HC Deb 18 December 1961 vol 651 cc913-6
7. Mr. Bence

asked the Minister of Labour what increase has taken place in the employment of skilled engineers in the engineering and shipbuilding industries from 1957 to the latest available date.

Mr. Hare

In the shipbuilding and ship-repairing industry, workers in skilled engineering trades numbered 61,824 at the end of August, 1961, compared with 78,111 in August, 1957. Corresponding figures for the engineering industry are not available.

Mr. Bence

I am shocked to hear that there has been a decrease in the number of skilled engineers employed in the shipbuilding and engineering industries in the last two years. Is this not an extraordinary state of affairs at a time when the right hon. Gentleman's Department is trying to encourage an increase in the number of apprentices training for the engineering industry? What are we to make of a situation where there is a decrease in the number of skilled men being employed and at the same time we are trying to get more apprentices to go into these skilled occupations?

Mr. Hare

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that since 1957 the decline in world shipping and the increase in shipbuilding capacity abroad have resulted in a fall of activities and employment in the shipbuilding industry. I think that he will also be aware that, taking as a whole the shipbuilding industry and all the workers employed in it, this is an ageing industry. Rather than adopting a defeatist attitude in suggesting that the situation is continually declining, it is very necessary to get a new entry of young people to keep the industry going.

Mr. Bence

That is not a satisfactory answer. We know that there has been a decline in the shipbuilding industry, but surely the function of the Minister of Labour is to help to redeploy the skilled labour out of a declining industry into an expanding one? I am asking a question in respect of the engineering industry. Evidently there has been no redeployment because in the two industries taken together there has been a decline.

Mr. Hare

That is a slightly different question. We do not want to assume that the decline that has been going on in the shipbuilding industry will continue. I hope that the industry will have a great future, but unless it is prepared to take a proper proportion of young apprentices it will not have a future.

Mr. Ridsdale

Why is not my right hon. Friend more straightforward? Surely the reason for the decline in the shipbuilding industry is the number of demarcation disputes which there have been in the shipbuilding industry. If one looks at what is happening in Ireland one would be gravely concerned about the future of the shipbuilding industry.

Mr. Hare

I am being entirely straightforward, but I do not accept that the shipbuilding industry has no future prospects.

8. Mr. Bence

asked the Minister of Labour what steps he proposes taking to meet the threatened decline in employment in the shipbuilding industry on the Clyde.

Mr. Hare

I understand that recently shipbuilders on the Clyde have been more successful in obtaining some orders and I hope that this will arrest the decline in shipbuilding employment for the immediate future. There is much that the industry itself can do in the field of labour relations and utilisation of labour to improve its competitive ability, and at a conference I held with both sides of the industry on 14th December it was decided to set up a joint working party under an official of my Department to concert practical measures to this end.

Mr. Bence

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we on the Clyde are getting sick of this continual propagation of the idea that there is delay, through bad industrial relations and lost man-hours through strikes? Messrs. John Brown have just launched a passenger ship and, from its inception, not one man-hour has been lost.

Mr. Speaker

This is the time for Questions and not for an asserted proposition.

Mr. Bence

This is important in view of what the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) said. We on Clydeside have very good industrial relations in the shipbuilding industry. Will the Minister see that he and his Government take steps immediately to try to put some pep into the Clyde shipbuilding industry in order to enable shipbuilding interests on the Clyde to keep their teams of workers together?

Mr. Hare

I should be the last to wish to denigrate the shipbuilding industry, but my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) is perfectly right in part of his supplementary question to call attention to the fact that there are demarcation issues. The hon. Gentleman knows that, taking the shipbuilding industry as a whole, there are more unofficial strikes in that industry than in most. We have to face the fact that these things are not insoluble and we have to do something about it.