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about the minimum wage? How much does he value the advice of Mr. Gavin Laird of the Amalgamated Engineering Union who said : "It's never worked in the past, there's no logic for it. It doesn't work in any other country and it certainly will not work in Great Britain."

How much does the right hon. and learned Gentleman value the advice of Mr. Joe Haines, hardly a Conservative, who said :

"The minimum wage proposals won't work, and if they do they won't help."

How much does he value the advice of his hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who a year or two ago wrote :

"The employment consequences will be little short of disastrous."

Does he respect the views of the Sunday People, which is hardly a Conservative newspaper? It stated :

"Labour's plan for a national minimum wage is not the answer. It would only cause more unemployment and deny jobs to those who need them."

Mr. Haynes : The right hon. and learned Gentleman promised that he would give way and I am grateful to him for doing so. There are certainly some bright sparks in the Treasury. First, it was said that a minimum wage would result in 1.2 million people becoming unemployed. The Secretary of State and the Prime Minister spoke about2 million. They cannot even get the figures right. What will be the true figure? People out there are waiting for a minimum wage and after the next election they will get it.

Mr. Mellor : The hon. Gentleman will be greatly missed in the next Parliament. The figure of 1.2 million was the estimate of our friends at Phillips and Drew, not ours.

The right hon. Member for Leeds, East once said, "When you are in a hole, you should stop digging." The right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East was digging like mad on the minimum wage and was digging away last week in an interview with the Morning Star when he said :

"We will listen to employers"--

the next bit is worth noting--

"but I can assure you we have no intention of phasing in reform over stages."

Does that mean straight to 66 per cent. at a stroke? Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman embarrassed by the fact that the only newspaper giving editorial support to the minimum wage policy is the Morning Star ? I thought that Labour had lived through that phase. The right hon. and learned Gentleman may be digging away, but the Leader of the Opposition is having second thoughts. The Daily Mail last week, apropos his speech to the Transport and General Workers Union a week or so ago, said :

"His staff had gone out of their way to insist that Mr. Kinnock would take the issue head-on at Blackpool by claiming he would be proud' to fight the General Election on the issue Until Tuesday night, Mr. Kinnock seemed to have been convinced that it was a winner for Labour. But whatever was in his first draft it appears to have been deliberately dropped."

What a muddle ; what a mess. It is a muddle and a mess because the only consequence of the minimum wage is a loss of jobs. The Labour party should have more noble ambitions than pulling people down by their boot straps.

On interest rates, all we had today was the usual repetition of "Monklands law"--1 per cent. reduction and nothing else. Credit controls did not make their usual appearance, but during a party political broadcast the

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right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East recently reiterated his conviction that they are right. He has yet to tell us how he would prevent people going overseas to borrow money and why it is fair that credit controls should bear down on the poorer section of the community who cannot buzz off to France, Germany or Switzerland to borrow the money.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has also failed to tell us how he would justify credit controls in the personal sector when 85 per cent. of personal borrowing is on mortgages. That is an issue which once again will not go away. I can do no better than repeat what the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) said about credit controls :

"The Labour party idea that you can have credit controls is rubbish. There is no way you can control credit except by controlling the price of credit and the price of credit is the bank rate." Apart from saying that the Government's costings are silly, the Labour party has produced no answer to our carefully costed publication on Labour's programme showing that £35 billion would be the full year cost.

Mr. John Evans (St. Helens, North) : Rubbish.

Mr. Mellor : Saying, "Rubbish," s not an argument and an argument will have to be provided. One can assume that the only reason that the Labour party has failed to answer the charge is that it is thinking up new ones to levy. There has been no satisfactory answer. It is not only Conservative Members who are getting on to that point. What about Professor Rowthorn, not a well-known Conservative, who when asked--[ Hon. Members :-- "Never heard of him."] Well, hon. Members are about to. When asked on "Panorama" whether he thought Labour's spending plans added up, he said :

"Frankly, I think they don't add up. If you take their whole list of spending plans and you say where's the money for this list going to come from, I think the answer is I have no idea."

It is Dolly Parton economics--an incredible figure that would collapse without hidden support. It is about time that the hidden support ceased to be hidden. If only £4 billion has been costed, with the pain that has already had to be expressed about the tax consequences of raising that, where will the £30 billion come from? Every adjective in the book has been used--top, first, central, key--to establish these priorities. Those are plainly words of commitment, and everything cannot be a priority ; that all have won and all must have prizes, showing that Lewis Carroll is alive and well and writing speeches for the Leader of the Opposition.

There is brazenness in the fact that, since we published our analysis, fresh policy documents about which further details will be supplied on another occasion have been issued, making clear further commitments. The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) went to Oldham where he may have assumed the record would not reach, but the Oldham Evening Chronicle has been passed to me showing that, with a recklessness that came from being away from London, he said : "A Labour Government would pour money into the NHS."

That would be interesting.

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Even in the presence of the hon. Lady who formulated "Beckett's law" herself, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) pledged more spending. The Derby Evening Telegraph, in an article headed

"Shadow Minister's pledge on railways",

said :

"Shadow Transport Secretary John Prescott has pledged to electrify the Midlands main line if a Labour Government wins the next general election."

Did the hon. Lady leap to the rostrum and say, "The man's mad. He should be certified. I am not going to do it. Beckett's law says that we have only two priorities." Of course she did not. She sat there and smiled, knowing that it was not right.

The Labour party's economic policy reminds me of the last will and testament of Rabelais, who said :

"I owe much. I have nothing. The rest I leave to the poor." Mr. Derek Foster (Bishop Auckland) rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to. Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question :--

The House divided : Ayes 199, Noes 311.

Division No. 225] [10 pm

AYES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley, N.)

Allen, Graham

Anderson, Donald

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Armstrong, Hilary

Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

Barron, Kevin

Battle, John

Beckett, Margaret

Beith, A. J.

Bell, Stuart

Bellotti, David

Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

Benton, Joseph

Bermingham, Gerald

Bidwell, Sydney

Blair, Tony

Boateng, Paul

Boyes, Roland

Bradley, Keith

Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Caborn, Richard

Callaghan, Jim

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Canavan, Dennis

Carr, Michael

Cartwright, John

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Corbett, Robin

Corbyn, Jeremy

Cousins, Jim

Cox, Tom

Crowther, Stan

Cryer, Bob

Cummings, John

Cunliffe, Lawrence

Cunningham, Dr John

Darling, Alistair

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'l)

Dewar, Donald

Dixon, Don

Dobson, Frank

Duffy, Sir A. E. P.

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Eadie, Alexander

Edwards, Huw

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)

Fatchett, Derek

Fearn, Ronald

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Fisher, Mark

Flannery, Martin

Flynn, Paul

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Foster, Derek

Foulkes, George

Fraser, John

Galloway, George

Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

George, Bruce

Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Golding, Mrs Llin

Gordon, Mildred

Gould, Bryan

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Grocott, Bruce

Hain, Peter

Hardy, Peter

Harman, Ms Harriet

Haynes, Frank

Heal, Mrs Sylvia

Healey, Rt Hon Denis

Hinchliffe, David

Hoey, Ms Kate (Vauxhall)

Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

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