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 Bruce Millan Mr Bruce Millan , Glasgow Craigton 12:00, 24 July 1978

I intend to do that. I want to examine the voting record of the Opposition over the past four years of Labour Government.

The hon. Member for Cathcart said that some of the recommendations and proposals that he was making might be regarded as rather woolly. Certainly they are woolly. They are more than woolly, they are dishonest, misleading and hypocritical. It is an impertinence for the hon. Gentleman to ask about the shipbuilding industry and the Government's action. Without the intervention of the Labour Government, without the nationalisation of the industry and without the action that we have taken through the intervention fund, with the further action that we are now taking for the extension of the fund, the industry would be in a state of total collapse.

Opposition Members voted against the nationalisation of the shipbuilding industry. They have voted against giving help to the industry as they have voted against giving help to other parts of British and Scottish industry.

The hon. Member for Cathcart, like the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) in the speech that he made during the employment debate on 4th July, poured scorn on the subsidies that the Government have paid to private industry. I agree that subsidies by themselves are not especially desirable or undesirable. However, I should be happy if we had a private enterprise sector that could do without subsidies. Without the massive help that the Government have given to private industry over the past four years, whether it be British Leyland, Chrysler or any of the many other examples, we would have had massively increased unemployment and seen our important industries that are basic to the success of our industrial prosperity picked off one by one.

In all these cases, the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. and hon. Friends, far from supporting the Government in the assistance that they have given to industry in this way, have taken every possible opportunity to vote against such assistance. Their actions, if the Government had followed them, would have led to a substantial increase in unemployment.