HC Deb 13 April 1967 vol 744 cc1345-6
7. Mr. Elystan Morgan

asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will request the Welsh Economic Council to make a study of the effects of Selective Employment Tax on areas in Wales where only a low proportion of the insured population is engaged in manufacturing industry and a very high proportion thereof in service industry.

Mrs. White

My right hon. Friend has already asked the Council for its comments on the proposal for a regional employment premium. In considering this matter, the Council will no doubt take account of the relatively low proportion of the insured population engaged in manufacturing industry in certain areas in Wales.

Mr. Morgan

I thank my hon. Friend for that encouraging reply. Will she accept from me that there is deep feeling in Mid-Wales that the disproportion of manufacturing industry to service occupations is such as to constitute in Mid-Wales special problems in this respect?

Mrs. White

We fully appreciate, as was made plain in the Green Paper, that there are areas which have special needs and which will not be helped very much by the proposals in that paper. If my hon. Friend will examine the relevant paragraphs of the Report, he will see the references I have mentioned.

Mr. Birch

Does the hon. Lady realise that the implementation of the Green Paper will be extremely damaging to her constituency and to mine, because the effect of it is to do nothing for service industries and to prejudice manufacturing industries in that area?

Mrs. White

I remind the right hon. Gentleman that Flintshire has the lowest rate of unemployment in Wales and one of the lowest in the United Kingdom. I am speaking for my constituency and I would not presume to speak for his. The Government are, therefore, much more concerned with the areas mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardigan (Mr. Elystan Morgan), where there are certainly very great difficulties.

Mr. Gibson-Watt

Does the right hon. Lady really realise that both answers she has given are entirely unsatisfactory and that, in future, this question should not be referred to the Welsh Economic Council but that the Secretary of State should be spending his labours on impressing the Chancellor of the Exchequer? He has had 12 months to do it. What has been the result?

Mrs. White

One of the results has been the Green Paper, after all.