Industry and Employment

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 4:13 pm on 29 April 1999.

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Photo of John Redwood John Redwood Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 4:13, 29 April 1999

The Secretary of State's new doctrine is that I must table all the more subtle points in my letters in parliamentary questions. I have tried that once or twice. Let me tell the House what happens in such cases. First, the Department sits on it for a bit. It misses the deadline. Then it decides to shuffle the question over to the Treasury, which decides that it is too difficult to answer—or the person concerned is not allowed to answer because, if he did, the Chancellor would beat him up, or at least disagree with him. The Treasury then fails to come up with an answer at all. I shall give the House and the Secretary of State an example.

I asked the simple question: what will be the impact on unemployment of a 1 per cent. increase in labour costs? That is not a hugely difficult question that needs rocket science to answer: any Government economic model has such information built into it, and the Secretary of State must have considered such matters before he pushed through the remains of the Government's employment legislation designed to increase wage costs. The previous Government certainly looked into the issue when we considered the sort of ideas that the Government are now producing, and we decided that they would be damaging. The Government must have a view.

The Secretary of State shoved the matter over to the Chancellor. The Chancellor or one of his Ministers replied that it would depend on whether the 1 per cent. increase in wages was matched by productivity. Well, you don't say! That was well worked out. I then tabled a question saying that what I had in mind was a 1 per cent. increase not matched by productivity, which is exactly the type of increase that the Government are forcing on British business. The Government refused to answer. That is a disgrace. This is meant to be open government.

Are Labour's ideas helping to generate more jobs, or are they destroying jobs? That is the big issue. I asked a simple question that goes to the heart of the matter. The Government will not answer it in letters, and they will not answer it from either Department of State. How can they claim to believe in business or open government when they will not answer such a simple point? Perhaps they will argue that one cannot get the staff these days. We do not get much out of the Government for £330 billion: it is all spent on spinning—none of it is spent on answering questions or on proper policy analysis. The Secretary of State is paid money to answer questions. I look forward to getting value for that money when he has had time to reflect on these exchanges.

I enjoyed the recent spat between the Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs and the Secretary of State over the decision on News International and its bid for Manchester United. We have had no opportunity to cross-examine the Secretary of State on that. There has been no statement, although it was a big issue that affected thousands of Manchester United fans and many media businesses in this country and elsewhere.

The Secretary of State consistently told me before the decision that the Government had been entirely neutral, and that he was relying on an independent body outside Government to settle this crucial policy issue. We now learn that the Government submitted advice to the competition authority telling it to turn down the bid. The authority recommended turning it down, and the Secretary of State turned it down. Why did the Secretary of State not tell us that at the beginning? He could have saved the fans all the worry and the trouble of campaigning to try to influence the decision that he and his colleagues had already made. He also put Mr. Murdoch to considerable expense and trouble on the other side of the account. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I am delighted that the Labour party so dislikes Mr. Murdoch. I am sure that he will be interested to read these exchanges and to learn that his business investment in Britain and his newspapers are not valued by the new Labour party.

The Government gave Mr. Murdoch a slap in the face, and they put the fans through a great deal of unnecessary worry, trouble and uncertainty. If only they had the courage to set out a policy on the relationship between the media and sport, we might have an even more flourishing media and sports industry, more investment and more common working of the kind that must happen one way or another.