Unemployment (East Midlands)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:21 pm on 9 February 1983.

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Photo of Mr Raymond Ellis Mr Raymond Ellis , North East Derbyshire 5:21, 9 February 1983

One thing that we can say about the speech of the Minister of State is that it was consistent with the track record of the Government on such matters. We expected a repetition of the same old tired, barren and negative replies that do not help to solve the problem and do not even help the Government's case. The problems seem to be blamed on Governments of long ago. It is true that no Opposition Member was happy with the unemployment level under the Labour Government, but, compared with the dimensions of today's disaster, the period from 1974 to May 1979 was one of halcyon days or comparative Utopia. At least the total of one million unemployed then was a real figure and not a massaged figure. Had the previous Government applied the same cosmetic measures of job schemes and so-called work experience, and had they used the same vanishing cream that this Government used to remove the long-standing unemployed from the statistics, in May 1979 the official total of unemployed would have been zero.