Recession and Unemployment

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 8:42 pm on 19 February 1992.

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Photo of John McAllion John McAllion , Dundee East 8:42, 19 February 1992

At the beginning of this debate we witnessed a spectacle on the Government Benches and heard from the Secretary of State for the Environment a speech that summed up quite brilliantly why the current Government have no friends in my country—Scotland—and fewer and fewer friends south of the border. In all the nauseating point-scoring of the Secretary of skate—"skate" is a good word, but I mean the Secretary of State—we heard nothing at all offering one scintilla of hope to the millions of our fellow-citizens who are without work and without homes and who will be without any kind of economic prospects while the Conservative Government waste their time in office.

The Secretary of State's knowledge of Scotland is so limited that he believes that in Scotland there is a place called Edinburgh, Monklands. The fact that Edinburgh is the Scottish capital on the east coast, while Monklands is in Lanarkshire on the west coast, was totally lost on the Secretary of State, yet this man purports to be a senior Minister in a Government charged with responsibility for running Scotland. He could not even find Scotland unless someone took him by the hand and showed him where it was.

His ignorance of Scotland is so pervasive that he is undoubtedly equally ignorant of a crisis facing a company in my constituency this very evening. I refer to Alma Holdings, which manufactures confectionery. The firm employs about 300 people in Dundee, and hundreds more across the Tay in Fife, in Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes. Tonight Alma Holdings has been forced to call in the receiver as a result of the mother and father of economic recessions, which has been caused by the present Government's policies.

It is in recessionary times such as these that belts have to be tightened and spending has to be cut. It is in recessionary times such as these that the public stops buying the kind of confectionery that Alma Holdings produces. If that company is not selling, it is not earning; if it is not earning, it is not able to sustain employment as it has in the past. That is why the receiver has had to be called in. Such is the reality facing people trying to run businesses while the Conservative Government are in office. It is entirely remote from empty rhetoric such as we have heard from Government Members during this debate.

We are now in an infinitely worse economic situation that the country faced in 1979, when the Tory Opposition claimed that Labour Britain "wasn't working". The current Prime Minister took part in that campaign nearly 13 years ago. Like every other Tory taking part in that campaign, he had no misgivings whatsoever about blaming the then economic troubles on the then Labour Government. He did not then mouth weak excuses such as are now trotted out by Ministers. At that time we heard from the Conservatives nothing about the battle against inflation. We did not then hear Tory Members say that "if it isn't hurting, it isn't working", or that it is a price worth paying. There were no such words back in 1979. Then the situation was simple and straightforward to them: there was mass unemployment and there was a Labour Government, and the first was caused by the second.

Now, 13 years later, we have twice and three times the 1979 level of mass unemployment. Why are the Tories not now doing what they did then? Why are they not blaming the situation on the elected Government? Why the inconsistency? Perhaps consistency is not something that the public have come to expect from political parties, but, given the circumstances that now face this country—recession and mass unemployment—a little humility would not be out of place. We might hear a note of regret about the suffering of the millions in the dole queues and of their families.

There might even be a little remorse about the million more who are trapped into poverty wages as a result of the Government's deliberate policy, perhaps even a little shame that, after 13 years of Tory government, almost one quarter of Europe's 50 million poor live in Britain. Given these appalling circumstances, we should not be asking too much if we were to expect the Government to begin to recognise that perhaps—just perhaps—they got it wrong in the past and that it might be time to change their economic policies.

In the Government's amendment to the Opposition's motion, there is no sign whatsoever of recognition that the Tories may have made mistakes. In fact, the Government, in the amendment, congratulate themselves on what they call success. Success? Millions of families throughout this country must be saying to themselves tonight, "If this is success, God preserve us from failure." The amendment goes on to boast about what the Government call the foundations for economic recovery, which we are told have now been firmly laid. "Foundations for economic recovery" is yet another euphemism for throwing millions of people out of work for the purpose of deflating the economy and bringing inflation under control.

The foundations for economic recovery were supposed to have been laid at the end of the last Tory recession in the early 1980s. We were told then that the price had been paid for the breakthrough that would sustain economic recovery. In fact, we were told that such a breakthrough had been achieved. At that time, the Tories liked to call ut the British economic miracle. It was the high point of the then rising tide of Thatcherism, the pinnacle of the achievements of the then Tory Chancellor, whom the Prime Minister called "my brilliant, brilliant Chancellor".

Of course, both of them have now gone, and neither is lamented in any way by Labour Members. But their skeletons are still rattling very loudly in the cupboards of the right hon. Gentleman who is now Prime Minister, who at that time was their protege and owed his personal advancement to their sponsorship. Now the Prime Minister does not give them a second glance. He tries to place the maximum distance between himself and their political heritage before facing the British people in a general election. So far as the Prime Minister is concerned, the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) and the right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) might never have existed. Indeed, I am sure that he sometimes wishes that they had never existed.

But exist they did, and so does the economic damage that they inflicted upon the British people. If the Tories think that, by ditching those two individuals, they have absolved themselves of responsibility for 13 wasted Tory years, they are very sadly mistaken. It was not this or that individual who foisted upon the British people the ghastly experiment of monetarism; it was not this or that individual who forced through the poll tax in defiance of public opinion. It was each and every Tory Member of Parliament who, throughout those 13 years, knowingly gave their support.

Chief among those, of course, was the present Prime Minister, who was the most loyal supporter of the Government at that time—until it was in his personal interests to cease his support. In every sense of the word, the right hon. Gentleman was a right honourable rat deserting a sinking ship.

The flagship has sunk and pulled down its captain. It is now the turn of the rest of the crew who are beginning to sing a slightly different economic tune. They say that it is all the fault of a global economic crisis and nothing to do with the British Government. They say that Germany, Japan and the United States are all at the mercy of huge, international and impersonal economic forces that are sweeping the world and leaving in their wake international recession and mass unemployment.

In their desperation, the Tories are beginning to sound like so many Trotskyists as they say that it is all the fault of capitalism, and nothing can be done by any elected Government. Capitalism is cyclical—bust follows boom just as boom follows bust—and contained within capitalism are the destructive seeds of inevitable recession and mass unemployment. That is the logic of the Government's argument. They are saying that, if we want to put an end to economic recession and mass unemployment, and break through to a sustained economic recovery, we must first destroy capitalism, as it contains seeds that cannot be removed. I would not wish to quarrel with that argument, but I find it strange coming from Conservatives.

The truth is that something can be done: a programme of Government action and investment as outlined by my right hon. and hon. Friends in today's debate. Capital allowances would encourage investment to improve this country's transport and infrastructure, and we could introduce special employment measures. However, the suggestions all come from Labour Members.

One of the key reforms that must be implemented if we are to break away from the present problems is constitutional reform. Within this country, a political state is developing that is so skewed by the dominance of southern constituencies that is now possible for a Tory Government to be elected on the back of southern votes and pursue policies targeted solely in the interests of people living in the southern half of the country. That policy cannot bring economic prosperity to the whole of the United Kingdom. If the Tory Government are re-elected after the next general election and they persist with that policy, the United Kingdom could be put at risk.