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been greatly involved in central and eastern Europe helping emerging democracies to learn how our Parliament functions, but we do not discuss only parliamentary democracy. Next week, we are to have a visit by a parliamentary delegation from Hungary. Europeans always say to us, "Why do you British not become involved in our country?" The lack of meaningful commitment by the Government bedevils British industry and the people who try to run it.Mr. Conway : All hon. Members appreciate that the hon. Gentleman plays a distinguished role in the Council of Europe and an even more distinguished role in the IPU. It does not matter whether the hon. Gentleman is being fair to the Government, but he is being less than fair to our country when he speaks about the part that we play in Europe. I am sure that, when the hon. Gentleman attends international meetings, he makes the point that the United Kingdom is a vital part of the European Community and has applied more directives than any of the other member states. We should not let people get away with saying that Britain is not playing its role. We are in there and doing more than any of the others, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman recognises.
Mr. Cox : I should like to support the hon. Gentleman, but I cannot. Hon. Members often disagree with their colleagues--that is what democracy is all about. The views are not mine but those of European parliamentarians.
Mr. Cox : The Minister says that they are wrong, but the events of the past two or three weeks have been confusing and have not made it clear what the Prime Minister will or will not sign for.
The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham says that we are committed to Europe. He should read in today's issue of The Daily Telegraph a letter from 25 prospective Conservative parliamentary candidates who say, "Hold on, we don't really want anything much to do with Europe." That is the view of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues, and he should bear it in mind when he reflects on what Europeans say about us and our attitude.
Within the next four or five months, we could be in an election campaign. The debate in that campaign will not only be about the attitude of the electorate to the national health service, to housing, to the absolute chaos in our transport system, to the reports only this week about education and about how parents have to contribute more and more money to educate their youngsters.
Apart from those issues, the voters will take an even stronger line over the total lack of policies in the last 12 years to lead Britain into developing a modern industrial base. That base is still lacking, despite all the opportunities, especially financial, that have been available to the Government. As soon as the electors are given a chance, they will indict the Government on all those matters. 12.35 pm
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : I welcome the initiative of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Conway) in initiating a debate on employment policies. Although this is a vital matter, it is regrettable that the exposure of the Opposition green leather Benches is in excess of 99 per cent.
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The motion includes the important issues of the strike record of the nation and a national minimum wage and I shall confine my remarks to those. In terms of strikes, we have made considerable progress. Last year we had the record lowest number of strikes for 56 years. We seem at last to have got away from the nonsense of class war and head bashing which so damaged our social and industrial structure. The present situation has been due largely to the long-standing policies of the Conservatives over the past 12 years on reforms through industrial relations policy. Those reforms have been fundamental in handing back the trade unions to the members who pay the union subscriptions. People join trade unions only if they believe that they are relevant and worth the subscriptions involved. The reduction of millions in the membership of trade unions is perhaps a commentary on the position.Trade union members have got back control of their unions by the balloting that has been made possible by Conservative legislation. They ballot for their leaders and when deciding whether to strike. There have been examples time and again of politically motivated union officials proposing strikes which their intelligent members have chucked out.
Legislation has also brought trade unions back within the law, limiting their unfair coercive powers. That is why, even during the current recession, the British economy has shown remarkable resilience. Proof that the economy remains effective is revealed by the figures for investment by foreign companies in the European Community. The Japanese have placed 40 per cent. of their investment in the United Kingdom, with the remaining 60 per cent. spread among the other 11 members of the EC. American investment in Britain is even higher, with 42 per cent. coming here and the other 11 struggling to obtain the rest. That shows the effectiveness of the British marketplace.
Thank goodness we have seen the end of the old knee-jerk reaction to industrial relations and strikes. Gone are the days of the political antics of the likes of Red Robbo. An example of the great days of Labour Government was the freelance journalist who, out of curiosity, ran through the docks in an old raincoat, waved his arms in the air and yelled, "All out, brothers", and the dockers came off the ships and sat around the dockside for the rest of the day. They thought that their union had instructed them to cease work, although they had no idea why. They acted in such an inefficient manner that they were not even responding to their union.
Those days have gone, but what a tragedy it would be if the Labour party were able to put back the clock. I wonder how many of our constituents know the policies that the Labour party currently advocates on trade unions. If a Labour Government came to office, they would legalise secondary strikes and flying pickets, limit the courts' power to sequestrate a union's assets and make unofficial, unballoted industrial action lawful. We do not want such legislation.
It is worth considering that Labour's active contribution to industrial relations in recent years has been equally negative. How many people remember that the Labour party supported the P and O seamen's strike in 1988, the dock workers' strike in 1989, the railway workers' strike in 1989, which caused such misery to my commuting constituents, and the ambulance men's strike in 1989? It supports such strikes because it is bound to its paymasters. However, the public is not given that impression.
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The Leader of the Opposition, writing in the Director magazine, made an extraordinary claim in respect of the trade unions and the Labour party. He said :"There isn't a dependent relationship of any kind".
That is not the view of Ron Todd, who explained only last August that the Labour party needs the trade unions' money and strength. But it fears and resents that power, as is shown by the Leader of the Opposition's comment.
We must not forget the reality--the Leader of the Opposition is sponsored by the Transport and General Workers Union. He expressed his real views on the matter in a speech to a TGWU conference and they were reported in The Daily Telegraph on 11 July this year. He said :
"in every region, in every industry, in every constituency, this union represents the Labour party. This union is the Labour Party in so many ways".
This country forgets that basic background at its peril. The problem is that, for the Labour party, the matter is a one-way bet. Union restrictions and wrecking action equal higher unemployment. Higher unemployment equals party political advantage. Time and again, it appears that the Labour party wants higher unemployment. After the 1983 election, the Leader of the Opposition predicted that the new Conservative Government would create mass unemployment of 6 million people. Not to be outdone, Arthur Scargill trumped that figure with 8 million people. As so often happens with such predictions, the Labour party was disappointed when unemployment fell steadily for some years thereafter.
The syndrome of pressure from the Labour party would bring about higher unemployment, which would be reinforced by its highly damaging policy for a national minimum wage. A national minimum wage sounds nice and caring, but all academic studies based on realities and projections show otherwise. A former Labour party Employment Minister, Mr. John Grant, has looked into the matter in detail. In an article in The Guardian on 28 June this year, he recalled a study on the national minimum wage carried out for Barbara Castle in 1969 when she was Secretary of State for Employment. Mr. Grant recommended that the study should be dusted down, brought out and made
"compulsory reading for the Labour leader Neil Kinnock and his economic team as they flounder around in their quest for a presentable policy which tackles inflation."
Mr. Grant extrapolated from the 1969 report that,
"appropriately updated for inflation, a statutory wage today would add at least £1,000 million to the annual pay bill. To keep it to that level would imply remarkable restraint by higher paid workers." We all know that such restraint would not be shown. He continued : "There is only one context in which a statutory minimum wage makes sense for Labour--as part of an overall incomes policy."
We have been told time and again that there will be no overall incomes policy, despite the fact that when the Leader of the Opposition was a young Member in the early 1970s he favoured one. The Labour party has clocked up yet another U-turn.
What is the reaction of the trade union movement to the proposals for a national minimum wage? On 5 June this year, Gavin Laird of the Amalgamated Engineering Union stated on Channel 4 :
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"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."We all remember the association that Joe Haines of the Daily Mirror had with the Labour party. He said :
"The minimum wage proposals won't work and if they do, won't help."
The Fabian Society, which is so close to the background of many Opposition spokesmen, has produced an analysis showing that up to 880,000 jobs could be destroyed by the minimum wage. Other academic studies have researched the matter in considerable detail. Their analyses show that if there were to be a Labour Government and they introduced a national minimum wage, the jobs cost would amount to 1.5 million in the first stage of that policy, with a minimum wage set at £3.40 an hour. When the second stage of that Labour policy was introduced, the loss of jobs would rise to 2 million.
The Labour party may advocate policies that inflame unemployment, particularly at the bottom end of the scale for the most vulnerable people, but the Conservative party does not. We should be concerned to improve skills and to allow people to retain their self-respect and win jobs-- better and better-paid jobs--on the basis of their innate skills, complemented by the training that we support. That is why I welcome the wide range of measures introduced by the Government. Britain is the only country to guarantee an offer of a place on a two-year youth training scheme for every 16 and 17-year-old. Under the last Labour Government there were only 6,000 such training places ; today there are well over 250,000. The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) referred to the employment training programme. Our employment training programme in this country is the largest in Europe. Job clubs deal sensitively with the unemployed, assisting them in the practicalities of getting back to work and half of those who leave job clubs go straight into jobs.
Training and enterprise councils provide an imaginative way to draw local industry into training to ensure that employment and youth training is tailored to the precise needs of local communities. I see my role as being supportive of the Kent TEC in my area rather than looking for teething problems about which to complain. I wish the TECs success in achieving practical steps which will deal with the problem of unemployment.
12.50 pm
Mr. Tony Lloyd (Stretford) : This has been an interesting debate. I place on record my admiration for the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Conway) for choosing to table a motion on employment, given that over the past 12 months, unemployment in his constituency has increased by 50 per cent. We know that that 50 per cent. increase in unemployment represents considerable human misery for those of his constituents who now find themselves out of work. It is a little sad that, as Conservative Members have spoken, one after the other has shown almost no recognition of the human costs of the total failure of the Government's employment policies over almost 13 years. It may be helpful to examine the state of the labour market as we move into the Prime Minister's second year of office and into the 14th year of a Conservative Government. Although it suits Conservative Members, such as the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold), to
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try to re-run the battles of the 1970s, those are not the battles that the British public want to fight. The public want an agenda that faces the 1990s and the problem of mass unemployment, with which the Government have now dabbled twice. The Government have unashamedly used unemployment as an arm of social and economic policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) commented that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that unemployment was a price worth paying. There have been no apologies to my constituents, to those of my hon. Friends or to those of Conservative Members for the huge human suffering which the policy has caused. There has not been an increase in unemployment in my constituency on the scale that exists in Shrewsbury and Atcham. The reason is not that there has been less unemployment, but that unemployment has been outrageously high in inner-city Manchester throughout every year in which the Government have been in power.Unemployment has caused poverty and pressures on families, which lead to their breaking up. Unemployment has led directly to the associated problem of crime, to the problem of drug abuse and to the problem of drug sales in which crime is involved. It has led to women working in prostitution.
Those are the realities of the policies of unemployment which the Government accept as "a price worth paying". Those social consequences are so stark and alarming that they are dividing British society down the middle. Those who are lucky enough still to be in work are no longer secure, but at least they can count the blessings of being in work. They are divided from those who are thrust into unemployment and who struggle to make ends meet.
We know that, even among the working population, one of the greatest growth areas has been the increase in part-time work, and the associated growth of poverty wages and financial difficulties. Home working has risen to an extent that we never knew in the past, and it has caused some outrageous employment conditions, yet not one word of apology for the damage that they have done comes from Conservative Members.
Over the past 12 months, unemployment has risen to 2.5 million. Using the basis that applied in the late 1970s, more accurate figures would show that, once again, we are above the 3 million mark for those out of work. The numbers of those in long-term unemployment have increased to more than 650,000--an increase in one year of 50 per cent.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East pointed out, the chances of those 650,000 people obtaining a decent training scheme, whether as part of employment training or elsewhere, are virtually non-existent. There have been cuts in ET from the heady days when we were promised 600,000 places a year to the present, when the numbers on ET courses have been cut. Last year, ET starts were more than 200,000 ; by March this year, ET starts were down to 197, 000. There are 197,000 employment training places for 650,000 long-term unemployed people--the casualties of the Chancellor's economic doctrines and ideologies.
In the construction industry, which has already been hammered by unemployment, another 100,000 people have been thrown on to the dole queues. The hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) said that she had benefited from talking to taxi drivers about the growth in
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self-employment. I must tell her about the self-employed taxi driver who drove me recently. He told me how bitterly he regretted having to do such work, because he was a skilled construction worker who had been thrown out of work and denied the opportunity of earning the living that he wanted to earn in a trade that he valued. He could have been helping to build the homes, schools and hospitals that the country so badly needs. Such are the results of the Chancellor's policies.Manufacturing industry, which was so brutally hit by the Government in the early 1980s, has shed another 300,000 jobs. The service industries, which we were once told would be the salvation of the country, have shed 150,000 jobs over the past 12 months. The right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) used to insist that manufacturing had no future and that service industries would drag the country into a brave new future.
Conservative Members once thought that they could contemptuously treat the south-east as their own, as they damaged employment in the north and in other parts of Britain. But now unemployment in the south-east has grown by a dramatic 109 per cent. in the past 12 months--making it the worst affected region in the land.
That is the reality of the modern labour market in Britain--an economy increasingly dominated by people either out of work or under-employed and by outrageous and unacceptable working practices. I hope that the figures I am about to reveal will shock Conservative Members.
Conservatives talk about days lost through industrial action, but I ask them to compare with that figure the number of days lost through directly preventable industrial injuries, accidents and illnesses. Every year, about 60 million working days are lost through preventable accidents and ill health. By underfunding the Health and Safety Executive and the mechanisms for protecting people at work, the Government guarantee that that figure will continue to be a running sore on the back of the British economy.
Mr. Forth : I am sure that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will forgive the ritualistic element that enters such debates from time to time. The hon. Gentleman yet again trots out the tired old charge about underfunding the Health and Safety Executive. With as much enthusiasm as I can muster at this stage in the debate, I remind him and the House yet again that the Health and Safety Executive gets the resources it asks for to do its job and that the Government have confidence in its performance. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the Health and Safety Executive is not doing its job, or is he making an explicit pledge for more funds for it should he ever be in government? I would appreciate it if he made that clear to the House now.
Mr. Lloyd : I make it clear that the Labour Government will make available the resources that the Health and Safety Executive needs to do its job. That is a commitment which the Minister can read, if he cares to do so, in existing documentation.
Mr. Jacques Arnold : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Lloyd : No, not at the moment.
I have tabled questions asking the Minister to explain the recruitment ban that the Health and Safety Executive impose on further employment last year. The ban was caused by lack of funding, yet the Minister has said in
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parliamentary answers that no such ban existed. I have a letter from the Health and Safety Executive making it clear to the relevant trade unions that such a ban existed. Is the Minister prepared to explain how he has misled the House of Commons?Mr. Forth : If the hon. Gentleman is prepared to let me have a copy of the letter that he alleges he has received from the Health and Safety Executive--and if its contents are as he alleges--I shall look at it carefully and, if any withdrawal or retraction on my part is necessary, I will give it.
Mr. Lloyd : We can certainly arrange that. I hope that the Minister will make it clear that he will come to the House to make such a retraction, because it is a serious charge.
Mr. Forth indicated assent.
Mr. Lloyd : I welcome that commitment.
I must reiterate the charge that 60 million days are lost in British industry every year. It is calculated that that loss is avoidable, but the Government are simply not prepared to take the necessary steps to prevent it.
We have also lost a staggering 4 billion days as a result of the increase in unemployment since the Government came to power. The amount of money lost to the economy--some £400 billion--is so enormous as to dwarf revenue from North sea oil and all the other benefits to which my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) referred. The Government have squandered the future of the British people and the British economy in pursuit of their policies of high unemployment.
Mr. Arbuthnot : Has the hon. Gentleman compared the number of days lost through unemployment since the Government came to office with the number of days gained through employment since the Government came to office?
Mr. Lloyd : The days lost through unemployment are the days that the economy forgoes ; for the purpose of deciding at what level the economy could be operated, that is the significant figure. Any other figure has no relevance at all--except to massage the hon. Gentleman's own prejudices.
We are aware of changes in the nature of the labour market and I shall deal with that in referring to the challenges that we ought to face. There is an alternative agenda for Britain. We shall not hear it from the Minister this morning and, so far, we have certainly not heard it from his hon. Friends, with the possible exception of the hon. Member for Billericay, who briefly referred to the kind of labour market that we should have in Britain.
How are we to turn away from this destructive Government's capacity to view Britain's future as that of a low-wage, low-cost producing nation, and turn our economy instead into a highly skilled, high-technology, high- performance economy? There are a number of prerequisites for that, and the first is training. Whatever set of standards one applies, the British work force is undertrained. Training provision in Britain bears scant comparison with that in countries throughout the rest of western Europe, as well as that in Japan and the United
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States. We know, for example, that we lag way, way behind other OECD countries when it comes to young people going into full-time education and training.Only about 30 per cent. of people in the British labour force have any qualification--a figure which compares very badly with those of other western European countries. The Secretary of State for Employment lost the battle at the time of the autumn statement this year. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury worsted him and made it clear that money would not be made available for training. As a result, money for youth training places has been cut by £25 million and those who Conservative Members say represent the future of our country--on that, at least, they are quite right--are to lose training opportunities. On employment training, the Secretary of State lost the battle to the tune of £105 million.
The commitment from the Labour party is clear. We shall reverse those cuts in training. We must do so, because, without a proper effort to ensure that training becomes a priority, we shall simply doom Britain to the same sorry cycle of low-pay, low-cost production.
Given that, in a slump, one business in four operates with a skill shortage, it is clear that the Government have the training relationship fundamentally wrong. That is why a Labour Government will introduce a training levy. We shall ensure that those employers who are already facing up to their training obligations will be rewarded for doing so, by preventing undercutting and unfair competition from employers who are not prepared to train. That will have a significant effect on ensuring that there is a level playing field so that the good employer does not face unfair competition from the bad employer.
Mr. Conway : Has the hon. Gentleman costed the impact that that will have on businesses and the consequent effect on jobs? Is he not contradicting a statement from the Opposition Treasury team, who have said that they will give a costed commitment only to pensions and maternity benefits? The House needs to know the figures, so that we can understand precisely what the hon. Gentleman is saying.
Mr. Lloyd : The hon. Gentleman should do his research. Labour's position has been clear for some time. We will introduce a training levy which will be funded by the employer on the basis of payroll--
Mr. Jacques Arnold : By how much?
Mr. Lloyd : Half a per cent. of the payroll--and that will be used to fund training. That is a legitimate activity, which is pursued in many other countries. It is pursued at a high level in France, where it is successful. French training is better and more successful than ours. We aim to ensure that the British work force is the best trained work force in the world. Without that kind of training commitment, we doom Britain to having no future in terms of competition with the rest of western Europe.
Britain has a very poor record with regard to the number of women in the labour force. Between 1979 and 1991, the rate of increase of women's pay relative to men's has been so slow that, if we simply continue at the same rate, it will be 50 years before women's pay reaches parity with men's.
The Minister should bear in mind the fact that my four-year-old daughter, who will be entering school next year, will be thinking of retirement before her pay reaches
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parity with that of men if she has to wait for this Government and their voluntaristic approach. She and I are simply nor prepared to wait for that.Mr. Forth : In that case, why is the proportion of women working in the United Kingdom one of the highest in Europe? If the deal is so awful, why do so many women come forward of their own volition to take up what is on offer on the job market?
Mr. Lloyd : That is a fair question. Like the hon. Member for Billericay, I welcome the role of women in the labour force--unlike some Conservative Members, the stuffed-shirt neanderthals, who have a rather different view of women's role in society.
With regard to family finances, the Family Policy Studies Centre stated that the wages of working mothers are increasingly saving families from the breadline. It found :
"Ten per cent. of families where the mother has no job live on less than £100 a week, compared with fewer than one in a hundred families with dependent children where the mother does work."
We have become a two-wage economy : families cannot survive unless there are two wages. Women are forced into work to make ends meet and to allow their families to exist. Poverty wages disfigure the role of both women and men in employment.
Women in British industry are underpaid relative to men to the tune of £21 billion a year because of the unfair pay rates. Women are locked into a limited number of industrial structures and are offered limited career options, and we have the worst publicly funded child care facilities in western Europe.
Mr. Jacques Arnold : The hon. Gentleman's speech seems to be a long catalogue of running down Britain. He is suggesting that we are the worst- off in Europe. Time and again, hon. Members in this debate have highlighted a variety of areas in which we are well ahead in comparison with Europe. It does not help the debate simply to run down this country because we happen to have a Conservative Government.
Mr. Lloyd : Unfortunately, I have a different kind of patriotism to the hon. Gentleman's. My patriotism lies with the people I represent, including the women who cannot find adequate child care facilities for their children because they do not exist, and the women who would like to work full-time because they need to support their families. However, they have to work part time or not at all and they depend on benefits because there are no child care facilities. The hon. Gentleman can dance, scream and prance all he likes, but he will not change the reality that we have very poor child care facilities. He should put pressure on the Minister to make sure that we improve the matter or, perhaps better, vote for a Labour candidate at the general election, to make sure that we have a Government who will introduce child care services.
If we really are to alter the role of women in the labour force, we must do something, as the Equal Opportunities Commission pointed out in its document entitled "The Equality Agenda". I am sure that the Minister has read it. The commission makes it clear that one of the significant deterrents to women properly entering the labour market and competing equally with men is the inflexible and inadequate training on offer.
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We know, for example, that employment training, a source of training for women returners, has been cut. We must make resources available to give women returners the training that is necessary if we are to liberate the potential of women in Britain. We know that 90 per cent. of new entrants into the labour force between now and the turn of the century will be women. Many of them will be women returning to the labour market, or perhaps coming in not straight from school but for the first time, without adequate training. We not only condemn them to lousy work and low pay : we condemn the economy to under-perform, and we condemn society to an unacceptable long-term future of a kind that simply should not be on offer in the last part of the 20th century.We know that we will not get that change from the Government. We know that the Government have blocked the directive on pregnant women.
Mr. Lloyd : The directive has now been grossly amended. The Minister may want to announce what it now contains, because we have had no official announcement.
Mr. Forth : In the interests of honesty and truthfulness, I must ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the form of words that he used--that the Government "blocked" the directive on pregnant women. He must know, because we told him and everybody else at the time, that the directive on pregnant women went through the Council of Ministers on the European Community a few weeks ago, with only the Italians voting against. How he can square that with what he has said, I really do not know.
Mr. Lloyd : If the Minister cares to read my remarks in Hansard, he will have to consider the absolute truth. The Government were part of the process of blocking the directive until it was so badly mauled that it is now very different from the one that we first saw and debated in the House a month ago.
Mr. Leighton : Is it not the case that the Minister perhaps he will confirm this--abstained to allow through an emasculated formula which gave pregnant women in this country the equivalent of sick pay? Not many of us think that women producing babies are suffering from an illness. We think that that is insulting and humiliating.
Mr. Lloyd : I can confirm that that is exactly what happened. It certainly is not pregnant women who are sick the Government have that problem. We are intent on making sure that British women, even if no longer with the protection of the directive, have adequate protection during pregnancy.
We know that the Government have blocked the directive on part-time workers, which would have helped many women in Britain. We know that the Government have a record on child care. This Government in particular took away tax relief on workplace nurseries. Even from his hon. Friends, the Minister has received a request to consider that matter again.
The women of Britain--the women in the work force and those who want to be in the work force--will not look to the Minister to offer them any hope of liberation or any hope of a better future. They will rightly look to a Labour Government who will not look at the matter in the narrow
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economic calculus that we have heard from Conservative Members but will recognise that, unless we are prepared to accept the role of women in the labour force, we will fail as an economy to receive and achieve our full potential.The minimum wage seems to exercise Conservative Members to the greatest extent. The Government try to justify their claims about a minimum wage on the grounds of what it might to do employment, so it is worth spending a little time on the reasons why we shall insist on introducing it, and the rationale behind that.
The Select Committee on Employment recently produced a very good report on home workers, which revealed that many earn as little as 20p or 30p an hour for making up Christmas crackers. Some receive wage rates of £1 for sewing blouses, skirts and dresses. Some receive 20p or 30p an hour for packing cards and others 80p or 90p an hour for painting table mats.
I hope that the Minister will comment specifically on whether that is an acceptable employment practice for this country or whether he believes--as I most certainly do--that we should offer some form of legal protection for those women are the most exploited. I also hope that the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Livsey) will reconsider his unyouthful radicalism in that context, because surely nobody can justify pay rates of 20p an hour. Such women--home workers are almost exclusively women--are entitled to some statutory support, but they are most definitely not getting that support from this Government, with or without the wages councils.
The same report examined individual cases. We are not prepared to accept the fact that women, such as one woman from my own city of Manchester, can make skirts, blouses and trousers and be paid as little as 25p per pair of trousers. That women was not offered a contract of employment or a payment slip, and does not know whether she is an employee or self-employed. Each item takes between 30 and 40 minutes to complete now, but took as long as one hour during her training period. Her employment conditions are atrocious. Her health and safety provisions are non-existent. The protection that she is offered is so grossly inadequate that the Minister should be ashamed that he has done nothing about it. Such people deserve legal protection. They deserve a role in our society that gives them a little more economic security and social dignity than is offered by the current outrageous employment practices.
We know that many people in Britain who are on poverty wages, even if they are in more regular forms of work, simply cannot make ends meet. The "Breadline Britain" report quotes the words of a Liverpool housewife in a low-wage family. Talking about the reality of living on poverty wages, she said :
"The children, mainly, don't get enough to eat ; things they need when they need them, like the shoes and the clothes. I just wish we could do the things we want without having to worry where the money is coming from."
When a mother is forced to deprive her children of food, clothing and shoes, the Minister must explain the employment policies and successes of the Government, because we have yet to hear them. We know that roughly 10 million people in Britain today cannot afford adequate housing ; that 7 million people go without essential clothing, such as a warm, waterproof coat for the winter, and that about 2.5 million children are growing up in
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