Official Visits (Hansard, 1 April 1998)

§ Q8. Mr. Bob Russell
What plans he has to pay an official visit to Essex.

§ The Prime Minister
I am afraid that I have no plans to do so at the moment.

§ Mr. Russell
That is a big disappointment. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I should have liked the Prime Minister to meet some of the staff of various training centres in Essex, who as of today have lost their jobs because the funding given to Essex county council is 1257 insufficient. For those people, some of whom have been there for 20 years, that is not so much welfare to work as work to welfare.
Does the Prime Minister agree that all parties on Essex county council—Labour being the largest—would have liked to keep the centres going, but that closure was the inevitable consequence of the previous Government's underfunding of local government? Does he further agree that, if the present Government had funded local government properly, those jobs could have been saved?

§ The Prime Minister
I hope that, as his hon. Friends cheered him, the hon. Gentleman will not mind my pointing out the fact that the Liberal Democrat manifesto made it quite clear that his party was also pledged to keeping within the spending limits on local government. That point needs to be made.
The particular training centre to which the hon. Gentleman referred is the SEAX training centre. The decision to close it was made by a committee chaired by a Liberal Democrat. The reason why work under the welfare-to-work programme was not given to that centre was that it was due to close, but other activities that are funded under the welfare-to-work programme will directly benefit his constituents.

§ Mr. Ivan Henderson
May I tell my right hon. Friend how welcome the new deal initiative is to the people of Harwich, one of the unemployment black spots of Essex? Does he agree that it is nice to see the Liberal Democrats and Tories of Essex joining in and supporting the new deal for the Essex people? The people of Harwich have suffered 8 or 9 per cent. unemployment for the past few years. It is right that Opposition Members should notice that they were wrong not to vote for the new deal—

§ Madam Speaker
Order. I urge Back Benchers to put a question to the Prime Minister and not make a statement.

§ The Prime Minister
The new deal has resulted in more than 1,000 young people getting into work in different parts of the country. That is just in its initial stages. It is important because these youngsters are often being given the first chance to get a job in their lives. It will reduce the cost to the state and will give them opportunities. It is a £3.5 billion programme, funded by the windfall tax. It is extremely important that we get the scheme going throughout the country, where it is generating enormous enthusiasm—and rightly so.

§ Q9. Miss McIntosh
What plans he has to pay an official visit to the Vale of York.

§ The Prime Minister
I am afraid that I have no immediate plans to do so.

§ Miss McIntosh
May I express the disappointment of the Vale of York that the Prime Minister has no immediate plans to visit us? We would impress on him the distress caused to farmers and to manufacturing industry by the Government's failure to tackle the strong pound. What would he say to those workers who have lost their jobs at Samsung this week and to those farmers losing their living because of the inability of his party to tackle the strong pound?

§ The Prime Minister
Let us be clear about what the hon. Lady means when she says that the Government
1258 should tackle the strong pound. The only way of doing that would be to tighten the fiscal position of the Government even more than it has been tightened. The Government have tightened fiscal policy enormously, but that has been opposed every step of the way by the hon. Lady's party. If we had followed the policies outlined by the Conservative Opposition at the moment, we would have had a worse problem than we have. We would have had higher interest rates and our economy would have been deteriorating. As a result of the measures which we are taking, we have the best chance of avoiding the boom-and-bust scenario. It is vital that decisions in respect of the pound and economic policy are taken on a long-term and not a short-term basis, so that we never go back to Tory boom and bust.