§ Q5. Mr. Ashleyasked the Prime Minister how many letters he has received to date from retirement pensioners about the Government's economic and social policies; and what replies he has sent.
§ The Prime MinisterIt is not possible to identify how many of my correspondents are pensioners. The replies sent to letters about pensioners set out the various ways in which the Government are helping or propose to help them.
§ Mr. AshleyWill the Prime Minister accept my warm congratulations on his commitment to creating in Britain one nation? Will he tell ungrateful pensioners who may not appreciate the munificence of the Government that that commitment is to one nation in two parts, the first part comprised of those who can stand on their own two feet and the second of those who cannot?
§ The Prime MinisterI cannot, I regret, accept the thesis put forward by the hon. Gentleman. What divides the nation is when one section is determined to pursue its own interests regardless of the interests of others—[Interruption.]
§ Mr. William HamiltonLook behind you.
§ The Prime Minister—and perhaps those who are putting in inflationary wage demands, incited by hon. Gentlemen opposite—[Interruption.]—will bear this in mind. When we are asking the community to provide, through taxation, for the improvement of benefits to those who are less fortunate, which is the policy which we have been pursuing, that is not divisive. It is the real meaning of community and one nation.
§ Mr. LongdenWill my right hon. Friend point out to the hon. Member for 1898 Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) that those who cannot stand on their own feet are not helped by mutilating the feet of those who can?
§ The Prime MinisterAnother way of putting it was eloquently stated by the late Sir Winston Churchill when he said that one cannot help the weak by weakening the strong.
§ Mr. Harold WilsonAfter all these cliché—[Interruption.]—will the right hon. Gentleman now turn to words of his own, which he did not intend as a cliché, when he spoke in Leicester during the election about the effect of rising prices on old-age pensioners? In view of his responsibility for rising prices over the last nine months—[Interruption.]—which are now rising far faster than at any time in recent history—by abolishing the Prices and Incomes Board, the Consumer Council and by encouraging private enterprise to put up prices, will he say, in the light of that, whether he is fulfilling the pledge which he gave at Leicester?
§ The Prime MinisterThe right hon. Gentleman will have learned from his own bitter experience in office that the Prices and Incomes Board and the Consumer Council were not able to influence prices. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Indeed, they were not. There is no evidence at all that they were able to influence prices. Nor did the right hon. Gentleman ever have the machinery for the detailed control of prices. Moreover, the right hon. Gentleman is largely responsible for the fact that the inflationary wage demands which he himself stoked up during his last nine months in office have led to the rising prices which we have been experiencing since.
Our task has been to slow the rate of inflation down, and we can take some encouragement from the fact that awards of wage increases are no longer escalating at the rate they were under the right hon. Gentleman's Government but are stabilising, and there are some signs of their now coming down.