§ 11. Mr. BarnesTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment she has made of the implications of the increase in the number of temporary employees since spring 1992 for Government employment policy. [16063]
§ Mr. ForthThe proportion of temporary employees in the United Kingdom has risen from between 5.5 per cent. and 6.5 per cent. in 1992 to between 7 per cent. and 8 per cent., compared with a European Union average of 11.5 per cent. We shall continue with the policies that allow jobs of all kinds to be created.
§ Mr. BarnesWhy cannot we have a full-time Government who create full-time employment—as is proposed in the document to which my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) referred—rather than this pathetic, part-time, temporary Government, who provide only temporary, part-time work 332 of an insecure nature? Should not the Government have some sympathy with people who are in insecure positions, as at the worst they have only nine weeks to go before they are out on their ears? We can start then to implement our policy.
§ Mr. ForthI am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his typically optimistic and happy contribution. What he did not tell the House is that if this country sought to emulate the countries on the continental mainland that he and his Front-Bench colleagues seem to admire so much—countries which have statutory minimum wages, have adopted the social chapter and do all the other things that the rather silly document to which he referred would doubtless urge us to do—one of the results might well be that we would end up with the sort of youth unemployment, and overall unemployment, that those continental countries have.
The substance of the hon. Gentleman's question concerned those in temporary employment. In this country, about 6.8 per cent. of the work force are in temporary employment, compared with 10.3 per cent. in Germany, 12.2 per cent. in France and 35 per cent. in Spain. Those are the figures that people should ponder when comparing the document cited by the hon. Gentleman with our excellent track record.
§ Mr. AlexanderAre not even temporary jobs better than no jobs? My right hon. Friend mentioned what might happen if we adopted the social chapter. If we did that, we would not have even temporary jobs, because the cost of taking people on would be prohibitive for employers. Surely even the Labour party does not want that.
§ Mr. ForthI might go even further than my hon. Friend, although of course I agree with him. Most people in temporary work choose to be in temporary work because, for various reasons, it suits them better. All the surveys show that only a minority of temporary workers would prefer permanent jobs. As ever, Opposition Members want to force people into a straitjacket and make them accept the kind of work that the Opposition think that they should do. We, on the other hand, respect choice. People should be able to choose whether to work part time or full time, and choose between temporary and more permanent work.
§ Mr. HainThe Minister is insulting the people of this country when he says that the majority choose temporary work. His own figures disprove that. Is he defending the increase of more than a third in the number of temporary workers in Britain since the last general election? Those workers are joining the many millions experiencing the job insecurity that is stalking the whole nation. Will the Minister brush up on the subject? After all, we currently have an insecure Government plagued by temporary Ministers.
§ Mr. ForthWe have now had the same soundbite recycled at least four times. I should have thought that Opposition Members would at least have the ingenuity to produce different soundbites rather than rely on regurgitating the same one over and over again. However, if regurgitation is to be the order of the day, I will simply repeat to the hon. Gentleman what I said a few moments ago to the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire 333 (Mr. Barnes), who seemed to expect us to believe that what he had said was a revelation. As I said in my reply to him, the proportion of temporary employees in this country has indeed risen from about 5.5 or 6.5 per cent. to a massive and stunning 7 or 8 per cent. of the work force, but what has the hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) to say about the figures for countries on the continental mainland, which Opposition Members seek to emulate at every possible opportunity? In those countries, between 10 and 34 per cent. of the population are on temporary contracts. That is the threat that the Opposition would pose if we were ever to adopt their policies.