Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 24 July 1978.
The hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Rodgers) should realise that unemployment is not made acceptable for the work- ing people of this country merely because it has been created by a Labour Government. They find it unacceptable whichever Government create it.
In Northern Ireland unemployment is greater than in any other part of the Kingdom. The stark dramatic fact is that it is higher than at any time since 1938, and that is going back to bad old days that we do not want to see repeated. With 73,000 people unemployed in Northern Ireland, 13 per cent. of the working population is facing the future without hope or the prospect of work and feeling desperately frustrated. If the Northern Ireland unemployment figures for this month are were translated to Great Britain, 2·9 million people would be on the dole.
At present in Northern Ireland one in every two school leavers is out of a job, and I cannot allow that agonising situation to continue without protesting vehemently. At its most optimistic level the youth opportunities programme and the job creation scheme will not provide more than 4,000 job opportunities in work experience and at training centres, and most of those are for less than 16 weeks. With the widespread knowledge that there are no permanent jobs for them, job experience may lead only to a greater feeling of frustration and discontent among young people.
Clearly there is a need for large industrial enterprises, but I believe that insufficient attention is devoted to small firms. There are nearly 75,000 self-employed people in Northern Ireland, and more than 30,000 of them employ a total of 200,000 others. Most of the 490,000 employees in Northern Ireland work in shops, offices, factories and farms with fewer than 200 employees.
There are other regions in the United Kingdom like Northern Ireland with a similar percentage of unemployed persons, where large-scale industry, while important, is not the principal employer. Therefore greater priority should be given to the small firms and their problems. The TUC and the CBI concentrate too much, as the Government do, on the large scale, and not enough on the small scale. Some recent legislation, while excellent in intention, has had a restrictive effect on the growth potential of small firms. Indeed in many cases, it has put them into financial difficulties, and some even into liquidation. The temporary employment subsidy and the small firms employment subsidy seem to do no more than offset the consequences of the taxation system.
The Employment Protection Act not only protects the employment of those who are lucky enough to have jobs, but militates against small firms taking the costly step of employing extra people—