§ 8. Mr. Ray Powellasked the Secretary of State for Wales what has been the total increase in the unemployment figures in Wales since May 1979.
§ Mr. Nicholas EdwardsSeasonally adjusted and excluding school leavers, unemployment increased by 64,700 to June 1981.
§ Mr. PowellA tone of personal satisfaction appears to be coming from the Secretary of State, despite these appalling figures for Wales. Is he aware that last week alone, at Maesteg, in my constituency, Revlon—a multinational company with good industrial relations and 788 trade union agreements—announced the redundancy of 400 workers? Is he further aware that the Government are fanning the flames of violence in this country, deliberately creating industrial and social unrest—
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. Will the hon. Gentleman ask his question?
§ Mr. PowellI got on with it.
§ Mr. EdwardsThe hon. Gentleman used words similar to those used by the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) in 1978 when he said:
We are dealing with a matter which should be elevated beyond such obvious party interests. I am in a constituency—as most of us are—where blows are falling that are causing insecurity and anxiety to literally thousands of people. We all know that we are wrestling with a major problem."—[Official Report, Welsh Grand Committee, 25 January 1978; c. 59]It ill becomes anyone in this House to make a cheap party attack of that kind.
§ Mr. BestDoes my right hon. Friend agree that the people of Wales would get more help and succour from a disinterested approach to this matter than from the party political barracking that is coming from the Labour Benches? Has he seen a report that appeared in the Financial Times of last Monday, which quotes the inward investment—
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. The hon. Gentleman knows that he is not allowed to quote from it.
§ Mr. BestIs my right hon. Friend aware that the report in the Financial Times refers to the fact that the sense of desperation in Wales is now less than it was in the past? Does he not find it extraordinary that Labour Members scoff at the unemployment figures, in view of the fact that the trade union movement in Port Talbot and Llanwern has now turned those two plants into the most efficient steel-making plants in Europe?
§ Mr. EdwardsI agree with my hon. Friend. I have a great deal more respect than any labour members appear to have for the trade union leadership that I met at those plants and for the work that they are doing.
§ Mr. AbseI am pleased that the Secretary of State has been reading my past speeches with care. Does he agree with the opinion, expressed over a wide spectrum, that we require a departure from the hard—line, partisan party politics of the Prime Minister with her single-minded attachment to monetarism and her determination to steer a course which is clearly bringing calamity upon Wales? Does he not have the capacity to elevate himself beyond the hard party line, of which he is becoming such a keen protagonist, so that we can get in Wales a new policy, new public works and new infrastructure and can do what France is doing? Why does the right hon. Gentleman lag behind?
§ Mr. EdwardsI do not know why I should be lectured by the hon. Gentleman about elevating beyond anything. We have the biggest programme of capital works, infrastructure improvement, road construction and hospital building ever undertaken in Wales by any Government. It is substantially more than that undertaken by the previous Labour Government when unemployment was rising sharply.
§ Mr. WigleyIs the right hon. Gentleman saying that it is part of Conservative strategy to shake people out of 789 existing jobs in manufacturing industry in the name of competitiveness but that there is no corresponding strategy for providing jobs elsewhere? Is it the Government's strategy that all those people should remain on the dole?
§ Mr. EdwardsI have just pointed out that we have a massive strategy of improving the infrastructure, and I have given the hon. Gentleman the number of successes to which the strategy is leading. It is remarkable that in the middle of the worst recession since the war we should have allocated 226 advance factories and nine bespoke factories to new companies and that firms such as Inmos and Mitel should be coming to Wales.
I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not see the significance of those expressions of confidence by new companies and does not understand the scale of the special measures that the Government are initiating to help the unemployed.
§ Mr. Alec JonesDoes the Secretary of State not appreciate that the successes that he describes are far outshone by the failures that we see throughout Wales? Does he not also realise that the figures that we have been given today from all parts of Wales demonstrate the failure of the Government? It is reasonable for the right hon. Gentleman to talk about new factories, but does he not realise that we are losing existing factories in Wales? The Under-Secretary recently visited ITT Creed in Pontypridd, on the Treforest industrial estate, and pointed to it as an example that we should be following. A fortnight ago that factory announced its closure, with the loss of 425 jobs. The right hon. Gentleman has a responsibility to help to preserve existing jobs as well as to create new ones.
§ Mr. EdwardsA great deal of help is given in new investment projects for the retention of existing jobs. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government had failed to solve the long-term problems, but I well recall the sort of excuses that he used to offer after he had been in Government for four years and faced precisely the same situation that we face. He has not come forward with a single positive proposal to rectify the situation, except a lunatic commitment to withdraw from the EEC and an even more lunatic commitment in connection with regional policy, which would destroy regional policy in Wales almost overnight.
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. Right hon. and hon. Members are beginning to make speeches instead of asking questions, and we are also getting long replies.