HC Deb 21 April 1970 vol 800 cc216-7
1. Mr. Blaker

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will pay an official visit to Manchester before the end of the present Parliament.

3. Mr. Peyton

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will pay an official visit to Manchester.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Roy Jenkins)

I look forward to visiting Manchester again, but I have no firm plans at present.

Mr. Blaker

Is the Chancellor aware that one of his hon. Friends, in a paper prepared for a learned society in Manchester, disclosed that the Chancellor and one of his right hon. Friends bullied the Prime Minister into dropping his industrial legislation last year by threatening to back an alternative Prime Minister? Was the Chancellor's object to defeat the policy he had once espoused or to remove the Prime Minister?

An Hon. Member

The right hon. Gentleman did not anticipate that question.

Mr. Jenkins

Yes, we anticipate all these questions. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Mackintosh) addressed the Manchester Statistical Society. His remarks there reminded me of some rather unfriendly remarks made about statistics as a science.

Mr. Peyton

While it might have been a very laudable aim for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to seek to remove his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister from office, does he not think the time has come when he should offer to the House, and perhaps to the Manchester Statistical Society, some explanation of how he came to jettison a policy which he himself had made the cornerstone of a Budget speech?

Mr. Jenkins

No. The remarks my hon. Friend made to the learned society in Manchester, no doubt inadvertently, were quite false.

Mr. Sheldon

Does my right hon. Friend recall his last visit to Manchester when he spoke to a distinguished body of persons representing all sides of industry and was well received? Is he aware that if he would like to repeat that visit he would be once again well received?

Mr. Jenkins

I recall that visit. We had serious discussions about the problems of Manchester and the North-West generally. I hope to have such discussions in Manchester in the near future.