HC Deb 02 April 1985 vol 76 cc1051-3
8. Mr. Proctor

asked the Secretary of State for Employment what is the current level of employment; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Tom King

The employed labour force in Great Britain increased by 342,000 between September 1983 and September 1984 to 23,494,000.

Mr. Proctor

Does my right hon. Friend agree that greater attention should be paid to the number of people who are in work and the increase in their numbers as well as to the number of those who, unfortunately, cannot get work?

Mr. King

It is true that, contrary to the experience of the previous three years, in the past year we have seen an encouraging improvement in the number of people in work. Our ambition now — reinforced by the measures announced in the Budget — will be to see that rate accelerating in the year ahead. I am somewhat encouraged by the measures that we have announced and the further measures that we are taking. This is the only major industrial country in western Europe in which the number of people at work increased last year.

Mr. Foot

The Secretary of State asks us to take encouragement from the number of those in work and to concentrate on those figures. Does he realise that chart 5 on page 7 of the employment paper which he published last week contains the employment figures over the years and shows that the best period for civilian employment was between 1974 and 1979? Those are the very years in which Labour was said not to be working. Will the right hon. Gentleman now give us an apology, or perhaps ask for his money back from Saatchi and Saatchi?

Mr. King

I think that the right hon. Gentleman has just warmly endorsed our policy of putting the facts before the nation. There are important facts to be understood about both employment and unemployment in this country.

Mr. Baldry

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we can win more jobs only if Britain wins a greater share of world trade? That means British industry and British commerce being more competitive.

Mr. King

I certainly endorse what my hon. Friend has said. However, I believe that we are winning the argument. I was pleased to hear even the Leader of the Opposition say today that of course jobs depend on customers. If we are getting that message across, even to the slowest of Opposition minds, we are at last making progress.

Mr. James Hamilton

Will the Secretary of State concede that since the Conservative party came to power there has been a record number of bankruptcies? Will he now take some lessons from his senior colleagues, and from the right hon. Gentleman who spoke after the Budget statement, who made it crystal clear that unless the Government changed their policies there would be no hope for the unemployed? Will he learn this lesson from his colleagues?

Mr. King

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was referring to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If so, it should be noted that although the Budget did not receive universal acclaim, I cannot recall any other Budget that was followed so quickly by two reductions in interest rates and by the sharpest improvement in the value of our currency to succeed any Budget.

Sir Kenneth Lewis

Does my right hon. Friend agree that as the new technologies will get rid of as many—if not more — jobs as they create, we should take an imaginative look at the way in which we can make more jobs available? It is time that we thought, for example, about reducing the retirement age of some workers and doing away with large-scale overtime such as occurs in the Post Office, and which is the cause of the present dispute.

Mr. King

I note what my hon. Friend says, and his point about overtime is very relevant. In the current dispute, it would be interesting to know whether those who profess such concern about unemployment are prepared to adopt a more sensible approach to levels of overtime and to give more encouragement to part-time working.

Mr. Prescott

May I make it clear to the Secretary of State that many of us think it absolutely contemptible that he could produce a White Paper on employment without making a statement to the House about it. In the interests of truth, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm the latest figures produced by the Central Statistical Office, which show that during the last five years of the Labour Government there was an increase in jobs of 315,000, which compares with a loss of 1.8 million jobs during the five years of a Tory Administration? Does he accept that for every new job created by the Labour Government, six jobs have been lost by this Tory Administration? That shows that it is a deliberate part of this Government's policy to create mass unemployment.

Mr. King

The hon. Gentleman asked about making a statement to the House. I should make the situation clear, because no discourtesy was in any way intended. I have just checked the record. There have been 20 White Papers in the past year: five have been accompanied by statements and 15 have been published without it being thought necessary to make a parliamentary statement, although there may have been debates and discussions on them. I confess that when I was a Back Bencher I was one of the considerable number of hon. Members who preferred to have a chance to read a White Paper before jumping to instant comment. I make that quite clear. I thought that the announcement of the Opposition's new campaign would herald a rather more intelligent discussion of the unemployment problem in this country. The hon. Gentleman knows that we have lost a very substantial number of jobs and that I have discussed those losses on more occasions than I care to recall. I hope that he can raise the standard of debate, because it does no service to the unemployed if we debate unemployment in abusive terms of that kind.