Corbyn says education is key after decade of lost growth
LABOUR WILL prioritise investment in education to help Britain recover from a “lost decade” of Tory economic failure, Jeremy Corbyn has said.
The Labour leader used a keynote address to the British Chambers of Commerce education summit to state that a programme of lifelong training is crucial to building a high-skills economy.
He said: “Britain has been living through a lost decade. A decade of lost growth. A decade of stagnant living standards. A decade when investment and productivity fell so far that it takes a worker five days to produce what takes four days in Germany and France. Britain can’t afford another lost decade.
“We have an explosion of lowpaid, insecure jobs. We’ve had a period of lost wage growth and falling real terms pay that the Institute of Fiscal Studies describes as ‘completely unprecedented’.
“And now we have economic growth that has slowed to just 0.2 per cent in the latest quarter – the worst in the G7.”
Mr Corbyn, who said business would have to pay “a bit more tax” under Labour, insisted the party’s plans for a National Education Service will boost the economy.
“It is by investing in our education system that we can end the spread of low-paid, low-skilled, insecure work by providing the skilled workforce that businesses need if they are to create highskilled, better-paid jobs.
“That’s why our manifesto set out plans to build a National Education Service, providing lifelong education and training, free at the point of use, to every single person in this country.
“Our National Education Service will be the key institution of fairness and prosperity for the 21st century, just as the NHS transformed people’s prospects in the 20th century.”
The Labour leader said the country had to do more for vocational training to end the “deeprooted historical snobbishness of Britain’s two-tier educational system”.
Mr Corbyn said he is not a “doom-monger” when it comes to the impact of major technological change on employment, but that transformation cannot be left to the markets to oversee.
“We need public institutions, public investment and public enterprise to work with business to manage the social and economic effects of rapid technological change so that it benefits the many not the few.”