Economic Situation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 11 July 1960.

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Photo of Sir Austen Albu Sir Austen Albu , Edmonton 12:00, 11 July 1960

I very much agree with the last part of the speech of the hon. Member for Halifax (Mr. M. Macmillan) in which he referred to the actions of the Government to deal with the decline in the cotton industry in face of the liberalisation of imports and his demand that the Government should take more steps to ascertain the effects of economic change. I think, however, that he will find that if he pursues this argument very far he will land himself in schemes of economic planning with which at the beginning of his speech he pretended not to agree.

I must apologise to the Committee for not being able to hear the opening speeches. I was involved in the last stages of the deliberations of the Select Committee on the Nationalised Industries which, as the hon. Member for Scarborough (Sir A. Spearman) will know, has produced a very important Report. However, I can very well imagine what the speeches were like, as I have heard them very often over the last few years. I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer explained to the Committee the grave dangers of inflation and the strain on the economy, and went on to claim the credit for such small expansion as we have had in the last year and to point out that we could go on expanding only by standing still. I am certain that my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson), in a witty and telling speech, managed to quote a large number of figures showing that we are bottom of every league table in the economic game—the productivity league, the investment league and the export league—and he was perfectly right.