HC Deb 26 July 1956 vol 557 cc617-9
19. Mr. Chapman

asked the Minister of Labour why it is proving difficult to find alternative employment for the 5,600 men dismissed in the Birmingham area by British Motor Corporation, seeing that he estimates that 12,000 vacancies exist; and to what extent the list of vacancies has been reduced by employers now that labour is actually available.

Mr. Iain Macleod

Yesterday there were 10,000 vacancies for men in Birmingham and within reasonable daily travelling distance. I told the hon. Member on 19th July that there were then in this area 1,662 men registered as unemployed who had been recently discharged by the British Motor Corporation, and no later figure is available. I am unable to agree that it is proving difficult in general to find alternative work for these men.

Mr. Chapman

While I agree that it is too early yet to draw any definite conclusions, is it not a fact that a large percentage of the men who are actually being found work are not, as the Chancellor wished, going into exports or anything like that, but are going into the distributive trades and the G.P.O. and becoming bus drivers and so on, which are not essential at all?

Mr. Macleod

As soon as we can, I will give the House a break-down by industries of the other occupations in which men find jobs. If the hon. Member would like it, I can straight away send him all the information which we have already, but it by no means bears out all the implications of his supplementary question.

Mr. Gresham Cooke

Is it not true that only half of the men dismissed by the company registered with exchanges, and does not that indicate that men have gone back to the jobs which they held before entering the motor industry?

Mr. Macleod

It is difficult to draw firm conclusions, largely because of the incidence of holidays. One does not know whether many of these people may not come back from their holidays and register at the exchanges at a later date, but the true figure one can give at present is the one in my Answer, that 1,662 out of the total are registered as unemployed.

Mr. Lee

Will the Minister now make special efforts to discover how many of the vacancies on the books are genuine vacancies? He and I know from experience that very many of them do not really exist, and in these conditions it would be a good thing to find which are genuine.

Mr. Macleod

It is not possible to be exact about whether each one of 10,000 vacancies is or is not genuine. What I can say is that, in general, as it has got more difficult to obtain labour in certain areas and in other areas the pressure upon labour resources has eased, so in sympathy with that the figures of vacancies have become a great deal more realistic in the last week or two than they were a few months ago.