House of Commons Hansard Debates for 12 Mar 1992

Mr. Hind : The hon. Gentleman can be satisfied that I can. The 1980s saw record levels of investment, right up to 1990, a fall in unemployment of 1.4 million, an increase in participation in companies through the increase from 2 million shareholders in 1979 to 12 million today. The public have a greater say and participation in industry than ever before. There was a record increase in jobs, by 1 million. Britain had more jobs as a proportion of the population than any other country in Europe and the G7. This is where the money worked its way through, and it has resulted in a higher standard of living. The public are better off than they have ever been, and that is where the oil revenues went--to benefit the British people. The Conservative Government need have no shame about the way that they used that money.

It has been suggested by the Opposition parties that the 20 per cent. band set out in the Budget is a bribe and that it is not enough and does not achieve what it set out to do. Both cannot be right. It is not a great deal of money in itself. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has injected 0.33 per cent. of GDP back into the economy. It is part of the picture, part of the strategy to kick-start the economy and move it forward. For the seventh month running, there have been improvements in retail sales in the high streets. Organisations such as the House of Fraser are saying that they are astonished by the increase in sales. The CBI has said that retail sales are improving.

The Budget makes a contribution to moving the country out of the recession. Inevitably, that move must be demand led, which means putting money into the pockets of people. If one takes the money out of their pockets, one deepens the recession. Putting money into pockets helps to pull the country out of recession. The country will face a clear choice when the parties go to the hustings over the

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next four weeks. The public must realise--I am sure that they will do so quickly--that increasing taxation will not stop the recession. However, decreasing taxation at a time when it is prudent to do so, in limited measure, will help and will result in Britain turning the corner and getting back on the right track towards prosperity. We have seen the Labour party's confusion over the 20 per cent. band. I am delighted with the Budget for this reason. It is a Budget for the needy, not the greedy. It will benefit the lowest-paid workers, and it will benefit 5 million pensioners by making additions to income support. They will see that and realise that things will improve for them.

Pensioners will realise that the lower rate of tax, with the 20 per cent. band under a Conservative Government, will improve their standard of living. The alternative to that is the investment income surcharge to be imposed by a Labour Government which would add 9 per cent. to the tax on savings, taking it to 34p in the pound. That would drag away years of savings. That is what pensioners are up against and do not let us forget that more than 50 per cent. of pensioners have savings, occupational pensions and investments, all of which count. They will turn their backs on the Labour party because they will realise that the Labour party will put its hands into the pensioners' pockets rather than putting money into their hands.

Mr. Battle : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hind : I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to make his own speech.

I welcome the proposals for small businesses, such as the changes in VAT. The most important is the improvement in the uniform business rate. That will be welcomed by small businesses throughout the country. They will be frightened to death at the thought of the UBR being taken over by profligate Labour councils which would use it to draw cash into their communities. Businesses would be used as money milch cows to the detriment of employment, investment and the prosperity of their communities.

Mr. Battle : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hind : I have already said that I will not give way. Small businesses will welcome the changes in inheritance tax concessions which will allow owners to pass on to their children more of what they have worked for. These are not wealthy people, the rich about whom the Labour party talks. Labour thinks that somebody on £20,000 a year is rich, but it is misguided. It will find that police sergeants, staff nurses and many others doing essential jobs that are not particularly highly paid will fall into its so-called rich category.

Our economy is highly dependent upon cars and the cut of 5 per cent. in car tax--50 per cent. of it--will help to generate economic activity. If there is one factor that will bring my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King) back to the House of Commons, it is the realisation among midlands workers that the Government are behind the car industry. They will be helping to export cars. They will not be turning their backs on the workers. That is what it is all about.

People throughout the country--in Sunderland and Derbyshire and those on Merseyside who work for

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Vauxhall and Ford--will realise that they are being given exactly the sort of help that they need. They will understand that Government policies will help to end the recession and push the country forward. The Budget will not inject an especially large amount of money into the economy--we are talking about £2.2 billion in the context of gross domestic product--but it will help to move the economy forward. There is a balance : the Budget is prudent and it is targeted at areas where it will produce the maximum results for the benefit of the people and for the economy.

Mr. Battle : Nonsense.

Mr. Hind : The hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that I am talking nonsense. Labour Members speak nonsense when they make promises about training, the health service and all the money that they will spend. We are never given figures. We do not know how much a Labour Government would spend. We never hear from the Labour party how it would raise the money ; we hear only rhetoric. We can all trot out rhetoric but the Labour party cannot back it with hard facts. The difference between the Conservative party and the Labour party is that Conservatives do what we say. We do not make promises, only to lead the public up the garden path. No doubt, we shall have four weeks of promises from the Labour party at the hustings, but we, the Conservative party, will deliver what we promise.

Mr. Peter Thurnham (Bolton, North-East) : Does my hon. Friend agree that the lower band of income tax will put an extra £250 million into the pockets of the people of the north-west? It is entirely wrong for Labour Members to think that they should take that money out of the pockets of those people because they know better how to spend it.

Mr. Hind : That is right. As my hon. Friend said, the money will go into the pockets of the people of the north-west, who will spend it on goods and services. The consequences of that will work their way through into the economy. Jobs will be protected in the north-west as a result. Job opportunities in the region will increase and there will be a gradual move towards prosperity.

There will be slow recovery but it will come and we shall see it by the end of the year. We can do it and we can deal with it. I am sure that the public will realise that, if they vote for a Labour Government, they will have to pay more tax, which will increase interest rates, inflation and unemployment. That will postpone the recovery. That will deepen the recession, not help to end it. The Budget is one step forward towards recovery and I welcome and support it.

7.12 pm

Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill) : The hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) was correct when he said that recovery is slow. I would say that it is imperceptible. There are many people, especially my constituents, who fail to find any evidence of it. They have suffered massive unemployment for many years.

When I opened my mail last week I took out The House Magazine from its cover. At first, I thought that I had come across a satirical magazine. On the front cover was a picture of St. Margaret's church, and beneath it was the caption, "Reviving the economy". It seems that the

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Conservatives have turned to divine intervention in the absence of policies. I am sure that their predecessors would agree with the proposition that faith without converts will not save the Government.

I found it incredible that the Secretary of State for Employment could make a lengthy speech without saying one word about unemployment levels. On Tuesday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said casually--it seemed to be a throw-away remark--that unemployment would continue to rise until he finally managed to bring about economic recovery. How can anyone say that and claim that he has concern for the low paid, the unemployed and those living in poverty ? That must be nonsensical.

In the past few days we have heard Conservatives expressing their concern for the low paid and we have seen their breast beating, but we remember their policies over recent years, which have shown clearly how little they care for the low paid. There are tens of thousands of low-paid employees who do not have the protection of wages councils, and thousands of others who come under wages councils but find that the councils can do only very little under the current arrangements. When the Secretary of State was pressed on this issue today by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), he said that the Tory party's policy on wages councils was under review. He said nothing at all about protection.

Mr. Battle : He said that the policy was under review, but in the document entitled "People, Jobs and Opportunity" he states that the councils should be phased out.

Mrs. Fyfe : My hon. Friend is correct. The Government's intention is to phase out wages councils. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has made that intention clear over and over again when my hon. Friends and I have debated employment Bills. The Government's position is clear--so much for their concern for the low paid, if that is their attitude to wages councils.

The Secretary of State claimed that family credit is a great scheme for those on low pay. It is a scheme that uses taxpayers' money to subsidise low-paying employers. If employers were required to pay decent rates, there would be no need to use taxpayers' money to provide a subsidy.

The Government are hoping that we have already forgotten the poll tax. If ever a policy was designed not to take account of the needs of the low paid and the impoverished, it was the poll tax. Everybody had to pay the same if weekly family income exceeded a low threshold. A person whose income barely crossed the threshold had to pay the same as the richest in the land. That policy was supported by those who have claimed today that they care about the poor. We see them beating their breasts and expressing concern for the poor, but they supported the poll tax and forced it through Parliament.

There was not a word in the Budget statement about improving unemployment benefit. As a result of small increases in the price of beer and cigarettes, for example, the unemployed will be even worse off. Nothing was said about housing benefit. We know that the Government want gradually to reduce the value of the benefit. They have not said anything today about improving it and making it more valuable to those who receive it. We have heard nothing about child benefit, either.

The Government's approach shows that their so-called concern for the low paid and the poor is entirely insincere.

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It amounts to nothing more than a death-bed conversion. If they are concerned about the poor, it is only because we are on the eve of an election.

The Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland has written to me drawing attention to two areas in which the Government, in the context of the Budget, have been negligent. There will obviously be consequences for small businesses in Scotland and for those who work in them. We know that the uniform business rate will be reduced slightly. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that Scottish business rates would be similarly reduced. In Scotland, small businesses pay a higher level of business rates than their equivalents in England. That deters the provision of work in Scotland. The problem is not so great in England and Wales.

Businesses throughout the United Kingdom should pay their fair share towards the cost of running their local authorities, but the anomaly between what Scottish businesses pay and what their counterparts in England and Wales pay is a problem for Scottish businesses trying to overcome unemployment and to create work in our localities.

Likewise, it is not entirely clear what is planned to help the whisky industry in Scotland. The Chancellor spoke of protecting our spirits industry, but I should welcome some clarification of what precisely he meant by that in terms of protecting our important whisky industry.

For months, the Secretary of State has attacked the minimum wage in a wearily repetitive way, as though we were incapable of taking in his points, just as he is incapable of taking in our answers to those points. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman care about how many jobs are being destroyed simply because people are unable to buy goods in the shops because they are too poor, because they are scraping a living and have no money to spare? Lack of money for households in which earnings are less than £3.40 per hour, and sometimes not even half that figure, means that there is no demand for goods that people could otherwise be employed to make. The Secretary of State quoted some hotel keeper as saying that if the minimum wage were imposed he would be forced to pay off staff. I should have liked to know what that hotel keeper pays his staff--in many hotels the pay is scandalous--but perhaps it would have been too uncomfortable for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to tell us that. Is that hotel keeper really employing more people than he needs? If so, he would be unique among employers generally, who obviously have no reason to employ more people than they require to carry out the work which needs to be done.

Debates such as this always remind me of the days of Lord Shaftesbury. Let us imagine in our mind's eye what this House would have been like when Lord Shaftesbury was bringing forward reforms to prevent small children working in factories. At that time, people said that he could not possibly do that, that it would bring the country to ruin, wreck the economy, prevent us from competing with our competitors and create unemployment. All those arguments were heard then, and we are hearing them now in relation to the minimum wage.

Mr. Edward O'Hara (Knowsley, South) : Does my hon. Friend agree that the workers about whom she is talking who are supposed to benefit so much from the 20p rate of income tax will, because of the low level of their earnings, benefit by the princely sum of 20p per week?

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Mrs. Fyfe : My hon. Friend is right. As has been pointed out, that is the price of a box of matches. Big deal. Perhaps that box of matches could usefully be used to set fire to Tory propaganda. That is the only good that will come from that measure.

People listening to tonight's debate, even if they know nothing about economics, even if they had just arrived from Mars and knew nothing about what was going on here, need only contrast the performances of the two Front Bench spokesmen. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) spoke with the deep sincerity that comes from genuine concern about unemployment and the low paid--a concern which is well respected and recognised throughout the United Kingdom. My hon. Friend will be one of the major figures in the Labour party's Front Bench team when we form the next Government.

Contrast my hon. Friend with the Secretary of State for Employment oozing insincerity from every pore. The right hon. and learned Gentleman strikes me as a man for whom the word synthetic would be a compliment because at least some synthetic things can be capable of useful service. I was reminded of the saying,

"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons".

The Secretary of State and the Chancellor continually spoke of their concern for the low paid and the more that they did so, the more we counted the tens of thousands on low pay who are not protected by wages inspectorates and who have had their trade union rights abolished, and the more we counted the millions unemployed in our constituencies. But the counting that I am thinking of now will come on 9 April, when the votes counted will show Conservative Members the consequences of their cold and heartless policies. They will then start learning something about what it is like not to have a job any more.

7.24 pm

Miss Emma Nicholson (Torridge and Devon, West) : I am delighted, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to have the opportunity to say a last few words in this Parliament while you are in the Chair. This afternoon the House has had an opportunity to pay tribute to some remarkable people who look after our well-being in the Chamber and to have a moment or two to thank you personally means much to me, not least because you are a south-west Member of Parliament and, as such, must be among the greatest and best.

My prime memory of you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is of the day when I found that I needed a cow in London. That was a difficult thing to achieve because I was told by the authorities in London that a cow was a wild beast. So far we have strayed from our agricultural background in this great city of ours that a cow is deemed to be a wild beast. The result is that one is not allowed to bring a cow into London ; at least, if one is, one cannot offload her on to the pavement, because the pavement is not for wild beasts, nor can one offload her on to the road, because the road is not for wild beasts either.

So well served are we by the police in the House of Commons that, ever inventive, they carved out a small space with barriers off the pavement which they deemed not to be the road. It was an enclosed space just outside St. Stephen's entrance. That was deemed to be neither road nor pavement, so we could unload the cow.

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How on earth do you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, come into this caper? I have to tell the House that the cow was yours. I had cheated. I had wanted a cow from Torridge in west Devon but, alas, it was deemed that the cows there were too delicate beasts to travel up to the evil city of London. None the less, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you unwittingly and unknowingly were able to provide a cow. I was feeling a little guilty. I had pinched a cow from your constituency. The cow's minder from the NFU had driven up with her at 5 o'clock that morning and had had eggs and bacon with me at 7.30 am. There the cow was, standing on what was neither the road nor the pavement, this famous wild beast, just outside St. Stephen's entrance.

By pure chance--it was quite a neat thing--along came the then Minister for Health and, again by pure chance, our good friends from the BBC and ITN were there too. That was the most peculiar concatenation of happy circumstances that any cow could wish for who was producing unpasteurised green top milk and who wished the sale of it to continue. There I was, guilt ridden, while the Minister for Health was just about to quaff his first ever draught of health-giving, bacteria-ridden, beautiful creamy green top milk which is absolutely wonderful, and along you came, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You did not say, "Goodness me, what are you doing with my cow?" You said, "How wonderful to see you, Mary" addressing the farmer, and you and she sat chatting. In the end we managed the impossible and, together, we managed to persuade the Minister to take his pint of green top milk into the Cabinet meeting five minutes later where it was decided to continue the sale of first-class green top west country milk.

That episode, Mr. Deputy Speaker, personified your urbanity, charm, delightfulness and inventiveness. Your humour, wit, courtesy and kindness to us all are legendary. I am grateful to you for all that you have done for me as a Back Bencher and for so many others during your lengthy term of office.

I do not intend to talk about animals throughout my Budget speech. I could not help but listen to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes). I am sorry that he is temporarily not with us ; I am sure that he will be back in a moment. I wonder whether he quite knew what he was talking about. [Interruption.] Here he is. Wonderful. How glad I am that the hon. Gentleman is back in his accustomed place, or one of his accustomed places ; he bobs around the Chamber quite splendidly these days. I want to comment on part of what he said. I wonder whether he knew what he really meant when he said so charmingly, in his usual dulcet tones, that his last speech, which he had just delivered, was his swan song.

I was a little fearful, as the hon. Gentleman revved himself up in his usual wonderful way, that his speech might turn out to be more like the song of a corn-crake, or perhaps an advertisement for throat pastilles, but he managed to get through his speech and sit down. Mr. Haynes rose --

Miss Nicholson : This seems to be a splendid duet.

My hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Sir I. Lloyd), who spoke before the hon. Member for Ashfield, said during his magnificent and masterly speech about science and technology that he had been listening to Gotterdammerung- -but that means the twilight of the gods, and the past two days have been no twilight of the

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gods. The Labour party's opposition to the Budget has not been Gotterdammerung at all. As a matter of fact, it has reminded me more forcefully of an organ piece that I recently played at a funeral--"Pavane for a Dead Doll" by Tchaikovsky. That is the level of banality that has characterised the Opposition's objections to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor's excellent Budget.

It will be a lot of fun for the rest of us to see the Labour party wriggling, wheeling and dealing in an attempt to justify to its electorate the fact that Labour Members are voting against a reduction in income tax to 20p in the pound for those who earn the least.

In his musical fervour, the hon. Member for Ashfield may not have realised that a swan song is what a swan sings when it is dying. No doubt he will recall that wonderful piece by Orlando Gibbons--"The Dying Swan". That is what a swan song is, and we may have been witnessing the dying throes of the Labour party.

Mr. Haynes : I am grateful to the lovely lass for giving way. I watch ballet too, and I have seen "The Dying Swan". I am not dying--I shall go on and on and on--but I was making my last speech in this place. I shall be making plenty more speeches outside during the election campaign.

Miss Nicholson : That explicit tenor statement did not hide the fact that we are witnessing the dying throes of the Labour party, as Labour Members attempt to vote against a 20p income tax band for the lowest paid-- I make that point most seriously. I urge my right hon. Friend the Chancellor who has introduced that magnificent measure to go up the scale as soon as possible and raise the 20p band higher and higher. That is a true Conservative choice--allowing people who earn money to keep as much of it as possible.

The hon. Member for Ashfield has darted away from the Chamber again, like a gadfly, but during his speech he mentioned his favourite newspaper. He said that The Guardian had done him sterling service. Has that service really been so sterling? Perhaps the hon. Member did not bother to read the headline yesterday. Yesterday The Guardian said that the Budget was

"good for small businesses and the poor."

That may have escaped the hon. Gentleman's notice as he was talking about poverty and rich living.

I wonder whether the modern Labour party, for all its protestations, can really claim to understand the problems of poverty when it charges £500 a head for a "rich living" dinner. The hon. Gentleman told us that his constituents could not afford fish and chips. It is clear how outdated he is, because the present price of salmon makes it one of the cheapest protein dishes in the United Kingdom--bettered only by chicken. We have never had such low-cost protein before, and we shall never have it again if the Labour party gets into power--it will be £500 a head for dinner if Labour win. Labour's fund-raising efforts are quite unlike those of the Conservative party, which at a recent winter ball charged only £75 a head--we considered that to be really rich living. Perhaps the hon. Member for Ashfield--who has darted out again--is suffering from a surfeit of lampreys. Perhaps that is how the modern Labour party will writhe to death. The Labour party will certainly not do very well in its attempts to impress the electorate with its claims that our education policy is all wrong. The hon. Member for Ashfield wanted more money for his chief education officer

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to spend on running education. I shouted out--perhaps

inelegantly--"Jobs for the boys". The fact that I am right is demonstrated by the fact that schools are opting out and walking out of local education authority control in many Labour-controlled areas-- [Interruption.] I am making a very important, accurate, factual point.

The great difference between the Labour party and the Conservative party emerges when Labour Members talk about the minimum wage. I was in business myself nearly all my life before I entered the House.When Labour Members use the word "differentials", I realise that the modern Labour party does not understand what a differential is--perhaps that is because there are no differentials in the House of Commons. There is a minimum wage flat rate for everything we do. Modern Labour Members, who do not come out of industry or business, honestly do not understand what the erosion of differentials means to the lower-paid. Every low-paid person would run away from the idea of the erosion of differentials, because it diminishes people in terms of their skills and aptitudes and the way in which society regards them. Furthermore, it reduces their actual pay. That is why the minimum wage would be no good to anyone--unless differentials were preserved, in which case it would merely encourage the inflationary spiral. That is why, as one of my hon. Friends said earlier, inflation reached such intolerable heights last time the Labour party was in government. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said earlier this week, his goal has been to have a generation of people who have not been brought up to see inflation as the order of the day, as it was under the Labour Government.

Mrs. Fyfe rose--

Miss Nicholson : I have commented large and long on the problems which arose from the speech by the hon. Member for Ashfield, but I now wish to deal with something much more upsetting to me personally and to many people outside this place. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) acted in an unmanly way--I hesitate to use the word "cowardly", because that may be an unparliamentary term. However, the hon. Gentleman was certainly cowardly--if I am allowed to use that word in the House-- because he failed to give way when he was ripping apart what he saw as the terrible Tory tactics on advertising. He would not give way either then or when he was talking about the health service, yet the important thing--

Mrs. Fyfe : Will the hon. Lady give way now?

Miss Nicholson : I am sorry ; the hon. Lady has just spoken and I shall not allow her to butt in now. I had not spoken before the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East, as everyone knows, and I tried twice, courteously, to intervene, but he would not let me.

Why did I wish to intervene? It was because I found it truly unspeakable, in the real sense of that word, that he should talk about advertising and attempt to destroy a perfectly honourable advertising company which has served the country well--Saatchi and Saatchi--and attempt to destroy our record on the NHS in a week in which the Labour party has destroyed the lives of a family by claiming in an advertisement that the death of their daughter was due to underfunding and understaffing at Great Ormond Street hospital. I find that despicable. I am

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appalled and horrified. I ask all Labour party members to spurn their party's advertising campaign. It is despicable. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East, who must have known what I wanted to refer to, was too cowardly to give way and allow me to make that point.

Mr. Battle : Will the hon. Lady allow me to intervene?

Miss Nicholson : I shall give way with pleasure if the hon. Gentleman will say that he does not support that filthy advertisement.

Mr. Battle : I remind the hon. Lady that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) simply read out what the Advertising Standards Authority had said about the advertising company in question. Does she dispute or challenge the authenticity of the ASA's statement?

Miss Nicholson : The hon. Gentleman has not bothered to pick up the point. Obviously it hurts him too much. The hon. Gentleman is an honourable man. Perhaps he does not support that foul advertisement. I did not comment on what the Advertising Standards Authority had said. I am more than willing to bow to its authority ; this matter is its particular concern. I was commenting on the failure of the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East to let me ask him whether he supports that form of advertising, because he purported to criticise our advertising by means of one particular advertising company. It is a squalid and despicable advertisement. I am ashamed for him for not saying that he does not support it.

When the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East referred to advertising he was not talking about the Budget. I support the excellent Budget that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer presented. I support also the excellent points that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Employment made this afternoon. I am glad to note that Computer Weekly agrees that the Budget offers a boost to software. As David Bicknell writes :

"Chancellor Norman Lamont has ironed out discrepancies in capital allowances on software."

My right hon. Friend has allowed suppliers and users to obtain tax relief on all software, as he stated yesterday. This is a boost for business. Do the Opposition not realise that software is the information marketplace upon which the single market depends? This is a major initiative, but they have chosen not to recognise it, or they have failed to understand what is included in the Budget. It is an excellent move. It will encourage suppliers to download electronically transmitted software, which is the preferred method of supply. It is a first-class initiative which I heartily commend. This is a prudent Budget, which I heartily support. I suspect that the Labour party has talked about everything other than the Budget this afternoon because it has no alternative to put forward. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East spent an enormous amount of time on saying that he believed that the national health service was deteriorating and that the principles of the national health service were being eroded by the Government. His sense of history is hugely at fault. It is a great shame that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Sir R. Rhodes James), one of Britain's leading historians, is not here. He would be able to put the Labour party right on that.

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The principles of the national health service are to offer assistance to the poorest in health, free at the point of delivery, so that they can become healthier and be less of a burden on the NHS. The Conservative Government have increased expenditure on the NHS by 50 per cent. in real terms. What sticks in the Labour party's gullet is that we are achieving real reforms that have cut waiting lists and led to many more operations and to the greater range of operations that science, doctors and the medical profession in general can now offer to patients.

I have personal experience of a flagship NHS trust hospital. I have continuing personal family experience of Guy's hospital in Lewisham. I commend most highly the plastic surgery team, the children's ward, the Rothschild ward, the nurses, the doctors, the support services, the administrators and the chairman, Sir Philip Harris. They are carrying out a first-class job. I shall continue to have family experience of that hospital for many years to come. The truth is that the Labour party does not understand what the principles of the national health service were, are, or will be. It has no alternative to offer. Therefore, it falls into the usual Labour party trap of whining, moaning and whingeing about excellent policies that, in all honesty, it ought to have difficulty in not supporting.

We are offering a lot of extra money to pensioners. The Labour party moans about that. We are offering help to family businesses and small farms. That is a first-class measure. The help that we shall give to family businesses and small farms relates to inheritance tax. Again that goes against the grain. The Labour party wants everything to go back to the centre, to the state. However, our proposals go with the grain, since the nation wishes us to conduct its affairs on its behalf in that way. The help to be given over the uniform business rate will be widely welcomed in my constituency. Many people in my constituency will also welcome the help that is to be given to small businesses in terms of the disclosure of the time of payment in the company accounts of big companies, as well as the introduction of best practice by the Government when it comes to payments to small businesses after they have secured Government contracts.

This is a prudent, thoughtful, intelligent and caring Budget. It epitomises the Conservative party's philosophy. As I prepare to return to my constituency to fight the election--where, I am delighted to say, we shall continue to enjoy our cider without any unwarranted intervention by the French--I can say that we shall win the election on this Budget. The society that the Conservative party's values represent is the larger part by far of society in modern Britain. 7.46 pm

Mr. Derek Fatchett (Leeds, Central) : My right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) graced yesterday's Budget debate with what will be his final speech in the House of Commons. He spoke movingly of his experiences in the past 30 years as a Member of Parliament for Leeds. I have the privilege of representing part of my right hon. Friend's former constituency of South Leeds. I wish to put on record not just my thanks to my right hon. Friend but the thanks of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) as well as the thanks of literally thousands of people in

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Leeds who will always regard my right hon. Friend as a citizen of our city and as one of whom they can be totally proud for having given great service to the city.

As I listened to my right hon. Friend's speech I compared its grace, style and wisdom with what, sadly, was the cheapjack speech of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The latter was a knockabout speech,. As someone on these Benches rightly pointed out, it was a speech appropriate for a Chelsea supporter but not for a Government Minister. The same sort of speech was made this afternoon by the Secretary of State for Employment. It is indeed sad that at the fag-end of this Parliament the Government and their Ministers should behave in that way. They could certainly learn a lesson in decorum and behaviour from my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Leeds, South.

My right hon. Friend made one very important point. He referred to the fact that Leeds had grown on account of its manufacturing industry. He talked about the wealth that had been created by our engineering, textile and clothing industries. He made the point that we have a Government who seem, at best, indifferent to manufacturing and, at the very worst, anti- manufacturing. It seems almost as though the Government do not believe that we need to produce goods in order to pay our way in the world. When the Government's attitude to manufacturing comes to the fore, I am always reminded of the comment of a leading industrialist in manufacturing industry who said, "We cannot live in a service economy ; we cannot live by taking in each other's washing ; we cannot live on a service basis ; we need a manufacturing base."

In Leeds we are asking not to go back or for a return to the old industries but for support, help and hope for existing industries and future developments. Over the past 18 months we have experienced the longest recession of the past 60 years. My constituency is now faced with over 20 per cent. unemployment. There is a loss of hope and ambition. Leeds is an affluent city, but the pockets of poverty are deep and desperate. Ministers talk about generalities of statistics. They should see the pockets of poverty and hopelessness and consider them alongside those generalities. Even on the Government's official statistics, sufficient people are unemployed in Leeds to fill Elland road football ground. If the hon. Member for Boothferry (Mr. Davis) thinks that that is funny, he should visit Leeds. Each day those unemployed people get up and know that there is no hope and nothing that they can put their hands to. That is why we make the plea for improved manufacturing industry. We do that not in the cheapjack way of the Conservative party but because we believe in producing wealth and real jobs. That is why we want the new industries to develop and why we want to preserve our existing industries.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Francis Maude) : The hon. Gentleman is keen to support manufacturing industry and to encourage the development of manufacturing industry in Britain. Will he take this opportunity to dissociate himself from the motion passed by the Trades Union Congress last year which described investment from overseas as being alien and made some thoroughly disgraceful and offensive remarks about such investment? Labour party Front-Bench spokesmen have not yet dissociated themselves from that motion. Does the Labour party support that disgraceful attitude?

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Mr. Fatchett : The hon. Gentleman should know that the TUC is not the Labour party.

Mr. Ian Taylor (Esher) : The Labour party is the TUC.

Mr. Fatchett : The hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Taylor) shows a lack of understanding and ignorance worthy of a member of the Government, but it does not do him justice. The Labour party's position on such issues is clear.

Mr. Maude rose --

Mr. Fatchett : I will give way later. I want to develop my point further.

Manufacturing industry in Leeds has suffered under the Government's policies. A survey published last year by the Leeds chamber of commerce showed that 91 per cent. of its firms referred to high interest rates and the Government's high interest rates policy as the main factor affecting their performance. That is a telling criticism of the Government. In a city that is trying to improve its economic and manufacturing base, firms feel that the real constraint on increased performance has been the Government's high interest rates. That was not a comment from the TUC. Unlike the Government, Leeds chamber of commerce understands the importance of manufacturing. Yesterday my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Leeds, South made some telling points about manufacturing. I echo those comments. We need a Government who invest in and help manufacturing. My right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Leeds, South also said that many of our constituents feel that there is no hope for them. They have no ambition. That is why training is important. It provides the skills for the future. It provides people with passports, hope and ambition.

In today's Yorkshire Post is a letter from a 19-year-old. That young person wrote to Dr. Jenny Cozens on the reader's problem page. Dr. Cozens is a clinical psychologist at the university of Leeds. It is a typical letter from a young person. It says :

"I am 19 and I haven't had a job for over a year and I think I've lost my confidence. I realise I've got to keep trying and that it's my fault if things don't go right, but I've become so unhappy lately that sometimes I think things are too much for me. I still write for jobs, but not as much as I did and then I feel I'm not trying hard enough. I got mugged recently and that seemed like the last straw. I used to sing a lot, but now my voice sounds awful a friend said that it might be the blow to my head."

The response from Dr. Jenny Cozens is very important. She said, "Stop blaming yourself". Under this Government, it is always supposed to be somebody else's fault--very often that typical young person's fault. I enjoyed the final comment from Dr. Cozens. Talking about job losses and the difficulty of readjustment, she said :

"Even Prime Ministers like Mrs. Thatcher get upset when it happens to them."

It is a funny old world for Prime Ministers, but it is not such a funny old world for that 19-year-old. That is the cost of unemployment and it is about time Ministers understood that. The Government's training and enterprise councils say that the employment training programme is important and that it is a pathway to jobs and hope for the future. The Leeds training and enterprise council has suggested that we need 2,200 jobs on employment training. The Government have offered 1,800--a cut of more than 20 per

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