House of Commons Hansard Debates for 13 Jun 1991

Mr. Dave Nellist (Coventry, South-East) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I had hoped that the Leader of the House would have heard me raise this matter, but I am sure that he will read about it.

Mr. Speaker : Come off it ; sit down. It must be a point of order to me and not to the Leader of the House.

Mr. Nellist : I still have to refer to him in my point of order to you, Mr. Speaker. You have just told my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) about a convention of the House, which I was trying to obey. I tried to give notice that I wished to raise a point of order when the hon. Member that I wanted to mention

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was present. You will realise that that was not possible because you are taking points of order some time after the time at which the matter arose.

On 12 occasions today, and on many hundreds of occasions previously, the Leader of the House has, quite rightly, said that he would refer to his right hon. Friends inquiries from hon. Members on both sides of the House about specific subjects. He did so in reply to me a couple of months ago, when I mentioned to him the need for medical help for children in the Ukraine following the Chernobyl accident five years ago. I know that he does so ; I have seen the letter. When an hon. Member asks a question or tables a petition, he receives a reply from the Department concerned. I have just done a straw poll and I have not been able to find an hon. Member who, subsequent to that referral, has had the courtesy of a letter from the Department to which the Leader of the House has referred the matter. Will you consider at your leisure whether it should be a rule of the House that if the Leader of the House gives such a reply hon. Members will receive a letter from the Department concerned saying why a debate cannot take place or a statement be made?

Mr. Speaker : I am sure that the hon. Gentleman's request will have been heard by those on the Government Front Bench. The contents of an answer are not a matter for me. The object of business questions is to ask about the business for next week. The trouble with business questions these days is that they refer to a wide range of subjects, which by any stretch of the imagination could not possibly all be dealt with next week.

Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will appreciate that all Back Benchers greatly value business questions and appreciate the fact that in most weeks you allow all hon. Members who are standing to ask questions. Will you examine the record of today's proceedings? If you do, you will see that many hon. Members used business questions to make contrived political jibes that had nothing to do with business? I realise that you do not know in advance what hon. Members are about to ask, but will you ensure in future that those hon. Members who continually abuse the privilege are those who are left with their questions unasked?

Mr. Speaker : That was what I was trying to tell the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) whose question I have just answered. Of course business questions should be directed to business for next week. I said that at the beginning of questions about business today. However, I notice that politics tends to creep into business questions at a time when a general election surely cannot be far off.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.

Ordered,

That the draft Building Societies Act 1986 (Continuance of section 41) Order 1991 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.-- [Mr. Patnick.]

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Opposition Day

[13th allotted day]

Business (Government Policies)

4.53 pm

Mr. Gordon Brown (Dunfermline, East) : I beg to move.

That this House condemns Her Majesty's Government for creating and then compounding a recession which has led to large falls in manufacturing output and investment, rapidly rising closures and bankruptcies and the fastest growing unemployment in Western Europe, now hitting all professions, occupations and trades ; deplores the problems all businesses, especially small businesses, are facing over high interest rates ; regrets, especially in the run-up to 1992, the current contraction of industrial strength in all regions and nations of the country ; and calls for an interest rate cut and policies for technology skills and the regions that will build a stronger industrial base throughout the country.

Mr. Speaker : I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. In view of the late start to the debate, it will be necessary to impose a 10-minute limit on speeches between 7 and 9 o'clock.

Mr. Brown : This motion draws attention to the urgent need for measures to deal with unemployment, with the crisis in investment, and with the problems of training and skills in our economy. Today unemployment is nearly 2.25 million men and women, 70,000 higher than last month. That is the biggest May rise since 1945--a higher rise than the previous highest in the United Kingdom, during the last Tory recession in the 1980s. Unemployment is now 600,000 men and women higher than it was at this time last year, having risen relentlessly for 14 months in a row. It is rising faster than in any other country in western Europe ; it is rising not merely in the south and the north but in every region of the United Kingdom. It is rising not merely in areas of traditional blue-collar employment but among every profession, trade and occupation, with 80,000 managers now out of work.

Unemployment, the biggest destroyer of opportunity, is now half a million higher than when the current Prime Minister came to power, pledged to a classless society and the hollow promise of opportunity for all. It is half a million higher than when the Prime Minister, when Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told us that families and people in work could plan ahead on the basis of there being an economic miracle.

There has been as fast a rise in the numbers unemployed in a shorter time as under any Prime Minister since the 1930s. The recession is reaching parts of the economy that previous recessions did not reach.

Mr. Michael Brown (Brigg and Cleethorpes) rose --

Mr. Brown : I shall give way in a minute.

For a year, the Government have boasted that unemployment is below the European average ; now, according to the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development, unemployment is higher than the European average and is rising faster than anywhere else. By the end of the year, according to the most recent

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estimates, unemployment will be higher in Britain than in any other European country with the exceptions of Ireland and Greece. What of the human consequences?

Mr. Michael Brown : It is perfectly legitimate for the hon. Gentleman to mention unemployment in the context of this debate, but I wonder whether he recalls that when challenged by Conservative Members during a previous debate on the Labour party's minimum wage policy, he said that if that policy were implemented unemployment would increase a little additionally. Would he care to say by how much unemployment might rise if his minimum wages policy were introduced?

Mr. Brown : The hon. Gentleman should do his research before he comes to the debate. I have never had any statement of the sort attributed to me. It is absolutely clear from looking around Europe, where they all have minimum wages, that that has not affected employment and there is no reason to believe that it would affect it here.

The Secretary of State for Employment has made the issue of the next election very clear. In contrast to Labour's minimum wage proposals, he has said that he wants to abolish wages councils in their entirety. I ask the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) and his colleagues to defend the existence of more poverty pay in our economy.

Mr. Spencer Batiste (Elmet) : If the hon. Gentleman is not willing to face head on the reality that statutory minimum wage policies will cause increased unemployment, does he share with Gavin Laird the concern that that policy will erode skill differentials and discourage training?

Mr. Brown : No, I do not and I believe that a minimum wage is not only socially just, but makes for economic efficiency. I quote the words of Sir Winston Churchill, when he introduced the first minimum wage proposals into this House in 1908 and said that he wanted to end a situation where the good employer was undercut by the bad and the bad employer undercut by the worst. That is precisely what our minimum wage proposal will do-- [Interruption.] That shows that Conservative Members want to return to the position before 1908. What of the human consequences of unemployment, about which Ministers say so little when talking emptily about opportunity for all? Perhaps the Secretary of State will be more influenced by listening to a manager from a Tory constituency, a Tory voter who was quoted in The Times on 4 June as saying of the Tories : "they have devalued my house. They have lost me my job. They have pushed up inflation. They have made unemployment start rising and they do not seem to be taking any notice. They do not realise the resentment there is pent up. It is not the people who make noises, it is the silent voter who is frustrated by what he sees is happening, the mismanagement of the country".

It is not merely managers ; skilled, conscientious and reliable men in their 50s, who have worked every day for nearly 40 years, are now being made redundant, and are gradually beginning to realise that they will never work again. Their suffering is no doubt part of the price that the Chancellor thinks is well worth paying. Widows, the only breadwinners for their families, are condemned to an indefinite future of unrelieved poverty on the basic dole of £40 a week, or just a little more. No doubt the Chancellor regards their unemployment as a price well worth paying.

Young people are denied the opportunity of doing a first-class job. They have never experienced the self-esteem

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that can follow a good day's work. No doubt that colossal waste of human potential is also part of the price that the Chancellor considers well worth paying. Then there is the family man with a mortgage who goes home to tell his children that, now that he has lost his job, they will shortly have to lose their home. No doubt that family's suffering is all part of the price that the Chancellor considers well worth paying.

The lives of all those people--if I may use the agonised phrase of the former Prime Minister--have been shattered like patterned glass smashed on the ground. No doubt, however, it is all part of the price that the Chancellor thinks well worth paying. The truth is that the only price in unemployment that the country thinks worth paying is the unemployment of the Chancellor himself.

Mr. Churchill (Davyhulme) : How does the hon. Gentleman imagine that Labour's policies of giving more power back to the union bosses and increasing taxation levels will contribute to the solving of such problems?

Mr. Brown : It is amazing that, on a day when we have heard that unemployment has risen by 70,000, the hon. Gentleman cannot think about the problems of people in his constituency who are losing their jobs, and that he should suggest that the Government's policies are working. The fact is that they are not.

Today, Ministers should tear down the offensive advertisements, mounted at the taxpayer's expense, which read : "I will work, I must work, I can work." Those advertisements attempt to show that it is not the Government but the unemployed who have failed. The Government should erect, at their own expense, a billboard addressing the truth--that Conservative government is not working. It is the Government who have let down the unemployed.

A memorandum from the Department of Employment itself makes it very clear what is happening, and what will happen in the next few months. According to the document, which was produced on 2 May,

"the forecast for the period October 1990 to October 1991 was for a 50 per cent. rise in the levels of unemployment"--

that is, an increase of 850,000 in the number of unemployed men and women in a year. Since October 1990 half a million have become unemployed, and the Government and the Training Agency predict that 350,000 more will do so in the next few months. The memorandum goes on :

"Any arguments that the Treasury therefore have for a reduction in funding for training are now completely eroded. There is a demonstrable justification for further funds."

Ministers should act today, even if they do so not because they fear the unemployment of others as a result of the recession, but because they fear their own unemployment following a general election. Every day on which they delay the training and employment programmes that we propose for the unemployed represents a further betrayal of those whom they have pushed out of work.

Mr. Phillip Oppenheim (Amber Valley) : The tenor of the hon. Gentleman's speech makes it plain that he is concerned about the performance of British business. Will he cast his mind back to an era when British Airways was rated below Aeroflot, British Leyland was the butt of international jokes and British Steel was the world's largest loss-maker? A Labour Government were in power

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then. How can the hon. Gentleman, who has never manufactured anything except dodgy policies, expect to do any better?

Mr. Brown : As the hon. Gentleman delivers his continual lectures from the Back Benches, he should remember that the growth rate under the last Labour Government was higher than it has been under the present Government. Despite what he says, our share of world trade has fallen under this Government, and fallen severely.

The hon. Gentleman should cast his own mind back--to the manifesto that he wrote in 1987. Unemployment in his constituency is now 61 per cent. higher than it was last year. In 1987, he wrote :

"The battle for jobs is finally being won."

It is not only the old, obsolete, traditional companies that are going under ; it is also the new, high-technology companies which were told by the Government that they represented the country's future, but which in recent months have needlessly become part of our industrial past. The Government cannot dismiss the 500,000 unemployed, the 40,000 bankruptcies in a year, the 5 per cent. fall in output and the 20 per cent. fall in manufacturing investment as the froth on the economy or a simple loss of fat from industry. They must admit that those losses go far beyond the natural resilience of the economic cycle, and represent not just a tragedy for individuals and families, but the attrition of our industrial base. They have eroded a critical mass of skills and expertise, and a culture of technology that, once lost, cannot easily--if ever--be restored.

Where is the recovery promised by the Chancellor and others? Last November, in the autumn statement, we were told to trust the Government, because the economy was about to turn the corner. A few months later, we were again urged to trust them, because the economy was about to turn the corner. In November 1990, the Prime Minister told us that the recovery would come "early next year", but the unemployed are still waiting. In his Budget speech, the Chancellor told us that the recession was "largely behind us", and that the recovery would begin

"around the middle of this year".--[ Official Report, 19 March 1991 ; Vol. 188, c. 165.]

Under pressure, the Chancellor told us a week later that the recovery would begin towards the middle of the year. If recovery were indeed beginning towards the middle of the year, would we not be experiencing it now? The unemployed are still waiting.

In April, in a speech to the Institute of Directors, the Chancellor said :

"we are close to a turning point"--

but the unemployed are still waiting. The right hon. Gentleman continued, in even more fevered language, "victory is in sight." A few days ago, when he realised that developments could not be timed as precisely as he had thought, the Chancellor said : "It's not like arriving at Waterloo station. You cannot tell when it will happen"--a remark which betrays a sad lack of familiarity with the realities of life for London commuters.

The Government told us three years ago that a miracle had happened, when it had not. A year ago, they told us that there was no recession, when there was. Can we now believe anything that they say about a recovery? In his last survey, Mr. Banham, from the CBI, said that things were

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bad and getting worse. The Engineering Employers Federation's last survey told us that prospects would not improve in the short term. According to the motor manufacturers, the recession would continue until the end of the year. Ian Vallance of British Telecom, one of the Government's supporters, has said :

"there is no sign of an upturn"--

except for him, that is--

"and we do not know when it will come".

Mr. Graham Mackenzie, of United Engineering Steels Ltd., said : "we were pessimistic six months ago but we never expected anything as bad as this".

On Monday, Goldman Sachs said that it was hard to find any company in any part of the economy that was reporting clear signs of improvement in activity. Kleinwort Benson has referred to "the almost complete evaporation of confidence over the last few weeks".

What are we to make of all the Government's claims about the promised recovery? All that the Chancellor has been able to say, in an extended interview on these matters, is what he said to David Frost a few days ago-- that he could detect "vague stirrings" in the economy.

A transcript has now become available. The Chancellor said : "There are vague stirrings at the moment, but the signs are there. Business men say We cannot see it'"--

but the Government, of course, can see around the corner. David Frost said :

"But the vague stirrings you are saying you have seen--you say you have seen vague stirrings."

The Chancellor replied,

"Faint stirrings, yes."

There are those who claim to see visions ; there are those who claim to hear voices ; yet others claim to have second sight. Now the Chancellor seeks to persuade us that he can hear, see, feel or otherwise detect "faint stirrings". I am advised by those who know about these matters that, if the symptoms were merely those of seeing things that the rest of us could see and misrepresenting them, the Chancellor would be deemed to be suffering from delusions. Alas, his predicament is more serious : he is seeing things that he knows others cannot see, and living his whole life as if they were there. This is a textbook case of an otherwise sane man hallucinating a whole economic recovery--just as three years ago he hallucinated an economic miracle.

What is to blame for what has gone wrong? Is it consumer spending? Is it the stock exchange crash? Is it inefficient management? Is it the wage rises? Is it the banks? Is it the right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson), who is often blamed for creating this mess single-handedly? It is interesting that the answer came to us in an interview not in Vanity Fair or in "Bark", the Japanese journal which enjoys the confidence of at least one faction of the Conservative party.

In a revealing interview nearer home, hidden away in the privately circulated House Magazine, which the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, presumably hoped few would take the trouble to read, the right hon. Gentleman was asked, "Why the recession? Why inflation?" He said :

"It rose because of mistakes which were made during the period I was at the Treasury".

Mistakes at the Treasury--a significant confession. The right hon. Gentleman continued :

"so I can't, and wouldn't wish to, escape my share of the blame."

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There it is--a confession, a complete admission of guilt. The Minister who is to stand before us today has given us a full and frank account of his part in the affair. He has made a clean breast of it and has avoided the necessity of a prolonged cross-examination during his speech. It is a recession which, we now know, cannot be blamed on the Gulf war, America, the EC, the unions or managers but which, by the right hon. Gentleman's admission, is due to mistakes which were made at the Treasury.

Far more significant than the admirable personal confession of guilt by the Secretary of State--in effect, the right hon. Gentleman turning Queen's evidence ; I remind the House that he was only a junior Minister during those events, probably keeping bad company at the time--is his statement of the part played by others. As he puts it, the blame attached to those at the Treasury.

Who are these men whose careers have gone unchecked, who have never been forced by The House Magazine into a confession of guilt and who have inveigled themselves into more senior positions? I refer, of course, to the former Chief Secretary, now Prime Minister, and to the Financial Secretary, now Chancellor, who were jointly and severally responsible. They were to blame, not the managers of our companies, not trade unions, not businesses and not primarily bankers, either. On the admission of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, mistakes were made by people at the Treasury- -the senior ones now at Downing street.

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Lilley) : Does the hon. Gentleman recall that the mistake of cutting interest rates excessively after the crash of October 1987 was endorsed by the shadow Chancellor ? Unlike me, the right hon. and learned Gentleman still believes that it would have been right to have interest rates even lower then, while I have recognised that that was not right and that we erred in the direction of resisting a slump. The consequence was greater inflation.

Mr. Brown : That was an interesting statement. The right hon. Gentleman now seeks to tell us that it was a "mistake" and not "mistakes" that were made during the period he was at the Treasury. [ Hon. Members :-- "Answer."] Of course we supported the reduction in interest rates-- [ Hon. Members :-- "Oh."] We did not make a mistake. Of course we supported the reduction in interest rates. We did not support the £6 billion in tax cuts, mainly to the very rich, which was the primary reason why things moved ahead after March and caused the problems.

Mr. Lilley : In other words, the hon. Gentleman is saying that I was not mistaken.

Mr. Brown : The right hon. Gentleman was certainly mistaken. Talking about mistakes, the biggest mistake made in that three months was the 1988 Budget, which caused many of the problems with which we must now deal. I asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at the time how he could defend that Budget, on the grounds not only of social justice but of economic efficiency, when the Government pumped £6 billion into the economy and then cut interest rates again. That is why we have all the problems now, and everyone knows it. They are the men who are guilty of creating the recession they once claimed never existed, guilty of compounding it

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by further actions and, even now, guilty of failing to correct the recession without rapidly rising unemployment and cutting at the heart of our industrial capacity.

What does the Prime Minister now say after all that? The classless society now looks like a hollow promise ; opportunities for all look, with rising unemployment, like a sick joke ; a nation "at ease with itself"--the comment he took from President Bush and said was applicable to Britain--now looks like a contradiction in terms. What are we now told? At the start of the week, we were told that we would have a keynote speech defining Majorism. The Prime Minister appears to have changed his mind--that in itself is a definition of Majorism. We have had Thatcherism, but of course we never had Churchillism, Macmillanism or Gladstoneism. Apparently, after six months of these achievements, and after all that new thinking, we are to have Majorism. I believe that the nation would excuse the lack of Majorism as a philosophy if we at least had policies to deal with one problem--rising unemployment.

Ten years ago, we were told that the Prime Minister was not for turning but that the economy would turn. Now it seems that things have changed. We have a Prime Minister who does nothing but turn and an economy that will not. What is to happen in this recovery which we were promised? The Government's case is that, after this unfortunate recession, will come sustainable recovery and all our worries will cease--exactly what they told us after the first Tory recession. It is even less credible when we have entered a second Tory recession with unemployment higher than it was in 1979 and industrial capacity smaller.

The real question is, what kind of recovery can we expect? Will it be investment-led growth? Will it be industry-led? Will it be likely to ensure sustainable growth? The Chancellor has already begun to answer the question. When pressed by David Frost, the only stirrings the right hon. Gentleman could detect were not stirrings in industry or manufacturing, not even signs of new investment in industry as a whole, but stirrings in the property or the housing market. Those are precisely the sectors whose expansion without investment-led growth led to the recession in the first place. Indeed, the very sectors in manufacturing industry upon which the country's future most depend for sustainable growth will, by the Chancellor's own admission, be the last to recover.

Is it not the case that the Government recognise that fact and will not tell the nation the full truth? Despite all pleas to the contrary, Britain will do badly in 1991 ; it will also do badly in 1992, according to the Government's own figures. As we leave the recession, if interest rates and inflation fall, the real questions will be : how much capacity will have been lost? How much unemployment will there be? How much investment will there be? The question that dominates our future as well as our present deliberations is : how can we have steady, sustainable, long-term growth for Britain without the capacity, particularly the skills, and the strength to sustain it?

Anyone looking at the forecasts that are made in Europe, with the Government's help, will know that investment prospects in Britain are believed to be about the lowest in Europe, not just in 1991 but in 1992. Investment is expected to rise by 4 per cent. in Germany, 6 per cent. in Spain and 4 per cent. in Italy but only just over 2 per cent. in Britain. Having had a worse record for output this year than any other country except Greece, next year Britain will fall to the bottom of the European

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investment league as well. According to the forecasts, employment is expected to fall in 1991 and 1992. Not only will Britain's export performance be the worst of any EC country this year but, according to the EC's forecasts, the same will happen next year as well. What will happen to our balance of payments next year? We will have all the elements in 1992 or 1993 of the problems that caused the present recession, including the pressures from imports and the balance of payments which brought rising interest rates and rising inflation. The answer is to be found in the Government's own publication, the Red Book of the Budget. According to the Government's figures, next year imports will rise by 4.5 per cent. The balance of payments, which is in a parlous state this year during a recession, will worsen yet again by £2 billion, according to the Government's estimates, and will have to be financed from abroad through higher interest rates.

Built into the Government's forecasts and into what they are saying in their official publications and buried away in the Red Book are all the elements of future grief in rising imports and a worsening balance of payments deficit. Let us be absolutely clear : there is no long-term strategy from the Government to bring Britain sustainable growth--only a short-term tactic to get them through an election. Even the Government, with their own figures, cannot claim to offer sustainable recovery.

If they do not believe me, will they listen to what industry is saying? The president of the Engineering Employers Federation said : "My contention is that the United Kingdom manufacturing sector will simply not be big enough to support the kind of expanding economy that we need in the 1990s"

Martin Jacomb of Barclays de Zoete Wedd said :

"It is amazing how long it has taken people to realise the competitive weakness of our economic performance. Even today, our political leaders do not acknowledge it. You still hear them talking as if we were economically successful."

Mr. John Marshall (Hendon, South) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Brown : No, I shall not give way. I have already done so many times.

If anyone is in any doubt about the gap that must be bridged in the run-up to 1992 and beyond, let him consider the problems that we face not only in training, technology, output and investment as a whole, but in manufacturing investment for the future.

A survey that the Confederation of British Industry gave its members only a few days ago said that manufacturing investment per worker in the United Kingdom is only £2,800 ; in Germany, it is £4, 000 ; in France, £4,300--60 per cent. higher ; in Japan it is more than twice as much-- £6,000. Those are the 1989 figures. Investment in other countries has risen and is still rising in most cases, but in Britain it is down to what we estimate to be £2,400 per manufacturing worker. It is falling this year and slipping behind all our competitors as we move forward.

The tragedy is that the loss of investment power for manufacturing workers is not a one-off occurrence that can be dismissed as a freak or a blip--it is a recurring and lasting feature of the past 12 years. Over the past 12 years, the British worker has had only £18,000 invested in him in real terms. The figure for the German worker was nearly

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30 per cent. higher, for the French it was 60 per cent. higher and even for the Irish worker it was 50 per cent. higher. In the Netherlands, the figure was 250 per cent. more, and in Canada and America it was 100 per cent. more. No other country invested less in manufacturing per worker except Greece. If the Government will not listen to us, will they listen to the voices from industry?

Mr. Ray Whitney (Wycombe) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Brown : No.

Under this Government, the whole country now sees 1992 not as the opportunity that it should have been, but as the threat that it has now become.

What of the role of the Department of Trade and Industry? For 12 years, the DTI has done next to nothing. Only a few weeks ago--this is important, because the Secretary of State thought it so in the speeches that he made-- after 12 years of doing nothing, the Secretary of State acted and made a few speeches on DTI policy. What was the purpose of those speeches? It was to explain the philosophy behind doing absolutely nothing. I suppose that, having acted and made so many mistakes at the Treasury, by his own acknowledgment, he is playing safe by doing nothing at the DTI.

Under the new Prime Minister, the Department of the Environment is at least getting rid of the poll tax, if not until 1993 or 1994. At least the Department of Health is setting itself new targets even if, it says, they will not make any difference until 1995 or beyond. At least the Department of Transport is talking about investing to get trains to run on time at some as yet unspecified time in the future. What has happened at the DTI? What does it do when its sphere of responsibility includes dealing with the rundown of research, the failure of investment, the weakening of many of our exports and needs for innovation and the problems of the regions? What is the most important and interesting single initiative of the DTI over the past few weeks? It is not a new policy initiative or programme, but a video. The Sunday Times states :

"Plummeting morale at the DTI has persuaded the bosses to commission a video to remind staff how vital their work is. The low-key image of Peter Lilley has led some officials to look back with rose tinted spectacles on the reign of Lord Young whose campaigns made DTI staff feel important. The grumblers doubt that the new video will make much difference. Mr. Lilley will star in it himself."

Presumably the video will begin, "You may not of heard of me, but I am in charge here."

When industry needs research and development support ; when it needs a Department to speak up for them in government and imaginative thinking of public and private partnership to develop the infrastructure ; at a time when we need to modernise--as the Labour party proposes--rather than abolish regional policy if we are not to slip back in the run-up to 1992, the best that we have is a video featuring the Secretary of State. The problems of this country are too important to be left to a Government who have failed. When the House of Lords recommended improved capital allowances to boost investment in manufacturing--as the Labour party has also recommended--and when it recommended in its report tax credits for additional research and development such as those in America--a similar proposal to that advanced by the Labour party--the Government chose to do absolutely nothing. The

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