Orders of the Day — Employment Policy

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 23 June 1944.

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Photo of Mr Wilfrid Roberts Mr Wilfrid Roberts , Cumberland Northern 12:00, 23 June 1944

Well, the chairman of the Tory Reformers. I welcomed what the hon. Member, and also the hon. Member for The High Peak (Mr. Molson) said, because they, and other hon. Members, have said that they have held their views for a year. That is splendid, but members of my party have held those views for a number of years longer than that, and we welcome this conversion to Liberal doctrine of members of the Conservative Party. Hon. Members of the Conservative Party, who may be future occupants of that Front Bench, seem to be taking a very Liberal view, which we welcome wherever we find it. There is, however, an extraordinary difference in the attitude of Members of different parties to the White Paper.

The Conservative Party is really very much divided on this issue, and we shall hear more of that different approach. The hon. and gallant Member for Preston (Captain Cobb) seemed to me to have a most defeatist view of the future of this country. We have to export our population, to de-crowd this country and fill up the Empire and the Dominions instead. If that view prevailed, it would be a disaster. We have not a very large population compared with some of the other United Nations, and if we were deliberately to reduce it, and the defeatist view that there must be unemployment in the country were correct, it would be disastrous.