§ Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington)I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the announcement by the Austin Rover Group on Friday of the decision to make redundant 600 toolroom workers at the Austin Rover plant at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham, in my constituency, and 150 at Dunstable and Llanelli.The matter is important because unemployment in this part of my constituency is now 23 in every 100, with more than half of them out of work for more than a year. In the whole constituency, 8,364 are jobless—virtually the same as a year ago.The matter is specific because the number of jobs in the west midlands machine tool industry has fallen from 8,750 to 3,500 in the past five years—a loss of six out of every ten jobs.
It is rumoured that the Austin Rover group plans, against the background of those redundancies, to order millions of pounds worth of machine tools for its Sherpa van and Land Rover production from West Germany, when the men with the skills and experience to make the tools for the production of the Metro, the Maestro, the Montego, the Acclaim, and even the latest Rolls-Royce are to be thrown on the scrapheap.
The matter is urgent because the redundancies mark one more fatal step in the rundown of toolroom capacity, which can only cost more British jobs and mean that, when the recovery comes, it is certain that the necessary machine tools will have to be imported.
§ Mr. SpeakerThe hon. Member asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
the decision of the Austin Rover Group to make 600 toolroom workers redundant at its plant at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham.I fully understand the concern that the hon. Gentleman has expressed, but I regret that I do not consider that the matter he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 10. Therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.