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 James Kilfedder Mr James Kilfedder , North Down 12:00, 24 July 1978

I want to restrict my speech to eight minutes so that another hon. Member may speak.

It is commercially safer for a small firm with a full order book to arrange overtime for its existing work force than to engage more people, including young persons.

Small firms in inner Belfast have to face the facts of city centre decay—high rents, spiralling rates and skilled workers who have moved out to the new suburbs or the small towns which ring the city. Large-scale public investment would lead the way to large-scale private investment in the inner city areas. I welcome the belated change in the Government's policy, but far more resources must be devoted to the revitalisation of the inner areas of cities throughout the United Kingdom.

I doubt that work sharing, in the sense of reducing overtime and spreading the available employment, would make much difference in Northern Ireland to the actual number of unemployed compared with, say, the Midlands. However, there is a feeling that the level of efficiency decreases with overtime and that in the small firm particularly, overtime working reduces buoyancy and flexibility.

Certain boredom at work presents a real problem for the worker. This matter has not been mentioned by Labour Members. Not enough attention has yet been paid to the subject of boredom, but when workers are bored they are bound to get into squabbles with management, with all the resultant difficult problems.

The fundamental requirement is the restoration of real incentives both to firms and to employees. I am convinced that one reason for the slow recovery of the United Kingdom, compared with Germany and France, is the taxation system. I should like to see a thorough examination of the effects of the system on productive effort, the level of investment and the modernisation of equipment.

I am also worried about the effect on the number of unemployed of cheap imports from Poland, Taiwan and elsewhere. In 10 years Ulster's mechanical and electrical engineering industries have lost 6,500 jobs, textiles have lost 11,000, clothing and footwear 8,000 and the distributive trades about 8,000—a total of over 33,000 jobs lost through what amounts to dumping. Some of the jobs may have been lost because of technical changes, but most seem to have been lost because of cheap imports. It is high time that something was done to stop that.