UNEMPLOYMENT (SCOTLAND) (Hansard, 1 February 1971)

§ Mr. James Sillars (South Ayrshire)
It is my intention to indict the Tory Government as the guilty men responsible for the high unemployment in Scotland. I have no doubt, particularly watching the Under-Secretary, that they will squirm and twist and wriggle in an attempt to get off the hook, but this is a bad week for the Tory Party. We start with a debate on Scottish unemployment tonight, we deal with the Scottish situation on Wednesday and we have another motion on Scottish unemployment next Monday.
I am certain that in the process of the seven-day debate that will go on inside the House and outside it the Conservatives will be made to face up to their responsibilities for the disastrous level of unemployment in Scotland. I say in all seriousness to the Under-Secretary that in laying the blame at the door of the Tory Party I am not playing politics. The reason is simple. I know that as long as the Tories think that they can shrug the blame off on to someone else they will do nothing about it. It is only when they cannot escape from the consequences of their actions that they are likely to do something about it. The motive is no higher than that—merely to save their political skins.
The question of who is to blame for Scottish unemployment has been raised before. The Conservative Government 1421 say that it is the fault of the Labour Government. We have even had the Secretary of State for Scotland making that claim. He has justified this charge by claiming to have forecast the unemployment problem. I have here a quote nom the Daily Express, and I am certain hon. Members opposite will not question the authority of the Tory Party's Pravda. In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Buchanan), who is Secretary of the Scottish Labour Group, the right hon. Gentleman is reported in the Daily Express as follows: He reminded Mr. Buchanan that the Tories had forecast the current unemployment situation in the month before taking office. If the Tory Party and the Secretary of State forecast that situation before June that leads one to ask about the efficacy of their contingency plans. Why after three months in office, after forecasting before June, the problem of Scottish unemployment did the Under-Secretary of State for Development say in October, in his constituency "Alas, nothing can be done this year about unemployment."? Why did the Tory Party not tell the people during the General Election "Alas, we cannot do anything about unemployment his year."? They did not say that in the election. The opposite was the case. I will not weary the House by talking about the question of cutting prices "at a stroke", but no one has noticed that the Prime Minister's famous "at a stroke" speech on 16th June included rising production and falling unemployment.
If the Tories had been in office for only three weeks when the Under-Secretary said that nothing could be done about employment, he would have had a fair point and probably he could have been forgiven for his "alas" statement. But. coming three months after the Tories took office, his statement that nothing could be done meant that nothing would be done. There is a world of difference between those two statements.
Surely the first thing which the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary should have done when they went to St. Andrew's House was to check whether their forecasts were accurate. Surely that was a high priority on their internal administration agenda. If it was 1422 a high priority and if their forecasts were accurate, as they claim they were, there must have been a conscious choice in the early days—and I use the word "days" advisedly—of this Administration to do absolutely nothing and to throw in their hand about solving the problem of this year's unemployment.
I do not think that the Tories' claims to be innocent victims of circumstances hold water. Nor does the assertion that the present situation is an unavoidable consequence of the 1970 Labour Budget. [Interruption.] There is no point in the Under-Secretary shaking his head because I have heard Tory spokesmen argue that our budget judgment in April is responsible for the current unemployment.
The problem of unemployment arises because of low growth in the economy and for other reasons. Probably the switch from our investment grant system has something to do with it.

§ Mr. Ian MacArthur (Perth and East Perthshire)
What about the 1966 White Paper?

§ Mr. Sillars
There is no point in the hon. Gentleman interjecting. I am sick to death of him in this Chamber and in Committee upstairs.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson)
Order. The hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars) has been here long enough to know that what he just said is out of order.

§ Mr. Sillars
I accept your stricture, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I regard it as most unfair for the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) to interject from a sedentary position almost every time I am on my feet in this Chamber or in Committee upstairs.

§ Mr. MacArthur
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) knows that if the hon. Gentleman does not give way he must resume his seat.

§ Mr. Sillars
The reason why I will not give way is very simple. If the Tories want to raise the problem of unemployment in Scotland on the Adjournment they should make an application just like the rest of us.

§ Mr. MacArthur
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

§ Mr. Sillars
No. I am talking about an important subject, I am not here to bandy words with the hon. Gentleman.

§ Mr. MacArthur
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Will not the hon. Gentleman give us an opportunity to intervene from a standing position on a matter of great importance?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
That is not a point of order. However, the House will remember that I drew attention to the fact that, although the remarks of the hon. Gentleman for South Ayrshire were perhaps intended to be directed at the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire, they were directed to the Chair.

§ Mr. Sillars
I apologise for my flash of temper, but this is a very important subject.
The problem of unemployment arises because the Conservatives have reduced the rate of growth target of 3.5 per cent.

§ Mr. MacArthur
Tell us about the White Paper.

§ Mr. Sillars
That means that unemployment figures have been recalculated upwards.

§ Mr. MacArthur
Eighty-two thousand lost jobs.

§ Mr. Sillars
If the hon. Member continues to interject, I shall not listen.
I refer the Under-Secretary to my right hon. Friend's Budget Statement, on 14th April, 1970, as reported at column 1230, where he pointed out—

§ Mr. MacArthur
Eighty-two thousand lost jobs.

§ Mr. Sillars
—that the central reason for his policy in accelerating growth towards the target figure of 3.5 per cent. was the need to reduce unemployment. Three months after my right hon. Friend's Budget judgment, we were into the month of July. It must have been fairly clear at that time that a certain stimulus was required in the economy if we were to reach 3.5 per cent.

§ Mr. MacArthur
To overcome 82,000 lost jobs.

§ Mr. Sillars
If the Under-Secretary and his hon. Friend who is heckling behind him want to check up, I advise them to read the statement by the late lain Macleod in his first speech in the House as Chancellor of the Exchequer—

§ Mr. MacArthur
Eighty-two thousand lost jobs.

§ Mr. Sillars
—that stimulus was required to get 3.5 per cent. When no action was taken, this meant slower growth and made higher unemployment inevitable.
I believe that it was a deliberate choice by the Conservative Government, because they abandoned the prices and incomes policy via the National Board for Prices and Incomes and opted for the traditional Tory wages policy of intimidating the workpeople and the trade union movement with high unemployment.

§ Mr. MacArthur
Nonsense.

§ Mr. Sillars
I know that the Secretary of State for Scotland can take only a share of the blame for the Government's United Kingdom economic policies, which have consequential effects upon Scotland. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer must bear the main burden of the blame. Even within the restrictions of the policy laid down by the Cabinet, however, it is my contention that the Secretary of State could have acted to ensure that the rise in unemployment did not reach the present disastrous levels. A method was open to the Secretary of State and to the Government, and that was to increase public expenditure on that favourite Tory word "infrastructure", which was used constantly in their election manifesto.
It is legitimate to argue that public expenditure is a way of reducing unemployment because the Secretary of State recognised this and brought forward £1¾ million for winter work relief for unemployment. He recognised the principle of the point that I am trying to make. What he did not seem to recognise was that £1¾ million was derisory in relation to the needs of the time. What we required was public expenditure on infrastructure on a massive scale—on housing, roads, schools, hospitals, nursery schools, clearing up dereliction and the 1425 building of old folks' homes, for example. But a choice of that nature poses extremely grave problems for the Conservative Party because they have an ideological aversion to public expenditure.
What took place was a choice between Tory Party dogma and the needs of the people, and the needs of the people came last and Tory Party dogma came first. Public expenditure was not introduced on the necessary scale and our unemployment went up.

§ Mr. MacArthur
Hypocritical nonsense.

§ Mr. Sillars
It was indeed. I can think of no better comment upon the Tory Government than that comment from the hon. Member.

§ Mr. MacArthur
Eighty-two thousand lost jobs.

§ Mr. Sillars
Because of those decisions, the present winter has been one of humiliation for 115,000 people in Scotland.
I suggest to the Under-Secretary that even now something could still be done to absorb certain sections of unemployed people. If he released money to hospital boards of management, for example—all of them—with certain plans pigeon-holed for a number of years, for fairly minor schemes which they could undertake quickly, he would absorb many unemployed people in the building and construction industry.

§ Mr. MacArthur
Selective employment tax.

§ Mr. Sillars
I hope that if S.E.T. is abandoned we shall not get value-added tax in its place.
This winter is a very worrying one, but I am also concerned about the probability of rising unemployment next winter. I may say, without being controversial, that the Chancellor, with that stupid 6d. cut off the standard rate of tax, has preempted his Budget this year, and there is not a great deal of room for manoeuvre left to him. One can predict the sort of situation we shall be in after this year's Budget, that growth—if we get growth at all—will not be sufficient to stimulate a sufficient reduction in unemployment. There is clear evidence of it now. So we have legitimate fears about next winter. 1426 This one is bad, but next winter could be worse.
I say to the Under-Secretary that it is essential that the Government act now. I further suggest that it is impossible to get away from the point which I made earlier about the need to inject massive amounts of money in public expenditure. I think that the Government will find that inescapable.
I remember writing to the Secretary of State on 5th October. I remember that very well because it was at the end of the Labour Party's annual conference. I made the proposition to him that he should undertake a public works programme amounting to £20 million, with £5 million for schools and nursery schools and £4 million for hospitals, and when one looks at the condition of our mental hospitals there would be a great deal of benefit not only to the unemployed but to the patients in those hospitals if we invested that amount of money in them —and also to the staff, as some of my hon. Friends are saying, and they are right. Then there should be £6 million for local authority road works and £5 million for clearing dereliction.
If that sort of programme is introduced, if it is introduced for next winter, then we shall take up the slack in both skilled and unskilled labour now unemployed. I would do the right hon. Gentleman an injustice if I said I had no answer from him, but I cannot remember getting an answer from him, probably because the points I made were unanswerable.
I want to come to the end of what I have to say.

§ Mr. MacArthur
Now talk about the White Paper and 82,000 lost jobs.

§ Mr. Sillars
I want to be more generous in giving time to the Under-Secretary than some of his hon. Friends have been generous to me in this debate.
There are imperative economic reasons for reducing unemployment, but the social reasons override every other possible reason. Many people think that unemployment today is not the same problem as it was in the 'thirties. Certainly it is not the same problem in magnitude. We have about 700,000 unemployed in Britain now, compared with perhaps 3 million in the 'twenties and 'thirties. But to the individual who is 1427 unemployed today the problem is pretty much the same. Certainly cash aids and unemployment benefit are better, though they are still inadequate, but the sense of isolation and hopelessness is, to some extent, worse than it was.
In the days of mass unemployment one was unemployed together with all one's friends. Now a man can be unemployed and be the only one in his street who is unemployed. His sense of isolation is greater than it ever was before. I speak from experience. I have never been unemployed, but I have been the situation next to it, running around with a redundancy notice in my pay packet.
It happened to me about four weeks before a Christmas. I remember very vividly the horrible feeling which a man gets when his ability to earn his living is suddenly taken from him. I shall always remember walking up my street and being the only man in the street with a redundancy notice in his pocket. I went home and listened to the children innocently talking about what they were likely to get for Christmas. My wife and I were at our wits end wondering how to meet the bill for the Christmas presents. I was lucky. I was in a good trade union and did not become redundant.
That is the sort of situation which is facing 115,000 people in Scotland. Becoming unemployed does something to a man. It also does something to a woman, because women are taking their part increasingly in industry. It is perhaps irrational, but it is nevertheless the case that an unemployed man feels a loss of dignity, a degree of self-humiliation. When he applies for jobs but does not get them, when he applies for jobs that perhaps are not there, he gets the feeling that somehow or other he is industrially unclean. It is a social crime to put people through the mental anguish of unemployment.
The 115,000 unemployed people in Scotland have committed no offence against society. They are honourable and decent citizens with the very laudable, if modest, ambition of simply wanting work. As the Tory election manifesto was called "The Better Tomorrow", and as we have had 226 tomorrows since 19th June, it is clearly the Government's responsibility. They have the power and 1428 the ability. It is their responsibility to provide those people with the work that they urgently need.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office (Mr. George Younger)
Once again, as is the normal practice with this Opposition, I have been asked to reply to an adjournment debate and have been given absolutely no time in which to do so. Even allowing the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars) the maximum time for interruptions, there is nothing like enough time for me to answer the debate in the time I have been left. I make that quite clear before I embark on my speech.
The hon. Gentleman disappointed me greatly tonight. I thought that he had a much greater grasp of the real ways of economics and of the ways in which the country is run than he has shown tonight. He has produced a whole string of slogans and extraordinary statements, none of which hang together. If his claim is to be believed that he was not playing at politics tonight, I look forward to the time when he does.
The hon. Gentleman misquoted something I said: he alleged that in October I said that no one could do anything about unemployment in the following year. What I said—correctly—was that, alas, no one could do anything this winter about unemployment, and nobody could in September and October of last year, and everybody knows that quite well.
A marvellous piece of information that the hon. Gentleman gave us was that unemployment arises because of low growth in the economy. Did not the hon. Gentleman, both in and out of Parliament, support for five years a Government which achieved the lowest growth that we have had for many years and which stagnated the economy for five years? The hon. Gentleman expects us to believe that until 18th June last everything was marvellous and nothing needed doing, that the budget judgment of his right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) in April was perfect until 18th June and that suddenly on 19th June it all needed changing.
The hon. Gentleman complained that the Tory Government had abandoned 1429 the prices and incomes policy, whereas his own party was the one that abandoned it, having introduced it in the first place. The Labour Government introduced a wage freeze, and then abandoned that, too.
The hon. Gentleman ended with the most remarkable thing of all. He complained that nothing had been done for mental hospitals under the Tory Government, whereas the fact is that the Tory Government in the short time they have been in office have already provided extra funds for putting right the things that are wrong with mental hospitals.
Clearly, we are very concerned about the rising unemployment rate. No Government could be anything but concerned about the situation. We do not underestimate the position. Having listened to my hon. Friends week after week for three, even four, years, putting Questions again and again to the Labour Government about the loss of jobs in Scotland and every time being laughed out of court, being scorned for raising the matter, being assured by the previous Secretary of State that everything in the garden was lovely, it is a bitter victory to be proved right now. Here we are left with everything that was forecast, everything we complained about, and more. Now we are expected to listen to the sort of speech the hon. Gentleman has made, and it is not worthy of him.
Let me give some facts. Every month after September, 1969, and up to June, 1970, the total of unemployed in Scotland was higher than it was in the corresponding month a year previously. At first the increase was relatively small, no more than 500, but the gap rapidly widened to an increase of over 6,000 by the beginning of 1970 and to 10,000 by May and June, 1970, and by July, 1970, it was 12,500. So we were not only on an upward trend, but on a rapidly accelerating upward trend.
Every Government find themselves with a legacy from their predecessors—the Labour Government did and we did. The legacy left to the previous Government when they took office in 1964 is shown in the unemployment figures for the first half of 1965—under 80,000 and falling by the early summer to around 60,000. What we inherited was a summer rate of over 80,000 and the deep-rooted rising 1430 trend to which I have already referred. Indeed the July, 1970, level was the highest level, with one exception, since the war. That was the legacy left to us by the Labour Government.
There is a contrast, too, and a very marked one, in the growth of employment opportunities between 1959 and 1964 and between 1964 and 1969. In the earlier period there was overall a net increase of 44,000 employees in employment in Scotland; under the Labour Government from 1964 to 1969 there was, as the hon. Gentleman knows, a net loss of jobs of 30,000. The hon. Gentleman may have noticed an answer to a Question by my lion Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) on 10th December last, which shows that the net loss of employment between March, 1966, and March, 1970, was no fewer than 82,000 in Scotland. Those are the figures.

§ Dr. J. Dickson Mabon (Greenock)
rose—

§ Mr. Younger
No, I am not giving way; I have not time. The hon. Gentleman cannot complain about those figures. They are taken from HANSARD, and they are absolutely right. By the end of 1969 the Scottish economy was stagnating, although the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) was describing Scotland's economy as "Scotland's rapidly strengthening position." I would emphasise that I am quoting from HANSARD of 10th December, 1969; Vol. 793, c. 520. That was the time when the jobless figures were going up in the way I have described to the House.

§ Dr. Dickson Mabon
rose

§ Mr. Younger
No.
The index of industrial production for Scotland showed an increase of less than 1½ per cent between the second quarter of 1969 and the second quarter of 1970. Redundancies had begun to climb in many industries that can easily be named—

§ Dr. Dickson Mabon
Would the hon. Gentleman give way?

§ Mr. Younger
No.
The Scottish economy has been afflicted by the same malaise which the policies of the previous Administration had 1431 imposed on the economy as a whole. Wage costs were forced rapidly upwards at an accelerating rate.

§ Mr. Robert MacLennan (Caithness and Sutherland)
On a point of order. The hon. Gentleman began his speech by complaining of the fact he had not been given time to answer the debate. In the course of some seven minutes—and he has now one minute left—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
The hon. Gentleman must know that that is not a point of order, nor is it helping the timing of this debate.

§ Mr. MacLennan
As I understand it, it is the—

Hon. Members
Filibuster.

§ Mr. Younger
I am reminded of a debate some two years ago when we sought to ask the then Secretary of State about loss of jobs in Scotland when the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) put up a filibuster for something like 2½ hours to prevent these facts from being known. That was a disgraceful thing to do, and the same thing is being done tonight. It is a deliberate attempt to stop me from making my points.

§ Dr. Dickson Mabon
You are a Parliamentary cheat.

§ Mr. William Ross (Kilmarnock)
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to accuse a right hon. Gentleman of a subterfuge in relation to filibustering and ought not that right hon. Gentleman to have an opportunity to reply?

Hon. Members
Come off it!

§ Mr. Ross
I deny it entirely.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen must know that such interventions cannot help this debate. Mr. Younger.

§ Mr. Younger
It may have been a piece of private enterprise by the hon. Member for Fife, West. All I can say is that it was done without the right hon. Gentleman's approval—