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 Harold Walker Mr Harold Walker , Doncaster 12:00, 24 July 1978

If the attempted intervention were to be half as short as the last intervention, it would be a jolly good speech in its own right. I must get on.

The real difficulties about forecasting lie outside the models that are hypothesised by economists. They arise from the impossibility of knowing the extent to which what seem at one point in time to be reasonable plans and expectations can be realised.

I will give some illustrations. World trade expansion for example, must be a major factor in the Government's economic strategy to secure a return to full employment and sustain economic growth. We seek, in co-operation with the other major industrial countries, at the summit conference at Bonn, and in the EEC and OECD discussions, to revive and to expand world trade. Yet none of us can know how successful the eventual outcome might be. All that we can say is that other countries are as anxious to reduce their unemployment as we are to reduce ours, and rest their hopes of doing so on an expansion of world trade.