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Mrs. Wise: Would the hon. Gentleman be embarrassed to tell us what he thinks is the lowest acceptable wage? Is there too low a low wage?
Mr. Leigh: No, I would not be embarrassed to answer that question. Clearly, people want to work. The marketplace and their own skills will decide the question. I do not know what the lowest wage per hour is in my
constituency; I suspect that it is very low. It is probably well below £2 an hour. That is a very low wage, but if it is the only wage available, it is better to work for that than not to have any wage at all.
I am not trying to dodge the question. I believe that, ultimately, people must be allowed to seek work where they want, and that we should not throw up to 900,000 workers, many of them women, out of work. The minimum wage was the first problem that the hon. Member for Dulwich faced. She had grave difficulty in telling the House what her solution would be to the very grave problems we are talking about.
The hon. Member for Rotherham was right to allude to the problems of society with which we are all trying to grapple, and he was right to allude to the high rate of divorce in this country and to the enormous pressures being placed on family life. However, none of us, including the hon. Member for Dulwich, has an instant solution. At the end of the debate, she is short on solutions. I quite understand that, because I would find it difficult to offer solutions.
There is a fundamental philosophical divide between Labour Members and myself. I now want to give my own perspective on the debate which may be different from that of some of the other speakers.
A constant thread running through the debate has been that it is absolutely right--indeed, that we should take pride in it--that more and more mothers are going out to work. The elegant and informative document that has been provided for us by central office gives us all sorts of facts and figures with which I will not delay the House. I see that the hon. Member for Stockport (Ms Coffey) already has a copy, obtained no doubt from some photocopying machine in this building. That document takes great pride in the number of women, most of them presumably mothers, who are going out to work.
I do not know what sort of society Labour Members ultimately want to achieve, but I suspect that it is a society in which the old-fashioned concept of the family will be swept aside. I think it works extremely well; it is a division of labour which works well.
The hon. Member for Rotherham spoke in glowing terms about the family, but for some reason, he thought that a Rossetti view was somehow wrong. I do not think that it is wrong at all. The whole point of the family is that it supports the weak. The hon. Gentleman's problem is that he equates the family with the state, whereas the state is very different from the family. The whole point about the family is that it is a sufficiently small and loving unit to enable people to support one another. That cannot be equated with the state.
I suspect that there is a strong streak of feminism running through the debate. The feminist view is that women and men are fundamentally the same. Of course they are equal, but they are very different. I believe that the old-fashioned concept of the family, usually based on the man working and the woman staying at home and bringing up the children, is right. That sort of family bolsters society.
The hon. Member for Rotherham bewails the collapse of society. Let me tell him that the reason for all the current social problems is not 18 years of Conservative government--which I suspect has made very little difference, except on the margins--but the fact that in western society, not only in this country but in France,
Germany and America, there has been a wholesale move based on increasing economic pressures. Those pressures are forcing more and more people out of work who do not actually want to work.
I believe that the hon. Member for Dulwich said that women want to work. Of course some women want to work, but not all of them do. Is it right that we should create a society in which more and more women are forced into low-paid part-time jobs just to help to pay the mortgage? They do not want to work; they want to stay at home.
What is the solution? Is it a socialist solution? Should we pay women to stay at home? That may seem attractive at first sight, but we cannot afford it. Is the solution a sort of nationalisation of family life? That simply does not add up. We have heard various other proposals, such as allowing parental leave, but no figures have been given: no one has worked out how some of these brilliant ideas involving the use of the state, or the taxation system, to keep people at home will operate.
Nothing concrete has come from the Labour party. My view, for what it is worth, is that there is no instant solution, but if any hon. Member can be said to have identified a solution today, it is my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Porter). He tried to explore what was wrong with society, and proposed sensible solutions.
Is it right, for instance, that our tax system should discriminate against a family in which the man works and the woman stays at home? Is it right for us to have a benefits structure that, in many ways, encourages single parenthood? There is nothing wrong with single parenthood; it may be thrust on one through no fault of one's own, because of divorce or for some other reason. But is it right for us to have a housing system, a benefits system and a welfare system that encourage dependency and single parenthood?
It is a little-known fact that this vicious, right-wing, cutting, Dickensian Conservative Government have increased social security expenditure by 75 per cent. in real terms in the 17 years for which they have been in power. [Interruption.] The cry that constantly comes from Opposition Members is that the increase is due to unemployment, or to the fact that we have created an impoverished society. Unfortunately, that simply is not true. If Opposition Members consult any statistic, they will see that we are now an infinitely wealthier society than we were 17 years ago--but we are adding to dependency and worsening the poverty trap through our own welfare policies.
I am not saying that it is possible to slash the social security budget overnight, to deliver tax cuts next November, for instance. That is not the right way to proceed. We must, however, ask ourselves why, although this Conservative Government have increased social security spending by 75 per cent. in real terms, and although this year we are spending roughly the same this year as a proportion of gross national product as did the Callaghan Government--£90 billion a year--we have record rates of divorce and family breakdown, and all the other statistics that worry us.
The Opposition suggest that the solution to all the problems is to spend more. They want to add to the social security budget, to introduce a minimum wage and the social chapter, and to have more regulation. All those
proposals would simply add to Government expenditure, but, apart from adding considerably to the tax bill, they would make no difference.
Given expenditure of £300 billion a year, are the Opposition really suggesting that increasing spending on health, education or trade and industry by, say, 1 per cent. would fundamentally alter the country's economic performance? Are they suggesting that, in some mystical, mythical way, that would create the tens of thousands of new jobs that we all want? It simply does not add up--but those who frame Labour party policy know that, if they suggested anything more radical, they would be seen off by the electorate. No solutions have been proposed by Labour Members.
I urge Ministers not to be misled by the rhetoric of Labour Members. My hon. Friend the Minister told us, with some pride, that we spend £64 million on child care facilities. Should we be doing that as a Conservative Government? Is it helping to tackle the problem?
Mr. MacShane:
That is a policy.
Mr. Leigh:
It is a policy, but is it the right one?
This is a very difficult problem to address. Should we say to single parents, "Put your child into a state nursery; we will pay for it, and you can go out to work"? Is that a good policy for the party of the family and of tradition? Should we encourage mothers to look after their children, and, if so, are we prepared to pay them to do so? These are the problems with which we must grapple, and instead of hurling insults, it would have been interesting if the Opposition had proposed a solution.
Mrs. Gillan:
Expenditure on the out-of-school child care initiative amounts to £64 million. That is seed money to create out-of-school child care places. It enables working women to find affordable out-of-school child care for their children, and in many instances it provides new businesses for women and men who have set up initiatives in response. It is seed money, not a blanket handout from the state.
Mr. Leigh:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for setting the record straight, but in a debate of this nature, at least one speech should question the prevailing ethos, which has been that we want to encourage more women to go out to work. We should certainly give equal opportunities to women, but we should create a society in which the traditional concept of the family is nurtured.
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