But I know that in Bury, as elsewhere in the UK, the full employment we are now enjoying is fragile. The reserve army of labour created by the noble Baroness Thatcher has either been temporarily absorbed by the hamburger economy or pensioned off with Incapacity Benefit.

Almost all of my constituents are in work. But far too many are surviving just above the breadline, doing jobs that are way below their potential with little chance of increasing their level of skill or their earnings.

How do we overcome a century and a half of failure to take seriously the importance of vocational education and training? How do we unify the academic/vocational divide? And how do we imprint on the brain of every parent and every employer in Britain the message that skill, knowledge, creativity and innovation are the tools of survival, not to mention success, in the weightless economy?

Far too many British employers have viewed training as a cost and not an investment. Far too many British politicians have ignored work-based training (because that's what other people's children did) and have decided to let employers get on with it.

And they haven't. That's partly why 20% of adult workers struggle with basic literacy and numeracy. It's largely why the number of British workers with level 3 qualifications is less than half the number in Germany. And it's probably why BMW bought, and then sold, Rover and not the other way round.

In Europe they do it differently. The Swedes introduced a law on educational leave in 1974, the year of the ILO Convention on the subject, to which the UK is a signatory. The Italians established their 150 hours scheme and the French followed in 1984. Article 15 of the European Social Chapter, to which the UK government is now a signatory, calls on governments and both sides of industry to set up schemes of leave for retraining purposes. And in the last few years British trade unions and the TUC have been pushing hard to get skills and training at the top of the collective bargaining agenda.

The British problem isn't primarily a lack of aggregate investment in training. Employers spend over £10bn annually on training. The budget of the new National Learning and Skills Council will be almost £6bn. The problem is that almost a quarter of the workforce doesn't get any.

I want to change that. My Lifelong Learning (Paid Study Time) bill puts before parliament the concept of a national minimum entitlement to training - an annual time allowance for training purposes for everyone in work. Most employees have this already. If you're an MP, a media consultant or a managing director, there's no shortage of opportunities for personal and professional development.

My bill would extend a bit of that opportunity to the caretaker, the cleaner and the care assistant. Paid study time really is the most effective way of extending vocational education to the many and not just the few.

The bill doesn't specify the minimum number of hours. It simply establishes the principle. It won't make much progress in this parliament. But it will get people talking about the ideas and thinking about the mechanisms. And it will come back, again and again, until it is accepted alongside acceptance of the national minimum wage.

The right to earn and the right to learn. Nothing revolutionary. Just a bit more security and opportunity for low-paid workers in the weightless economy.

This article was published in The Guardian newspaper on November 14th 2000.