Oral Answers to Questions — Employment – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 22 October 1991.
Mr David Hinchliffe
, Wakefield
12:00,
22 October 1991
To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement about the level of unemployment in Yorkshire and Humberside.
Mr David Hinchliffe
, Wakefield
Bearing in mind the fact that the Wakefield area alone has lost about 20,000 mining-related jobs since 1979, what assessment have the Government made of the implications for employment prospects in that area of the delay in constructing the channel tunnel rail link to Yorkshire? Is not it disgraceful that the Government appear to be more concerned with the interests and problems of certain Tory marginals in London than with the employment potential of thousands of jobs in the north of England?
Mr. Jackson:
I shall draw the hon. Gentleman's question to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Transport because it relates to his Department. As for my Department, I have already said in answering the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) in relation to large-scale redundancies in the coal mining industry that I shall ensure that the Employment Service is providing a full service in this case, as in all other cases of large-scale redundancies.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
The political party system in the English-speaking world evolved in the 17th century, during the fight over the ascension of James the Second to the Throne. James was a Catholic and a Stuart. Those who argued for Parliamentary supremacy were called Whigs, after a Scottish word whiggamore, meaning "horse-driver," applied to Protestant rebels. It was meant as an insult.
They were opposed by Tories, from the Irish word toraidhe (literally, "pursuer," but commonly applied to highwaymen and cow thieves). It was used — obviously derisively — to refer to those who supported the Crown.
By the mid 1700s, the words Tory and Whig were commonly used to describe two political groupings. Tories supported the Church of England, the Crown, and the country gentry, while Whigs supported the rights of religious dissent and the rising industrial bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, Whigs became Liberals; Tories became Conservatives.
