London Airport (Redundancies) (Hansard, 14 July 1982)

§ Mr. Russell Kerr (Feltham and Heston)

I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely, the recently announced redundancies at London airport involving 7,000 British Airways staff and their effect on the employment situation in the area. The matter is specific because it refers to a report in The Guardian on 12 July quoting British Airways management as announcing 7,000 redundancies in addition to the 10,000 announced last year. It has thrown a deep depression over that part of West Middlesex and elsewhere. It affects my constituents, many of whom are employed by British Airways, which is the largest employer in the area.

As the latest victim of the Government's ill-judged monetarist policies, the flag-carrying British airline feels especially bitter because, as one of Britain's high technology industries with a distinguished record as a leading international carrier, British Airways has been a mobile shop window for British skill and technology and has been of enormous benefit to British industry in its relations with other countries.

The rundown of British Airways is tied to the sale of the airline to private interests—the privatisation about which we hear so much today from people whose ignorance of the industry is matched only by their capacity to talk through their pockets. It should not blind us to the fact that the dismantling of British Airways is equivalent to the sabotage by stealth of one of Britain's major economic assets, on which we are told that our future will depend increasingly and in which the skill and inventiveness of the British workman is as nothing compared with the thirst for profit exhibited by the entrepreneurs.

No one will deny that, whoever ultimately owns the airline, it is important not only to my constituents, many thousands of whom gain their livelihoods as British Airways employees, but because aviation is the industry in which Britain leads the world, although any British breakthrough must cross the Atlantic to achieve proper recognition. Few, if any, of the world's aviation observers would doubt British skills in this industry.

The problem demands urgent consideration and the arithmetic of the proposals argues the case most eloquently. Although the series of redundancies, totalling about 10,000 during the past year, has in many cases resulted in a fairly thick cushion being provided to soften the discomfort of job loss, at least temporarily, thousands of British Airways' highly skilled workers are being slung unceremoniously on to the labour market at a time when economic prospects, according to almost every economist except the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have hit rock bottom.

If we do not succumb to the Chancellors's gloom, in a year or two we may, with luck, have a Labour Government and some adult economic policies in place of the juvenile monetarism that is the best that we can manage at the moment.

It is important that we realise that the profit entrepreneurs, who are interested not in the industry but 1047 in its money-making opportunities, now have the scent of victory in their nostrils and are being encouraged greatly by the Government in their hunt for quick profits from the exploitation of Government assets. When the full extent of the "steal" being operated by those highwaymen is understood by the public, the position will probably correct itself, so great will be public revulsion. In the meantime, those of us privileged to see the pattern from long association with the industry are seized of the idea of urgent action being taken by the House of Commons to protect the people's interests and their property before it is too late.