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By Root 3109 0

of the workforce by helping people to obtain the right qualifications and experience for the jobs now available. In my last year as Prime Minister some two and a half times as much — in real terms — was being spent by government on training as under the last Labour Government. Of course, there is always a danger that ‘training’ becomes an end in itself, with its own bureaucracy and momentum, particularly when public funds on this scale are involved. So I was keen that as much as possible of the administration and decision-taking in these great state-funded programmes should be decentralized. Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) were set up from 1988 to take over responsibility for the delivery of these programmes. They consisted of groups of local employers, who knew more than any ‘expert’ what skills were actually going to be needed.

Another innovation in which I took a keen interest was the use of Training Vouchers — which because of the corporatist sensibilities of the training establishment I was always being urged to describe as ‘Credits’. Under this scheme, school leavers were given the choice of where they would use their voucher to purchase a certain amount of training from an employer, a local further education college or other approved body. The basic psychology was that of any voucher: when someone can exercise power over his own future he will take a closer interest in it than under any system of central direction. And there is absolutely no reason why those who are in receipt of state funding should be deprived of choice or responsibility. This idea was at the heart of the ‘empowerment’ approach of our 1987 manifesto reforms and is, perhaps, of even more pressing relevance today when the threat of welfare dependency is widely recognized.

Housing is vital to a properly working labour market.* If people cannot move to regions where there are jobs — ‘getting on their bike’, to quote Norman Tebbit’s immortal phrase — there will remain pockets of intractable unemployment. And the less willing or able they are to move, the greater call there will be for state intervention to force or bribe firms to go to commercially unsuitable locations to provide the jobs. The private rented sector of housing would be the ideal source of cheap, often temporary, accommodation of the sort that those seeking work are likely to want. After decades of rent control, however, private landlordism — almost uniquely in Britain — is popularly associated with exploitation and bad conditions. This meant that it was never possible to take the radical action needed to reverse the shrinkage in rented housing which has got steadily worse since the First World War.

In our 1987 manifesto we promised — and subsequently in our 1988 Housing Act introduced — some measures to revive the private rented sector. We further developed the two schemes — originally introduced in 1980 — of the shorthold tenancy (short lets at market rents, after which the landlord can regain possession) and the assured tenancy (also market rents but with security of tenure). These measures had some effect, at least halting the shrinkage in private rented housing; but there will need to be a sea change in attitudes if it is ever to grow to make a major contribution to labour mobility.

By contrast, council housing is the worst source of immobility. Many large council estates bring together people who are out of work but enjoy security of tenure at subsidized rents. They not only have every incentive to stay where they are: they mutually reinforce each other’s passivity and undermine each other’s initiative. Thus a culture grows up in which the unemployed are content to remain living mainly on the state with little will to move and find work.

So the great increase in private home ownership in my years as Prime Minister and the corresponding reduction of the public sector’s share of the housing stock was an important benefit to the economy. Attempts were made to deny this on narrow financial grounds. In particular, it was said that through mortgage tax relief too much of the