HL Deb 13 November 1985 vol 468 cc273-84

Debate resumed on the Motion moved on Wednesday last by the Lord Middleton—namely, That a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:

"Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament".

3.11 p.m.

Lord Young of Graffham

My Lords, I should like to support my noble friends Lord Middleton and Lady Lane-Fox on their Motion for a humble Address and to congratulate them on the speeches with which they opened these debates a week ago. I look forward to hearing the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Marylebone. I started my commercial life working for his father and then for him, and I learnt greatly from both. I am sure that he will instruct your Lordships' House. I look forward to listening to him in the future, as indeed I look forward to the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lord Elliott of Morpeth and the noble Lord, Lord Kimball, during the course of the debate today.

I welcome this opportunity to debate our economic and industrial affairs and to hear the views of some of our critics. If I could express a wish, it perhaps would be that with the return of Halley's Comet there would come back to noble Lords opposite a sense of realisation and appreciation of the facts of economic life. Judging by the terms of the amendment, they certainly have not been living in this world for some time; for not only is our economy strong but it shows every sign of continued good progress in the future. We have an economy which not only is growing over four successive years at an average rate of 3 per cent. but is expected to grow a further 3 per cent. next year We have an economy in which inflation is well under control and falling, and is expected to fall to less than 4 per cent. next year. We have an economy which is investing in its future. There was an all-time record level of investment last year of £55 billion, which will be increasing this year to some £60 billion. Next year we shall be looking for a further £64 billion. And we have an economy which is exporting at 7 per cent. more this year and is expected to grow even further next year.

So the economy is strong and employment is growing, but not as much as it might because high pay rises have sapped the strength of our recovery and deadened its impact on economic growth and the economic growth of jobs. Nevertheless, employment has increased substantially since 1983. It was up by 340,000 last year—more than in the rest of Western Europe put together. But as the jobs came, more people came on to the labour market to fill them and so unemployment continued to rise until recently. In three of the past five months unemployment has fallen. I have said that I find this mildly encouraging; and I do. But it must not distract us from the tragedy of high unemployment, from recognising the causes of high unemployment or in any way from our determination to tackle it. And we are tackling it, using all the experience of our country and the experiences of other countries.

I say "other countries" because it is when we look round at the rest of the world that we see that unemployment is the European disease. The gulf between the employment-generation powers of Europe and of the United States of America over the pas 10 years is immense. The United States has seen employment grow by 19 million and Western Europe saw employment fall by 1 million between 1974 and 1983. Unemployment has risen substantially in all major European countries in recent years and faster in a number of countries other than our own during t he past 12 months. And other European countries have learnt by that experience. All of them have a financial policy as tight as, and in many cases tighter than, our own. All of them are looking at ways to make their economies more adaptable to change and to make the markets work better.

Perhaps we shall hear in a few minutes' time the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, put forward his familiar prescription of a million here and a billion there. No doubt he would want to recommend it also to our other European governments—to the French socialists, for example. But he may find them greeting it with a cry of, "Déjà vu, déjà perdu"; for they created public sector jobs; they raised minimum wages and benefits; they reduced working time; they introduced early retirement and they inflated their economy. And the result? It was not a sustained reduction in unemployment but a sustained rise; not a sustained growth in output but a fall; and it was not a sustained continuation of the policies but a dramatic reversal.

Despite all the efforts in public sector job creation, despite all their efforts in work sharing and despite all the efforts in employment measures, unemployment in France is not only higher than it was four years ago but is going up against the background of a reducing workforce. The lesson that spending vast sums of money to reduce unemployment does not work was painfully learnt by us in the 1970s and has been painfully learnt by the French in the 1980s. I hope it is a lesson that we do not have to learn yet again.

But our recognition that those well-trodden paths lead only into the quagmire of economic disaster does not mean that we can do nothing about unemployment. We can create the conditions in which unemployment will fall, and we are doing so. The Autumn Statement shows clearly how the economic policies of this Government are working: low inflation and sustainable growth. It also shows how inappropriate and inept are the cries for more spending on the infrastructure. Governments, like companies, should invest, but they should only invest where the return is best. This Government are prepared to invest, but not in the white elephants of the past; for we know that achievement is not a matter of throwing money at an issue and thinking that it will then go away.

We are providing extra spending on renovating housing—£220 million extra next year and £200 million extra in 1987–88. In total, nearly £10 billion is being provided for capital spending on housing over the next three years alone. Excellent! But is this not also an indictment of the quality of post-war local authority housing? Seventy-five per cent. of it was built post-war and much of this past spending went on the crumbling council estates put up without a thought for quality. Is that the kind of public spending that we really want to see? No, my Lords; for the solution is not just about money but about much greater efficiency.

We all hear about the financial difficulties of some local authorities and their demands for more and more money. But what we never hear about are their claims for greater and even greater efficiency. That is why privatisation is so very important, for wherever we have privatised our national assets they have been better managed. The benefits of better management under greater competition and the thrust of private enterprise will bring benefits for consumers, who will get a better service, and for employees, who will gain a direct stake in the business for which they work. This greater efficiency feeds through to the whole economy.

The way to tackle total unemployment is clear, and our strategy has remained consistent. First, let us create conditions for sustained growth and lower inflation; and, secondly, let us transfer power from the state to the individual and encourage enterprise. The measures announced yesterday and in the gracious Speech form part of that self-same strategy.

The Enterprise Allowance Scheme has encouraged people to take the plunge and set up their own businesses, for their enterprise is the basis of our economy, and the real value of this approach will be seen more and more in the years to come. Such individuals need support and advice in the early years of their enterprises. The extension of the Loan Guarantee Scheme and the development of the network of local enterprise agencies will help to provide that support and encouragement to the newly-emerging businesses of tomorrow.

All too often in the past Governments have given the wrong signals to industry and diverted funds into industries whose first need was adaptability in the future and not for sustaining the production levels of the past. In encouraging tourism we are assisting an industry largely neglected by previous Governments where the potential for job creation is huge, and where adaptability is the hallmark and not the exception.

Such measures form a part of our strategy to encourage enterprise and for jobs to grow; but we must recognise that our fears about unemployment do not dcrive solely, or even mainly, from our concern over the statistics of the total numbers involved. We worry about all unemployed people but we worry in particular about those people who have been unemployed for long periods of time and who have experienced a loss of hope, which is worse than any loss of income. Of course, they will benefit as employment rises but perhaps less than other groups, for their ability to re-enter employment and to adapt to change may be doubted by themselves and, more importantly, doubted perhaps by their potential employers. The community programme was created to meet just such a challenge, and the scale of opportunities today provided by it is immense: 16,000 places filled today and, by next summer, some 230,000 places.

Our aim is to build on that by an approach which encourages people to develop their own individual enterprise. One approach we are developing concerns job clubs, and our initial indications are that these are working well, with three-quarters of those participating getting jobs. The other new approaches we are developing concern the pilot schemes which I announced yesterday in the House; and the keynote of both counselling the long-term unemployed and helping them to get started in work is for them to be given the support, the encouragement and, most important of all, the confidence to approach the world of work again and be successful. For enterprise is not limited to those who start their own business. Initiative and enterprise are needed by all those seeking work, too.

Indeed, I believe that if we had invested more wisely in the education and training of our young people in the past and had given them support and encouragement to develop their own talents, initiative and enterprise, we would not be facing this problem of youth unemployment today, for they have been failed by the corporatists who do not trust individual freedom. They were dragooned in schools which emphasised the academic at the expense of the vocational; ordered by employers who neglected their training; and marshalled by trade unions which sent them marching up the hill of high pay claims and down the hill to redundancy.

I am well aware that our reform of wages councils will be misrepresented by noble Lords opposite. But our desire to remove young people from the scope of wages councils is a desire to increase their employment. Our view is that young people need jobs and that wages councils have denied them jobs in the past.

Our concern to encourage the individual and his freedom was nowhere more evident than in the trade union legislation we enacted in past years. For many years Governments have told unions that the way to jobs is through high quality of work and responsible pay claims. The message has just not got through. We know that we have to compete and innovate so that people choose to buy the goods which British labour has created. That means competing on quality, reliability, design and consumer appeal. And we have to compete on price, too. Nothing, but nothing, crippled the British economy in the past more than fast wage growth not matched by productivity growth and all-round efficiency. The evidence produced by the Lords Select Committee on Overseas Trade was most telling on this point and I welcome the opportunity to debate the report in December.

My view is that those individuals in work—and out of work—have the ability to understand these issues and relate them to their everyday life. The more the power is passed to individuals, the better able will they be to take the decisions which will improve their chances of employment. The greatest of our national problems, as it was in the past, was our failure to set the individual free. Tackling that is the key to reducing unemployment, and that needs individual enterprise—sustained, encouraged and set free by Government.

In contrast to Lord McCarthy's amendment, we do have a strategy to create jobs and to reduce unemployment. We do not despair of the Government's ability, but we do recognise their limits. We would do the unemployed no service at all to indulge in "magic wand economics" or to pretend that Governments can create jobs without individual enterprise. They cannot. We recognise that government can set the conditions for individual enterprise to flourish, and in some cases this means measures—measures to sustain individuals and encourage enterprise. After all, my department will be spending some £600 million more than was planned a year ago—spending to train our young people; spending to sustain the long-term unemployed; spending to develop the enterprise of individuals; and spending to develop the future of our society.

Exactly a year ago I was privileged to participate in our debate on economic and industrial affairs. I spoke then of growth in investment. That growth continues, with investment set to break new records next year and the year after. I spoke then of the growth of jobs—and that growth has continued. We have now achieved nearly 700,000 jobs in just over two years—a record unmatched anywhere in Europe. I spoke then of four years of sustained economic recovery. That recovery continues well into its fifth year.

We, as Government, cannot produce the products or provide the services that others want, but our people can. What we can do is to provide the help and the environment in which they can prosper. As I have shown today, we are doing that to an unparalleled degree. We, as Government, cannot foresee the future, but if we carry on as we are we can say that our people will be working in larger and larger numbers—for themselves or for others. What we, as Government, can say is simply this. We are on the right path, we shall continue on the right path, and we shall restore the fortunes of our nation with the one resource that will never run out—the enterprise and the energy of our people.

3.30 p.m.

Lord McCarthy rose to move, as an amendment to the above Motion, at the end of the Address to insert "but regret the failure of the Government to propose measures to achieve a sustained reduction in the present level of unemployment.".

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move the amendment standing in my name, but before doing that I have two pleasant preliminary things to do. First, I should like, along with the noble Lord the Secretary of State, to look forward to the three maiden speeches that we are to hear today, and to say that 1 am sure we shall all find them very instructive and very helpful in dealing with this problem.

Secondly, I should like to congratulate the Secretary of State, not on his first speech on an employment matter but on his first major intervention, I suppose, on the issue of employment since taking up his new post. Elsewhere, noble Lords will know, in another place, on my side of the House there have been some complaints about the Secretary of State for Employment being in this place. They think that he should be down there. All I can say is that, personally, I am very happy that the portfolio is up here and I hope that it remains so until the next general election——

Lord Young of Graffham

Then you will be here.

Lord McCarthy

My Lords, it is not for me to forecast the ways of God and man. However, I wonder whether the noble Lord realises that he has achieved for him, and indeed, I think, for all Secretaries of State in this post, another first; because since 1918 when the Ministry of Labour was created all Ministers of Labour and Secretaries of State have been in the other place, including of course Mr. Bevin, Mr. Bevan and the present Leader of our own House. But even before 1918, when labour affairs were under the control of the Board of Trade, as you go back into 20th century history you find that the President of the Board of Trade with responsibility for labour affairs was still in the other place; and very distinguised Presidents of the Board of Trade they were, including Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and Joe Chamberlain.

I do not know whether the noble Lord is aware of this, but you have to go back to Lord Salisbury's first Administration in 1885 to find the Duke of Richmond, who was the last person in this House to be directly responsible for employment affairs. The noble Lord has to last only eight months and he will outdo the Duke of Richmond, because he was put out when Mr. Gladstone's Administration put in Mr. Mundella. So we have here a first, and let us hope that it will be a noble first.

I made no secret in the past of the fact that I rather envied our previous speaker on labour affairs on the Government side, the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, when he was Minister for the Arts. It always seemed to me that one would do that job for the complimentary tickets. But he could not do it on his salary; so he left us, and now we have a Secretary of State of our own and I think that is rather good. but I hope that the next time the Secretary of State speaks—if I may paraphrase his version of what he said I am going to say—it will not just be efficiency here, enterprise there, initiative all over the place, but above all, "None of it is our fault". It seems to me that that was the central theme running through the Secretary of State's speech: "None of it is our fault". It was like Macbeth talking to Banquo: Thou canst not say I did this thing, Shake not thy gory locks at me". We think we can say he did this thing, or at least his Government did this thing; and that brings me to the amendment.

I want to pose four questions in the course of arguing the case this afternoon. What is the best estimate of the present level of unemployment? Why do we claim that the Government have no policy for any sustained reduction in that estimate? Why do we say not that it is a matter for regret—that is a parliamentary phrase—but a disaster? What might we reasonably expect this Government—not a future Labour Government with, as he says, a billion here and a billion there—to do at this time? That is what I want to ask, because I think there are things which even this Government could do.

If I understand the Secretary of State aright in the speech he made at the Conservative Party Conference, he believes that we can take the benefit count as a fairly accurate index of the present level of unemployment—3.3 million unadjusted, 3.1 million adjusted, and a figure of about 13 per cent. unemployed. We think that underestimates the figure. We think it misleads. We think that for four different reasons. First, since 1982 the Government have taken various measures—and I am not arguing today whether they are right or wrong—to take people out of the benefit count. The over-60s and summer school leavers are no longer in the benefit count. If you put them back, in order to see how the present level of employment would compare with previous levels of employment, the level of unemployment then rises to about 14 per cent.

But the Secretary of State's own labour force survey, as he admitted at the Conservative Party Conference, says that there are another 870,000 people who are looking for work but are not in the benefit count. He seemed to be arguing then that we can, in a sense, allow for them in recalculating a true unemployment rate and if we do that the figure rises to about 18 per cent.

I know what the Secretary of State will say at this point, because he said it at the Conservative Party Conference and he has said it since. He said that you cannot do that unless you also take into account the 940,000 people who the labour force survey says claim benefit but are not looking for work. I think that that is a sleight of hand. I do not think you can just knock out the whole of the 940,000 and bring the figure back to 14 per cent., because the greater part of those who said they were not looking for work said, in effect, that they were not looking for work this week. And if you ask, not the question that was asked at the 1985 survey but the question that was asked at the 1984 survey, then you have to add back about another 400,000 people into those who were in fact looking for work.

Moreover, 23 per cent. who said that they were not looking for work said they would look for work if they thought there was any chance of finding it, so I think it is only reasonable to include the great majority of those people back into the figures. Then there were many who said they were not looking for work because they were looking after the home. Many had been driven to do this because there was no work for them to do. Then again, many said that they were retired and some of them must have been retired before their proper time, due to the employment position. So I would argue—and it is not just me; other people who have looked at the figures would argue—that only the bulk of the long-term sick, the permanently disabled and the 7 per cent. who said that they did not want work or need employment, should be taken out of the 940,000 (indeed, I would say 20 per cent. of the total) and on this basis I calculate that unemployment is now above 4 million or 17 per cent.

But that of course is what we might call the "intervention" rate of unemployment, because the Secretary of State told us that the Government believed in not interfering with the operation of the labour market. But of course they do interfere in the operation of the labour market; and I am very glad that they do, to the extent that they do; for they have raised the level of employment by the special measures by 450,000 and therefore the "market" rate of unemployment—where unemployment would be if we did not have intervention; if we had a fully uncontrolled labour market—is 19 per cent. Even that does not give us the full extent of it, because we know that figures of this kind can be doubled if you look at the high unemployment groups among the long-term unemployed in the worst, most underemployed areas of the country.

So why do we claim that the Government have no programme for sustaining a reduction in those figures? The first reason I would give is that that is what the Chancellor said yesterday. The Chancellor does not claim to have any policy for significantly reducing unemployment. The Chancellor echoed the position stated in the red book at the time of the Budget. I quote from the red book, which said, explaining why there was no target for unemployment and for reducing unemployment: Future levels are not pre-ordained in unemployment. … They depend on enterprise, adaptability and our control of inflation. Therefore we cannot give a figure of reducing unemployment". That is really an astonishing argument for this Government to use, because if you look at the red book, if you look at the recent Treasury statement, if you look at what the Chancellor said yesterday, and listen to what I have no doubt members of the Government are saying in another place day by day, their statements are full of what is not "pre-ordained"; things which they "cannot control"; things which depend on circumstances beyond the control of any Government.

The Treasury statement, the red book and all the other public statements tell us all the time, with the aid of all kinds of initials, about broad and narrow money aggregates. Nobody controls any of them. Nobody has been able to control any of them. We are now told that it does not matter anyway. They are also full of figures about public expenditure levels which every Government, every year, get wrong. They are full of figures of personal saving ratios which even Keynes could not understand. There are figures about intended and expected levels of inflation, for which the Chancellor apologised yesterday after he gave them. Only trends in unemployment, we are told, are not pre-ordained, and because they are not pre-ordained the Government cannot give us any figures. On this occasion the Secretary of State reminds me of W. C. Fields as Micawber: I hope to be able to expect a modest improvement in circumstances: in short, my boy, something may turn up". But in the meantime, no figures.

The second reason is because nothing which was told to us yesterday suggests any significant change in the net job position. We have at this moment from this Government a target rate of growth, to which the Secretary of State made reference, which is just sufficient to avoid a deterioration in the benefit count of employment—for we need between 2.5 per cent. and 3 per cent. a year in order to maintain the employment position where it is. The Secretary of State made a great deal in his speech of the new jobs that we are creating, or have created. The Government always take credit for all these new jobs. The noble Lord tells us that they have created 587,000 jobs since 1983. What we are not told so frequently is that on all the evidence we have the great majority of these jobs are part-time jobs. Indeed, many of them are second jobs. The Bank of England suggested in their recent study that if one calculated the full-time equivalents of the jobs that have been created since 1983 one would have to cut the total by two-thirds.

Moreover, these figures will not help the long-term unemployed. They will not assist areas and groups where unemployment is worst. Very few of the new jobs which have come into being in the past four years will help 45-year-old face workers in Scotland, or 35-year-old clerks facing their third redundancy, or 18-year old youths with no O-levels who have come off YTS and have been unable to find a job. The people who benefit from the new jobs—I am not against people benefiting from these jobs, but they are not the people in the most need—are ladies with charge accounts at Harrods or short-time manual workers who get second jobs during the evenings in pubs. These are the type of new jobs for which the Government are taking credit. What we say is that they will not do anything for long-term unemployment.

But, of course none of the figures which we were given yesterday will do anything for unemployment, either. In this connection I should like the Leader of the House to tell me: what is the net job worth of the additions in public expenditure which were announced last night? I hope the Leader of the House can tell us that. This £4.5 billion increase seems to be not an increase on last year, but an increase in previously announced targets. Half of it seems to be going either in social security payments because inflation was wrongly forecast or because the Government under-estimated the cost of the miners' strike. But, never mind, let us not worry about the details. Can the Government tell us whether there will be a single additional worker employed in the National Health Service or in local government or in repairing houses as a result of the increases in previously announced targets which the Government announced yesterday?

If we go through all these measures, which the Government are suggesting to deal with the long-term unemployment problem, we can find no reason to suppose that they intend to do anything. Of course, the Secretary of State may say—I have no doubt that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place would say—that this is unjustifiable pessimism because they intend next year in the Budget and in the subsequent Budget to cut the standard rate of income tax, or, if not to cut the standard rate of income tax, then to give some other form of tax remission, as a result of what it is not thought nice in this House to call "selling off the silver". But a very considerable body of well-informed expert opinion (whether one takes the studies from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the National Institute or the London Business School) believes that a cut of that size in the standard rate of income tax would create about 100,000 jobs if you are lucky—about one-fifth of the job creation consequences of a properly directed increase in public expenditure: not £ 1 billion here or £ 1 billion there, but 500,000 jobs as a result of properly directing an increase in public expenditure of a similar size.

We also do not believe that the problem will be solved by taking young workers out of wages councils, about which we shall have a debate later this Session and into which matter I do not have time to go now. Indeed, that is all part of the amazing (I might say last and final) illusion of this Chancellor as he expressed it in his most depressing Mais lecture when he said that, high real wages are the fundamental cause of unemployment … The heart of the problem is the level of real wages". I suppose they believe that by cutting wages council protection they will lower real wages. The Secretary of State seemed to be saying that in his speech this afternoon. This is the last and final expectation that they rely on.

I can see why they do not say "money wages". I can see why they say "real wages". They cannot say "money wages" because since 1979 earnings have fallen by 60 per cent. while unemployment has more than doubled. We have had an almost unprecedented reduction in the level of wage settlements and a quite unprecedented increase in the rate of unemployment, and they have gone one alongside the other. In the face of that even this Government cannot say that employment has anything to do with the rate of fall or the rate of rise in money wages. Indeed, in real terms employment fell fastest when wages were falling fastest and have even reduced in real terms. So we must talk about real wages.

Recently the Treasury published a paper, The Relationship between Employment and Wages, in which they misinterpreted the literature on the subject to conclude: Employment might be 110,000 to 220,000 higher if real wages were 1 per cent.' lower". In order to do this they leaned very heavily on the work of two professors, Professor Metcalfe and Professor Nicol, who were so shocked with the misinterpretation and unfair inferences from their lectures that they themselves wrote an article in which, after showing how the Chancellor and the Treasury had misinterpreted their results, they said: It is safe to say that anyone who asserts that high real wages are the fundamental cause of our problem is talking nonsense. The Chancellor's assertion that the heart of the problem is the real level of wages is simply wrong". Yet we still get the argument coming out today that there is something wrong with the level of wages, and that if we could get the level of wages down somehow we would get the level of employment up.

I should like to ask a question. Suppose the Government still believe that if we can get the level of wages down we can get the level of employment up. Suppose they do not dispute my assertion that the level of wages was falling until the last two years, and that it is almost certainly going to rise next year. What is the level of pay increases which the Government would like to see in the next two years if the level of employment is, first, to be stabilised, or, secondly, to be reduced? Will the Leader of the House answer that question?

Most commentators believe that next year wages will rise and that the level of earnings movement will be about 10 per cent. rather than about 8 per cent., as it is this year. What do the Government think that will do to the level of employment? They must think that it will raise the level of unemployment. If so, what level of wage increases would they like to see?

This brings me back to a point we were making earlier, and which the Secretary of State did not take on board. We were trying to say that if the Government wanted to lecture industry and workers to the effect that the present level of wage increases is putting people out of work, then they ought to lecture those who are receiving the highest rate of increases. The Government ought to be talking to the judges. They ought to be talking to the chief executives. They ought to be talking to higher civil servants. Maybe they should be talking to the police. However, they should not be talking to young workers in wages councils industries because their rate of increase has been below that of the increase in the cost of living.

Let me deal finally with what we say this Government could do—even this Government. In the past, as a result of the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, we finally achieved a breakthrough with the Treasury because they admitted that the cost now of people on the unemployment register is approximately £6,300 a year. That is the direct Exchequer cost. When we began this argument the direct Exchequer cost was £3,000 a year, but now the Treasury accept that the figure is £6,300 a year. However, we now know that that figure is an underestimate. We know that as a result of the very interesting work done by two men named Sindfield and Fraser at Edinburgh University. They recently estimated the £4,500 a year which the long-term unemployed cost local authorities; that is, the cost of social service payments, the cost of lost rates and the cost of rent subsidies. Thus we may now say, as we could not say before, that the direct public expenditure costs of the long-term unemployed are about £11,000 per annum.

On any reasonable estimate, that expense is far more than the cost of a place in a community programme. It is probably more than the overall costs of jobs in local government or in the National Health Service—particularly if one focuses on the lower-paid sections of the National Health Service and local government where people earn less than £100 a week. Therefore, in that respect, the true public sector costs of doubling the community programme or of putting 200,000 more people into local government and the National Health Service would be nil.

We therefore ask this Government to increase provision in a positive way, taking account of the annual job costs, carefully and precisely. We ask the Government positively to expand employment, particularly that directed at the long-term unemployed. We say that nothing stands in the way but ideology. We say that the Government have nothing to lose and that they could achieve an improvement with half of what they have obtained from selling the family silver. Indeed, we could give the Government a slogan. If they are still worried about the charge that they are selling the family silver, then the gravamen of that charge is what they do with the money. If the money is to be given away in order to win elections, and if the money is to be given away to higher-paid workers who will spend most of it on imports, then they are selling the silver and gambling away the proceeds.

However, if that money is to be used to place people in work, then ideologically we might oppose that action, and we might oppose it too in terms of efficiency—but we could not accuse the Government of selling the family silver. Indeed, the Government could claim, since the Secretary of State has commented that the true worth of this country is in its people, that they were going out of silver and into gold. That is the policy we ask this Government to adopt, and if they will not do so, then I invite the House to vote for the amendment. I beg to move.

Moved, as an amendment to the Motion, at the end of the Address to insert "but regret the failure of the Government to propose measures to achieve a sustained reduction in the present level of unemployment".—(Lord McCarthy.)