To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what steps are being taken by his Department to encourage training initiatives for people with disabilities.

Training and enterprise councils and local enterprise companies in Scotland are required to set out in their business plans how they intend to provide training for people with special needs, including those with disabilities. These plans form the basis of their contract. From April this year, people with disabilities are being given higher priority than before by being included in the aim group for employment training.

Will the Secretary of State meet the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, which will provide him with concrete evidence of how young disabled people are being denied their training rights? Will he inform the training and enterprise councils that they have a contractual responsibility to deal with these matters, and that they should meet it? Will he discourage his ministerial colleague from complaining about the quota system as Departments have an appalling record, and his own is no exception?

I will not answer the last part of the hon. Gentleman's question because the Government's position on the quota was explained fully a few moments ago by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State. My hon. Friend or I would be happy to meet the organisation to which the hon. Gentleman referred. We are happy to discuss these matters with it, and I can confirm that training and enterprise councils are contractually bound to make available training places for people with special needs, including people with disabilities.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that the Government introduced the legislation that ensures that all 16 and 17-year-olds, including disabled youngsters, are entitled to training, and that that legislation did not exist under the Labour Government? It is humbug to pretend otherwise.

My hon. Friend is right. There was no guarantee for young people, disabled or otherwise, when the Labour party was in office. It is no use Opposition Members parroting from sedentary positions matters relating to unemployment at that time, because we know very well that Ministers in the previous Labour Government wanted to introduce schemes such as we have introduced but did not have the resources to do so because of the abject failure of their economic policy.