Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con): I remind the House of the interests declared in the register against my name.
The matter that I draw to the attention of the House is the credibility of the Chancellor in the context of his Budget speech. I shall highlight a few issues that were included in his speech and a few that were not. On the subject of today's debate, education, there is a credibility issue relating to the skills gap to which a number of hon. Members have referred.
I am pleased that we have had an opportunity to focus on the skills gap, not least because in the survey of more than 1,000 businesses that I undertook in my constituency in the run-up to the Budget, the overwhelming cause of concern was the poor quality of school leavers presenting themselves for employment. This is not a criticism specifically of the schools in my constituency, which do a very good job. However, of the businesses that responded to my survey, 64 per cent. raised skills as the main problem for them, and of that group, 72 per cent. said the problem was getting worse, not better. This is a fundamental issue for the competitiveness of the United Kingdom as we move forward, and it needs to be addressed.
Instead of raising the skills of our work force, one of the ways in which the Government have been tackling the skills gap in this country has been to import skills from elsewhere. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), whose constituency borders mine, regularly reminds the House that the shortage of dentists has been filled by dentists from his homeland, Poland. I have always taken his comments with a pinch of salt, but the point was graphically illustrated by the recent publication of an e-mail in which the British ambassador to Warsaw, Ambassador Crawford, stated that Her Majesty's Government have
"created more jobs for Poles in the past year than the Polish Government".
Turning to school funding, much has been made of the announcement of extra money for schools and the aspiration to raise school spending per head close to the level achieved in the independent sector. I welcome more money for schools, although I have not been overwhelmed by the increase, which appears to be close to 1 per cent. of the total schools budget, but it is welcome none the less. To echo the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), I urge the Government seriously to examine the allocation policy.
In Shropshire, our children receive approximately £3,300 a pupil-that places the local education authority 10th from bottom of the 150 education authorities in this country-which is barely 75 per cent. of the average spending per pupil in this country as a whole. One area in my constituency is among the top 25 most deprived areas in this country. The issue does not solely relate to urban areas, because deprivation occurs in rural areas, too, and I urge the Government to examine the funding formula.
On further education, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills has referred to a level playing field, which I would welcome, too, but I do not welcome the levelling of buildings. In my constituency, Bridgnorth college was closed last year and the site is being prepared for levelling. I urge the Financial Secretary to make a commitment in his winding-up speech that the proceeds raised by the sale of the sites of colleges of education that are being shut down in rural areas will be reinvested in the area where the facilities have been shut rather than being transferred to supposedly more deserving areas, which leaves even less provision for those in rural areas.
The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) has welcomed the Chancellor's announcement of independence for the Office for National Statistics. Like all Conservative Members, I welcome that decision, because it was a Conservative policy, and it is reassuring to see the Chancellor in this, as in so many other areas, picking up our policy-the current consensus in politics is clearly working. That change was needed because of the credibility gap, which is of the Chancellor's own making.
Since the Budget, many commentators have referred to problems with the presentation of statistics. On Sunday, The Business carried an article in which its correspondent, Allister Heath, discussed the way in which the Chancellor has chosen to portray productivity in this country as improving rather than the actual trend, which is declining. When the Chancellor was appointed too many years ago, he saw productivity as one of the main benchmarks for his success, and the article discusses that point:
"His main trick was to break down the UK's productivity performance into three periods: 1972 to 1986; 1986 to the first half of 1997; and Labour's election to the third quarter of 2001, a period he claimed to be the first half of the current cycle. This allowed him to claim that the growth in output per worker had hit 2.13 per cent. a year in the final period against 1.93 per cent. and 1.5 per cent. in the previous two . . . The truth, as the official figures for output per worker reveal, is the exact of the opposite of the great performance that Brown chose to boast about. Productivity growth averaged 2.6 per cent. a year between 1992 and 1997",
which was the last period of Conservative Government, and fell to
"2.1 per cent. a year between 1997 and 2001."
It declined further to 1.3 per cent. between 2001 and 2005. In the past 12 months, it has declined even further to 0.4 per cent. So much for the Chancellor's productivity growth. I am looking forward to how the ONS will portray that.
I turn to something that I suspect arrived in the Budget as an afterthought-the assault on the trust industry. Several Members have referred to the impressive growth in, and our reliance on, financial services. The trust sector is a critical part of that. By seeking to impose such significant taxation changes on the accumulation of maintenance trusts and other trust types, the Chancellor will drive a coach and horses through that industry and force it offshore. He may not have appreciated that many of these trusts have nothing to do with inheritance-they are to do with protecting assets, initially for minors and then for other young people while they are still in their formative years. Some were set up during the crusades to help estates not to fall into the wrong hands in the event of knights being toppled from their chargers overseas. This is a serious measure to propose with the flick of a pen.
In the brief time that I have left, I should like to raise three issues that were not mentioned in the Budget. First, there is the credibility gap over pensions. The right hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mr. Byers) devoted much of his speech to that. I think that he is being a bit economical as regards the way in which the Chancellor has chosen to present some of the pension-related measures that have come out of the Budget. A year ago, the Chancellor made great play of the fact that the council tax rebate for pensioners was being doubled from £100 to £200. That was not mentioned last week when it was abolished, with the result that pensioners' council tax will have soared by more than 20 per cent.
The right hon. Member for North Tyneside also talked about Labour's responsibility for dealing with the pensions crisis that has been created. There is indeed a responsibility. I look forward to seeing what happens with Turner and deeply regret that the Chancellor did not refer to that.
I reiterate my concern that the Chancellor did not mention the NHS in his speech. I hope that he will be listening tomorrow when protestors from all over the country come to highlight the cuts that are being made in our community hospitals.
9.2 pm
