It is a sad fact of government that it is not always possible to persuade one's colleagues of the virtue of certain projects. The one that the hon. Gentleman mentioned was and is dear to my heart. We would now be in a stronger position with our gas supplies and energy supplies generally if the project had gone ahead.

Finally, the end of the coal strike brings many opportunities for reducing energy and fuel costs. That will bring a direct social benefit for those who pay highly for their electricity and gas each week, as well as an enormous industrial benefit. We can now pave the way towards lower electricity prices. In the book of many of us, the central issue in the coal dispute has been to find a way of moving from high-cost electricity to entry into the international world of competition with competitive electricity prices. We now have the opportunity also to liberalise the natural gas market by linking our system with the continental grid and the Norwegian sector.

We have had to go through a hideous era of high energy prices—I was involved in it and found no pleasure in presiding over it when energy prices were roaring upwards — and there is now an opportunity to introduce a substantial lowering of natural gas prices. In many countries, and in Britain in due course, this process will force oil further out from the domestic heating market.

These few topics should be part of a broader picture which it is important to grasp and to take further forward. The central features of the picture are enterprise, education and training. Those are the three qualities which we should drive into the system by every possible means so that we can begin to ameliorate the appalling problems of inner city areas and high unemployment areas.

Can this be done? Is there enough room to enable it to be done? Does it involve a shopping list which no one can possibly pay? It is important to show the direction in which we are moving so that we can at least start on the chosen path. Can we make a substantial start? I believe that we can. A number of those who have argued over the years for sound money and prudent finance first and foremost are now rightly saying that there is fairly considerable room for making quite a good start along the path which I have described even as soon as next Tuesday 19 March.

Mr. Samuel Brittan is a friend of mine and a respected commentator, and only the other day he wrote in the Financial Times:A £9·5 billion projected borrowing requirement based on credible spending estimates would be better received than £5 billion based on funny numbers. That is a sound comment and one that I would commend to all hon. Members. The City editor of the Daily Telegraph wrote: A hair-shirt budget to please fickle financial minds would in these circumstances be wholly inappropriate. Professor Patrick Minford of Liverpool, the high priest of the supply siders, argues that we should go for a borrowing requirement of £8 billion. The truth is that with these sorts of figures, additional revenues from the higher dollar price of oil and any tax additions which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the exchequer is able to raise from other sources — I suspect that there will be some — a considerable start can be made in implementing the type of programme that I have outlined without inflation and without pushing up interest rates.

There are those who ask how it is possible to talk in such terms during a sterling crisis. But it is a false perspective to imagine that we are in the midst of a sterling crisis that requires hair-shirt economics. There is, of course, the dollar crisis. The soaring price of the dollar is creating severe volatility and danger throughout the Western world and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is right to say that in due course it may have brutal results. There is no need for unilateral penance for this on the part of the United Kingdom.

The problem that we have in handling our economy, which our neighbours do not experience in handling theirs, is oil price instability, which is difficult to control. I think that we can make a slightly better contribution to resolving the problem than we have made so far. I understand that we shall be debating that issue on Thursday and I have no doubt that views will be expressed on that occasion.

In the meantime, we have a 14 per cent. interest rate, which obviously threatens recovery. We have that rate because we are told that it is necessary for money supply reasons and strict monetary policy. But monetary targets are now coming under control, so I think that there is room for lower interest rates in addition to the other items to which I have referred. An interest rate of 14 per cent. hurts employment in inner city areas such as Hackney and Tower Hamlets, and great industrial areas such as Birmingham, as much as high taxation and the other burdens of which we have spoken. We need to see lower interest rates and less tax burdens of all sorts. It should be realised that they are not alternatives to each other.

We need to see the expansion and extension of the idea of education and training far outside the period of formal education. We should build on the youth training scheme and other schemes over which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has presided so energetically and effectively. Above all, we need to bring home to the public that there is a goal that we can achieve. It is one that is within reach. It is not the same goal that we have sought to reach in the past. We must seek to move forward to a fully occupied society. I believe that we have the resources and confidence as a nation and Government to do that.