HC Deb 25 March 1974 vol 871 cc15-6
15. Mr. Huckfield

asked the Secretary of State for Industry what is his latest estimate of the loss of production and earnings because of the three-day week.

Mr. Benn

From the limited statistical information available, manufacturing output may have been reduced by up to one-fifth in the first quarter, equivalent to a loss of gross domestic product of the order of £1,000 million. For the economy as a whole, the loss will have been substantially greater. The index of average earnings in January, the latest month available, showed a fall of 4½ per cent. compared with December.

Mr. Huckfield

Has my right hon. Friend made any estimate of by how many times it would have been cheaper to settle the miners' claim in full immediately?

Mr. Benn

I have not myself done this, but figures were given during the recent election campaign and I have no reason to amend what was said by Government members at that time.

Mr. Tuck

Was the three-day week really necessary? Is it not a fact that when the three-day week was proclaimed we had reserves of 16 million tons of coal, much more than the year before? Therefore, if a three-day week was necessary in this period it was certainly necessary in the former period when it was not imposed.

Mr. Benn

I think my hon. Friend knows that I put that very question to the then Prime Minister early in January. In our view—it is a view I do not resile from in any way—the three-day week was intelligible only in terms of the desire to have a confrontation with the National Union of Mineworkers.

Mr. Emery

Will not the right hon. Gentleman agree that, if the decrease of coal production which had been evident over the six weeks before 16th December 1973 had continued at that rate, without a three-day week we should have been at minimum security levels by the end of January?

Mr. Benn

Yes, but I think that the hon. Member misses the point that the shortage of fuel derived from a policy which we, then in opposition, believed to be misguided. If he looks at the figures I have just given, he will see that his own Government spent in two months' loss of manufacturing output alone the equivalent of two Concorde programmes.