House of Commons Hansard Debates for 30 Jan 1991

Mr. Brown : I have given way many times.

What do the Government propose to do? When the Prime Minister was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he gave an interview to the Financial Times on how the problem could be solved, what way out he saw and how difficult it would be to change things. His perhaps inadvertent use of a marine metaphor was revealing. He said that sorting out the problem was

"like turning the Titanic round, as you know."

He will agree that the choice of the Titanic was an unfortunate simile in more ways than one. As every schoolboy knows, the Titanic was not for turning. It hit an iceberg at 20 knots and sank. By the time they tried to turn it, it was too late.

This recession, as the Prime Minister surely knows, did not happen by accident. Its origins are neither remote nor mysterious. To understand it and how it began, we must ask who were the most influential economic Ministers when, in 1987 and 1988, the policies about which we warned were being developed and implemented. There is much talk of the part played by the right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson), who is now the scapegoat in the wilderness and is punished for his sins with his three directorships, one non-executive chairmanship and a reputed income of £5,000 a day from his part-time employment.

Are we seriously being asked to believe that even he could undermine a whole economy single handed? Even the most cursory investigation of the events leading up to the remarkable Budget of 1988, the consequences of which still haunt us, reveal the identity of the principal collaborators. Where were the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at the time of the events that led up to the recession? Can they account for their movements in the second week of January 1988? Were not they at that

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great Budget weekend when the 1988 Budget was being planned? Did not they support the then Chancellor, who is now the scapegoat? Were not they persuaded at the time? Did not they enthusiastically defend that Budget?

Who was Economic Secretary to the Treasury in the early spring of 1988? None other than the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Who was Financial Secretary to the Treasury? None other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is now at No. 11 Downing street. Who was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury? None other than the Prime Minister, who is now at No. 10.

Did that gang of three have no influence? Are they entirely blameless for what went wrong? Did not they bask in the brief glory of that giddy post- Budget spring, telling us that they had created an economic miracle? Do they seriously ask us to believe that the departure of the right hon. Member for Blaby somehow exonerates them from responsibility? Let there be no doubt about it : they are, as the poll tax legislation puts it, "jointly and severally responsible" before, during and after the fact.

Mr. Phillip Oppenheim (Amber Valley) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Brown : No.

Mr. Oppenheim rose --

Mr. Speaker : Order. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) is not giving way.

Mr. Brown : I have given way to the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) in every debate in which we have discussed this matter and I have tried to remind him of the Conservative party manifesto commitment that inflation would be reduced substantially under a Conservative Government.

The great tragedy for Britain is that the Treasury Ministers who failed in the past now comprise the Prime Minister's economic team which is supposed to lead us into the future. Those people told us that they had created an economic miracle, that Britain had achieved a dramatic economic transformation and that manufacturing industry was a Labour obsession. They told us that an industry policy was not necessary and that the trade deficit was of no consequence and had nothing to do with competitiveness.

Those were the people who, with the Prime Minister, told us that, while Britain had envied Germany during the 1960s and 1970s, the position was now entirely reversed. Do those people have any credibility now when they come to us and say that they have solutions to the problems that they have caused? They denied that there was a recession, but there is one ; they said that it was not severe, but it is ; and they claimed that it was happening elsewhere, but it is not. Try as they might to blame external events and to find scapegoats, they cannot blame anyone but themselves.

The failures are not just failures of economic mismanagement over the past three years. There has been a complete failure of industry policy over the past eleven and a half years. The problem is one not just of the mismanagement of demand in the short term, but of the failure to bring adequate industrial capacity over the long term. Our complaint is that a short-term consumer boom was bound to be unsustainable and lead to higher imports,

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higher interest rates and pressures on inflation simply because that consumer boom was not underpinned by long- term adequate investment.

The real problem is not just that demand grew too fast because of the sins of commission such as the 1988 Budget, but that our capacity has grown too slowly because of the sins of omission--the absence of a policy for industry. How else do we explain the fact that, in Britain, industrial production has increased by only 12 per cent. and manufacturing output by only 7 per cent.? However, with demand increasing by 40 per cent. over the past eleven and a half years, imports have increased by 65 per cent. and manufacturing imports by 236 per cent.

No wonder Britain now has a manufacturing economy that has fallen behind France and Italy and is falling to the size of Brazil. No wonder Germany now exports three times as many manufactured goods as Britain. No wonder the production of electric motors, transformers, tractors, ships and lorries has halved over the past 10 years. No wonder Britain now imports 3 million computers a year and 2 billion microchips.

Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for officials to be briefing a Conservative Back Bencher?

Mr. Speaker : I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is being briefed, but he is not on my list to be called.

Mr. Brown : I do not know how many Parliamentary Private Secretaries the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry possesses. No wonder we face this position after 11 years. I was asked earlier about our share of world trade. In 1974, our share of world trade was 8.5 per cent. By 1979, our manufacturing share had risen to 9.1 per cent. and the latest figure available shows that it is back to 8.2 per cent. That is an appalling record of performance in world trade. No wonder we have a massive manufacturing deficit.

The tragedy is that, without a policy for industry, this recession, which has been caused by Ministers, is merely the interval between making mistakes in one short-term consumer boom and repeating them in another.

It is Labour's case--a case which the Government resist--that we cannot solve industry's deep-seated problems unless we have an industry policy with the Government and industry working in partnership to secure specific objectives in training, in technology and in securing balanced economic development.

The key feature of Government policy is that, even as the gap with our competitors widens, they ignore the problem, do very little, and almost always too late. In every case, the barrier to their acting is their crude free market ideology. Let use consider what needs to be done.

Sir William Clark : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Brown : I have given way on numerous occasions. We must make some progress. The right hon. Gentleman will have plenty of time to make his contribution later.

Let us consider what needs to be done when more young people leave school early ; when more young people are without qualifications ; when there are fewer people in the workplace with qualifications ; when we have fewer college and university students than Korea and the number is falling to the level of Taiwan ; when the Government's own head of training admitted that, at every

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level, we are towards the bottom of the training league table, whether in education, youth training, higher level skills training or management training ; when Lord Tombs, who advises the Prime Minister on economic matters, said that normal market forces cannot solve the problem ; and when we are in the unique situation of having the fastest rising unemployment of our major competitors and yet skill shortages in our labour force, underpinned by cuts in the training budget over the next three years--

Mr. Andrew Mitchell rose--

Sir William Clark rose--

Mr. Brown : I am not giving way. I have made that absolutely clear. I want to make some progress. I have given way on many occasions. We need to implement Labour's policy--a national training strategy, clear targets set by industry working with Government and locally delivered, a guarantee of high-quality training for every young person and a working environment in which all employers are obliged to train so that the good firms are not undercut by the bad firms and the firms that train do not lose out to those who poach. What do the Government do? They insist on continuing the crude free market approach that has clearly failed, instead of pursuing the successful policy for change that exists elsewhere in our competitor countries. It makes absolutely no sense to have a situation in our national economy in which some regions are growing at half the rate of others. It makes no sense to have congestion, pollution and pressure on the green belt in one part of the country and forced emigration from the other. Germany and Italy recognise that they need to spend more on regional policy and that the task is to modernise it, not to abandon it. It is absolutely clear that Labour's policy--the creation of regional development agencies, the targeting of regional investment incentives on training and technology, the encouragement to banks and venture capital funds to work in the regions with those development agencies to build and strengthen them--is not only successfully pursued elsewhere but is right for Britain.

When that is the case, what does the Department of Trade and Industry, which is charged with responsibility for regional policy, actually do? The Secretary of State went along to the famous House of Lords Select Committee. When he was asked whether he was doing all that he practically could in regional policy, was his answer that more resources might be provided if the cash was available and that, if the problem was greater, he would provide more? Would more resources be available if the need could be proven? No. He said that the Government were doing everything that they could--no turning back from the regional aid cuts that have characterised the Government. He will do absolutely nothing.

It is worse than that. When we had the 1988 regional review, we were promised that DTI spending on the regions would increase and that the replacement for regional development grants and regional enterprise grants would lead to the expenditure of considerable sums of money. Of the £42 million that was budgeted for the

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new grants, only £9 million has actually been spent after two years. That is less than £1 in every £4 promised. Yet the Secretary of State says that he is doing all that he can.

Is it not the case that the Department of Trade and Industry is now dominated by three Ministers who are all members of the No Turning Back group? I refer to the Secretary of State, the Minister of State and the Minister with responsibility for regional policy. Not for them that the Government should do what they can as a matter of practical help ; for them, the Government should do as little as possible as a matter of dogma. Is it not the case that, at every point at which the Government should be enabling industry to succeed, the Department of Trade and Industry is doing absolutely nothing? We should consider the programmes.

Mr. Michael Grylls (Surrey, North-West) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Brown : I am not giving way.

When we need incentives to invest in civil research, when we need technology transfer within our regions, when we need more small firms to be encouraged to undertake research and development, and when we need the market research schemes that the Government abandoned, what do the Government do? Over the past four years, they have abandoned almost every successful initiative, not because they have failed but because it is not in the Government's interests to prove that schemes that can help industry should work.

When we now have the recommendations from the CBI for a technology policy to help small firms ; when we have the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Science and Technology--the scientific advisers to the Government--that biotechnology and opto-electronics need Government support ; when we have the view of the Trade and Industry Select Committee that information technology should be accorded some priority ; and when the DTI's own innovation advisory board advises the Minister about the chronic short-termism of the City, is it not the case that, even during a recession, even as we face the challenges of 1992, the Secretary of State is presiding over some of the severest cuts in the industry budget to have taken place for a decade? We have had an 18 per cent. cut this year--27 per cent. cumulatively over two years, 36 per cent. over the three-year planning period.

The Government are not cutting administrative fat ; indeed, they are spending millions moving into some of the most expensive office space in London. They are not cutting bureaucracy ; even as responsibilities are abandoned, the amount spent on administration has risen to 23 per cent. of the budget. Given that the Secretary of State's right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health wants to intervene against the health service, whose administrative costs are 5 per cent., what does he say now that the budget costs for administration have been allowed to rise to 23 per cent?

What the Government are actually cutting is technology transfer--by 22 per cent.--expenditure on research and development and support for innovation. All these things have been considered by all-party Committees, and, in my view, the House of Lords Select Committee, with the evidence that it now has, will make certain recommendations. These cuts are being made not

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because industry does not need help during a recession--it does--but because, as a matter of dogma, the Government have decided that nothing should be done.

Apparently the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), when he went through the doors of the DTI, asked what the place was for. The right hon. Member for Southend West, (Mr. Channon), one of his predecessors, said that he did not know what an industry policy was. Of course, Lord Young put his view on record as he departed. In 1988 he said that in the DTI the drive to improve industrial enterprise was over. The DTI, Lord Young said, had become a bore ; there was nothing left to be done --a "do nothing" Department, as defined by Lord Young. Yet, even as we approach 1992, what we are seeing under the new Secretary of State is not a modification of the reductions in support but an intensification of them. I can think of no other country in Europe where the budgets for training and for industry are being simultaneously cut, yet it is Britain where industry, because of the recession, is doing worst of all. What is the reality? Ministers have responsibility for the regions, but they are cutting the budgets for the regions ; Ministers in the Department of Employment have responsibility for training, but they are able to cut back on support for training ; Ministers have responsibility for technology, but their policy is to cut back on support for technology ; Ministers accept the responsibility for industrial research and development, but their policy is to run down support for such research and development. Whereas, in other countries, industrial policy is about Governments working in partnership with industry--taking practical measures to build industrial performance--in this country industrial policy is about the Government withdrawing support for industry as a matter for ideology, no matter what the consequences for businesses up and down the country.

In eleven and a half years the Department of Industry has had nine leaders, but no leadership at all. Does anybody believe that, if the Department of Industry had not existed, the present Government would have created it? The message of the last few weeks--since the change of Prime Minister--is that one can change the leadership at the top, and one can change even the style and the rhetoric, but one cannot persuade people that one has changed unless one changes policy. Doing nothing, even with a new face at the top of the DTI, is still doing nothing ; inactivity, even with expensive public relations, is still inactivity ; dogma, even under new management, is still dogma. We have had eleven and a half years, at the end of which inflation is more than 9 per cent., whereas the Government promised that it would be zero ; eleven and a half years, at the end of which it seems a matter for self-congratulation to Ministers that the trade deficit is £16 billion, a figure unparalleled before the present Government came to power ; eleven and a half years, at the end of which the Government have consistently failed to address the long-term problems that they claim to have solved in their first few years ; eleven and a half years of squandering £100 billion of North Sea oil revenues, with no thought of tomorrow ; eleven and a half years in which they have systematically denied industry the support and co-operation that our competitors give their industry. We have ended up with the worst interest rates, the highest inflation, the biggest trade gap, the slowest growth, the lowest investment and the fastest rising unemployment of our major European competitors.

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The recession is the fault of the Government. The recession is unique to Britain in western Europe. It is the direct responsibility of Ministers. That is an unanswerable case. It is also an unanswerable case that Britain needs a long-term policy for industry which backs our people, our skills and our inventiveness and does so in every part of the country. That is the industry policy which the Conservative party cannot support because of dogma and therefore they will lose the election. It is the policy which Labour demands for Britain, and that is why we shall win.

4.20 pm

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Peter Lilley) : I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof :

congratulates Her Majesty's Government on policies which have transformed economic performance and, over the last decade, achieved a faster rate of output and investment growth than in Germany, France and Italy, the largest increase in manufacturing productivity of any major industrial country, record levels of exports, a record number of businesses, the highest ever number of people in work and an unemployment rate below the average of the European Community ; welcomes the threefold increase in shareholders since 1979 ; and commends the resolve of Her Majesty's Government to bear down on inflation and to continue with the supply side policies which have contributed to these achievements.'.

As I have listened to the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) at the Dispatch Box over the years, I have learnt respect for his considerable talents. Above all, I have recognised that his principal skill, which he deployed with effect today, is to depict gloom and predict doom. Unfortunately, for the bulk of the period during which he has been in Parliament, the British economy has outstripped even our strongest competitors in Europe and his skills have failed to carry conviction when he has attempted to paint a picture of gloom. Now that industry faces a severe slowdown in demand--I recognise that it does--the hon. Gentleman is in his element.

However, I do not propose to dispute in detail the picture that the hon. Gentleman painted of the current position. I want to concentrate on his attempt at a diagnosis, his attempt at a prognosis and his attempt at a prescription to cure the illness of which he complains. The hon. Gentleman scarcely spelled out a proper diagnosis of what is wrong with the British economy.

The real disease from which we suffer is inflation. Inflation is an evil not only in itself, because it penalises the weakest and poorest sections of society--the old, the sick and those on fixed incomes--but because it creates further evils by eroding competitiveness and destroying jobs, savings and the incentive to invest. In turn, inflation is the consequence of excessive demand--demand which grows faster than output. Its cure must inevitably involve a period of slower growth of demand. When monetary demand outstrips output, prices are bid up and costs are allowed to increase. When monetary demand is slowed down, prices and costs are put under intense pressure. That process is painful but essential, and it is what is happening at present.

On a previous occasion, I challenged the hon. Gentleman to say whether he believed that inflation could be curbed without a slowdown in demand. Has he yet found an answer to that question? Does Labour have a painless solution to the problem of inflation? I take it from his silence that it does not.

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Although the hon. Gentleman's diagnosis was pretty hazy, not to say non-existent, his prediction of what would happen from now on was clear, but wrong. He believes that the economy is set to spiral downwards into a prolonged slump. But we should discount his predictions, for three reasons. First, he does not realise that the very severity of the slowdown in demand means that price inflation will be curbed more sharply than would otherwise be the case. One inflation has slowed down, the Chancellor will be able to reduce interest rates, and non- inflationary growth will resume. Indeed, the reduction of inflation itself will provide the economy with a stimulus. What is more, the reforms that we have introduced to the labour market over the years, coupled with a pegged exchange rate, will result in a more rapid response of pay costs to this slowdown than we have seen in previous cycles.

The second reason why I found the hon. Gentleman's gloomy outlook and forecast unacceptable is that his forecasts have invariably proved wrong in the past.

Mr. Gordon Brown : What about the Government's?

Mr. Lilley : He is happy to quote other peoples' forecasts, but he is a little disturbed when people quote his forecasts back to him. In 1986, he wrote in The Guardian :

"In 1990 around 3.12 million of us will still be unemployed ... The Government simply cannot reduce unemployment by present economic policies."

The fact is that unemployment in this country is substantially lower than the average of our European partners ; under the Labour Government, it was higher than the average of the European Community.

Earlier, in February 1974, the hon. Gentleman told the House : "there is no evidence that economic recovery is in sight."--[ Official Report, 15 February 1984, Vol. 54, c. 316.]

We know that that was three years into the recovery from that recession.

Mr. Neil Kinnock (Islwyn) : Before my hon. Friend came to the House of Commons.

Mr. Lilley : It was in 1984 ; I am so sorry.

Thirdly, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East does not seem to recognise that although inflation is a nasty disease, the British economy is fundamentally much healthier than when it faced recessions in the early 1970s and early 1980s. It will continue to thrive once inflation has been curbed. Let me give the House a few indicators of how dramatically the economy has improved in strength and vigour over the last decade.

The hon. Gentleman always focuses on manufacturing. Manufacturing output fell under the Labour Government ; it has risen substantially under this Government. Indeed, in the 1980s as a whole, it rose by about a quarter, which was faster than the rise in Germany, France and Italy.

Mr. Bruce Grocott (The Wrekin) : What is happening now?

Mr. Lilley : If the hon. Gentleman wants to know, previous economic slowdowns have always been led by manufacturing, and manufacturing has suffered the greatest fall in output. They have also been led by the regions and by Scotland. The difference between this slowdown and its predecessors is that manufacturing has

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suffered less, the regions and Scotland have suffered less, and the concentration has been on areas of the economy which are most heavily borrowed--the housing market, the south-east and, compared with other slowdowns, the service industries.

Mr. Grocott : Can the Secretary of State tell us what the level of manufacturing output will be in six months' time, on present estimates, in comparison with what it was in 1979?

Mr. Lilley : As I have acknowledged, we are going through a severe slowdown in demand. However, the hon. Member is typical of his party in taking a short-term view. I am dealing with the performance of the economy and the improvement in its health over a decade.

Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan) : The Secretary of State says that the Scottish economy is doing well in the recession. He knows the great concern that there is in Scotland about the fate of the steel industry. Can he and the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, who is sitting beside him, confirm that they have the power, if they so choose, to refer the steel industry to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission? The Secretary of State need not be impeded by the view of the Director General of Fair Trading, any more than he was last month, when, against the advice of the director general, he referred the bid for AMOCO refining assets by Elf Aquitaine to the MMC.

Mr. Lilley : References can be made only on the basis of concrete complaints of specific infringements of competition rules. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman accepts that Scotland's economy is suffering relatively less than the rest of the economy, particularly compared with past slowdowns.

The other great change in manufacturing industry is that productivity, once our weakest spot, has increased enormously. It rose by 60 per cent. during the past decade, which is faster than any other major industrialised country, including Japan--a happy contrast to two decades when we were at the bottom of the league.

Let us also look at the performance of exports, which tells the same story of increasing strength over the decade. Manufacturing exports are at record levels with volume nearly 60 per cent. higher than in 1980.

Mr. Roger King (Birmingham, Northfield) : My right hon. Friend will know that, last year, the British motor industry increased its exports by 44.7 per cent. over the 1989 figure. Definite progress is being made. That is discounting the fact that the Ford motor company did not commence exporting cars until last December.

Mr. Lilley : My hon. Friend makes a good point, which illustrates a widespread phenomenon. Manufacturing industry is now both more competitive and more flexible. It is increasingly able to replace weak home demands by finding increased export sales abroad. The motor car industry has seen a reduction in domestic sales, but it has almost fully offset that by increasing exports by nearly a half. In December, exports were up 125 per cent. on the previous year. That reflects the return to exporting by Ford, the first exports from Ellesmere Port in 15 years and the arrival of Japanese manufacturers in this country.

Another source of strength in the past decade has been the take-off of the enterprise culture. There are now some 400,000 more firms in this country than there were in 1980.

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Some are facing difficulties, which the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East highlighted. Despite the high interest rates of the past year, the number of new businesses created during that period has exceeded the number merging or closing down.

The biggest transformation in our economy in the past decade has been in industrial relations. During the whole post-war period, that was our greatest weakness. We were notorious for strikes, stoppages and industrial disputes. Last year saw the lowest number of industrial disputes for 50 years. That is a substantial improvement in the underlying strength of the British economy.

Perhaps the clearest indicator of the improved climate for manufacturing industry in particular, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King) said, is the willingness and eagerness of foreign industry to locate its plants here. It would not do so if the economic analysis of the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East were correct. The fact is that United States direct investment in the United Kingdom exceeds that in West Germany, France and Holland combined. It has grown by more than 70 per cent. in the past 5 years. Japan has nearly twice as much direct investment in the United Kingdom as in any other European Community state.

The investment has come not only in the car sector, with three major Japanese car firms choosing to place their European operations in Britain, but in consumer electronics, electronic components, bearings and machine tools.

Mr. Michael J. Martin (Glasgow, Springburn) : The Secretary of State must be concerned about the type of investment that takes place when money is put into companies only to buy them out. Despite good industrial relations and high productivity, some companies are closed down and sold off. That has happened in the whisky and tobacco industries. The Hanson organisation has a deplorable record on that. Surely the Secretary of State must recognise that some of the investment is involved in asset stripping. What will he do about that?

Mr. Lilley : The hon. Gentleman's example most certainly does not refer to foreign investment in this country. One cannot fossilise the distribution of a particular industrial capacity at any one moment. We must allow firms to expand by acquisition, subject to our competitive rules, if need be.

Foreign investment in this country is an indicator of our attraction for manufacturing and industry in general. It is true that even within the Community we are attracting investment from other Community countries. In recent years, West Germany has invested more in the United Kingdom than in any other country. Do Opposition Members, or any hon. Members, seriously believe that Nissan, Toyota, Bosch and many others would have come to this country to invest if we had suffered the policies advocated and pursued by the Labour Party and previous Labour Governments?

Mr. Ian McCartney (Makerfield) : Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the foreign companies he has named have come to Britain because of the direct involvement of Labour local authorities? Those companies have invested in various regions of Britain and Scotland because of the direct efforts of Labour local authorities, which have redoubled their attempts to create new

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employment opportunities. The truth is that Labour local authorities have brought foreign investment into the United Kingdom.

Mr. Lilley : When I went to Japan the week before last, I spoke to many representatives of Japanese companies that have invested or are thinking about investing in this country. Not one said that the principle attraction, or any attraction, was provided by Labour local authorities.

Mr. David Clelland (Tyne Bridge) : Does that mean that the right hon. Gentleman did not speak to anyone from Nissan or Komatsu who regularly acknowledge the contribution made by the former Tyne and Wear county council when reaching their decision to invest in that area?

Mr. Lilley : I spoke to people from those companies. I am not saying that they have not got on with local authorities, but they simply did not list them as one of the attractions of this country.

Mr. Michael Grylls (Surrey, North-West) : My right hon. Friend is right to quote the success of inward investment, but it is equally revealing to study one of the most important British firms, British Steel. Under the Labour Government, that company was losing £500 million a year and it employed three people for every job. Now, however, it is competitive and it is making nearly £500 million a year. Does my right hon. Friend agree that British Steel is almost the best example that one could quote to prove that, if one gets the conditions right, industry is able to prosper?

Mr. Lilley : My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a great strength of this country that we now have a steel industry that is one of the most profitable in the world, not excluding the steel industry of Japan. The Leader of the Opposition may want to interfere in the operations of British Steel, but we would prefer it to continue its healthy course since privatisation.

The diagnosis proffered by the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East was hazy, his prognosis wrong, and his prescription about as hard to decipher as that issued by the average doctor. I listened hard when he said, "Now I come to the measures we must take." I found it difficult to decipher the meaning of his message. Instead of a spot-the-ball competition, we are faced with a spot-the-policy one--the hon. Gentleman's hand points in one direction, but his eyes are looking in another. The one place one knows those policies will not be found is on firm ground. They will be somewhere up in the air, probably in the hot air, because those policies consist of phrases such as "encouragement for," "a regional policy" or "priority must be given"--there is no specification behind those words.

Mrs. Maureen Hicks (Wolverhampton, North-East) : My right hon. Friend will recall that, as part of his prescription for the future, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) spoke about the importance of training. Can my right hon. Friend recall any instance in the past few years when the Labour party has supported any training initiative? The theory does not match the practice. The hon. Gentleman talks about encouraging young people to get qualifications, but my right hon. Friend will recall the Labour party's total opposition to the youth training scheme and employment training. In my area, the Labour party is strongly opposed

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to the training and enterprise council, where industry works with business and the Government. Can my right hon. Friend think of an occasion when the Labour party supported a training initiative?

Mr. Lilley : I am afraid that I cannot recall an occasion when the Labour party took a positive attitude towards any of the initiatives we have taken.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East also appeared to be unaware of some existing policies. He proudly proclaimed that he intended to introduce a guaranteed training programme for school leavers. Apparently he is unaware that it already exists, in the form of the youth training scheme and its successors.

Mr. Gordon Brown : Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that every school leaver is automatically guaranteed training? That is not true.

Mr. Lilley : We have guaranteed that school leavers who cannot find jobs will have access to training programmes

Mr. Brown : Are Conservative Members and the right hon. Gentleman unaware that 100,000 young people leave school and get a job with no training whatever?

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