HC Deb 11 November 1971 vol 825 cc1220-1
Q1. Mr. Leslie Huckfield

asked the Prime Minister how many letters he has received about unemployment in the Coventry and Nuneaton areas.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath)

I would refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on Tuesday to Questions from the hon. Members for Southall (Mr. Bidwell) and Bothwell (Mr. James Hamilton).—[Vol. 825, c. 825.]

Mr. Huckfield

Is the Prime Minister aware that by continuing to give answers like this he is tending to turn Prime Minister's Question Time into a futile farce? Is he also aware that answers like this give my constituency the impression that he just does not care about unemployment? Is he aware that there is widespread concern in Coventry that it is his Government's deliberate policy to turn the area into a battleground over the toolroom agreement so that our trade unions can finally be crushed?

The Prime Minister

The hon. Gentleman is, of course, absolutely wrong. It the hon. Gentleman has a specific question which he wishes to ask about detailed figures for employment, or about unemployment in a particular area, he can put it, like every other hon. and right hon. Member, to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment. What I must explain to the House is that t am not prepared to set up at No. 10 an enormous organisation which none of my predecessors has had, to take detailed note of every one of the 90,000 letters I receive a year setting out specific views and dealing, as many individual letters do, with a variety of subjects. I am not prepared to set up an organisation to take note of all the views expressed in them. That has never been done and I do not propose to set up that organisation now.

Furthermore, I must tell the hon. Gentleman that whenever a letter at No. 10 requires Departmental action it is immediately, within 24 hours, sent to the appropriate Department for action. To expect Whitehall Departments to dig through their files to find the answers to questions of that kind is entirely unjustified.

Mr. Adam Butler

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the workers at Rolls-Royce in Coventry and in Derby and elsewhere are grateful to the Government for saving the RB211 contract and thereby saving their jobs?

The Prime Minister

I believe that that is absolutely true. The plain fact was that the Government, quite rightly, made an enormous effort in co-operation with the American Administration to ensure that the RB21I went on and a much better contract was signed. This is now going on, and I would have thought the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite would have been pleased about it.

Mr. Edelman

In this connection, will not the Prime Minister repudiate the action of Rolls-Royce at Coventry in locking out toolroom workers, thus precipitating a breakdown in the talks on the Coventry toolroom agreement? Will he now use his authority in order to get Rolls-Royce to withdraw the lock-out notices so that talks can resume?

The Prime Minister

As the hon. Member knows very well, this is a complicated dispute over the toolroom agreement, in which both sides have expressed their views and taken action, and I do not propose to make a judgment on one side or the other.