Industry, Employment and Roads

Part of Scotland – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 2 July 1959.

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Mr. Enroll:

The visitors themselves need to be serviced and looked after and all that helps to bring employment.

We do not want to think only of manufacturing industry. I know that that must be a main feature, but we want to look at the other subsidiary sources of employment which can all help to make their contribution to a high level of prosperity.

I should like to remind the House of the action which the Government had taken in the field of public investment. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated in the debate on the Address on 3rd November last that a review of public investment was held during the course of last summer and this resulted in a series of specific but limited relaxations designed to stimulate employment during this coming winter, particularly in those areas which were suffering most heavily from unemployment."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd November, 1958; Vol. 594, c. 641.] In the case of Scotland, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out on 10th March, these measures were expected to lead to the expenditure of nearly £10 million of additional money by local authorities, Government Departments and other public bodies in Scotland, the expenditure to be incurred by 31st March, 1960.

Perhaps I should mention how the figure of additional expenditure is made up: schools, technical education, etc., £2,800,000; housing. £2,100,000; hospitals, £1,150,000; electricity boards, £1 million; trunk and classified roads, £310,000: miscellaneous local government services, £600,000, and a number of other items, bringing the grand total to £9,675,000. This additional expenditure should produce a useful stimulus to employment.

Nor is this all. The total of public investment in Great Britain for 1959–60 is £1,607 million. Many of the programmes included in this total cover the whole of Great Britain and the Scottish share is not known—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—with sufficient precision to make a comparison. Of those which can be separated, such as electricity, roads, local authority housing, water, sewerage, education and hospitals, the Scottish share is about one-seventh. This does not seem unreasonable in view of the fact that Scotland's share of the population is nearer one-tenth.