Orders of the Day — Civil Estimates, 1940.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 16 April 1940.

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Photo of Mr Ernest Brown Mr Ernest Brown , Leith

I will not prophesy, because I am certain that this country means to win this war—when I say the country, I mean all, with the exception of an insignificant minority—and that the country will pay any price to do it. It has been my good fortune to have a greater measure of active co-operation, not merely in generalities, but in practical working out of details. This has been the case more than in any other period I believe in British history. It is a very solid advantage indeed. There are two issues here. First, we have the Government—the various Ministries—themselves responsible for a great deal of production but which after all is not the greatest part of production. The bulk of production in this country is being entrusted to private firms which have had long experience. Our policy has been based on this free co-operation, with the determination to get a rapid evolution of the industrial process, and to attain the results the nation must have if it is to get, equip, and maintain its forces in the field, and to maintain civil life.

I am bound to say that the trade unions have shown themselves most ready to co-operate with us. In the engineering industry as a whole, there is no need to talk in general terms because agreement has been arrived at, and where breaches of the agreement are brought to the notice of the responsible authority, either employer or employed, they are being dealt with. The case is not quite the same in the shipbuilding industry, because, as industrial Members of the House know, we are dealing here with a confederation of a number of unions, and we have had to proceed in another way. It has never been my conception of my duty to work along abstract lines. My conception of my duty as Minister of Labour and National Service is to get a practical machine which will do the job. On the one hand we have general agreement, and on the other a number of agreements. The process, however, is going on just the same.

The hon. Member for Cardigan was quite right when he pointed out that it is universally recognised that this war will make far greater demands than any other war on the skilled worker of the country. He made one slip, however, when he exhorted me to produce the skilled man. That is not my task. It is my task to see that every available skilled man registers at the Employment Exchanges and is made available for a job in his own craft. It is not my duty to train skilled men, nor could I do it. The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) rather chided me the other day for not training men in shipbuilding, but if he had taken pains to put the point, either to the shipbuilding employers or the shipbuilding unions, he would have been told that the last thing the Ministry of Labour could do is to provide the equipment and surroundings necessary to train shipyard workers. We cannot claim, and we have never claimed, in our training centres to train skilled men, but what we can do is to give a certain amount of skill in quick time. The issue there is not somehow suddenly to add x thousands of skilled men. No one can do it. There is no wizard who can wave a wand and do that. The skill is there. It is the result of long experience, and no Minister or employer can improvise it. What can be done, and what is going on in industry now, is to apply that skill to its utmost. The process is to make the utmost use of all the skill available so that every skilled man shall go to the job in which he is competent, and then the semi-skilled man shall follow him, and the unskilled will follow the semi-skilled.

Let me tell the Committee the machinery which has been set up in order that workers may be given the work they ought to have so that they can use their skill to the full for the nation's benefit and the less skilled jobs can be given to those from the ranks of the unemployed and others who were previously employed in other occupations. We have adopted the principle that every skilled man must be employed where his skill can best be used.