Orders of the Day — The Divided Nation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 21 January 1974.

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Photo of Sir Keith Joseph Sir Keith Joseph , Leeds North East 12:00, 21 January 1974

The whole House listened with envy and admiration to the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), who spoke for 35 minutes without a single note. I have, perhaps, deluded myself in preparing a speech on the basis of the motion, which the hon. Gentleman did not even discuss. I have now set aside my prepared speech and I shall try—though I cannot hope to rival the hon. Gentleman—to answer what he said from a single page of notes on which I have recorded the subjects which he raised.

No hon. Member will be surprised that I am not qualified to enter today into the merits of the miners' dispute. This is not a debate primarily about that dispute, although it is referred to in the motion, and indeed there is a meeting going on at this moment between the TUC and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and other Ministers. But in the light of the hon. Gentleman's remarks there are some general points that I can make related to the subject.

The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale made great play about the future need—indeed the present need—for more miners. He invoked precisely the laws of supply and demand which the Labour Party has constantly reviled and which it has tried to escape by the whole process of nationalisation and by that constant invocation, not of the laws of supply and demand and the mechanism of the free market—which we on the Government side far prefer—but of the difficult distribution of resources according to some inevitably subjective assessment of what is called "fair shares."

The Labour Party has constantly said that the division of income should be according to some doctrine of fair shares. But here the hon. Member says, "Not for the miners ; for the miners supply and demand ; they should get more, because they need more." What about the nurses? What about other equally deserving groups?

For two years the present Government tried to operate a policy that would achieve growth and increased prosperity for the country in a free market with free bargaining. They were forced off that policy by the refusal of some elements in some trade unions to work with the essential elements of compromise, give and take and reason that alone could reconcile growth, prosperity and full employment in this competitive world. It was with great reluctance that we were forced on to the second best course that we now follow, namely a prices and incomes policy. I must remind the House that the reason for the deficit for which the hon. Gentleman so criticised us was precisely the purpose which the whole House shares—growth and higher prosperity, value for money and the ending of inflation for all our people.