HC Deb 22 May 1997 vol 294 cc826-7
5. Mr. MacShane

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what steps he is taking to support the work of the International Labour Organisation. [194]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Alan Howarth)

My right hon. Friend the Minister of State will be representing the United Kingdom at the annual ILO conference next month. We shall give the ILO full support for its activities, particularly its promotion of international labour standards and human rights.

Mr. MacShane

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment as Minister and on his election as Member of Parliament for the great steel-producing town of Newport. You and I, Madam Speaker, who have held only one party card in our lives, will know how difficult it is to switch to another party. After the putsch by the old Etonians and anti-Europeans of the 1922 Committee yesterday, may I invite the remaining one-nation and pro-European Tories to come across and join us before it is too late?

I welcome my hon. Friend's strong statement in favour of the ILO, particularly as only two years ago the Conservative party, when in government, sought to take Britain out of it. It now needs a British-led agenda on employability, not over-regulation. We need a strong ministerial presence in the ILO. Britain has not had that presence in recent years; such a presence will give the ILO new leadership from a new Government—leadership which it needs and to which he and other Ministers can contribute.

Hon. Members

Answer.

Mr. Howarth

With friends such as my hon. Friend, it is so much easier. Of course the United Kingdom should support the International Labour Organisation, whose aims are to encourage productive employment and to improve standards and conditions of work worldwide.

Mr. Forth

Rubbish.

Mr. Howarth

The hon. Gentleman says that is rubbish, but he will now have plenty of time on his hands to reconsider the simple view that deregulation to the ultimate degree, a cult of low pay and the absence of employee rights lead to some sort of economic nirvana. That view has been extensively disproved in the Conservative experiment of recent years, in which the poor and the unemployed in this country have been the victims.