Unemployment (Hansard, 13 July 1981)

§ 4. Mr. Ioan Evans
asked the Secretary of State for Wales how many people were unemployed in Wales, Mid-Glamorgan and Aberdare in May 1979 and at the latest available date; and what action is proposed to deal with the problem.

§ Mr. Nicholas Edwards
In May 1979 unemployment in Wales, Mid-Glamorgan and Aberdare totalled 83,024, 15,471 and 1,961 respectively. The figures in June 1981 were 150,352, 29,007 and 3,524. The Government will continue to pursue policies to encourage improved competitiveness while undertaking major programmes to improve the industrial infrastructure and reduce the impact of the recession on those who are unemployed, particularly the young unemployed.

§ Mr. Evans
Will the Secretary of State look again at the Select Committee report on employment opportunities in Wales in view of the fact that over a year ago it said that there was not a jobs gap but a jobs chasm? Is he aware that the chasm is widening month by month? Is he further aware that at that time the Select Committee warned that there would be serious social disorder if the Government did not address themselves to the problem of unemployment? When will the Government implement and update the proposals in that report?

§ Mr. Edwards
As the hon. Gentleman should be aware, we have undertaken by far the largest factory-building programme ever undertaken. More advance factories have been built in the last two years than in the entire previous four-year history of the Welsh Development Agency. What is more, we have succeeded in getting more space allocated in that period than has actually been constructed. That remarkable achievement indicates the determination with which we are tackling the problem.

§ Mr. Best
Will my right hon. Friend take every opportunity to inform the House that unemployment in Wales is now rising less sharply than in the past and that the proportion of unemployment in Wales, as part of the whole United Kingdom, has decreased?

§ Mr. Edwards
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, although that in no way mitigates the seriousness of the situation in Wales. My hon. Friend may have seen a report in the Financial Times or one of the Sunday papers in the last few days about the difficulty experienced by English authorities in filling their advance factories. We are currently far more successful than they are in finding new tenants for factories in Wales. I find that encouraging. I believe that if we can avoid the kind of social disturbances to which the hon. Gentleman referred we shall continue to be in that position.

§ Mr. Abse
Does the Secretary of State recall how, even in January this year, he mocked the Select Committee and me personally for having warned of the need for action to prevent serious social disorder in Wales? Has he the same high confidence now that it has happened in so many English cities? Does he not regard it as lamentable that, even though, fortunately, we have not had violence, our young people are sinking into apathy, refusing to get out of it and finding themselves disintegrating in a way which is no less serious an expression than that of an aggressive 784 attack? Will the Secretary of State cease to be a satrap to the Prime Minister, speak up for Wales in the Cabinet, and reverse these calamitous policies?

§ Mr. Edwards
That is the usual rubbish that we hear from the hon. Gentleman these days. It is untrue that young people in Wales are responding with apathy. It is also untrue that the Government have failed to respond. We responded to the situation in Wales with the largest programme of factory building ever attempted and a large increase in the special measures for the unemployed. The Welsh workers responded with startling improvements in productivity and competitiveness at Llanwern and Port Talbot and in plants throughout Wales. They know that that is the way to create jobs for the future. They also know that it would be fatal to follow the tragic example of some English cities and the kind of encouragement that I fear the hon. Gentleman's remarks imply.

§ Mr. Rowlands
That is not true.

§ Mr. Edwards
That is the way to maintain order and the high reputation of the Welsh work force.

§ Mr. Abse
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Secretary of State has made a serious allegation, suggesting that I encouraged violence when the words that I used referred to preventing violence.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I heard the exchange. It was the Secretary of State's interpretation. It is not a point on which I can rule.

§ Mr. Hooson
Can my right hon. Friend recall any recent Parliament in which the inflationary policies advocated by the Labour Party actually reduced unemployment.

§ Mr. Edwards
Unemployment rose in every year that the Labour Government were in power. At that time we did not hear the kind of remarks that have just been made by the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse). At that time he said: It does not become the hon. Gentleman"— referring to me— constantly to lower the tone by pouring out his jeremiads and apparently revelling every time the figures come out so that he may make his miserable, puerile party point". —[Official Report, Welsh Grand Committee, 25 January 1978; c. 59.] I throw those words back in the hon. Gentleman's face.

§ Mr. Alec Jones
Does the Secretary of State realise that the Opposition are tired of his and his right hon. and hon. Friends' complacent attitude? One would scarcely have thought that under this Government unemployment in Wales had risen by 70,000. Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that at the last Welsh Question Time he proudly boasted of three new factories being let in Wales which would create 210 jobs over three years? Is he aware that within three weeks of that announcement 2,578 redundancies were announced in Wales? Does he agree that my hon. Friends are right to draw attention to this potential danger for our society and people in Wales?

§ Mr. Edwards
They should be drawing attention to the huge danger for the future of Wales if the type of social disorder that has taken place in England were repeated in Wales. They should also be taking pleasure in the fact that such a large number of the advance factories that we have built have been occupied during a period of severe recession, and that major new companies are setting up in Wales.

§ Mr. Ioan Evans
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.