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Mr. Forsyth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Wilson: The last time the Minister tried to make four interventions in a speech by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition he made a complete fool of himself. I do not see why he should be anxious to do that again.
Mr. Wilson: I do not propose to take any more interventions.
The Minister said that we wanted to crush--I think that that was the word he used--Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise. Those two bodies would never have existed but for Labour Governments. The Highlands and Islands development board and the Scottish development agency were among the great creations of Labour Governments in the 1960s and 1970s.
I am reminded of the kind of stuff that the Minister comes out with. In his heyday in the 1980s he described the Women's Rural Institute as a Marxist front organisation. In the 1960s, when Willy Ross was setting up the HIDB, Michael Noble, the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland at that time, described it as a Marxist conspiracy. There is a long tradition of that.
I assure the Secretary of State that, long after he has gone, the successors to the Highlands and Islands development board and Scottish Enterprise will be not only secure, but will once again be enhanced as agencies of economic and social change. The great feature of the HIDB was that, originally, it was not simply an economic organisation, but had a strong social remit which has been largely eroded by the Government's ideological changes.
The hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) moved the motion with dignity. Its spirit is absolutely right. It is entirely proper, in the run-up to a general election campaign, that the agenda of poverty and homelessness and the conditions that afflict a substantial proportion of our constituents should be given an airing, and not brushed aside in the general melee of agendas that are set either by the media or by politicians.
In the past couple of weeks, I have had a couple of all-party meetings in my constituency. They were organised by Church organisations which said that the issues that they want to put across form what might broadly be called the humane and social agenda. The issues include homelessness and poverty, not just in our country, but throughout the world. It is entirely right that, in the period before a general election, those subjects should receive an airing.
Sometimes, we are all too clever. If there is a problem of homelessness in any society, it is very likely that its very simple cause is that there are not enough houses. That is the case in this society. We have a Government who are driven by ideology--with the Secretary of State playing his full role--and have refused to allow local authorities to provide houses for rent. That has been the primary cause of homelessness, including hidden homelessness, in any community--and certainly in those that I represent.
I believe that a national minimum wage will be one of the major social innovations of the post-war years. It will be a landmark reform, which the Tories will despise and oppose because they cannot bear the idea of the introduction of a minimum standard of decency into any sphere of a society that they want to be driven by the market. However, once a national minimum wage is established as a concept, they will never dare overturn it. Until the day the national health service was created, the Tories bitterly opposed it, because they opposed the idea of people having access to the best medical care irrespective of their ability to pay for it. Once it was in place, they could chip away at its edges, erode it and
remove bits of it, but they never dared to attack its core. A national minimum wage will be in that category of great social reforms.
Mr. Gallie:
The hon. Gentleman's comments on a minimum wage may well be true. A minimum wage exists in other countries. In France, for example, it is set at the equivalent of about £2. Would he like to tell the House at what level he thinks a national minimum wage would be set on its introduction here?
Mr. Wilson:
No, I would not. The level at which a national minimum wage is set will be determined by a commission, which will consider the views of both employer and employee bodies. I understand why the hon. Gentleman takes a very short-term view of politics. I take a slightly longer-term view, however, and believe that it is far more important to establish the principle of a national minimum wage. That is what will be done in the next Parliament. Once the principle is established, it will never be abolished.
Part of the tragedy, and the indictment of the events of recent years, is that there is almost no level at which a national minimum wage could be set which would not benefit a substantial number of people. In this supposedly wealthy society and successful economy, hundreds of thousands of people are earning below £2 an hour, and millions of people are earning below £3 an hour. In his last days in the House, the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Gallie) would do well to support the concept of a national minimum wage.
The motion is ostensibly unexceptional, although I have not conducted a close textual analysis of it. It states that the House
Mrs. Ewing:
What would the hon. Gentleman cut?
Mr. Wilson:
It would have been more helpful if the parties that tabled the motion had made some suggestions on that subject. It is extraordinary that, since the previous general election, expenditure on social security, for example, has increased annually by £15 billion. That is astonishing. It would also be astonishing if an incoming Government could not produce a great deal of intelligent thought on how that money could be better spent, to create a successful economy rather than subsidised failure. Expenditure on subsidising low pay--for which the taxpayer pays--instead of providing a national minimum wage is one very obvious example of that.
The thrust of the comments made by the hon. Member for Moray is right. I also do not think that anyone needs to go further in politics, when looking for a big idea, than the eradication of poverty. The real debate is about the means of attaining that goal, about the speed at which it
is possible to move in achieving it and about the priority that it should receive. Despite all the brickbats that are tossed and all the attempts to sap the morale of those looking forward with hope and optimism to the advent of a Labour Government, I have not the slightest doubt that, in the future, as in the past, eradicating poverty will be the priority of a Labour Government.
Mr. Bill Walker (North Tayside):
The hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) seems to have made a reputation in politics for attacking organisations and people who are involved with organisations that assist companies. It was therefore interesting to hear him praise the Highlands and Islands development board and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. He did so without declaring an interest: the fact that he and his company have been substantial beneficiaries of those organisations. It seems that he has one rule for others and another for himself. If he wants to speak in the House about standards and values, I suggest that he should first look in the mirror.
Mr. Wilson:
The company with which I am very proud to be involved is probably the only one in the highlands and islands which, before grant and loan disclosure existed, made a specific request that every penny given to the company--it was not very much--should be made public. That is the openness that we have practised ourselves and have always expected from others. Having made that point, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will now tell us how much he has received from his time with Stagecoach.
Mr. Walker:
Nothing--absolutely nothing. The hon. Gentleman has picked on the wrong target. He should do his homework more carefully. I say again that, if he wants to be critical of other hon. Members, he should first look in the mirror. Those who live in glass houses should not chuck bricks.
Like the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing), hon. Members care about the society in which we live. I do not think that any individual or party can claim sole concern for people's well-being--the only difference is that some of us see different routes for arriving at similar answers. The issue is whether the route one travels will or will not produce the answer.
I should also tell the hon. Member for Moray that I have always respected people in Scotland who say that they want independence and who are prepared and willing
to pay the costs, whatever they are, for it. There will be costs, because no one yet knows what the debate will entail. All we currently know is that separation, in whatever form, can be very expensive if it is achieved in acrimonious circumstances. Also, independence in Europe is simply a slogan. It is nonsense. Jim Fairley, a well-respected nationalist in Tayside, has written and spoken at great length about it, and much more effectively than I.
If the hon. Member for Moray seriously believes that the Royal Air Force bases in Scotland would remain unchanged, she is not living in the real world. She has only to consider the aircraft on those bases to realise that the Tornado, Jaguar and Nimrod are very expensive and require massive support from the many people who work on the bases, in or out of uniform. Their number would change substantially if the types of aircraft were changed. Anyone who has any experience of military matters will tell the hon. Lady that. I do not believe that the Royal Marine base at, for example, Condor in Arbroath would remain in its current form, because it is part of the Royal Marine Brigade, which requires certain things that would not exist if the base were operating alone.
The SNP's policies, especially those relating to social and economic matters, belong, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland clearly said, to the world of fairytales and make-believe. If Scotland and the UK are as bad as the hon. Lady claims, why are so many people from all over the world desperate to come and live here? If this is such an awful place, why do we face the ghastly problem of more people wanting to come here than we can possibly take? Of course, some people in the UK and Scotland have problems, but the vast majority have a quality of life of which our grandparents never dreamed. I have seen a dramatic change in my lifetime. I was one of six children living in a two-roomed house with my parents.
Of course there are problems--anyone who thinks that there are not does not hold surgeries--but it is interesting that a substantial number of the problems brought to Members' surgeries are really local authority matters, involving the failure of those authorities. Councillors are there to deal with them. The system that other hon. Members and I operate shows that, if one writes to the chief executive of a local authority, it is surprising how quickly one can unclog things that should have been unclogged without their having to be brought to the authority's notice.
I could use all my speech to comment on the SNP's military budget, which is a fairytale, but I shall deal with some matters that the SNP fails to address. How does it account for the fact that so much is missing from its budget? One of the problems with operating a budget, whether in government or in business, is that one has to state everything, or there will be a deficit at the end of the day.
The SNP wishes to remove standing charges for gas, electricity, telecommunications and other utilities and says that the cost will be met from the profits of the companies involved. The SNP has obviously never run a company if it thinks that such a change will not have an impact on profits. If we link this idea with Labour's utility tax, it is clear that profitable companies will quickly cease to be profitable. I recommend that the left-wing SNP recall the
selective employment tax, which Labour introduced many years ago and which savaged employment levels and the profitability of businesses in the service sector.
The SNP wishes to abolish the assisted places scheme--so does Labour--but does not tell us how the youngsters currently in the scheme will be educated and how the cost of their education will be met. It wishes to abolish nursery vouchers--it will be a voucher snatcher--and transfer the provisions to local authorities. No mention is made of how the cost of changes to the administration will be met. The list is endless--I should like to ask questions about some 50 items in the SNP's budget, but I shall not.
This is an interesting debate, because it has given my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland the opportunity to demolish the SNP's arguments. We can all wander around with our hearts on our sleeves--that is easy and costs nothing--but we have to consider how to implement policies and cost ideas.
The hon. Member for Cunninghame, North mentioned the massive increase in the social security budget. Had the Government not looked after people who had been adversely affected by the recession, they would have been condemned--and rightly so. The Government, however, quite properly dealt with matters, as any Government would be required to do.
"rejects the Government's proposed spending plans"
for the next two years. I did not hear the hon. Member for Moray say whether that means that she rejects the Government's global figures or only their detailed breakdown of them. I hope that she does not really believe that, after 18 years of Tory government, every penny--or even every billion pounds--of public expenditure has been so closely scrutinised and intelligently applied that there is not an awful lot of room to reapply priorities so that we can provide very different forms of public expenditure.
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