National Economic Development Council

HC Deb 01 August 1972 vol 842 cc334-5

8. Mr. Green

asked the Secretary of State for Employment when he expects to be present at a meeting of the National Economic Development Council.

Mr. Maurice Macmillan

I expect to attend the normal monthly meeting of the council tomorrow morning.

Mr. Green

In the light of the continuing rapid change in methods of production, distribution and exchange, to what extent are all parties to the NEDC giving priority to retraining and the application of retraining efforts?

Mr. Macmillan

Questions of training and retraining are not a direct concern of the National Economic Development Council but they come into discussion. Certainly the implications of the need for retraining are very much behind some of the studies undertaken by the National Economic Development Office.

Mr. Harold Walker

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the NEDC will regard the early answers this afternoon on unemployment as reflecting an extraordinary complacency on the part of the Government, particularly in the light of the seriously disquieting figures that we had in the latest unemployment returns? Will the right hon. Gentleman say what additional measures the Government are taking to avoid a repetition next winter of last winter's disastrous unemployment figures?

Mr. Macmillan

I am not in the least complacent about the present unemployment figures. But as I said when the trend of unemployment was downwards, one should not make too much of one month's figures. That is particularly so when about 26,000 out of a 28,000 increase in unemployment in the last figures were students registering as unemployed during the vacation. But I am not complacent about the figures and we have every intention of keeping a very close eye on them with a view to preventing any increase in unemployment.