Yorkshire and Humberside Region

Part of Orders of the Day — Supply – in the House of Commons at 6:45 pm on 29 June 1981.

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Photo of Mr James Johnson Mr James Johnson , Kingston upon Hull West 6:45, 29 June 1981

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Duffy) on his first-class speech. I listened with equal care to the speech of the Minister. The Minister and I have only one thing in common: neither of us was born in Yorkshire. At times he was flippant. At other times he spoke like a sixth-form master lecturing the class. The leopard never changes its spots. I could imagine, closing my eyes, that the hon. Gentleman was once again sitting below the Gangway, up to his old behaviour in his old bad days in Opposition.

The job of an Opposition Back Bencher is to tell the Government how bad they are. In some ways, the Minister is efficient. His leader is also efficient. However, the Government are diabolically led. If he goes anywhere in Yorkshire, he will be told the same. His speech contained nothing of any cheer for Yorkshire hon. Members—in fact, the reverse. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Mr. Lofthouse) gave statistics about the facts of life in the North, the North-West, the North-East, Scotland and Yorkshire and Humberside. Those figures show that we are the worst off. Yet the Minister sat dumb and did not even acknowledge that the figures were correct.

Like our sister areas—Leeds, Sheffield and elsewhere—Hull and Humberside is experiencing a bad time. In fact, the people of Hull are at a low ebb. I have always been an optimist in public life. There is, however, an old definition that a pessimist is simply a well-informed optimist. I know too much about the behaviour of the Government to be an optimist. I am deeply pessimistic about the future of our national economy. Figures speak volumes. I have the bulletin Employment Monitor issued by David Gill, director of planning for Humberside county council. It contains sheaves of statistics. I should like to boil them down to about four.

In May 1979 the unemployment rate for Humberside was 6·9 per cent. By May 1981 it had gone up to 16·1 per cent.—an increase of 133 per cent. In addition, redundancies are legion and have taken place in nationally known firms, such as Metal Box, Birds Eye, Smith and Nephew, Reckitt and Colman and Fenner's, as well as in the port and the docks board.

There has been much publicity about the dismal, doleful dumps into which our deep sea fishing industry has fallen. We are suffering death by a thousand cuts because of the pantomime over the EEC common fisheries policy. We cannot get anything definite, and nor can Scarborough, Bridlington, Grimbsby, Fleetwood or any other port. We are all in the same boat.

Let me encapsulate the position on Humberside. The number of jobs dependent on the deep sea fishing industry has fallen from 14,000 as recently as 10 years ago to fewer than 5,000 as a result of the loss of fishing grounds off Iceland and Norway and competition with EEC countries. Many of our so-called sister States—not only the French, but those in Scandinavia—are believed to be fishing beyond the strict catch quotas.

The city council, the industry and the unions are fighting to the death in Hull. A consortium of owners, including Tom Boyd, unions, including the TGWU, the AUEW and the GMWU, and the city council own the Hull Fish Landing Co. But one of our biggest enemies is the chairman of the British Transport Docks Board, Sir Humphrey Browne. He is fixing charges that have resulted in a Norwegian vessel being able last week to dock and land fish more cheaplythan it could in the Albert Fish Dock. The mayor has led deputations to complain about the artificially high charges in the dock. We fear that if that sort of thing continues the fish dock may be closed in August when the House is in recess. I want the Minister, who is listening carefully, as always, to give Hull Members an assurance that there will be a Minister available to see us if there is any question of closure of the dock.

Some of our difficulties are due to the EEC, but others have been caused by the cod wars and the difficulties with Iceland and the United Nations conference on the law of the sea, with its insistence on national limits, which would deny us access to Icelandic, Norwegian, Soviet and Canadian waters. All that means that the Government must fight harder inside the EEC to get a better settlement, with third party agreements so that we can get bigger quotas.

I am not optimistic. I believe that we shall have the utmost difficulty getting anything like a decent common fisheries policy. Indeed, we may not get one at all. There is not long before the 11 years, period expires, and we shall face the fearful prospect of Dutch, Danish, Belgian, German and French vessels fishing up to the high water mark of the East Coast of Yorkshire and all round the coast of Britain.

The Government must do something. The Minister is looking much more serious than he was during his speech. It is a serious matter for us on Humberside. There is deep inspissated gloom on Humberside, but it is absurd for us to be totally gloomy. The Queen is coming to open the new Humber bridge on 17 July and, according to some reports, at the weekend there were queues of traffic stretching from Boothferry to Goole.

I believe that the opening of the bridge is the most important event in Hull's history. It is already taking £1,000 an hour, crazy though that may sound. Vehicles are passing over the bridge in their thousands and there is general acceptance that the magnificent bridge will give a much-needed boost to the economy of both sides of the Humber and will complement the magnificent motorway network.

However, there are some, even in the House, who live on the south bank and speak for the people there, who cannot yet accept that the bridge exists for their benefit as well as for the benefit of those on the north bank. I appeal to my colleagues in the House, whether from Grimsby, Scunthorpe, Immingham or Louth, to realise that it is time to stop talking nonsense about white elephants and claiming that the bridge goes from nowt to nowt. Yorkshire Television was guilty of the same error in a progamme broadcast a few days ago.

It is time that people got away from nineteenth century attitudes and started to realise that the bridge benefits those on both sides of the river. I have been told that a Grimsby merchant spent £2 to cross the bridge and sold a ton of fish on the north bank. If more people were to do that, we could compete not as north bank against south bank but as British citizens working together to lift ourselves off the bottom. I appeal to what I call the fifth column to stop perpetuating nineteenth century chauvinist attitudes of "Yellow Bellies" on the south bank and "Yorkies" on the north. That has no place in a modem society, particularly when we have to pull ourselves out of the dumps. This is not a party issue. Both sides have been guilty and I hope that Yorkshire Television will stop inviting those who speak in that vein to appear on its programmes. It does no good to anyone.

The bridge is the largest and finest single-span bridge in the world. It is elegant against the skyline, a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Let it be an inspiration to all Humbersiders and Yorkshiremen. It should do much to dispel the malaise that has afflicted us for so long.

If we had a general election and the defeat of this abominable Government, we could expect better days for Hull and Yorkshire. We mean to have them, but we shall not get them while the Government Benches are occupied by the Conservative Party.I close with the memorable words that I heard Nye Bevan say many years ago to my party—"We have nothing to fear but fear itself'.