HC Deb 28 January 1971 vol 810 cc806-8
Q4. Mr. Skinner

asked the Prime Minister if he will reduce the number of Ministers in the Department of Employment.

The Prime Minister

No, Sir.

Mr. Skinner

Is the Prime Minister aware that all sections of British industry are suffering from the worst wholly-unemployed figures since the end of the Second World War and that a few more Tory Ministers added to the unemployed will not make any appreciable difference? Would he also accept that the pledge which he gave on 16th June, among the many other pledges, to cut unemployment at a stroke has now been added to the long list of broken promises?

The Prime Minister

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary told the House while I was in Singapore— and this has been emphasised by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer— that if a high rate of cost inflation continues, there is bound to be higher unemployment. It is the whole question of inflation that we are tackling at this moment. If the Leader of the Opposition likes to give his support in the country to stopping excessive inflationary wage claims, he and the hon. Gentleman might serve some more useful purpose.

Mr. Harold Wilson

The right hon. Gentleman will not continue to get away with this kind of answer. As I understand it, he is now trying to say that the reason he has broken his pledge on unemployment, in common with all the other pledges, is inflation. Was not that pledge about unemployment, which was also covered by the phrase "at a stroke" since it was all the same sentence, made in the course of a long discourse on inflation, involving a promise to break into the price-wage inflation so that we could cut unemployment? Why has he flown in the face of those clear election pledges?

The Prime Minister

The right hon. Gentleman knows that throughout the election I emphasised that the basic cause of inflation was the wage explosion which had been released by his right hon. Friend. It was the deliberate abandonment of the right hon. Gentleman's prices and incomes policy as well as his abandonment of the reform of industrial relations which led to that position.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis

Since two of our Ministers can carry out the work of four Ministers in the Labour Government, does my right hon. Friend not agree that, once the Industrial Relations Bill is through the House, we should not only be able to reduce the number of Ministers in the Department of Employment but also to get rid of the present inflation, reform the strike situation in industry and thus reduce employment?

The Prime Minister

As the House knows, when I formed this Administration, I greatly reduced the number of Ministrys below that required by the present Leader of the Opposition in the former Administration. Of course, I shall keep the numbers under review in the same way as I shall keep under review the whole organisation and machinery of government.

Mr. Roy Jenkins

Was it part of the Prime Minister's anti-wage inflationary policy during the election to endorse the statement of his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer that for the then Government not to pay 30 per cent. to the doctors was wholly unacceptable?

The Prime Minister

I dealt with that matter fully and I always challenged the Leader of the Opposition, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and the then Secretary of State for Social Services to say exactly what was the economic situation in which they were deciding the doctor's award. On that they would never come clean, but now we know what it was.