Unemployment (European Union) (Hansard, 7 November 1995)

§ Q1. Sir Teddy Taylor
To ask the Prime Minister if he will raise at the next meeting of the European Council the implications of the level of unemployment in the EU. [40127]

§ The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Michael Heseltine)
I have been asked to reply.
I can confirm that employment and unemployment in the European Union will be on the agenda for the next European Council in Madrid in December.

§ Sir Teddy Taylor
Will my right hon. Friend insist that the Council gives urgent attention to the forgotten army of 18.5 million unemployed in the European Union, a total which has soared by 5 million in the past three years? In particular, could he tell our friends in France, who are at present creating extra unemployment on top of a 12 per cent. total by setting artificial exchange rates, that they could learn a great deal from Britain, which escaped from the exchange rate mechanism and the social chapter and has found that unemployment has been falling ever since?

§ The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a most valuable contribution, particularly when he points out that this Government will not accept the social chapter, and neither will we impose the overheads of a minimum wage on the competitive manufacturing base that we have here today. The whole House can welcome the fact that unemployment in this country is down by 713,400 since December 1992.

§ Mr. Hutton
On the subject of unemployment within the European Union, does the Deputy Prime Minister recognise it as a fact that, since 1979, the United Kingdom has had the third highest unemployment rate within the European Union? When will he drop the damaging dogma of his party and start to work with our European partners to tackle the scandal and the waste of almost 20 million people unemployed in Europe?

§ The Deputy Prime Minister
It is very convenient for the hon. Gentleman to choose 1979, when we had to start the process of undoing the stranglehold that the trade unions had on the British economy, of privatising the industries that are now leading the British recovery across 726 the world and of creating in this country the enterprise centre of Europe, all in the teeth of Labour party opposition.