Debate on the Address

Part of Orders of the Day — Queen's Speech – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 3 November 1959.

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Photo of Mr David Webster Mr David Webster , Weston-Super-Mare 12:00, 3 November 1959

It gives me great pleasure to congratulate the hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Mapp) on a most successful maiden speech. Throughout his measured and thoughtful contribution he discussed with great feeling and considerable thought the grave problems which he sees in his constituency, and he went beyond mere statistics to the human problems.

At the same time, I should like to pay a tribute to the hon. Member's predecessor, who sat on a different side of the House. He was a most courageous politician and never modified his words to court popularity. I can see that, although probably their opinions would differ on the grave matters which we discuss in this House, there is the same determination to speak up and to get issues thoroughly cleared.

The hon. Member gave no sign of the ordeal which it is to all of us. One is told that the first speech is the worst, but I do not know whether that is the general consensus of opinion in the House. I took great interest in the problems of transition which the hon. Gentleman discussed, and, if I may, I should also like to discuss problems of transition.

I welcome the reference in the Gracious Speech to the Bill which, with commendable promptitude, has been presented to the House to help to cure local unemployment, to make these powers anticipatory and to give to local authorities powers to clear sites in order to build. It is right that the first major Measure of the new Parliament should be to prevent local unemployment becoming a chronic problem.

I think that we should go a little deeper into the causes of localised unemployment, apart from the transitional problems which the hon. Gentleman discussed as they apply to his own constituency. Many of the pockets of unemployment, as they are known today, although some of them are now so big that I would prefer to call them sacks, contain industries which we all know are of a most cyclical nature. Today, there are many aspects of the steel industry in which there is expansion. The expansion of need and of production has grown greater than the capacity, but there is one part of the steel industry, namely, that supplying the needs of the shipyards for heavy steel plate, where the capacity is much greater than the need at present. Every time that freight rates rise slightly, it means that more vessels are taken out of the estuaries where hitherto they have been laid up. As long as these vessels remain unremunerative, one cannot see any increase in the number of orders on the order books for the shipyards. Therefore, people in the North-East and in Scotand, where they are used to the tradition of feast or famine, do not want the famine to be too prolonged and want to get back to feasting as quickly as possible.

I think that the problem is likely to persist if we do not go further than the steps set out in the Bill. I cannot discuss the Bill, because I would be out of order, but there is a great need for many of the products of the heavy industries of the North-East and Scotland and there is today a great threat to one of our traditional types of trade.

Very few people seem to be aware of the nature of this threat. It is that the great trading centres of Western Europe will take away from this country a traditional British trade, shipping and transport into and out of Europe. As one sees the Rotterdam—Rhine—Meuse water and pipeline network and docks build up, it is absolutely essential that those who in this country are responsible for the docks and for communications leading to and from them should get a move on and modernise equipment and all the ancillary services which are required. If they do not get on with this problem immediately, they will find that they will be competing in the most adverse way with the trade and competition from overseas. A major drive to modernise these port installations would take up a considerable amount of slack in the heavy aspect of British industry and go a long way to curing many of the problems of local unemployment.

In the more remote areas, one would wish to do something to help the pockets or sacks of unemployment. We heard the hon. Lady the Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) describing eloquently the problems of her constituency. While one would wish to help Scotland, one would not go quite so far as to suggest that a strip mill should be set up in the constituency of the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), the Leader of the Liberal Party, although, possibly, the hon. Member might welcome a few extra radical thinkers into his constituency.

The core of the problem, which so far has not been mentioned, is the high cost of the transport of materials and of the finished article from the sources of supply and back to the markets. Until that problem is tackled, all these other methods of transitional subsidy and aid deal only with the problem at the periphery. What we must do is to drive as hard as we can to improve our communications, including road, rail and bridges, in the remoter parts of the country, because until we do this we will never get rid of the fundamental problem which lies at the root of this unemployment condition.

To talk about my own part of the country, I found it rather ironic when in Cornwall recently to recall that about a year ago it was declared to be a D.A.T.A.C. area. At the same time, however, the Ministry of Transport cut down the major road improvement grants to the area. It is a complete fallacy to suggest that the South-West is only an area where people go for their holidays. We would not direct industrialists to set up industries in Cornwall any more than we, or hon. Members opposite, would direct labour to various parts of the country. We do not, however, see how any industrialist would consider it economically feasible to set up business in an area in which communications are so extremely poor. When one thinks of holidays and realises that this area is a major gold and dollar earner for the country, when one thinks of the communications to the area and of the annual funeral procession to the South-West as we see it for four months of the year, it is high time that something was done about this drastic problem. We should be careful to ensure that the goose that lays the gold and dollar eggs is not strangled in the highways and byways of Somerset.

I welcome the activities of my right hon. Friend the new Minister of Transport, and his predecessor, in all that is being done in the development of transport and the building of roads and I wish the maximum speed to my right hon. Friend's efforts. It is, I consider, altogether a good thing that Miss Jayne Mansfield opened the Chiswick flyover. It gave the occasion a bit of publicity and introduced a controversial note. Now, Mr. Dayton has made the matter even more controversial. It is right that these matters should be brought before the public eye and interest concentrated upon them.

One of the activities of my noble Friend the new Minister for Science should be to consider the science of road building, in which art we are far behind European standards, as many of us who visited Germany recently have discovered.

At the same time, I did not think that the remarks of the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson), when he referred to a certain lady whom I have mentioned, were particularly flattering, either to himself or to the West when he was comparing the aims of the West and of Russia. Our function as politicians is to ensure that when we leave this House, we leave the conditions of the people better than we found them when we came in. Although we may not yet have put a sputnik round the earth or a lunik round the moon—we might yet be able to do these things—it is true to say that we have improved the conditions of the people to a stage very much in advance of conditions in Russia today. It is a paradox that in Russia, with its tremendous scientific developments, so little has been done to help ordinary people.

There is, however, a danger that we might be beguiled simply by material things. What we want to cherish and maintain is a spirit of voluntary service to the community and a spirit of voluntarily giving up one's spare time to get education to improve our ability to serve the community. When we have to compete with States which have compulsory powers, as there are in Russia and China, it is essential that this individual spirit and desire to serve should prevail. As long as we maintain and insist upon these things, we will ensure that we compete successfully as a free nation against the competition of others of an alien type of thinking.