Orders of the Day — Unemployment

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 24 July 1978.

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Photo of Mr Barney Hayhoe Mr Barney Hayhoe , Hounslow Brentford and Isleworth 12:00, 24 July 1978

These people have sought to label my party as the party of unemployment. Now all that has changed. They may attempt to continue the smear, but the reality and the record are against them. With every Labour Government more people have been unemployed when they left office than when they came into office. Labour Governments have failed to meet the challenge of unemployment, and in failing they have opened up great opportunities for my party to serve the people of this country by implementing the policies which will provide jobs and by killing off the damaging, searing untruth that my party believes in unemployment. It does not. None of us believes in unemployment. Peter Jenkins, who is no friend of ours politically, says that the Labour Party has used unemployment as an instrument of policy. So it has. It has failed to solve unemployment, and it will be both in support of our positive policies and in criticism of the Government's failures that we vote tonight.