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House of Commons

Friday 20 November 1992

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[Madam Speaker-- in the Chair ]

Adjournment Debates

9.35 am

Mr. William Hague (Richmond, Yorks) : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Adjournment debates are within your gift, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak on the Adjournment later today, but I and many other hon. Members are concerned that the Adjournment debate of last night never took place.

Accordingly, Madam Speaker, I seek your guidance on two matters. First, will you confirm that the schedule of Adjournment debates for today and next week remains the same, even though last night's Adjournment debate never took place? Secondly, if, as is strongly rumoured, last night's problem was due to abject incompetence on the part of the Opposition Whips' Office, will you suggest to the official Opposition that any new debate on the subject that was to be discussed last night should take place in Opposition time?

Mr. Don Dixon (Jarrow) : Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I think that the hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) has the matter wrong. I know that he is the Parliamentary Private Secretary to a senior Minister, but it is obvious that he does not know the procedures of the House. I understand, Madam Speaker, that Thursday night Adjournment debates are within your gift and that other such debates are determined by ballot. If anyone spiked my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms. Squire) to prevent her from initiating the Adjournment debate last night, it was the Tory Whip, who immediately jumped to his feet to move the Adjournment.

Mr. Terry Dicks (Hayes and Harlington) : Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. As a simple man and a PPS, I seek your guidance. Is it the constitutional position that the Labour party, after two days of debate on the autumn statement and several instances of Prime Minister's questions is now in favour of all the contents of the statement?

Madam Speaker : Order. I can resolve the matter. As the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon) said, Thursday night Adjournment debates are within the gift of the Speaker. They do not affect Friday motions because those are dealt with by the ballot procedure.

Perhaps we might move on to the first motion.

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Workfare

9.37 am

Mr. Ralph Howell (Norfolk, North) : I beg to move,

That this House recognises that unemployment is nearly three million and rising ; considers that unemployment is wasteful and soul destroying ; recalls the original Beveridge proposals ; believes that reform of the trade unions and the removal of restrictive practices have a valuable part to play in increasing employment opportunities ; believes that the great majority of the unemployed desperately wish to work ; considers that all sections of society would benefit from improvement of the environment and the infrastructure of the country ; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to give the unemployed a voluntary choice between the current benefit system and participating in paid, environmental, caring and minor infrastructure work at an enhanced level of remuneration, thus in due course establishing the right to work and implementation of the original Beveridge proposals in full.

This is an attempt to discuss a solution to an awful problem that confronts the country. Nearly 3 million people are unemployed, and the numbers are rising. If the old recording criterion were used, we know that unemployment would be set at a higher level than ever before. It is a national and human tragedy.

Unemployment must be shattering for those who experience it. I am sure that the whole House joins me in recognising what an awful experience it must be suddenly to find that one has no job and nothing particular to do. Boredom and family strain go with a person suddenly losing his job and often having nothing to do for a long time.

There are now nearly 1 million people who have been unemployed for more than a year. That is the greatest problem confronting this country, and the world. It is really a non-party issue. Unemployment is rising all over the world, for the simple reason that more and more sophisticated technology is continually putting people out of work. The banks are shedding labour because of their sophisticated machinery, and in shops new cash registers and so on are replacing jobs and putting more people out of work. On top of that, the end of the cold war has meant that the armaments industry throughout the world has declined--a fact for which everyone is grateful. I believe that the time has come when this House should give serious consideration to finding a way out of this impasse. In the 1930s, we did something about the problem : we set people to work building roads. Most of the ring roads around our cities were built in the 1930s by people who had been unemployed. That was and is helpful to this country. We should learn from that experience, and also from the experience of America in the 1930s.

The Americans had an even worse depression than we did, and when President Roosevelt came to office in 1933, in the depths of the depression, he immediately said that he would get the country back to work. He set up the Civilian Conservation Corps and recruited 250,000 young men. Altogether, some 12,500,000 people were put to work under Government schemes. Although that was not as comprehensive as what I shall propose today, it did represent work for about a third of the unemployed people in America.

We should give this problem more serious thought than we have in the past. The election is not far behind us. Unemployment was not properly debated during that

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election ; it was not a major issue, although it should have been. The time has come when the Government must give serious thought to finding a way out.

Month after month, we hear of increases in unemployment, and on every occasion we are told that there is some reason for hope--the figures are not quite as bad as we had anticipated. We seem to pretend that the problem will go away or will improve. The Government's solution is to train, retrain and provide work experience : never to give work. Of course the Opposition makes as much capital as they can out of the Government's misfortunes, but what are their solutions? To train, retrain and provide work experience : never work. The only difference between the Government and the Opposition in this respect is that the latter say that the Government are not doing enough of these things. I say that we have not applied our minds to the real answers.

Mr. John Gorst (Hendon, North) : Before my hon. Friend moves on to those answers, can he tell us whether, during his examination of this problem, comparing today's position with that of the 1930s, he has discovered that a greater number of middle-aged and elderly people--in career terms--are unemployed today than then? If so, will the suggestions that he makes for dealing with today's problem incorporate this particularly disadvantaged group of workers?

Mr. Howell : My solution, when I come to it, will be

comprehensive--to include anyone who wants to work. The state is the provider of the last resort ; it has to make sure that everyone has adequate funds for housing, clothing and food. We spend about £10 billion in support of the unemployed. All I am saying is that we could offer work to everyone who wants to work, for roughly the same money--but I shall develop that point later.

We must examine every possible way of dealing with the problem. I know that the Minister of State has just been to the United States to look at workfare there. I do not believe that workfare, as practised in the United States, is the ideal answer, but I am glad that we are looking into it.

Under workfare in the United States people are obliged to work for benefit. My idea of the right to work is to do away with unemployment benefit and to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to earn a decent wage. The workfare experiment in America has been under way for some time. It was started by Governor Reagan in California and subsequently developed there.

The BBC sent over a "Panorama" team to America some years ago and made a programme that is well worth seeing, but its objective was clearly to discredit workfare. The programme met various people who were doing menial jobs. One of them was a former miner on a dustcart who described how pleased he was to be doing that job and how awful life had been before--his family had almost broken up before he was lucky enough to get onto workfare. It had saved his marriage, and he was a very satisfied person.

The programme also showed a single parent somewhere in the mid-west who had to take her three very young children right across town to the day centre every day and then go all the way back to her work, which was near her home. She then worked all day and repeated the

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performance each night. She insisted that she would rather be doing that than be locked away indefinitely at home with the children, but without work companions. In short, her life was 100 per cent. better than before.

I believe that it would be good for the country and for everyone in it if we could find a way of offering work to all who want it, but, before I get onto my proposals proper, I want to tell the House about how badly unemployment is rising and will continue to rise, whatever anyone says.

Average unemployment during the 1950s was 370,000. In the 1960s, it was 480,000, and in the 1970s it was more than a million. Average unemployment in the 1980s was more than 2,700,000. An artificial dip was created. Had the rules not been changed, unemployment would never have fallen below 2.25 million. That was static.

The dip has now disappeared, and unemployment has been rising again. Unemployment always rises whenever a Government decide to attack inflation. When inflation is brought down, unemployment goes up. Right at the end of the Thatcher Administration, when we started to become nervous about the level of unemployment and reflated to bring it down, we ran into the difficulties from which we are only now emerging. So there is no escape.

In view of those figures, which are rising in a steep curve, how can any reasonable person believe that unemployment in the 1990s will not average well over 3 million? We must face that, and we need to do something positive about it.

Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham) : I believe that the House will agree that my hon. Friend's argument works, whether or not unemployment rises above 3 million. Even if unemployment stood at 1 million, it would be a scandal for £8 billion to be paid to people on the sole condition that they did nothing worth while. The House is grateful to my hon. Friend for finding a non-partisan way in which to raise the problem of the non-use of people. It is a sin to abuse people ; it is wrong to misuse them ; but the greatest problem is not to give people any use at all.

Mr. Howell : That point has been well made, and I believe that the figure is higher than £8 billion or £10 billion. We have now reached the stage at which the official figure for the coming year is more than £10 billion of total waste ; £10 billion of our money will be paid to people who in the main desperately want to work, and it will be paid on the condition that they do nothing whatever to help society. That must be a crazy idea.

Three arguments are put against my idea. The first is that it would be too costly. The second is that it would be compulsory, and the third is that there would not be enough work to be done. I think that I shall be able to argue against those in due course.

In my opinion, there is plenty of work for everybody to do, in any society, anywhere, at any time. It is crazy to believe that there is an economic argument which makes it necessary for people to be idle.

Lady Olga Maitland (Sutton and Cheam) : Does my hon. Friend not agree that, when we try to match people to all the work available, we must ensure that the work is appropriate to their skills and backgrounds? There is no point in trying to make a dustman take over the job of the managing director of a charity--or vice versa.

Mr. Howell : Yes ; I will deal with that question in due course. People must have a choice. My scheme does not

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involve the direction of labour. What I shall suggest will be in no way compulsory. I say only that the state should offer work of various kinds--for example, environmental work, such as President Roosevelt offered in the 1930s. That category could cover all sorts of activities--improving derelict land, making the streets clean and planting millions of trees, as we ought to. It would cover infrastructure work and caring work. I shall deal with all that in due course.

My principal proposals are clearly set out in the pamphlet "Why Not Work?", which was published with the help of the Adam Smith Institute a year ago, and received considerable support right across the political spectrum. The best press report, which appeared in the New Statesman and Society, slated the Opposition for not coming up with the idea years ago. There was a time when we always used to hear from the Opposition about the right to work--so the article said that it was rather strange to hear that idea coming from this side of the House.

However, I am not interested in party political banter. I want to try to galvanise everybody into recognising that we could solve the problem quickly and for all time. I shall describe what the scheme would be like when fully operational--but, as I shall explain, it would come into operation over a period.

When fully operational, the scheme would establish the right to work. Every adult would be offered work for 40 hours per week at £2.50 an hour, or one third of the national average wage, whichever was the greater. That would be free of income tax, so it is a better deal than most of the unemployed get today.

Every person aged 16 or 17 would be offered the right to remain in full- time education, supported through child benefit and educational grants, or the right to paid training, or the right to employment in the right-to-work scheme, or up to 40 hours a week at £1.25 per hour for 16-year-olds and £1.75 per hour for 17-year-olds. That would be free of income tax.

Unemployment benefit would cease. The status of being unemployed would also cease. Every person would have the right to work or, for the under-18s, the right to education or paid training. The fear of unemployment, the fear of being discarded, would be removed, and everybody would have the right to make a contribution to society in general. Thus, every adult would have access to £100 per week, tax-free, if he or she cared to work for 40 hours. That is considerably higher than the present rate of unemployment benefit. Adult couples, married or otherwise, with or without children, would be entitled to earn up to £5,200 each per year, tax-free, and would receive no other benefits. Couples with children and single parents would be entitled to the same overall support from the state as at present, but the first £100 would come from the right-to-work scheme. For example, a family unit now receiving £150 per week in various benefits would receive £50 automatically, and the other £100 would be paid if 40 hours' work were done. For every adult, it would be deemed that the full £100 had been earned, and any entitlement to further family or housing benefit would be paid accordingly. If someone did not avail himself of the opportunity, that would be entirely up to him.

Sickness, disability and similar benefits would continue as at present. People who were 50 per cent., or less than 50 per cent., disabled would be entitled to participate in the scheme, but they would receive disability benefit

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automatically as of right. In other words, someone who was 50 per cent. disabled would receive whatever he is now entitled to for his 50 per cent. disability but, as he is also 50 per cent. able, he would be able to participate either at a reduced rate of pay for 40 hours, or at the full rate for 20 hours. It is important that the scheme should enable partially disabled people to participate. Now I shall explain how the scheme would be phased in. Initially, it would be for the under- 21s. Little change in legislation would be required. We already have on the statute book a system whereby no benefit is paid to 16 and 17-year-olds. They should be--I say "should be" because I am not sure whether the system has worked as it should--entitled to training or to be able to continue with their education.

I suggest that we should extend that system to include all those between 16 and 21. As soon as possible, we should set up facilities for turning jobcentres into work centres. We should operate a scheme to find work and, as I said, there would be a variety of work available. There would be environmental work, coast protection work, minor infrastructural work and caring work.

Mr. Tony Lloyd (Stretford) : I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman. As he will hear from my later remarks, I do not approach what he is trying to do with any sense of absolute hostility. However, I point out to him that a guarantee was given to young people when benefits were taken from them. Unfortunately, one of the results of the Government's failure to honour that guarantee is that about 75, 000 young people are waiting to take up youth training courses. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Patrick McLoughlin) indicated dissent.

Mr. Lloyd : The Minister shakes his head, but he does not know what he is talking about. Of those 75,000 people, there are certainly quite a few who, because of cessation of benefit, find themselves with no income. I am simply not prepared to listen to anyone who says that we can establish schemes the effect of which would be to deny many of our young people any access to income. Such a scheme would be a cruel illusion.

Mr. Howell : In principle, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. However, I do not believe that his figures are correct. I do believe that we have not honoured in every case what we should have honoured for 16 and 17-year- olds. I very much regret that, because it discredits such schemes. However, let that not put anyone off the idea. The guarantee has proved a little difficult ; I know that we intend to correct it as soon as possible. That difficulty does not detract from my proposal.

We should introduce my proposed scheme as soon as we can. We should extend the withdrawal of benefit, but should offer a generous and real work possibility at a higher rate of pay than at present. By the time the 21- year-olds reach 22, we should advance the scheme by one or two years a year. In other words, we should make it impossible for any more young people to move forward into the something-for-nothing society which has destroyed our whole social system.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : There speaks the party of freeloaders.

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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes) : Order. I believe that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) may want to make a contribution later.

Mr. Howell rose --

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. I am dealing with a seated intervention. The hon. Member for Newham, North-West cannot make his point from a seated position now.

Mr. Nick Hawkins (Blackpool, South) : Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the great advantages of his scheme is the reduction it would be likely to bring, on the basis of experience in other countries, including the United States, in the high rate of juvenile and youth crime? It would take us away from the dependency culture into which so many people in their late teenage years fall. Boredom encourages juvenile and youth crime, which is one of the most serious factors in the rise of crime, especially in crimes of dishonesty such as car crime and dwelling house burglaries, which are such a scourge on society.

Mr. Howell : I agree entirely with my hon. Friend who makes a valuable point. When we talk about the social damage being done and about the overall cost, we should realise that a huge cost goes along with unemployment, especially for young people in the inner cities, in terms of policing and the extra cost of insurance for homes that are being burgled week in and week out. A tremendous benefit would accrue from the scheme in that important area.

Mr. Peter Bottomley : We shall gain more interest in examining the details of my hon. Friend's scheme if we do not rely too much on the crime reduction element, although that has a part. We should remember that 10 per cent. of males aged 15--well below school leaving age--have already been convicted of an offence for which they could have been sent to gaol for six months or more. We should recognise that the scheme would have some advantage in reducing crime, but the main purpose would be to avoid people being paid money on the sole condition that they do nothing worth while.

Mr. Howell : I was talking about the stepping up of the age limit at which benefit would be withdrawn and at which there would be no entitlement to benefit. By the time the 21-year-olds reached the age of 22, the limit would be stepped up to 23. No more young people would ever get into the dependency culture.

Lady Olga Maitland : Would my hon. Friend seriously consider suggesting his scheme to people in their 30s and 40s? The new age travellers, for example, were clearly fit and able to work, but showed no intention of looking for work.

Mr. Howell : Of course we should tighten up the work test. When the scheme was fully operative, it would be a work test. There would be no payments to new age travellers when the scheme was fully operative. There would be no classification of "unemployed". Work would be offered to everybody, and people could take that work the day after they left their previous employment. There would be no break. Whenever a person wanted to take up a job, there would be a basic income which would be a basic right for everybody.

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A few months ago, I discussed my scheme with people in a job centre in Sheringham. I nearly got to the point of taking a vote ; I am sure that, if a vote had been taken, it would have been carried almost unanimously. At least 75 per cent. were in favour. Just as I was about to get to the vote, somebody intervened and made sure that no vote was taken.

As well as starting with the young, I suggest that, in Sheringham or some such place, we should also run an experiment with older people. We should say that we have an obligation to ensure that all the young under 21, for starters, have work available to them. We should also put aside 20 or 30 places for other people on a first come, first served basis. There would soon be a queue. I know of many constituents who would love to take up such work. The pressure would then come from the unemployed themselves for more places in any particular locality.

That would not be something imposed by the Government ; it would be demanded of the Government by the unemployed. That is a sensible and practical way in which to proceed.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cirencester and Tewkesbury) : Does my hon. Friend agree that the real problem is that of the long-term unemployed? In any six-month period, some 4 million people move in and out of work. Would not my hon. Friend's scheme be easier to implement if he allowed unemployment benefit to remain for the first six months of unemployment and operated it thereafter?

Mr. Howell : I am grateful for that suggestion. I do not take a rigid view ; I am suggesting the scheme as a cockshy. Refinements may be needed and what my hon. Friend suggests may be one of them. The scheme would simplify everything. There would be no tribunals or refunds and no complicated calculations involving thousands of civil servants mulling over silly sums and claiming back £2 here or as little as 10p there. The whole thing would be quite simple. There would be a work centre. A person who worked for one hour would get £2.50, and a person who worked for the full 40 hours would get £100 at the end of the week, which could be paid straight into his bank account. There need be no cash exchange.

Mr. David Willetts (Havant) : My hon. Friend has already made it clear that he envisages a scheme whereby unemployed people would receive £100 a week, but he has added that entitlement to other benefits such as housing benefit would remain and that, if a family was entitled to benefits worth more than £100, the benefits system would be used to top up the income from the scheme.

Does that not mean that my hon. Friend would not succeed in removing all the complications? In practice, the benefit system would continue and it would be necessary to calculate the benefit entitlement of people with families to housing benefit and so on. Can my hon. Friend assure the House that his proposed scheme would yield the administrative savings that he claims?

Mr. Howell : I agree with my hon. Friend. I should like us to go for the full scheme immediately, but it is not practicable to do so. Once the principle was in place, however, we could adjust benefits accordingly and, in due course, phase them out and so wean the whole country off

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the dependency culture. That could not be done immediately. That is why I suggest that, initially, while we are trying to find a way to start the scheme--

Mr. Mike O'Brien (Warwickshire, North) : By the sound of it, the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that an unemployed man with a family--perhaps several children--would be paid £100 if he worked a full week. Does the hon. Gentleman expect anyone to take seriously the suggestion a family man would be able to pay his rent and feed, clothe and look after his family on that sort of income?

Mr. Howell : I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in his place when I explained my scheme in full. I said--I was challenged on this by my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts)--that a family receiving a total of £150 in various benefits today would automatically receive £50 in benefit, while the parent or parents would be offered 40 hours work at £2.50. Both parents could earn £100 per week if they wished to, and if they did, they would probably be able to afford to pay someone to look after their children. Thus, no hardship would result from the scheme if it were introduced in the way that I have suggested--although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Havant pointed out, it would not clear away all the deadening bureaucracy in the system immediately.

Lady Olga Maitland : Has my hon. Friend taken into account, in considering how his scheme would work, the fact that, although it is laudable to encourage the unemployed to take up an occupation, they need time to look for long-term employment that is sustainable and viable? We do not want to take that from them.

Mr. Howell : Perhaps it would be necessary to introduce a refinement there, although I personally believe that, if someone seriously wants work, he will find the time to look for it after he has put in his 40 hours. We do not want too much of a nanny state, and if we go in for such provisions, we may find that the scheme is wrecked.

Over the years, I have received a great deal of support for my scheme. It is not something that I have thought up in the past day or two, but something of whose benefits I have tried to persuade many Governments over a long period. Lord Carr, who was Secretary of State when I entered the House in 1970, heard all about it--indeed, they have all heard all about it. Sooner or later, I shall win. I have had something of a victory. I remember going to see Lord Tebbit in the early 1980s when he was Secretary of State. Norman Tebbit did not want to know anything about it. He had the answer to unemployment : it was coming down. In fact, it went up, but that is par for the course for all Secretaries of State. It is interesting to note, therefore, that, in his recent book "Unfinished Business", Lord Tebbit has given my version of workfare the top spot in his suggestions for putting the country back on course for prosperity. We have all heard about St. Paul, but it is cause for rejoicing when one of our number sees the light at the end of the Corridor.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will do his best to draw the attention of the present Secretary of State--who used to be one of my constituents and who has known all about my scheme for a long time--to our debate today.

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I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will show--rather more than she did in the House the other day--that she is just as enlightened as Lord Tebbit.

The Employment Research Trust, which a number of my friends and I set up 12 years ago, has done much work in conjunction with Buckingham university to try to get the idea across. I am also grateful to the Adam Smith Institute, which supports the scheme and which helped me with the publication of the pamphlet "Why Not Work?" At the other end of the spectrum, the Low Pay Unit has been especially helpful. I have worked closely with Chris Pond for many years, and he fully supports what I am trying to do. Moreover, the New Statesman and Society gave the exercise a year ago a better write-up than any other periodical.

I have received support from unemployment groups throughout the country-- including, in particular, a group in Finchley. I do not believe that any of those involved support my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth) or that they supported his predecessor. Nevertheless, they have devoted most of their recent publication to saying that the scheme should be carefully considered and that it must be given top priority.

Every time I speak on this matter, I receive support from unemployed people throughout the country, almost all of whom want to work. I stress the fact that the majority of the unemployed want to work. They want comradeship, they want something to do, they want a purpose and they want an escape from the boredom of unemployment.

Mr. Hawkins : Can my hon. Friend confirm that one of the most interesting developments in workfare has been in the USA, in particular in California and West Virginia? Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to observe the West Virginia experience, which has been particularly positive. It certainly reinforces what my hon. Friend has been saying.

Mr. Howell : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. A constituent of mine--a Mr. Haines--has suddenly found himself unemployed at the age of 58. He started work when he was 15 and spent 41 years in employment and two years in self-employment. He is not entitled to any unemployment benefit--partly, I think, because his wife works for more than 16 hours a week, and perhaps partly because of his self-employment. I doubt whether he is even included in the unemployment statistics. There is something wrong with that. Mr. Haines went to his local jobcentre, but he was told that it was impossible to find him work. He was told to come back in six months, by which time he would have lost the will to work and the jobcentre would reinstil it in him through some scheme or another. What could be more ridiculous than that? I am glad to say that he is one of those who are working hard and successfully to promote my scheme.

Mr. Gorst : My hon. Friend should persevere with his scheme beyond today's debate and beyond his conversations with eminent Secretaries of State. There is one important principle in politics--not that one does something that is right, but that one puts it across at the right moment. This is the right moment for my hon. Friend's scheme. In the past, Governments have wanted to

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spend money ; more recently, they have wanted to save it. Today, they want to get value for their money. That is why my hon. Friend's scheme is worthy of support.

Mr. Howell : I am grateful for those comments. We must curb wasteful Government expenditure. We waste at least £10 billion in this area, and that is one of the most important aspects of the problem. We can push and push to no avail when the time is not right, but I believe that the right moment has arrived. All sides of the political spectrum realise that this is not a party political issue--it is a national and international issue. We should make it the cornerstone of our plans for reviving the economy.

Instead of telling our partners in Europe that we want nothing to do with the social chapter, we should say, "This is our social chapter. It is the answer to our problems and your problems." My scheme could be the answer to problems in Poland and Russia. I am sure that everyone realises that we cannot just worry about our problems, because the worldwide problems in, for example, the eastern European countries will soon become our problems if we do not find an answer to them.

I was pleased to receive a letter from my hon. Friend the Minister of State on that very point only a few days ago. He suggested that there might be a scheme of some sort, although I do not think that it would be the right sort to satisfy me. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will outline a pilot scheme to investigate whether my ideas could be used to find a way to solve such terrible problems. We must deal with this matter with the utmost urgency. If it is left much longer, we will be in a deeper and deeper hole, pouring more and more money down the drain. We are ruining our economy because we have not faced such an important problem. There is only one way out. As I said earlier, when President Roosevelt took office in 1933 in the depths of the depression, he said that there was only one way out of the problems : "We must work our way out." That is the way to proceed.

10.26 am

Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe) : I am grateful to the hon. Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Howell), who spoke without party animus, for the opportunity to debate, in the words of his motion, the "wasteful and soul destroying" effects of the ever-growing job losses in Britain today.

The debate comes on a day of rapidly mounting public concern about the huge costs of mass unemployment, in economic and human terms alike. These costs have increased, are increasing and will go on increasing, in spite of the measures announced by the Chancellor in his autumn statement on 12 November. Indeed, many people think that the statement will make the dole queue even longer by reducing the purchasing power of millions of people who are already among the lowest paid and who, in many cases, have living standards that are little better than those of people on state benefits.

As of now, the increase in the jobless total compared with only two years ago is almost 1.25 million--71 per cent. The number of jobless people chasing every vacancy has shot up from 11 to 30. The number of young people out of work has risen by 323,000--an all-time high--and 541,000 jobs in manufacturing industry have disappeared.

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It is against this background that I want to discuss the extremely daunting difficulties of disabled people--for whom the hon. Gentleman said that he wanted positive discrimination--as they seek to show that they have abilities as well as disabilities. I hope that, by common consent in the House today, it will be agreed that they are among the least fortunate and the most distressed of all the victims of the jobs famine. For them, unemployment is a double handicap that leads to double despair. They seek not sympathy but social fairness ; not the dependence of state benefits but the independence of reasonably paid employment ; not expressions of compassion but practical concern in a society about which one highly skilled disabled person, who lives in Surrey, commented to me recently :

"It would be an exaggeration to describe my status as that even of a second -class citizen."

Another very able, but physically disabled, correspondent wrote to me last week from north London to say :

"I was made redundant as a Senior Research Officer into special needs education when the ILEA was disbanded. Since then I have attended 32 interviews for virtually the same kind of employment. Obviously my written applications were acceptable but the interviewing panels were either unable, or unwilling, to look beyond the nature of my physical disability, thus ignoring my proven ability to do the job."

In the queue for jobs, these and other disabled people are the tail-enders in the longest and most soul-destroying queue in Britain today. The Spastics Society, in a justifiably bitter comment about the unmerited but widespread discrimination against disabled job-seekers, has been displaying a poster which pictures two job applicants, one disabled and the other able -bodied, with the caption :

"One has the degree in engineering the other has the job." As the society points out, employers can blatantly discriminate against disabled people, with no real fear of being called to account.

Colin Barnes, in his book "Disabled People and Discrimination", amply exposes and documents the extent of discrimination in comtemporary Britain. The 3 per cent. quota scheme which the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944 provided is now a dismal failure. More than three quarters of the employers who are subject to its requirements do not meet the quota. There have been no prosecutions of defaulting employers since the present Government came to power. Employers are now six times more likely to turn a disabled person down for an interview, even if his or her qualifications and experience are identical to those of a non-disabled applicant. People with disabilities are at least two-and-a-half times more likely to be out of work than the general population. Nor does that figure take into account the large numbers of employable disabled people aged 16 to 64--perhaps as many as 1.2 million--who are excluded from official unemployment statistics. Although they are very much "out of work", they are hidden by the Government's figures.

At present, only 1 per cent. of the work force are registered as disabled ; yet according to the Government's own surveys, well over 3 per cent. are registrable. For their part, Ministers say that education and persuasion are preferable to the legal requirements of the 1944 Act. But the more repetitively they state their view, the more tragically unemployment grows among employable

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