Economic Affairs

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 17 November 1965.

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Photo of Mr George Mackie Mr George Mackie , Caithness and Sutherland 12:00, 17 November 1965

I shall be brief as by this time of night hon. Members called upon to speak have a great fellow feeling for those hon. Members who are still left. I do not at this time have a great deal to say.

I have been gratified by the attacks on the Liberal Party made by the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod). I was very pleased that the attack was in this House because outside the House he has been threatening homicide to the Liberals and encouraging his troops into battle to that effect. I cannot quite see why he is getting so angry. It is not as though he were like the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Duffy) who has a Liberal opponent with only 200 votes behind him. Admittedly in Enfield, West the Liberal candidate jumped to second place. This may make the right hon. Gentleman very apprehensive indeed of the Liberal Party.

I could not quite get the right hon. Member's reference to the Liberal Party selling itself into bondage. What appeared to hurt the right hon. Member was the fact that we had not extracted a price. This he could not understand. I can assure him that the Liberal Party has looked at the programme and does not specifically need a price to approve the sort of policies which it has been preaching for some time. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Liberal Party has said quite clearly that the Queen's Speech has many Liberal policies in it. Of large parts of it we approve. Of course, we shall examine it and vote on the virtues of the measures as they come forward in this House. We shall vote on whether they are right or wrong without the fear that we may bring the Government down, which appears to influence the poll figures of members of the Tory Party voting in the Divisions we have so far had.

The Amendment we are discussing appears to be a most curious one in that it humbly regrets that the Gracious Speech contains no measures likely to redeem the failure of the Government's economic policy. We cannot accept this. There are many measures in the Speech which are bound to be and have been accepted by the Conservative Party— special attention to regions, efficient working of the Boards of little N.E.D.C.s, improved export facilities, agricultural expansion. All these are obviously measures which must improve the economy.

The reference to the policy on prices and incomes is curious because I had understood that Conservative Chancellors have themselves endeavoured to work out an incomes policy. Why they should disapprove of such a policy I do not know. It is obvious that one could criticise, and criticise very hard, a number of the first results of the incomes policy. It is, of course, disturbing that wages have risen by such a large percentage. People are disturbed about this, but it does not invalidate the policy on prices and incomes.

I want to put our position in regard to this Amendment. The Amendment itself we regard as a silly one, not relevant to the occasion, and we see no reason why we should vote for or against it. We do not regard it as relevant and there-we propose to ignore it. We have on the Order Paper what we consider to be a constructive Amendment to the Address. There are certain things which, of course, we in the Liberal Party have criticised. We criticise, and have done before, the lack of any intention on the part of the Government to produce competition in this country. In a few days we shall be debating an Order to retain the 10 per cent. charge on imports. That is a temporary charge which has now been on for a year. This is an extremely disturbing position.

For the Government to talk about competitive efficiency in exports and then to admit that industry cannot compete at home, appears to be quite wrong. I cannot see that investment allowances inside this country will make industries efficient. The industries which require capital should be willing to spend in order to make larger profits. If they can make profits and have to be driven to spend money on equipment which will raise their profits, there is something wrong with competition in this country. This the Government must recognise.

Another matter on which we have constantly criticised the Government is the lack of any reference to a commitment to go into Europe in a proper way. The Gracious Speech says that we should continue our efforts, but the efforts have not been good enough. If we are to be competitive it is absolutely necessary for this Government to declare their intention of joining the European Community, and doing that as soon as conditions are right. If they did this they would create a new climate in industry and would do a great deal to persuade industry to pull up its socks and prepare to tackle the new challenge which would come along.

We in the Liberal Party have also said —and have been criticised for saying it— that more incentives are necessary. This is true today and many hon. Members have spoken of the taxation position in other countries to show how our competitors operate, many of them in an extremely successful way. We feel certain that the answer is to make profits harder to earn but a great deal easier to keep in a competitive economy. This is sound common sense and has been proved to be correct in other countries.

The Government must, first of all, see that we get into Europe and so obtain the advantages of scale and so on which membership of the Common Market would bring about. Is this not a more suitable subject for hon. Members of the Conservative Party to consider for amendment to the Gracious Speech? It has been at the centre of their policy and the Leader of the Opposition has been closely associated with efforts to get into the Common Market. I should have thought that that was the most glaring omission from the Gracious Speech to which they should have drawn attention.

In short, we will vote for or against the Government on specific measures according to their virtues when they are brought before Parliament. We will not vote at the behest of the Government or the Opposition. We see no necessity to vote on this entirely irrelevant Amendment.