§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Sainsbury.]
§ 10.2 pm
§ Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth)The average rate of unemployment throughout the United Kingdom is 13.8 per cent., which is very high. That means that one person in seven throughout the country in the age groups which should be economically active are unemployed.
Unemployment in my constituency is dreadfully severe. The official figure in the travel-to-work area is 23.1 per cent., but that does not present an accurate picture. Officially, almost one person in four in my constituency is unemployed; but in reality the position is much worse as many of the unemployed are not included in the official statistics. Many ladies who leave jobs are not registered and many men who are below retirement age, often far below it, are excluded, as are all those on the youth and community programmes, which, though welcome, are only palliatives.
Enforced inactivity is bad enough for anyone, but on the scale that we are now experiencing it corrodes our community. It becomes a grave matter when it seems an inescapable prospect for young people. In my constituency the dreadful inevitability of unemployment must command attention, for we neither provide work for our youngsters nor sufficient opportunities for meaningful leisure.
Of the 1985 school leavers, only 14.4 per cent. have found normal employment after almost one year of ending their full-time education, and 2,319 are either unemployed or on Government schemes, which seem merely to be a deferment of unemployment. Some teenagers seem to have lost so much hope that they tend to believe that retirement begins when the youth training scheme is completed.
Of the 1984 school leavers, only 42 per cent. are economically active. All that those youngsters see is a dreadful pattern of decline in employment with no scope for ambition, interest, responsibility or challenge lying ahead of them.
Since 1981, the area that I represent has lost about 4,000 jobs in mining, over 2,500 in steel and another 2,000 to 2,500 in manufacturing industry generally, and a net loss of about 1,000 jobs in the service sector.
Almost 25 per cent. of our officially unemployed are under 20 years of age; 40 per cent. are aged between 20 and 29; and 40 per cent. of our unemployed have been without work for over a year. That is a quite horrific picture. What causes me the greatest anxiety is that some of us perceived years ago that difficulty would come, although we never believed that acceleration in the decline could have taken place at the pace we have experienced in the last four or five years.
As a young councillor I recall rejecting the view that new industry should not come to our area because it would tempt men away from the coal industry where wages were then not at all competitive. Our area was deemed to be too important as a coal producer for work to be undertaken to secure economic diversification. I hope the Minister fully understands what I am saying—that the nation has an obligation to those entrapped in the present position.
I live in the middle of South Yorkshire which is being abolished as a legal unit in 12 days' time. I live 200 yards from the house in which I was born in that mining 387 community where once most men worked in or in jobs related to the coal mining industry. In the not too distant past many boys went to the pits at which their fathers and uncles worked and many were trained in skills that went on to sustain small businesses elsewhere. What do we see now? The youngest man in the South Yorkshire coal industry is nearly 20 years of age. There has been no training and no recruitment for an unconscionably long time. That is bound to damage our local economy.
As I said, 14.4 per cent. of last year's school leavers have a job. The prospect of bitterness is inevitable. In Brampton Bailow, in which lay Cortonwood colliery before the miners' strike, there was high unemployment. Some 57 per cent. of the men there worked for the National Coal Board. In January 1984 those men were assured that their pit had five year's life. Five weeks later they were told it should shut in five weeks, and the strike began. It increasingly looks as it it was intended to begin. That pit is now closed. Some of the men have been transferred and others have taken the pension or payment available and retired. Altogether, we have undergone a devastating community experience.
It is not only in Brampton, because in the Bramley and Wickersley ward at the other end of the constituency 1,091 people have lost their jobs. In Thrybergh and Dalton 1,377 jobs have gone. In parts of Dalton—for example, in Dalton Brook—I cannot find a single teenager in normal employment. In Rawmarsh 1,816 jobs have gone and in Wath and Swinton the figure is 2,560. Altogether there are 6,766 local claimants of unemployment benefit. As I have said, over 40 per cent. of our unemployed have been without work for over a year, and they are not included in that number.
What is also galling is that our other local major industry, steel, has suffered terribly, despite the long term and determined commitment to change and to success shown by workers and management over a long period. In the 1960s there was major change to adapt to modern requirements, and that continued in the 1970s when we were immensely proud of the enormous success of the new Thrybergh bar mill, the holder of world records and an example of co-operation and wise investment. In that case, we demonstrated what good investment and decent industrial relations policies could achieve. Then came the dreadful decline since 1979 when the rest of the Common Market steel industry looked after itself and we rushed headlong down the contraction route. Thousands of steel jobs were lost in south Yorkshire. When our manufacturing and engineering industries recover, as one day they must, if we are not careful the resulting orders will have to be met elsewhere whilst our own people languish.
One cause for anxiety is that for the last two or three years there has been insufficient investment in steel whilst those in power have indulged in the obsessive game of furtive negotiations for privatisation. Those negotiations drag on for years and leave us with increasing anxiety. Despite that, the Minister may have noted the motion that I tabled yesterday congratulating the Aldwarke works on breaking its ninth record this year. It is to be hoped that the potential achievement that demonstrates will justify an early decision, which should have been made by now, to provide Aldwarke with the continuous casting facility that it needs.
But we cannot look to coal or steel to meet all our employment needs. Economic diversification is essential. 388 The dominating analysis of the early 1970s does not suffice. Then the Department of Trade and Industry believed that in our county economic need could be met from within. Plainly the need is so immense that that view will not do. My local authority recognises that. I know that it is the Government's view that some local authorities do not seem to be attractive to outside interests, but the Minister cannot say that about the Rotherham metropolitan borough, which is a prudent and respected authority which is desperately eager to develop the local economy. However, it has been hit by the ravaging effects of central policy and a loss of revenue from industrial sources, as well as by the huge cuts in central Government support for local authorities.
Despite our enormous efforts to keep down local spending, the Government have cut the grant again this year, disregarded the reduced rate income, and forced the council to increase the rates by a substantial amount. The council will not be rate capped. We cannot afford it. But our desperate prospects will not be helped by this result from the Government's utterly unhelpful approach. Rotherham has lost scores of millions of pounds in central revenue since 1979, and has reduced the number of jobs as a result.
Our housing programme, including the provision of private improvment grants, has been slashed, yet serious needs continue to exist. That issue requires urgent consideration, and the Government should not now force the council to curtail the use of capital receipts. Today moneys should be spent on investment in areas such as housing, as jobs are desperately needed, but next year the council is to be allowed to spend only £6,030,000 on all of its housing investment, which is enough to buy 15 houses like the one that the Prime Minister has recently purchased, or a dozen of the two-bedroomed flats that are on sale one mile from the Chamber.
Our needs are glaringly obvious, and that is perceived by bodies throughout our society. Our churches are deeply anxious, and some of them are heavily involved in community programmes which are an acceptable palliative. Our trades council is concerned. Only last Saturday I attended a meeting in Rotherham that was devoted to analysing the need and to pointing to the solutions to our economic problems. There is wide and substantial local involvement in the treatement of the symptoms, but we are now powerless to deal with the problems. That is for the Government to do, but yesterday's Budget was an almost frivolous response to our desperate need.
Perhaps the Minister will agree to some proposals. We need security for such mining as we have left in the constituency. I hope that there can be something of a guarantee for the Manvers complex and for continued investment there, and for Silverwood colliery, which recently broke yet another European record. We need recruitment and training again in the mining industry.
Moreover, we need further investment and the provision of continuous casting at Aldwarke, as our basic industries must not be allowed to shrink any further. We also need an immediate and substantial expansion of our environmental reclamation programme to ensure that the Victorian legacy is transformed more swiftly than is currently planned. The area must be made more attractive for development. Perhaps that will lead to some interest 389 among the financial institutions of the City, which seem to give more priority to overseas investment than to the safeguarding of sanity in our provinces.
We need full and proper recognition from the Government that our communities merit higher priority and that we are not going to see the creation of mini Northern Irelands and no-go areas in the 21st century. In our area we have seen a unity of purpose. The local council, the parish council, the trades council, the chamber of commerce and the churches all perceive the needs and they are working together in a co-operative approach. I am sure that the Minister will be impressed by the co-operation between the chamber of commerce and Rotherham council which is demonstrated in the splendid work of the Rotherham enterprise agency, which could be given greater resources. We have that unity and adversity, and it is adversity.
Some time ago I urged the Prime Minister to arrange a multidepartmental approach, and a ministerial conference in Rotherham, to show that there was a proper awareness of our position. Despite the fact that the Prime Minister recognised that we were to lose 2,800 mining jobs, she declined to assist. That disdain for that part of the country is quite intolerable. It is disdain for one of the major casualties of the divisive economic approach which besets our nation.
We need a more sensitive response to our plight than was shown last year when I went to the DTI to ask for assistance for a warehousing project. That was denied on the grounds that it would not create either local or national benefit. The Minister will understand that I question the sanity of those who gave that advice. The project proceeded, and although it did so on a smaller scale than we had hoped, it has remained the largest single job creator for some years in my constituency, yet it provided fewer than 100 jobs.
It is fashionable for the Government to say that Opposition Members are not co-operative in seeking to promote development. That is not true in the Rotherham area. My colleagues and I have made a number of proposals. In the last 12 months I have suggested reasonable schemes to promote timber growing and timber use, clock making, and the restoration of the Rockingham pottery, which made internationally famous porcelain before 1841 and which could be assisted with EEC grants.
We welcome the creation of NCB (Enterprise). Every week I look at the rapid progress of the scheme at Wath upon Dearne, where I know the excellent people involved. It is very welcome, but it is still only scratching the surface. That scheme may actually not provide as many jobs as we are going to lose, or already have lost, at Wentworth Woodhouse, the largest stately home in Britain. Rotherham borough council is responsible for that. Now that Sheffield polytechnic is moving out — perhaps as a result of Government policy — Rotherham will be left with an enormous liability and Rotherham council has no resources to seek alternative use, which is necessary. I asked the Government to assist with the further use of that tremendous asset. Unfortunately, assistance was refused, as a result of which the cost will continue to be incurred, and the enormous potential for the physical and recreational provision that exists is likely to be lost.
390 The Minister will no doubt mention our enterprise zone. Unfortunately, it is not filling with wealth creation. We have seen the development of imaginative ideas of enormous scale in shopping and entertainment complexes. I only hope that local disposable incomes will be capable of sustaining such development. I believe wealth must also be created, but we have seen our potential for future creation rejected.
This is not merely a question of economic statistics. We are talking about the future stability of our society. In my area, in the not too distant past, people did not need to lock their doors. In the last few months, more than 200 pensioners living within 1½ miles of my home have had coal stolen from their homes.
That is a shocking indictment of the change that the Government have inflicted on south Yorkshire, for today we have more magistrates than we had criminals a quarter of a century ago. I hope that the Minister will respond to these pleas, recognise the harsh reality we face and try to ensure that we will no longer take only one step forward for every 20 that we are forced to retreat.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Ian Lang)I very much appreciate the concern of the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) about unemployment in his constituency, and the seriousness with which he put his case. I shall try to answer as many of his points as I can, and I welcome the opportunity to do so. The hon. Gentleman is aware that unemployment, particularly serious though it is in his constituency, is not just of local or even national concern, but is an international problem.
The Government are continually searching for ways which will help real jobs to be created, and despite the unacceptably high national unemployment rate, the number of jobs has been rising since March 1983, and by 220,000 in the year to September 1985. The number of employees in service industries is at a record level, and the rate of decline in the number of manufacturing employees has eased considerably since 1983. The CBI has forecast 460,000 new jobs over the next two years, so new jobs are being created.
There are, therefore, real grounds for optimism on the national scene. I know that this is of no immediate comfort to those in areas of particularly high employment. The rate for the Rotherham and Mexborough travel-to-work area—where the hon. Gentleman's constituency is located—is too high. The area suffers from the all too familiar problem—particularly in various parts of the north of England—of traditional industries such as mining and steel in historic decline, having to adjust, often painfully, to new world market conditions.
That sort of change has happened in the past and will happen again in the future, but I recognise that the transition period is always very difficult. There have recently been a number of closures and redundancies in the area, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. He referred to his appeal to the Government for a co-ordinated ministerial approach to the problems of the area. He might like to know that I was in Sheffield very recently, where I visited the newly established and encouraging job club in Woodhouse. In addition, the Secretary of State was in Huddersfield, Wakefield and York only last week, and my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Mr. 391 Trippier) will be in Doncaster shortly. Therefore, our Department is not unfamiliar with south Yorkshire's problems.
Not least among the companies declaring redundancies in recent years has been British Steel. The Government have been concerned to help to ensure a continued United Kingdom presence in the engineering steels sector and have supported the setting up of a new company — United Engineering Steels — in a joint venture between the BSC and GKN to enable Britain to compete internationally, thereby safeguarding the longer-term job security of those who work in this sector. The BSC steel plant in the Rotherham area will represent an important part of the businesses going into the new company. Therefore, although redundancies have been announced recently, I am optimistic about the future of the new company.
I have seen the early-day motion tabled by the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) relating to the achievements of the Aldwarke steel works in breaking production records. I gladly join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating the works on the nine new records that it has established this year.
The Government have agreed the provision of funds to the BSC to subscribe £55 million for preference shares and loan stock to United Engineering Steels—the new company to be formed under Phoenix 2—on the understanding that the new company will undertake further investment, particularly in continuous casting. The timing and location of such investments will rightly be a matter for the board of United Engineering Steels.
Another industry in which there has been major redundancies, which have hit south Yorkshire as much as anywhere, has been the coal industry. But keeping open uneconomic pits is no answer to unemployment, and the size of the current investment programme in south Yorkshire is a measure of the commitment, both by the Government and the NCB, to the future of the industry. The restructuring that has been entirely necessary has been achieved by the NCB without a single forced redundancy. The NCB maintains its policy of offering a job to any man who wishes to remain in the industry.
The NCB has also demonstrated its concern for the future of the coal mining communities most affected by pit closures by setting up NCB (Enterprise). At the end of January, this company had committed £l.8 million to aid new industry in Yorkshire, creating more than 900 job opportunities. A further £6.5 million of investment has been attracted from other sources, and this is very encouraging. For the first time we have an organisation specifically to provide loans for the creation of jobs in coal mining areas, and there is no shortage of funds available for all those coming forward with suitable proposals. I should like to emphasise that NCB (Enterprise) will consider all sensible ideas put to it, and any individual, company, or other organisation that has such a project should approach it.
The old industries have been contracting, but other sources of employment are available. For example, the enterprise zone in Rotherham has been successful in attracting new businesses to the area. Between August 1983 and August 1985, 58 new and established companies, employing around 1,500 people, were attracted to the 260 acre site.
Jobs are being created in the service sector. For example, Stadium Developments is to build a £100 million 392 retail and leisure complex—the Parkgate centre—on the outskirts of Rotherham, which will create several hundred new jobs. Co-operative Retail is to build a £6 million super store selling home furnishings at Catcliffe, near Rotherham, over the next three years, creating 200 new jobs.
It is also encouraging to see that over 4,700 people were placed in work by the public employment service alone between April last year and February this year, a rise of 15 per cent. on the previous year, and many more will have found jobs by other means.
I mention all these facts not to contradict the hon. Gentleman or to disguise the true situation—I readily acknowledge that there is a problem and that it is a serious and deep-rooted one — but to try to keep it in perspective and to demonstrate that there is good news as well as bad. But of course I accept that a great deal still needs to be done to make headway against the area's economic and social problems. The Government will do and are doing all they can to help.
Rotherham and Mexborough travel-to-work area has development area status and thus attracts the highest levels of regional aid. It has received £16.3 million by way of regional development grant since 1979. Regional assistance has helped create over 3,000 jobs and safeguard over 1,900 existing ones. This assistance is now focused directly on job creation and is evidence of the Government's real concern to help the areas worst affected by unemployment.
I am well aware of the frustration and hardship that must be felt by unemployed people in the hon. Gentleman's constituency and I recognise the corrosive effect that high levels of unemployment can have upon the social fabric and the values of a community. They can knock the life out of it and destroy hope and self-respect. That is why we have a whole range of measures targeted at those particularly badly hit, both the young and the long-term unemployed.
The extension of the youth training scheme into a two-year vocational programme from April is a major step towards ensuring that every young person under 18 is undergoing high qualtiy training in work or in full-time education. There are currently over 6,500 in training with YTS in the Rotherham and Doncaster areas, with a similar number of planned places for 1986–87. The aim of the new scheme is to provide better qualified entrants to the labour market and it is hoped all young people will leave YTS with a recongised vocational qualification or a credit towards one. This can only improve young people's employment prospects and will ensure that no young person under 18 need be unemployed.
The hon. Member referred to the Budget and he will recall that my right hon. Friend announced in his statement yesterday the establishment of the new workers scheme, which aims to assist job seekers under 21 by providing financial assistance for employers who are able to provide more jobs for young workers at rates of pay which reflect their relative inexperience. Over 70,000 young people are expected to be covered by the scheme nationally, at a cost of some £26 million. I am sure this will prove a useful measure to help make jobs available particularly to those youngsters who may have exhausted their YTS entitlement. The new scheme will, I hope, be of significant benefit to the hon. Gentleman's constituents.
The problems of the long-term unemployed have for some time been a major concern of the Government. The 393 community programme, which is our major scheme to help the long-term unemployed, is to be expanded to 255,000 places nationally this year—almost double the level of a year ago. The number of places in the Rotherham area will be 5,000 by May 1986.
The national restart programme announced in the Budget statement means that the jobstart scheme, which provides a £20 per week allowance for six months for long-term unemployed people who find jobs paying less than £80 per week has now been made a national scheme. The long-term unemployed in the hon. Gentleman's consitituency will undoubtedly benefit. They will also benefit from in-depth interviews at jobcentres and the opportunity to take short restart courses to improve their chances of finding work.
The hon. Gentleman referred to training, which is indeed an essential requirement in helping the work force to adapt to changing economic conditions and become flexible in their skills and adaptable to new opportunities. It is not just training for shop floor jobs. People need training in management skills and in how to start up in business. Under the adult training strategy, which has a planned national expenditure of £260 million this year, we are helping almost 3,000 adults in the Sheffield and Rotherham areas this year through locally delivered programmes—an increase of no less than 86 per cent.
It is important that we do all we can to encourage people to be enterprising in finding work—not only looking for an employer but seriously considering the option of self-employment. The enterprise allowance scheme was set up to help those unemployed people wishing to start their own businesses by providing a weekly allowance in the difficult initial period. More than 1,700 are currently benefiting from the scheme in the Sheffield and Wakefield areas. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced in his 394 Budget statement, the number of places on the scheme will be increased to 100,000 nationally by April 1987—an increase of 20,000 on the current limit.
We are doing all we can to help small firms and those wishing to set up in business for the first time. We have announced a great many measures to reduce the burden of bureaucracy on small enterprises, with more proposals in the pipeline. We announced last November the provision of up to £2.5 million next year in support of local enterprise agencies. The Budget statement included a number of further measures to help small firms, including a reduction in corporation tax, the extension of the business expansion scheme and a new and upgraded small firms loan guarantee scheme lasting for three years with the premium halved from 5 to 2.5 per cent. At the local level, the Rotherham enterprise agency has helped 275 businesses start up since it was set up in 1983. Last year, it dealt with more than 1,000 inquiries. My Department's small firms service in south Yorkshire also dealt with almost 1,000 enquiries and about 100 new counselling cases since last April. There appears, therefore, to be a very healthy interest in setting up in business in this part of the world.
I hope that the House will recognise from all this that the Government are not in any way sitting by idly while hard-hit areas suffer from economic problems that they cannot deal with on their own. On the contrary, firm practical help is being given in the form of regional aid and employment and training measures. The hon. Gentleman must agree that a significant amount is being done to help the regeneration of economic activity in his constituency. The Government's commitment, together with the efforts of the people of the area will, I believe, lead to a much needed revival of their fortunes. It will not be easy, but I am certain that we are on the right road.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Eleven o'clock.