training, education or work. They need more intensive support, and that is precisely what we are offering them in co-operation with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills so that they are given the opportunity of gaining skills and jobs in the future.

The hon. Gentleman asked about our response to the Freud report. I would have thought that he would welcome our response—I would not be surprised if the report’s author welcomed our response as well. Let us look at the detail. The report recommended a change to the way in which we encourage lone parents into work. We have agreed and taken that change forward. A change was recommended on using the more specialist expertise that is available in the private and voluntary sectors, as well as the public sector. After 12 months, we have adopted that approach. In some cases, we did so before 12 months, as I said in my statement—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is heckling me, but if he had listened carefully, he would know that in some cases that can take place before the 12-month period.

We have not gone for the big, regional private monopoly provider, because there was a strong response from stakeholders participating in the Freud report consultation that suggested that that was not necessarily the preferred model. Many private sector providers objected to a single regional monopoly provider, because if it failed the whole region would fail with it, so they said that we ought to look at provision in a more flexible way. This is a consultation document: we want to deliver the programmes and to get the best possible support for those who need and want to come off benefit and into work. That is available in the private sector—we want to take advantage of that—but it is available, too, in other ways.

The statement and the Green Paper are a response, too, to the important report by Lisa Harker on child poverty, to the Leitch report on skills, and to the important report by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions. We are not just responding to the Freud report, although it is important and will inform our work in future.

Earlier, the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State referred to the social contract for 250,000 jobs, but as I understand it, a large slice of those jobs is in the retail sector, which has an employee turnover rate of about 25 per cent., rising to 34 per cent. at Sainsbury. That programme needs to be revisited if it is to be sustainable. As for child poverty, more than 300,000 children are not living with their parents for whatever reason, but with other family members. The system does not cater for them at all, and very little assistance is offered to their supporting families, but it is a serious child poverty problem.

As ever, my hon. Friend, who has authority and expertise in this area and who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee, has raised some important issues. The issue of the 300,000 children is important, and we should like to work with him and his colleagues to try to make sure that we can get that right, because there is an important problem to overcome and a challenge to meet.

On the question of the retail sector in local employment partnerships, the Prime Minister and I, along with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, met a number of employers this morning at No. 10 Downing street who represent more than 30 companies that have signed up to our local employment partnerships so far—the number is increasing all the time. They included important national retailers such as Debenhams, Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury’s, as well as Network Rail, security companies and other organisations that have signed up to the partnership with Government.

It is true—this was one of the points made by the retailers’ representatives this morning—that retailers tend to have a high turnover, partly because they attract many students at certain times, such as the pre-Christmas period. However, they find that when they can get someone through Jobcentre Plus—off benefits, in many cases—such people tend to stay. Working with us is therefore attractive, as it will help to make sure that many of those individuals have the opportunity and dignity that comes with work, and receive the support, including child care in the case of parents, that enables them to work, which they have not been able to do in the past.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance notice of his statement. Does he agree that, despite suggestions that all parties are interested in this agenda, it is astonishing that the official Opposition refused the opportunity to repeat the statement in the other place?

We share the Secretary of State’s objective of ending child poverty, but is he not aware that child poverty has gone up in the past year, not down? Is he not aware that the employment rate has gone down in the past year, not up, and that it is no higher now than it was at the peak of the last economic cycle? Is he not aware that inequality is rising, not falling?

We welcome David Freud’s proposals to move the benefit rules for lone parents closer to those in the rest of the European Union, but does the Secretary of State agree that he must address, too, the huge problem of child care availability which is the major barrier to work for that group? Is it not very hasty indeed to go further to the age of seven without addressing those child care issues and without allowing time for a proper evaluation of the reduction to the age of 12?

The Government must tackle the shameful fact that after 10 years in office 2.7 million people on incapacity benefit have still not received the help that they need. We welcome the long-overdue focus on building relationships with employers, but David Freud’s most significant contribution was on the funding of welfare support to the hardest-to-help groups through three-year contracts. Does the Secretary of State agree that such long-term funding is essential to enable the private and voluntary sectors, which he rightly praised, to deliver for those groups? Will he confirm that the Treasury objected to the long-term funding model proposed by Freud, and that without that funding it will be much harder to provide the personal support into work for those people who need and want that help most?

Freud made it clear in his review that the byzantine complexity of our benefits system is a major disincentive to work. He is right. Why will the Government not move faster towards his recommendation of a single system of working-age benefits? What steps has the Secretary of State taken to implement Freud’s proposals that Jobcentre Plus should become a one-stop shop for all benefits and tax credits? Britain today is disfigured by inequality and by concentrations of worklessness. By watering down Freud’s key recommendations in a Green Paper that took longer to write than Freud took to write his own report, today’s statement misses a huge opportunity to deliver extra help to those people who need it most.

To pick up the hon. Gentleman’s last point on the simplification of the benefits system, we are still considering the best way forward, as it is an important issue. However, there are many difficult problems. David Freud explored the notion of a single benefit system, and found that none of the options was straightforward—something that the hon. Gentleman did not mention. A recent paper by the Institute of Public Policy Research highlighted the costs of a single benefit system. We are still looking at the proposal, but we must proceed with a great deal of care.

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about long-term funding. Obviously, there is a comprehensive spending review time frame, but clearly we want more certainty, which is why we are looking at the way in which we provide contracts so that they can take into account such things and are outcome-focused, too. We should not just provide people with a contract and that is it: it should be more outcome and results-focused—a point that is made, he will agree, by the Freud report, and one of the many points that we have picked up.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s point about child care, I am not sure that he listened carefully to what I had to say. As I provided him with a copy of my statement, he might have checked it out in advance. We are linking the measure, especially for lone parents, for whom we start to bring the age down to seven years old by October 2010, to the availability of child care. If we reach the targets that we have set, there will be pre-school and after-school child care arrangements, and high-quality wrap-around child care. The child tax credit system is important, and there is more support for children and child care than ever before in the history of this country.

This is about providing lone parents with an opportunity that many of them crave and want, so we need support arrangements to enable them to take advantage of that opportunity and lift themselves and their children out of the poverty in which far too many of them are still stuck. The truth is that we have lifted people out of poverty in greater millions in recent times, and certainly compared with the previous Government. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman welcomed that. We have made a start on tackling inequality by that route, and we have provided, too, the highest level of employment ever in the history of this country.

What about the rate?

The truth is that more people have come on to the labour market in the past year than ever before, yet employment has still been rising, and unemployment is still falling—[Interruption.] I do not mind the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) heckling me—he is welcome to do so—but he should compare our record as a Government, which is a proud record on employment, with his miserable record on employment, especially in areas outside the south-east where unemployment was steep and long-term and many people disappeared on to the dole, never to have any hope or prospect of a job. That is the record that we are now seeking to replace and improve. There are big challenges ahead, which is why the Green Paper signposts the way to meet them.

My right hon. Friend will know that employment in the northern region was decimated under the Conservative party. He will also know that the new deal introduced by our Government has enabled 240,000 people to find work in the region. However, we still have a problem: we have under-employment, a skills gap and a percentage of people who are still registered unemployed.

During the consultation, will the Department be prepared to accept information from organisations such as Blind People’s Voice—whose programme Visage helps blind and partially sighted people into work—and TTP, which is highly successful in providing employment for skilled people in Teesside? Will my right hon. Friend also bear it in mind that many thousands of people in the northern region still feel thoroughly unconfident? We need a new deal programme that will encourage young and middle-aged people to believe that they have talents, and that we want to see them in employment.

rose—

Order. We are dealing with a statement, and we must have supplementary questions, not speeches. That sounded too much like a speech.

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. As one who represents a part of south Wales with much of the same legacy of the terrible Tory years, I know that we must continue to tackle it.

We will work with my hon. Friend, and with everyone who wants to work with us in all parts of the House, to try to make this programme work. We certainly intend to conduct our consultation on a regional basis, and I hope that my hon. Friend will work with us in the northern region. We also intend to work with organisations such as Blind People’s Voice and TTP. It is important that we get the programme right.

I remind the House that there are still big challenges to be met. There are still 4.5 million people on benefit, many of whom want to work and have the potential to do so. If we are to reach the 80 per cent. employment target that we have set to make our economy truly globally competitive for the future, realising that ambition will require 1 million fewer claimants on incapacity benefit, and 300,000 more lone parents and 1 million more older people in work. That is our ambition: not to go backwards into a failed Tory past, but to provide a successful future for Britain under Labour.

May I press the Secretary of State a little further on his proposal to end the entitlement to income support of lone parents with a youngest child aged 12 or over simply because they are lone parents? I suspect many people understand that there is a natural change of gear when a child enters secondary school that may provide more time for parents to find jobs, but why do the Government propose to lower the age to seven, when there is no such natural change of gear? What is the thinking behind the age of seven, rather than six, eight or some other age?

This is an opportunity programme, not a “big stick” programme. As I have said, under this Government there are over 300,000 more lone parents in work than in the past. They are doing better than ever before, and they have been able to lift their children out of poverty as well as taking for themselves all the advantages and dignity that come with work.

In our judgment, moving the age to seven—given the correct child support arrangements, along with support for parents that enables them to work in a way that protects their own interests and those of their children—presents a big opportunity. The point is that most of those people want to work. I think that provided that the circumstances are right, and—as we made clear in the Green Paper—provided that child care support is available, from 8 am pre-school to 6 pm post-school, lone parents who wish to work when their children reach the age of seven should be given the opportunity to do so. They should then move not from income support to nothing, but from income support to jobseeker’s allowance. That will give them a chance to make progress in a work-based environment, with regular interviews and all the opportunities that that brings.

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s localised and personalised approach. It has proved effective in pathways to work pilot schemes around the country, especially in helping people off incapacity benefit and into work. Does my right hon. Friend agree, however, that whereas large voluntary sector organisations may well have the infrastructure and capacity to deliver such programmes in partnership with the Government and others, we should not lose sight of what small voluntary sector organisations can offer, particularly in local areas? Will he ensure that they are not squeezed out of the system?

I will certainly do that. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: many small voluntary organisations, especially in local areas, know their areas well, and often harness local people’s potential, expertise and commitment to their communities. Far from being squeezed out, they should have more opportunities as a result of our approach, which—generally after 12 months, and in some cases earlier—will give them a greater stake in making progress and thus helping many more people into work.

The Secretary of State is right to stress that child care is crucial to the age reductions to 12 and seven, but he will know that it is often a problem in rural areas, especially when the market has failed and the private sector simply cannot provide. What steps will he take to ensure that rural areas are given particular attention before the age reductions come into force?

Child care places—places in children’s centres, or pre-school or after-school places—are a matter for the Welsh Assembly Government, in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency as in mine. We intend to work closely with that Government, and with the Scottish and Northern Ireland Executives, although in Northern Ireland employment programmes are not covered by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Rural areas do suffer from problems such as those that the hon. Gentleman has described. We need to proceed carefully. The extra obligations that will apply to those coming off incapacity benefit, or income support in the case of lone parents, must be matched with opportunities—and, for those with young children, child care support, so that they can work in the way that they wish while ensuring that their children are looked after properly.

Flexible working is important to lone parents in particular. We were told this morning by the large retailers, including Sainsbury, that their tremendously variable hours were ideal for lone parents, even at weekends when family support is generally more available.

I assure the Secretary of State that there will be considerable support for his proposals, at least on this side of the House. Does he not admit, however, that in the light of the Government’s record creation of new jobs since 1997, the movement from benefit to work has been modest, to put it mildly? During the past three years 2 million people have come to this country, practically all of them to work, yet the number moving from benefit to work is minor. Does the Secretary of State think that he can achieve his employment target if we continue an open-borders policy?

I do not think that we have an open-borders policy. The interesting truth is that although over the past year a significant number of people, mostly from central and eastern European countries, have come to work in Britain—often bringing skills with them—the claimant count has fallen. The two elements are therefore not necessarily at odds with each other. However, in the new work environment and given the challenges that I described earlier—the need to achieve an 80 per cent. employment rate, and the number of people whom we need to take off benefit—we must continue our efforts. I look forward to hearing my right hon. Friend’s views, and to his assistance.

I share the Government’s wish to return the work-inactive to work and their interest in doing so, but I am just as concerned about those who are currently losing their jobs. In my constituency, AstraZeneca, the international pharmaceutical business, is shedding 700 manufacturing jobs over the next three years, and Capital One is closing entirely its home loan brokerage business, mainly because of global competition, high costs and increased regulation. I know that the Secretary of State is concerned about such matters, so will he seek to do something about increased regulation and business costs, which are forcing companies to close and people to lose jobs?

I acknowledge that the hon. Gentleman has long taken a close interest in manufacturing not only in his constituency, but generally. Of course, any closures are regrettable. I do not wish to make a party point, but it is a fact that when there were job losses in the 1980s and early 1990s people were just thrown on to benefit, whereas nowadays Jobcentre Plus ensures that there is a rapid response to any closure and that we work with the employers and individuals involved, and in most cases almost everyone finds a new job as a result. That is what is needed in respect of the cases the hon. Gentleman mentions.

Over the past 10 years, when we have been in office, although globalisation pressures have intensified, increasing numbers of people have been entering new jobs and gaining new skills, supported by our employment programmes. Therefore, we can offer employment optimism for the future, despite the closures and job losses that inevitably occur, given competitive pressures.

I am sure that most Members support the Green Paper’s general thrust of working towards achieving full employment, but I have a question about how single parents with children over the age of 12 will be dealt with under the proposals. Many single parents in my constituency perform a dual role, in that they also look after elderly parents. That is particularly prevalent in former mining areas because of the legacy of that industry. Do the Government intend to make single parents who also care for elderly relatives seek work?

My hon. Friend raises an important point, with which I am familiar as I, too, represent a constituency that is largely a former mining area—in a few places it is still a mining area. Such areas face particular problems, such as high levels of incapacity benefit owing to industrial injury and the need to care for elderly parents, which is often performed by single parents. We must and will have personalised responses; it is made clear in the Green Paper that that will be a cornerstone of our policy. There will not be a universal application of a rigid programme, but instead we will look at each person as an individual and make sure that they have the support they need. Many of them might not be able to work, perhaps for the reasons my hon. Friend describes, and support will continue to be provided while they are on benefit. However, we will assist those who can work to do so.

Becoming a lone parent—perhaps after a difficult separation—can be traumatic for both parent and children. Will a new single parent, who might be feeling bereaved after a separation, within days also feel pressured to seek work when they should instead be spending time with their children, who will also be feeling the bereavement of separation? How flexible will the system be? Will such single parents from day one feel under pressure, or even suffer benefit sanctions, if they do not go straight out to look for a job?

There will be no question of sanctions applying from day one, especially in such circumstances. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has given me an opportunity to put that on the record. When, for example, a father suddenly leaves or a parent dies, the lone parent’s primary desire will be to look after the children, who will need special support and help at such times. Jobcentre Plus and the wider programme will ensure that those wishes and needs are met. I genuinely want such issues to be fed into the consultation by the hon. Gentleman and others—although we have anticipated the specific point he raises—so that we ensure we get the programme right.

Our programme is ambitious. It must be an opportunity programme. It will not seek to force lone parents with young children to go into work under any circumstances. The children’s interests must be paramount, as must fighting child poverty. We can get the programme right, but that requires there to be a much more personalised form of support than previously.

Financed by windfall utility taxes, in the first four years of the Labour Government unemployment in my constituency was halved. However, in the last six years as the funds have run out the unemployment level has stayed the same and is now rising. I will warmly welcome the statement and the Green Paper if the new ideas and initiatives are backed up with new finance. Without that, nothing will change. Will the Secretary of State confirm that new money will be available to finance the new initiatives?

I recognise what my hon. Friend says, especially in respect of cities. In cities such as London and Leeds there are still pockets of poverty and worklessness, sometimes cheek by jowl with very high house prices and many jobs and great prosperity. We must tailor programmes to reach those who are not benefiting from the general prosperity. However, let me add to my hon. Friend that every day 4,000 jobs are delivered through Jobcentre Plus and that there are more than 600,000 vacancies in Britain at any one time. I do not claim that they are all in his constituency—they evidently are not. We need to make sure that we provide the support that he wants.

The Secretary of State said that he wants to have a system of support that is

“ever more personalised and responsive to the needs of individuals”,

which I welcome. However, is that aspiration compatible with his Department’s proposal to close the Christchurch Jobcentre Plus office? The Secretary of State might know that a petition signed by between 4,000 and 5,000 Christchurch citizens has been presented to the House. Will he receive a deputation led by me from the local authority and people of Christchurch in order to try to establish some sort of partnership and to achieve the objectives set out in the Green Paper, instead of closing its Jobcentre Plus office?

The Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform will be happy to receive a delegation seeking to take forward the hon. Gentleman’s campaign. I understand his position. I have received representations from many hon. Friends on such local issues, and they are difficult to solve. We have been trying to take resources from back office Jobcentre Plus functions to ensure that we get the maximum resources to the front line. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, personalised support is essential if we are to meet the challenge of getting people, many of whom have been on long-term benefits, into the world of work—if they are able to enter it.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement and the Green Paper, and he is right to remind Members that we have the highest employment in our history. We certainly should support the free movement of labour throughout the enlarged European Union and the great migration of workers from central and eastern Europe to this country, as it helps us achieve faster economic growth. Is he aware, however, of there being any evidence that that will make it harder to drive down unemployment among certain social groups in our society? Will he also tell us whether some of our major banks and insurance companies are among the major employers who have agreed to interview people who have been unemployed for a long time?

We are embarking on a more radical approach to employment generation and enabling people to move into work—I am glad that my right hon. Friend welcomes that—for the very reasons that he gives. I know that he has been concerned about the issue, and the local employer partnerships will be concentrated on getting long-term benefit claimants into work. The focus is not those people who come out of a job, go on to benefits for a short time and then go back into work, but those who have been out of work for a long time. That is one reason why we will require lone parents to seek work once their child reaches the age of seven: the longer lone parents are out of work, the more difficult it is to create the environment in which they can return to work. We will work closely with everybody and I welcome any views that my right hon. Friend wishes to express.

I also welcome the Government’s attempt to tackle the hard edge of the unemployment problem. It appears that two approaches will be adopted. The first is the emphasis on the private sector in providing skills, guaranteeing interviews and, indeed, guaranteeing 250,000 jobs. Is the Secretary of State assured that the private sector has the capacity to do that, and that the capacity is located at the hard edge and in the same places as the bulk of those affected? Secondly, given the public commitment to a flexible new deal approach and the wrap-around care provision, what public resources will be devoted to that?

The Secretary of State will know that Northern Ireland is one of the areas with a big problem with long-term unemployment. What plans does he have for discussions with the Minister for Social Development and the Minister for Employment and Learning to ensure that some of these ideas are passed on?

We would be happy to discuss those matters. When I was responsible for the area, I was well aware of the points that he raises, although—as the hon. Gentleman will know—Northern Ireland now has more jobs and lower levels of unemployment than ever before, and is well on the way to being where it should be as a successfully performing area. I would be happy to work with the Ministers he mentions.

The hon. Gentleman asked about capacity in the private sector. When my hon. Friend the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform and my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Prime Minister met large employers at No. 10 this morning, it was noticeable that they were keen to engage. Many, if not all, of them are already engaged, but they are keen to reach out because they have a large number of vacancies. They include—I do not know the detail, but I know that they are keen to help in Northern Ireland as well—Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury, which all see huge opportunities.

As for flexible child care and other support mechanisms, it will be for the devolved Executive to deliver, but we want to work closely with them and co-operate in whatever way we can.

I welcome the new personalised service that my right hon. Friend has mentioned and his reassurances that the system developed out of the Green Paper will be applied sensitively and flexibly. Will he therefore consider the special circumstances of lone parents with a child or children with disability? As their children get older, the accessibility of child care and other support mechanisms is much worse. Indeed, as those children move into adulthood, even lone parents who have been in work find that they can no longer work because the support services simply are not available. Will my right hon. Friend consider their special needs?

I will happily do so, and I am keen to work with my hon. Friend, who heads the every disabled child matters group. I hope that she will give us the benefit of her ideas. The system will be geared to individual needs and will be very personalised. We must recognise that for everyone family life is just as important as working life. This is not about focusing on getting a job, but about the idea that getting a job will help to strengthen family life. That will need to be individually tailored and individual needs will be taken into account. The proposals are about choice and independence. For most lone parents, the opportunity of a decently paid job is a liberating experience, because the state is then no longer responsible for them. They are responsible for themselves and have the dignity and opportunity to offer support to their children that come with that.

The Secretary of State talked earlier about getting more staff to the front line, and I agree with the need to do so. However, in my constituency, his Department is making two members of staff compulsorily redundant in the small job centre in Campbeltown, and three more jobs are threatened, which would almost halve the number of staff. Does he not realise that local staff possess local knowledge, which is important when giving advice and support to local people? Instead of centralising the service in big call centres such as Clydebank, the Government should keep the work locally. Will the Secretary of State alter the policy of shifting jobs from small towns such as Campbeltown to big call centres such as Clydebank?

There is a distinction between call centre work and front line delivery in Jobcentre Plus offices. As I said earlier, we have tried to get more resources to the front line, where staff with local knowledge are very important. That will remain a key part of what we are trying to do.

What functions currently provided by Jobcentre Plus will move to the private and third sectors? How will the commissioning work, and will the contracts be published?

I was able to provide some reassurance on those points to Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, when I talked to him about our plans. There will be more intensive work for Jobcentre Plus staff in the first 12 months. It is in the nature of the shift from being on passive benefits such as income support or incapacity benefit to being on active, work-based benefit that more activity by Jobcentre Plus staff will be needed. After 12 months, depending on how the provision is delivered—by the public sector, the private sector, including Jobcentre Plus in principle, or the voluntary sector—there will be an impact. However, I expect that it will balance out in terms of staff. We will have to work out the contracts, but we want to ensure that they are results-based and sustainable.

I was delighted recently to be able to show Lord McKenzie the partnership work between the retail sector and the further education sector in my constituency, and the impact that that has had on employment. I commend that work to my right hon. Friend. Will he ensure that he gets his own Department in order and that family-friendly policies prevail within it?

My hon. Friend had better tell me exactly what he means by that. The Department should practise what it preaches and I think that we have a proud record of delivery in recent years. On the partnership between retail and further education, the latter has an important role to play, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills will identify shortly, especially in forging close links with local businesses. In my experience, the FE colleges that perform most successfully have an organic relationship with the local business community.

While most of the Green Paper will be about getting people who are out of work into work, I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State say that there would be a focus on job retention, which is extremely important for those with mental health problems. We make it doubly difficult for them because they get help only when falling out of their existing job, and finding a new job causes extra stress and anxiety. What is his thinking on how we can improve job retention, especially for people who have had mental health problems?

I welcome what my hon. Friend says, and she makes a very important point that illustrates the step change that we will need to make. New challenges will be faced by the extra layers of people to whom we want to offer the chance to work. Sainsbury is one of the companies with which we are working in partnership, and it has put in a lot of work, with Mencap, on employing people with mental health problems. It intends to pilot one of our local employment partnership programmes though recruitment for online grocery jobs in London within the M25. Sainsbury’s chief executive talked about that at No. 10 this morning, and the company’s participation will help us to encourage employers to recognise that people who claim incapacity benefit because of stress or similar problems are able to work. They can be helped to overcome their problems if they are given the opportunity to work, but job retention is important, and they must be given support in that respect as well.

I welcome many elements of the statement and the Green Paper, but I am sure that my right hon. Friend will accept that many hon. Members in the Chamber today share my difficulty with the idea of a lone parent of a 12-year-old child being taken off income support. Many parents will welcome the opportunity to work, but the problem has less to do with seeking jobs or the stigma associated with not having a job, than with the fact that there is a lack of wraparound child care that is affordable and of high quality. That is especially awkward in the summer months when the schools are on holiday, as child care that is normally needed only before or after school has to be available all day. People who work in supermarkets suffer most of all, as the flexible hours that they work mean that they often finish at 8 or 10 o’clock in the evening, and it cannot be expected that those hours will all be worked only by people who do not have children. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the first box to be ticked in the personalised care catalogue will be the availability of high-quality, affordable and wraparound care? The second box to be ticked can then be a person’s suitability for work.

I shall welcome my hon. Friend’s detailed comments on the Green Paper, but it makes clear that the availability of suitable child care is an essential component. We cannot expect lone parents who have to care for children to take a job unless that care is available. Such care will be increasingly available over the next few years, and should be universally available when we come to consider bringing the age of the child down to seven. We would not expect parents with children aged seven to accept a job unless it was certain that the proper child care was available locally, and that they had access to the support that they need. That support must be affordable, as people in that situation cannot always get jobs that are well paid, although we hope that they will be able to do so in the future. If parents do not get affordable support, we will not be able to give them the opportunities that they want.

Does my hon. Friend agree that if we are serious about tackling child poverty, we should look not only at the quantity of people whom we move from welfare into work, but also at the quality of the jobs that they go to? If we force people to take unskilled, insecure and low-paid jobs, we will tend to entrench families in poverty. In contrast, we should give people with slightly older children a breathing space so that they can go into full-time education without adversely affecting their benefits. In the longer term, that will be a much more sustainable and sensible solution.

I know of my hon. Friend’s work with the Child Poverty Action Group, and I welcome her expertise and commitment in responding to the Green Paper. She is right that the question is one of quality as well as quantity. There would be no point in making lone parents enter an insecure world of work, and no benefit would accrue if they were to find themselves in the twilight world of temporary and agency work, as that lacks the security that they need. People in that situation would not feel that they were offering themselves or their children any future, and we must make sure that the problem identified by my hon. Friend is resolved.

I do not seek a referendum on this matter. The Government’s record in this regard is generally excellent, but I hope that they will recognise that, as other hon. Members have noted, some stubbornly difficult areas of high unemployment remain. In my constituency, which covers Govan and Pollok, more jobs are about to be created than there are unemployed people, but the danger is that the jobs will be filled by people from more prosperous areas, or by migrants. Will the Secretary of State join me in calling for my area to be made a zero unemployment zone? Jobcentre Plus staff should be tasked with working to that end, so that the jobs are not filled with people from outside. Will he also co-operate with the Scottish Parliament and Glasgow city council to achieve zero unemployment in the parts of the city that I have mentioned? Thank you!

I thank my hon. Friend. We are very happy to work with Glasgow city council and other local authorities across the country. That is one reason why I have made that option available after 12 months, rather than simply sticking with job providers in the private or voluntary sectors. Many councils want to get involved, and they have the sort of ideas and expertise that will assist us in our aims. However, it is precisely to avoid the problem that my hon. Friend describes—of more jobs being available than there are people on the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count—that we are getting local employers involved in the local employment partnerships. The priority of such employers is to employ local people, as they are more likely to be long-term rather than short-term employees. Turnover rates are often very high in the retail sector, for example, but they can be reduced if local people are involved, and especially the ones who are desperate to work but have previously not had the opportunity. Local employment partnerships provide a key answer to the important question posed by my hon. Friend.

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I should like to make a statement on delivering world-class skills in England. Natural resources, a big labour force and a dose of inspiration used to be all that was required for countries to succeed economically. Today, it is the skills of our people that matter most. We have achieved much since 1997, with 2.6 million more people in jobs, more than 1.7 million adults with literacy and numeracy qualifications and record numbers in our universities, but there is still huge challenge ahead.

At present, in the OECD, we are 18th for low skills, 20th for intermediate skills and 11th for high skills. To be competitive in a global economy, to reach 80 per cent. participation in employment and to offer new opportunities to people in work, we must do better.

Today, the Government are publishing the document “World Class Skills”. It sets out how, with individuals and employers, we will bring about a skills revolution and close the gap between where we are now and where we need to be in 2020. Our ambition is to ensure that this country becomes a world leader in skills by 2020. That means being in the top quartile of OECD countries—the premier league for skills.

The targets that Lord Leitch recommended, and which we have accepted, are hugely ambitious. We want 95 per cent. of adults to achieve functional literacy and numeracy by 2020, and our aim is to have more than 1.1 million more people achieving that over the next three years. We also want more than 90 per cent. of adults to be qualified to at least level 2 by 2020, with one and a half million more adults achieving a full level 2 for the first time over three years. Another objective is to shift the balance of intermediate skills from level 2 to level 3, with half a million more people reaching that standard over three years. We want to have more than 40 per cent. of adults qualified to level 4 and above by 2020, with 1.25 million more by the end of the comprehensive spending review period.

Enhancing all our skills so much, so rapidly, will take more than the effective use of public and private money, more than changes in the way in which we organise and deliver training, and more than our overhaul of qualifications so that all employers rate them and individuals feel they are worth striving for. It will take a culture change in attitudes towards training and skills. The result will be that in the years to come, when somebody complains that they are in a dead-end job, their best friend will ask what they are doing to improve their skills. Alternatively, when employers express frustration at the skills of their employees, others will ask what they are doing to train them.

As individuals and employers accept greater responsibility for improving their skills, they must know that we in Government accept our responsibility to support them. “World Class Skills” sets out how we will meet our responsibility. We must ensure that the rising generation starts working life with higher qualifications and higher skills. We will introduce legislation to raise the participation age to 18. We will boost the number of apprentices in England, meaning that all suitably qualified young people will have access to an apprenticeship, and we will introduce a new entitlement to free training for those aged 19 to 25, in order to help more people in that target group achieve their first full level 3 qualification.

Seventy per cent. of the work force of 2020 have already left compulsory-age education. That is why the focus of “World Class Skills” is on adults. Our proposals are based on clear principles. First, we must ensure that employers are at the heart of the skills system. Improved skills improve productivity and competitiveness, but training must be tailored to employers’ needs, delivered in ways that support their businesses, and offer qualifications in which they have confidence.

The creation of a demand-led system of skills is our single most fundamental reform. We will make “train to gain” a much broader service that will help employers of all sizes and in all sectors to improve the skills of all their employees. We will put employers at the head of the skills system. Working with the devolved Administrations, we will create a new UK commission for employment and skills, and strengthen the employer voice at the heart of the system. We will reform the remit of sector skills councils to make them more sharply focused on raising employer ambition and investment in skills at all levels. Employers will have the key role in reforming vocational qualifications to ensure that they generate economically valuable skills. It will be easier for employers’ in-house training programmes to be accredited. More higher education institutions will collaborate with employers to develop programmes and delivery methods that meet their higher-level skills needs.

Secondly, individuals must also get training that is tailored to their needs. New skills accounts will give individuals greater ownership and choice over their learning, motivating them to gain skills and achieve qualifications, enter work and progress in employment. Moving from a poor job with few prospects to a better job can be as hard as moving from unemployment into work for the first time, so we will back skills accounts with a new universal adult careers service in England. Working in partnership with Jobcentre Plus, the careers service will be able to advise on training and skills, and help overcome other barriers to ambition, such as sorting out child care. We will legislate to give adults a new legal right to access free basic literacy and numeracy programmes and training, leading to their first full level 2 qualification.

Thirdly, we will work in partnership with employers and employees. We will step up the drive to encourage employers, large and small, to sign the skills pledge to benefit their staff. Companies that sign the skills pledge make a public commitment to support their employees to become more skilled and better qualified. We will support them through “train to gain”. We recognise that the encouragement of a colleague may often be the single most influential factor in persuading someone to improve their skills. So we will encourage trade unions in the important part they have to play in achieving our skills ambitions, through union learning representatives—currently 18,000 strong—and by building on the achievements of the new union-sponsored training programme, unionlearn.

This partnership approach, in which we shall engage learners and employers, is crucial to the new culture we are seeking to create. Without it the nation will not meet the targets we are setting out. Failure is not an option. That is why Lord Leitch proposed that in 2010, the new commission for employment and skills should review whether we are making satisfactory progress or whether we need to introduce a statutory workplace training entitlement. I can confirm today that we will carry out such a review in 2010. However, let us make every effort to achieve our ambitions without legislation.

Our proposals benefit employers and employees alike. The business case for investing in skills stands in its own right. It makes sense for Government to work with employers purely for the economic benefits and improved competitiveness it will bring. However, we must not forget that for many people, improved skills are the route to better jobs, higher incomes, reduced child poverty and improved social mobility. If we enable parents on low incomes to raise their aspirations and to have the opportunity to improve their lives, we can be sure that their children will have higher aspirations and better opportunities too.

Lord Leitch challenged us all to raise the nation’s skills base, build productivity, increase social inclusion and improve economic competitiveness. With employers, employees and other learners, unions, colleges, universities and training providers, we will meet that challenge. As our new skills campaign on television and in the press so rightly says: “Our Future. It’s in Our Hands”. I commend the paper to the House.

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Of course, we share the Government’s aim of achieving world-class skills. We agree with the powerful statement by Lord Leitch in his report that

“In the 21st century, our natural resource is our people—and their potential is both untapped and vast. Skills will unlock that potential.”

However, the Government have been making big promises about skills for years. In Budget after Budget, the Prime Minister launched initiative after initiative—initiatives that are supposed to be rising to the skills challenge. In his 1999 Budget statement, he said:

“Britain must make a quantum leap in skills”.—[Official Report, 9 March 1999; Vol. 327, c. 176.]

In fact, even before Labour came to office, in 1996, he said:

“I want Britain to be a world skills superpower”.

Today we are told that our aim is to be in the top quartile of OECD countries—I guess that is what 10 years in government does to people.

Perhaps one reason for that downgrading of ambition is the uncomfortable evidence that some key problems have been getting worse. The number of 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training has risen from 1.08 million in 1997 to 1.25 million today. That is a 15 per cent. increase. The statement should have recognised that we need a change from the failed approach of the past. Both Lord Leitch’s report and the Secretary of State use the right language. They talk about a demand-led system; we completely agree. They talk about its being employer-driven; again, we completely agree. However, in order to deliver that type of system, we need a tough-minded and rigorous assessment of how our skills policies need to change, which is not, I am afraid, what we have had today.

The report and the Government talk about a flexible employer-driven system, but the Government are keeping the panoply of controls that we have in our current centrally planned system. They will still set their plans for specific qualifications region by region, level by level and subject by subject, and further education colleges will still have to comply, churning out the paper qualifications that the Government want them to produce—when too many of those paper qualifications are not valued by employers, who understand that, sadly, a qualification is not always the same thing as a skill.

FE colleges, about which we have heard very little from the Secretary of State, are desperate to have more freedom to respond to local needs so that they can be employer-driven, but instead they have 17 different regulatory bodies telling them what to do. As we heard in the Foster report only last year:

“There is a galaxy of oversight, inspection and accreditation bodies. They need to be rationalised, co-ordinated and focused.”

That is what the FE colleges are calling out for. Instead of tackling the 17 bodies that already supervise FE colleges, the Secretary of State has just announced the creation of an 18th—the new UK commission for employment and skills.

Sitting on top of that structure is the Learning and Skills Council. I think that if Lord Leitch had been given his head, he would have wished to get rid of the Learning and Skills Council. Instead, the Secretary of State has announced today a fifth reorganisation—reforming the remit of sector skills councils. What are the Government really going to do about the Learning and Skills Council? After the latest reorganisation in Whitehall, will the Secretary of State tell us what he expects its long-term role and function to be?

If the Secretary of State had stood at the Dispatch Box and said that central planning had not worked, and that he was genuinely shifting to a demand-led, employer-driven system, we could have supported him, but sadly his statement today does not rise to that challenge.

Let me ask the Secretary of State about specific aspects of his statement. He set out several numerical targets—“ambitious” targets, he called them—that arose from Leitch, but it is noticeable that he did not give a target for apprenticeships, despite the fact that the then Chancellor said, as recently as in the 2007 Budget, that

“There will be average rises of…cash each year for the next three years, enabling us to…do more to double apprenticeship numbers to 500,000”.—[Official Report, 21 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 828.]

In his December 2007 pre-Budget report, he again talked about apprenticeships rising to 500,000. Has the Secretary of State dropped the target, either because he no longer believes in such central targets for apprenticeships, or because he is afraid that he will not reach it? After all, the number of apprenticeships has fallen from 135,000 to 123,000 in the past 18 months. If he is committed to the target, why did he not refer to it in his statement?

The Secretary of State referred to focusing on adults—rightly so, because many of the people whose skills we need to raise are already in the work force. However, we really need to know what the Government are doing about the catastrophic fall in the number of FE adult learning places, which is down by 1 million. We cannot talk about the importance of adult retraining and reskilling when the Government’s mechanism for financing FE colleges shifts those colleges away from helping adults. He also talked about making “train to gain” a broad service, but is he aware that a criticism made of “train to gain” is that it has a very high dead-weight cost? A lot of that cost goes on programmes and training that would have happened anyway.

I am sure that, like me, the Secretary of State enjoys reading Institute for Fiscal Studies appraisals of his policies, and I am sure that he will recognise its statement that there is no “systematic evidence” that the programme had

“significantly increased employer provision of, or employee engagement in, training”.

The appraisal estimated that about 85 to 90 per cent. of “train to gain” costs could be dead-weight. It went on to say that it could be that

“the true effect is zero percentage points implying 100 per cent. deadweight.”

Why are the Government putting more money into “train to gain” when evaluations show that it has such a high dead-weight cost? Of course, the former Secretary of State for Education and Skills responded to that challenge by saying:

“the idea behind Train to Gain is to assist small businesses, which is where a particular problem lies”.—[Official Report, 8 February 2007; Vol. 456, c. 975.]

It appears that the current Secretary of State has changed that approach; “train to gain” is no longer to be targeted on smaller businesses, in an attempt to respond to the problem of dead-weight cost. Why does he believe that his new general approach will improve the situation in any way?

We welcome the Secretary of State’s comments on the new skills account. It could be significant, and it could give individuals much greater control over their training. We look forward to seeing the detail of that proposal, and we hope that lessons have been learned from the failure of individual learning accounts. However, I have to say that the statement does not rise to the challenge of providing an employer-driven, individually focused service to improve the nation’s skills. It does not rise to the challenge of his new Department.

Obviously, to some extent I am slightly disappointed by the tone that the hon. Gentleman has adopted, but it is important to explore the claims that he makes so that we can see whether his response deserves to be treated as having any credibility. He attacked the Government for their failure to make progress on skills over the past 10 years—but as I said in my statement, the reality is that there has been considerable progress since we inherited a disastrous situation from the Conservative Government.

It is a bit rich to hear questions being asked about apprenticeships, because in the early 1990s, the reality was that one could go from one end of the country to the other and barely find a young person who was entering an apprenticeship, because the entire system had collapsed. We had to rebuild the apprenticeship system, not just in terms of the number of people involved, but in terms of the success rates and completion rates, which have gone up dramatically over the past two or three years. We have brought 1.14 million adults up to level 2 in the past four years. We have taken 1.75 million people through the skills for life programme. There were 250,000 people on apprenticeships in England last year, compared with only 75,000 in 1997—and those 75,000 had only just begun. We have every reason to be proud of what we have achieved from a very difficult starting point, but we have the honesty to set before the House the scale of the challenge that faces us in the years ahead.

As for whether what we have said matches up to what is needed, we accept some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised about FE colleges, but he will know that work is under way to design and introduce a lighter-touch regulatory system for them, and I hope that we can make more progress on that in the months to come. He criticised us first for expanding “train to gain”, and secondly for failing to introduce a demand-led system that responds to the needs of employers. If he does not like “train to gain”, he will at some point have to tell us what a demand-led system shaped by the interests of employers would actually look like. “Train to gain” is designed to make sure that the money in the skills system is used to ensure that FE colleges and other providers offer the training provision that employers actually want and recognise, and qualifications that employers value.

The hon. Gentleman was somewhat dismissive of what we said about taking a look at vocational qualifications, but to me that issue is central. There are employers who say that they are not sure that level 2 qualifications give them what they want, so our plans to work with the commission for employment and skills to overhaul the sector skills councils are central if we are to have a skills system that delivers what employers want.

The issue of dead-weight, particularly in the employment training pilots, has been raised. We will bring forward more detailed plans to extend “train to gain” in the autumn, and we will then need to set out how we intend to keep an eye on the issue. Of course, we do not in any way want to lose the quality of service offered to smaller employers, which they rate very highly, but it is right that the same responsiveness should be offered to a wider range of employers. I hope that I have covered the fundamental points raised by the hon. Gentleman. Incidentally, I should say to him that the target of 500,000 apprenticeships is set out prominently in the document. That is a UK target, and my commitment today is on meeting England’s share of that overall target, but in no sense has the UK target disappeared from our ambitions and aspirations.

First, may I explain that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), who would have responded to the statement, is unavoidably detained elsewhere by a family illness?

I guess that the Secretary of State spent the last two weeks immersing himself in the details of the Leitch report, because much of his statement is simply a rehash of the many targets in that report, and a repetition of many old announcements made by previous Ministers. However, the one issue not addressed in the statement is whether there is a meaningful future for the Learning and Skills Council. Nine initiatives are mentioned in the statement, but time only permits me to comment on a few of them.

The main legislation that will follow from the statement will have to do with increasing the education and training participation age to 18. The draft legislative programme, published by the Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago, referred to compulsion for individuals, a duty for parents, enforcement, penalties and sanctions. Is that the right language to use when encouraging more young people to take part in education and training? Would it not be much better to talk about giving them meaningful entitlements and incentives?

There are voluntary pledges for employers until 2010, but we are talking about enforcement against individuals and their parents.

No assessment has been given of the cost of implementing the increase in educational participation or how that cost is to be shared by the state, the individual and crucially employers. Will the Secretary of State please address that?

A second tangible announcement in the statement is old news. It is about increasing the free entitlement from 19 to 25 to level 3 provision. That pledge was made at least twice by the Prime Minister when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, but we still do not know whether there is any new money to back it up. In his first statement in his new role, the Secretary of State announced £400 million of additional support for students in higher education. What additional support are the Government pledging for level 3 provision?

The statement is full of warm or tepid phrases about how the Government intend to implement the Leitch report. It refers to refocusing the efforts of sector skills councils, and more universities collaborating with employers. What on earth does that mean? I know that the Secretary of State is probably still getting to grips with what universities do, but I know that most universities, if not all, already have extensive collaboration programmes with employers. That is the basis of foundation degrees, and many employers and universities collaborate on cutting-edge degrees, such as in gaming technology, in which Britain leads the world. What more do the Government expect higher education to do?

On the voluntary skills pledge to which employers are meant to sign up by 2010, the statement speaks of stepping up the drive. Again, what on earth does that mean? We know that the former Chancellor appointed his new comrade, Lord Digby Jones, as the skills champion who will charge around the country exhorting employers to sign up to the pledge. Now that he has another role, will the Government please explain to us who will be exhorting employers to sign up to the pledge and how, over the next two and a half years up to 2010, they will assess whether employers have met that pledge in sufficient numbers and to a meaningful extent before they can decide whether legislation is needed?

The Liberal Democrats welcome the announcement of a universal adult careers service, but where is the money to back that up? The statement is silent on whether new resources will be put behind the service, or whether it will be a re-aggregation of existing budgets. Will the Secretary of State recognise that many people start on their career paths before they become adults, when they are 14 or 16? Does he agree that he needs to co-operate with his ministerial colleague in the Department for Children, Schools and Families to set up an independent careers and guidance service for 14-year-olds and 16-year-olds to complement the work being done with adults?

The right hon. Gentleman set out an ambitious agenda for his new Department, but there are three strands to the Department. Higher education and science are backed by billions of pounds of Government resources, but there is a risk and a perception out there that the adult skills element of the Department is the Cinderella. He will have to work hard to redress that perception. The most compelling change that needs to take place is more engagement and more investment by employers. Unless the Government are willing to back up the statement with action rather than exhortation, the ambitious target of being in the premier league by 2010 will be very hard to achieve.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions, which are all pertinent. I shall try to address them all. Of course I understand why the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) is not able to be present today.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the Learning and Skills Council, so I shall take the opportunity to set out the position. As he knows, the funding for school sixth forms, sixth-form colleges and the contribution of FE colleges to 14-to-19 provision will transfer from the LSC to local authority ring-fenced budgets. My estimate is that we will not be able to give effect to the full legislative changes until the academic year 2010-11, so the legal responsibility will remain with the LSC over that period. We will co-operate sensibly and closely with the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families to make sure that provision is delivered effectively both for young people in that age group and for adult learners.

For post-19 education and training, we will consider how best to deliver the functions and services that support the FE system, and I want to build on the progress made with the LSC over recent years in developing a demand-led approach. As we do that, we will work closely with the LSC and other national partners, and consult schools, colleges and providers to ensure that the new arrangements are introduced smoothly. We will take the opportunity to review how the funding and accountability framework can best support initiative and high performance at institutional level and across the FE sector as a whole.

On participation to 18, the set of principles are similar to those that I discussed in my statement. We would rather not use compulsion, but we cannot rule it out if sufficient progress is not made. That must be the approach to young people in education and training. The detailed allocation of costs will depend to some extent on the balance between employer-based and work-based training.

On 19-to-25 provision, I make no apologies for the fact that the Government have set out repeatedly their vision of being able to offer an apprenticeship to anybody in the 16-to-19 age group who wants to go on an apprenticeship, and a commitment to level 3 up to age 25. It has taken time to build up capacity in the apprenticeship system from where we started to bring that goal more and more within reach, and we continue to make progress. I do not regard it as a rehashed promise, but rather as one towards which we are steadily making progress.

With respect to universities, HEFCE has developed a package with universities for about 5,000 co-funded higher level placements with industry for the coming period. That is a step in the right direction, but the bigger issue that the hon. Gentleman might like to consider is that, of the entire training budget held by employers, only 3 per cent. is spent with higher education institutions. That suggests that there is a massive potential to increase the volume of higher level education and training involving universities from the present level. That is something that we need to discuss in the years to come.

On the skills pledge, we will step up the drive to get companies to join the skills pledge. The noble Lord Jones, who is now a Government Minister, brought a particular and individual verve and passion to the skills pledge, and he slotted into the post very naturally indeed. I have already met Sir Michael Rake, who will chair the commission on employment and skills, to discuss how we continue and whether it would be appropriate to look for a single envoy or whether the commission as a body, which will have strong employer representation, may be a better vehicle to take the pledge forward. I hope we can resolve that quickly.

The starting point for resources for the adult careers service is to bring together learndirect and nextstep. It makes sense to co-ordinate those services and to stress the importance of the close working relationship with Jobcentre Plus. On the starting point at 14, the hon. Gentleman will be aware of the diploma programme.

Finally, I do not believe that adult skills is a Cinderella. What Leitch has given us for the first time is a logical framework to approach funding, with the public sector recognising a responsibility particularly in the area of basic skills and level 2 qualifications, and a recognition that higher level qualifications should rightly attract a larger contribution from individuals and employers because the direct and immediate benefits to them are that much greater. That gives us a sensible framework for deciding how we want to fund this crucial area of work.

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend to his place, and I warmly welcome the statement. The fact that one of his first speaking appointments was to the all-party skills group and the National Skills Forum augurs well for the emphasis and focus that the Government are putting on skills. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments on culture change and the focus on adults. I should like to raise two issues with him which have informed the discussions that the all-party group have had about Leitch since the report was published at the end of last year.

The first is about focusing on adult learners. My right hon. Friend will know all the statistics about the demographic gap that we are going to face over the next 10 to 15 years in terms of younger people, which means that we must place even more emphasis on older people in the work force. Does he agree that reskilling is as important as upskilling as part of the central strategy to gain more effectiveness in this area?

My second point is a related one. One of the criticisms of this policy that has been made in the past is that it has not always been finessed enough, particularly in relation to older learners. In considering how we take forward the exacting targets that Leitch has set, can we focus more on age-proofing and the particular needs of people in their 40s and 50s, and even beyond? We need to get those issues right in order to maximise the contribution to the skills improvements and ambitious targets that my right hon. Friend and his Department rightly look to.

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s comments and acknowledge the important work done by the all-party group on skills, not least in bringing the world skills competition to the UK in a few years’ time. Reskilling is enormously important. One of the challenges is to get the relationship between FE colleges and other training providers and employers right so that it is simple for employers to identify the package of training, and the delivery method, that will meet their needs. It may well be that the person is already in work and we have to raise their level of skills without disrupting the way in which the company or employer operates. “Train to gain” and the brokerage service will be as available to people facing that problem as to those who are, say, trying to meet the skills pledge to get people into level 2. That is an important part of its role.

I am interested in my hon. Friend’s point about age-proofing. I see no reason why the policies that I set out should not be of equal benefit to people of all ages in the work force, but if there are particular issues that he would like to raise with me, I would be more than happy to meet him, and perhaps other members of the all-party group.

Several hon. Members rose—

Order. May I remind all hon. Members of the need for just one question and a short response so that more may be successful in catching my eye?

I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. For the whole of my working life, we have had education for the best and skills for the rest. Leitch has put skills right at the heart of the national agenda, not just the Government’s agenda. In terms of the 40 per cent. target for level 4 students, or graduates, by 2020, does the Secretary of State recognise that simply adding more graduates to our work force is not what UK plc really wants? There is a massive need for scientific and technical skills, particularly at level 4. What plans does he have to address the market so that we can produce graduates with the relevant skills for business rather than simply more graduates to meet a target?

There are two issues that we need to address. First, there is the way in which a range of higher education institutions sets out to deliver the types of degree course that the hon. Gentleman is talking about; foundation degrees are often particularly relevant in this area. Secondly, not every higher level qualification is a degree qualification, although it may involve that level of study. Many companies are working with higher education institutions on training programmes and delivering higher level education tailored to the needs of those companies. Some universities have made much better progress at organising themselves to know what is needed in the local economy at the higher level of skills. I agree that we should not be trapped by a particular model of what a degree should look like or by what a particular programme of study should look like. That will ensure that industry gets the skills that it needs.

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly the emphasis on mentoring in the trade union movement. However, it is not needed in the trade union movement alone. In some communities, particularly the most deprived, there is a deep-seated aversion to education and skills, and sometimes even to employment. May I draw to his attention an organisation called Skills Link, which operates in Tipton in my constituency and which uses community mentors to involve people in the education and learning process? Will he look at that with a view to seeing what lessons could be learned in raising skills in the most deprived areas?

I would be very interested to discuss the work that my hon. Friend describes. I met representatives from the TUC a few days ago and had a discussion with them about whether the expertise of 18,000 union learning representatives could be used in community, as well as workplace, settings. The statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that preceded mine helped to set out how both our Departments need to work together in communities of the sort that my hon. Friend mentions. We do not want a situation where we get somebody into work and then they drop out again and have to reapply three months later. Providing people with skills as they go into work, and maintaining and improving their skills levels in work, is absolutely vital to sustainable employment and a sustainable cut in unemployment in those communities. We need to use the skills of everybody we can find, not only public sector employees, to enable that to happen.

Any statement on improving skills is welcome. However, I should like to concentrate on the high skills area, where we are 11th in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in terms of quality. Those are the skills that really attract and retain investment in the knowledge-based creative industries. Can the Secretary of State assure me that he will take that into account in reforming the remit of the sector skills councils, which can be very responsive to what the industry needs if they work creatively with it? They are often criticised on the basis that they are still not multi-disciplinary enough to meet the new challenges that arise in some of the new creative, added value industries, where they cross sectors rather than just lying within one sector.

Within that brief question were several very important points. It is important that the sector skills councils engage effectively with the higher level skills. One of the things that Lord Leitch told us, very politely, was that some do it better than others. Some have engaged enormously well with higher education institutions because that is where their employers have said that the problem lies. We need to ensure that all sector skills councils do that as appropriate to their industries. Other initiatives, such as academies, are being developed; I think that there is going to be one for the nuclear industry. That is another way in which employers and providers can collaborate to meet the whole range of skills that are needed within a sector. [Interruption.] Of course, we must recognise the need for cross-sectoral courses to be available where appropriate, not just courses in individual sectors. And I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) for prompting me on that point from a sedentary position.

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Is he aware that the Learning and Skills Council is causing mayhem among local training providers in areas like mine, with its constant chopping and changing of strategy and endless series of short-term contracts, now followed by a “big is beautiful” phase in which it is awarding contracts to large private sector providers who are very good at writing out the applications but walk away when they find, often predictably, that they cannot deliver? May I appeal to him to encourage the LSC to be a bit more consistent in its approach and to use local training providers where they are up to the job and capable?

I certainly hope that that is not the universal picture across the country. I will be happy to talk to my hon. Friend about the particular issues that have given rise to his concern. We need to recognise that a move towards a more demand-led system of skills is a move away from the “predict and provide” approach based on saying, “We will work out how many places we want and give you a contract for them”, to something that is much more closely tailored to what employers need. In that sense, over time there will in any case be quite a fundamental change to the relationship between the flow of funds and the providers of training, which should mean that we get a closer match between what is provided and what employers want.

I welcome much of what the Secretary of State has laid before the House today. In his statement he said, “We will step up the drive to encourage employers, large and small, to sign the skills pledge to benefit their staff.” Given that the Government are probably one of the largest employers in this country, particularly through Her Majesty’s armed forces, I urge the Secretary of State to meet the Defence Secretary to discuss the number of armed forces personnel who, because of overstretch, are unable to attend reskilling, upskilling and continuing professional development courses as a result of those courses being cancelled, or of there not being enough personnel to fill them.

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I will see any Secretary of State whose Department is too tardy in signing up to the skills pledge. Most Departments are already signed up and we need to ensure that that extends to all reasonable parts of public service. The armed forces have done a good job in many areas, particularly with regard to apprenticeships, but if the hon. Gentleman wishes to raise particular issues with me, I shall certainly look into them.

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and it is clear that the Government are seriously addressing an important national problem. The problem is not new; some 20 years ago Sig Prais and Claus Moser drew attention to it, making stark comparisons between Britain and the continent of Europe concerning skills in particular, but also education and skills in the broader sense. Is it not possible that we are trying to invent our own solution to a problem when obvious solutions might be available abroad? Should we not just look at the most successful countries on the continent of Europe and start to imitate them directly in order to ensure that we achieve in the way that they do? Employers would not then simply employ continental Europeans who already have the skills necessary, while leaving our own people unemployed.

I believe that Lord Leitch looked at international experience as well as the approach taken in this country. It is true that the issue of skills has been a problem with the British economy for a long time—certainly since the latter part of the 19th century, at the very least—and it has been raised recently. Sir Claus Moser was heavily influential on the literacy campaign that was launched with such success four or five years ago.

My view is that for too long we have not identified properly the partnership between the Government, individuals and employers that can deliver successful and sustainable improvements in skills. Over the years, we have perhaps lurched between thinking that the public sector could work it all out for itself, and putting unrealistic expectations on the private sector to pay for everything. I believe that the statement I made today gets the balance right, and it should be the basis for real achievement in the future.

Will the Secretary of State closely examine access to training in rural areas? In North Cornwall, despite excellent work by schools, we still have people making a 100-mile-a-day round trip from places like Bude to Truro in order to access specialist courses. Will he bear in mind the provision of training and upskilling in deprived rural areas such as North Cornwall?

That is an important issue. It is not simply a matter for urban areas, and I recognise the problems set out by the hon. Gentleman. There will be some funds in the system to assist in areas in cases of special need, which can include matters such as transport. I hope that as we flesh out the detail of our plans, he will see that we recognise the problems in areas such as his.

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend to his new post. In doing so, I draw his attention to the work of primary schools in my constituency that have set up adult learning centres in the community. Parents in those schools have been able to add to qualifications, or gain them if they had none, leading to their gaining employment. We can really target and attack deprivation in the most deprived areas in our communities by using local centres such as primary schools. I commend that work to my right hon. Friend.

Our colleague, my hon. Friend the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, has visited a primary school in my constituency and seen for himself how the process is working. It works because it is in an environment where people feel confident and able to come forward and engage with what is going on, and by doing so they are able to assist in the education of their own children. Examples of that process were shown to my hon. Friend when he came to visit. We are able to target such communities, and I urge the Secretary of State, when he is considering future funding, to make it easier for schools to set up such adult learning centres.

I am delighted to hear what my hon. Friend said. I am passionate about the ability to tackle family poverty and improve social mobility through improving adult skills. In my constituency, one of the least expected but most welcome effects of Sure Start has been on the aspirations of parents who have been involved with it. Many of them, by becoming involved in Sure Start, have gone on to jobs as nursery nurses or classroom assistants, and then feed back that experience to their own children, affecting their expectations of what can be achieved. We need to extend the type of experience my hon. Friend talks about as widely as possible.

One group of people who desperately need functional literacy and numeracy and skills training are offenders serving custodial sentences. How will the new universal adult careers service, the prison education service and the unions work together to ensure that every person leaving prison on the completion of a custodial sentence will be fit for work, and that employers are persuaded to overcome their very natural reluctance to offer a job to somebody who has been in prison?

That is a very important issue. The Government set out last year, in a document called “Next Steps”, our response to some of the challenges of reducing reoffending, and we need to build on that work. In a previous capacity, I was enormously impressed by the work of the National Grid Transco scheme, which gets young offenders into work by essentially guaranteeing them jobs if they successfully complete training as they leave an institution. Through such mechanisms and the corporate alliance supported by the Ministry of Justice, I hope that, as well as generally raising the level of skills among offenders, we can extend the direct routes of offenders into work, because the reoffending rates involved are dramatically lower than those under many of the schemes we have tried in the past.

I beg to move,

That this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their Amendments Nos. 12, 13, 15, 20, 67 to 70 and 72, does not insist on its Amendments 15B and 15C, but proposes the following amendments to the words restored to the Bill by disagreement with Lords Amendment No. 15: (a), (b) and (c).

We are dealing with pre-release, which is the final point of contention relating to the Bill. Since our last debate on the Floor of the House, the Prime Minister has announced that the Government will call for a vote to confirm the recommended candidate for the chair of the Statistics Board, before the measure goes to the Queen. That is in addition to our commitment to reduce further the length of time for which pre-release access is available to 24 hours for all UK-wide and reserved statistics. Hon. and right hon. Members will recall that the previous agreement was for 40.5 hours. By committing to reduce pre-release access from the current period of up to 5 days to what will now be a maximum of 24 hours, the Government are demonstrating that they have listened and responded to the views expressed during the debates on the Bill in both Houses. It is time that the Government were given credit for the moves and changes that have been made during the Bill’s passage.

Under the proposals, it remains up to the Government to determine the precise content of the new pre-release arrangements under the new system, but our commitment today is to provide on the face of the Bill that the board must also be consulted. Moreover, pre-release arrangements will be set out in secondary legislation. The affirmative statutory instrument will set out rules and principles to restrict the number of people who receive pre-release access and the statistical series to which pre-release might apply. It will also restrict the length of time for which pre-release access is available to a maximum of 24 hours for reserve statistics.

The purpose of the Bill, which the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey) spelled out on Second Reading, is to restore confidence in the statistical base on which so many of our political decisions are made. That is much needed. When I was an Opposition health spokesman in the late 1990s, I remember patients being reclassified from one list to another, beds being reclassified as chairs, and, more recently, the former Chancellor’s “revisions” of the start and finish dates of the economic cycle. Those and many other examples have contributed to undermining public confidence in the statistical data that are provided to us. The Bill is a welcome attempt to address that.

Conservative Members have long argued that an independent statistics service is a key part of the triple lock that will ensure fiscal and economic stability, along with the independent setting of interest rates and independent assessment of the fiscal rules. We have supported the principles of the Bill—after all, it enshrines much of our policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) made it clear from the outset that we would engage constructively in trying to improve the measure. There have been some successes so far. We welcome Government concessions that have strengthened the Bill and made it more likely to achieve its objective. Much has therefore been achieved.

However, we need one last heave to make the Bill a substantial break with the past in relation to pre-release. The former national statistician identified that as the key matter for gaining public confidence. It is the last contentious issue, as the Exchequer Secretary said, and the subject of the Lords amendments that we are considering today.

As the Bill left this place on 2 July, it uniquely preserved to Ministers the power, through secondary legislation, to set the rules for pre-release—who gets what and when—but no other aspects of control of statistics. In other words, Ministers will control the parameters for the operation of the spin machine about any given release of data. That was justified on the curious ground that

“Ministers themselves are best placed to judge how much pre-release access they require, and under what conditions they require it”.—[Official Report, 2 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 710.]

I bet they are. However, on that principle, Ministers may as well count the by-election votes tomorrow on the basis that they know best how many votes they require.

The earlier the access to statistics, the greater the scope of controlling the agenda. There is no other reason for wanting to retain such long pre-release periods and total control of the rules for pre-release.

Is the hon. Gentleman trying to persuade the House that all the arrangements that I have set out—board involvement, transparency, public consultation and an affirmative statutory instrument—amount to total control for Ministers?

I am trying to persuade the House that it amounts to much less than independent control of the rules by the board, for which hon. Members in this place and the other place have argued. We perceive it as the objective for which we should hold out.

Ministers have acknowledged, in proposing to reduce the five-day maximum for non-market sensitive data to 40.5 hours, that we remain way out of line with other countries. In France, the time is one hour; in Australia, the time is three hours, and Canada allows data to be released to Ministers the evening before general release. We must tackle those remaining, glaring anomalies.

We are considering a proposal for an independent statistics system that allows Ministers to decide how much advance notice they get, how widely advance data are disseminated, and under what conditions. That is wildly out of line with international norms and very much out of line with what ordinary, thinking people would expect from a Prime Minister who promised to abandon spin.

Will the hon. Gentleman at least acknowledge, so that we can have a debate in which we are in contact with the arguments, that we are not considering unconstrained ministerial decision making? The maximum time is 24 hours and there is a range of provisions about, for example, the number of people who can see pre-release statistics. We have made several changes, and we are now considering constrained ministerial decision making. The process is systematically set out, is transparent and will be contained in secondary legislation. Surely the hon. Gentleman will admit that.

The Exchequer Secretary talks about 24 hours, but I do not see 24 hours in her proposal, which we shall come to in a moment. She must understand that there is a clear distinction between a decision by an independent board and a decision by Ministers after consultation with that board. If she does not understand that, why is the architecture of the rest of the Bill set out as it is, with the board having that degree of control?

If the Government do not get pre-release right, they will not restore public confidence in the system, regardless of whether the impartiality and the quality of the statistics will be improved by other initiatives in the Bill, and they will certainly not persuade the public that they have abandoned the spin culture. The issue has become the yardstick by which the success or failure of this attempt to clean up public data will be judged.

I freely admit to being something of a Johnny-come-lately to the Bill—

You are not the only one.