Job Creation

HC Deb 30 June 1981 vol 7 cc690-2

10. Sir David Price

asked the Secretary of State for Employment, in view of current forecasts that unemployment will continue at or above present levels, what new schemes he intends to introduce to assist job creation.

Mr. Waddington

We have expanded special employment measures significantly and plan to spend almost £1 billion in 1981–82. We are keeping the measures under review and shall be considering later in the year what our programme for next year should be.

Sir David Price

Is my hon. and learned Friend aware that the whole House shares the view of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment that the present level of unemployment is completely unacceptable? Is he aware that the House will accept any measures that he and his Department bring forward to reduce it?

Mr. Waddington

I am obliged to my hon. Friend for his remarks. One has to remember the experience of the previous Labour Government who poured a vast sum of money into the economy between 1977 and 1979 and succeeded only in reducing unemployment by 150,000. If that does not show how difficult are these problems, nothing will. We shall not go to the people and pretend that there is any easy solution or panacea.

Mr. Cryer

As the Government have increased unemployment in my constituency by 183 per cent. and as many hundreds of people depend on the temporary short-time working scheme, does not the Minister realise that, if the scheme finishes, there will be getting on for another 1 million people on the dole? His hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) says that the House will support any schemes to reduce the level of unemployment. Has his Department any ideas for schemes to replace the temporary short-time working scheme to get people off the dole? Or is the truth that the Government do not care and that they are being hypocritical?

Mr. Waddington

The hon. Gentleman represents a part of the country which, like every other part of the country, will benefit if British industry emerges from this recession in good and competitive shape. His part of the country will suffer as much as any part of the country if we allow inflation to run riot again as happened under the previous Government, which he supported.

Mr. Budgen

Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the best way to help the unemployed is to allow them to price themselves into work? Will not the Government now consider freeing 10 per cent. of the economy by abolishing the wages councils, which have the effect of preventing the weakest sections of the community from applying for jobs at rates that employers can pay?

Mr. Waddington

The wages council system is but one example of the damage that has been done as a result of the narrowing of differentials between the wages of young people and adults. I remain to be convinced whether the wages councils have been setting the trend with their awards or following it. It may well be the latter.

Mr. John Grant

Will the Minister reconsider that reply? Is it necessary to make an unwarranted and disgraceful attack on the concept of the wages council system that bears no resemblance to the facts? Before he makes that sort of assertion should he not hold a full-scale inquiry?

Mr. Waddington

I fear that the hon. Gentleman cannot have been listening to what I said. I said that if one considers the awards made by wages councils one can see that over the years there has been a narrowing of the differentials between the wage paid to young people and the wage paid to adults. That has happened in the economy as a whole, I was therefore not entirely agreeing with my hon. Friend. My hon. Friend seemed to be suggesting that the wages council system was unique in making that mistake.