Full Employment (Commission) (Hansard, 25 May 1993)

§ Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for a permanent Commission to assist and advise Parliament on matters relating to the achievement of full employment in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and related matters. I should like to begin by contrasting the attitude and objectives of the current Prime Minister with those of his predecessor. During the old regime, not only was full employment taken off the agenda for political debate, but the frontier was policed by withering scorn being poured upon people who wished to raise the topic. They were told that they were being cruel to people in the dole queues even to refer to the possibility of full employment. That attitude could not contrast more starkly with the attitude of the current Prime Minister, who has made it clear to the House that he regards full employment as one of the Government's major objectives. This Bill seeks to introduce a means of allowing him to achieve that objective.

Given the horror that unemployment visits on so many of our constituents, I wish to ask why so little of the time of the House of Commons should be spent on this issue. It is a key issue not only to the constituents of Opposition Members but also to those of many Conservative right hon. and hon. Members: Part of the answer must be that thinking about full employment is now such an enormous task that it is easier not to do so.

During the first world war Barbara Wootton noticed that when the telegram arrived to inform her mother that her—Barbara's mother's—son had died, her mother worked herself up into a great state because the telegram got the designation of his office wrong. Each time War Office correspondence arrived, Barbara's mother was similarly upset about the mistake in rank.

When, after six weeks of marriage, Barbara received a telegram saying that her husband had died, she was similarly worked up into a rage because the corner of her telegram was torn. From this experience, Barbara drew the conclusion that when human beings face problems too large for them to cope with, they tend to concentrate on minor matters rather than on the major subject at hand.

Many of our constituents will ask why, having spent so many hours, weeks and months on the Maastricht Bill, we cannot spend time debating ways back to full employment. While I welcome without reservation the figures of the past three months, which denote a fall in the number of registered unemployed, as well as an increase in manufacturing output and an increase in the number of people employed in manufacturing, I have to ask whether this trend, by itself, can take the country back to full employment. I know the answer to that question, as does every right hon. and hon. Member and those of our constituents who are unemployed, for there are identifiable long-term trends in the British economy working against full employment.

From the mid-1960s, with each boom, the number unemployed was higher than at the previous boom. Also, we not only have today a record public sector borrowing requirement, but one that interacts with a record trade deficit. There is an urgent need to reduce the PSBR, but the danger of achieving that by reflating is so to increase the trade deficit that there is a run on our currency. The third force that will prevent the natural establishment of full 756 employment is that the Maastricht treaty contains convergence terms that, if met, will ensure that our economy is further deflated.

The Bill's aim is to focus attention and political debate on the importance now of achieving full employment. It modestly defines that goal as 3 per cent. unemployment. It acknowledges that, if that goal is to be achieved, thoughts have to be thought that have yet to be thought of, let alone implemented. It would establish a machinery to allow the House and the country to do that.

The Bill's primary aim is to establish a full employment commission that would regularly report to Parliament on trends in this country and world wide that affect this country's chances of moving back to full employment. Also, how do we evaluate the transfer of school to work, and how does that compare with the most effective of our competitors? What can we learn from elsewhere so that best practice in achieving full employment can be implemented? Again, the commission would have a duty to evaluate Government policy.

Why that action? Why the Bill? We know that unemployment is not a warm overcoat that our constituents willingly put on and shuffle around in; it is the greatest evil facing them. That is something to which we must turn our minds if we are to tackle it effectively.

If we cannot be concerned about those of our constituents who are unemployed, I pose another question. Today's newspapers, rightly, pay some attention to the number of children growing up in lone parent households. Many of our constituents, in an attempt not to be driven mad by the thought of not being able to find work, have written off from their daily lives the prospect of ever finding work.

A whole generation of children are now growing up in households in which full-time work has been written out of their lives. If we are concerned about the effect on children whose two parents do not live together, should we not be equally concerned about the devastating effect on children growing up in a household in which no adult member regularly earns enough to look after all or part of the family?

In seeking approval to introduce the Bill, I draw attention to a change of opinion about the need to move towards ways of achieving full employment. Earlier I referred to Barbara Wootton's observations during the first world war. I refer now to the second world war poster that showed a young son or grandson sitting on the knee of his father or grandfather, asking that person what he did when the country was at war. Today, this country is trying to register a need to put full employment back at the top of the political agenda. We will be asked how we reacted to that change in the political debate. I hope that the House will answer not only by passing the motion without opposition but will seek ways of effectively ensuring that the Bill reaches the statute book.