TNAG-2786-FCO40-4005-Hong-Kong-UK-Parliamentary-and-other-interest-in-constitutio-1993 — Page 23

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Oral Answers

30 NOVEMBER 1993

Hunt: First, I strongly agree with what my hon. Friend says about the importance of manufacturing industry. Secondly, the deregulatory effects of the abolition of wages councils will enable manufacturing industry to be even more competitive. Thirdly, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales will confirm, the Government have focused heavily on manufacturing industry in Wales, where output is now 124 per cent. of what it was in 1979, and have done much to reinvigorate industry throughout Wales.

Mr. Bryan Davies: Is it not Government policy that we should compete successfully with eastern Europe and, for that matter, with the Pacific rim countries, by driving down wage levels and worsening terms and conditions in this country?

Mr. Hunt: What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that the take-home pay of the average worker in the United Kingdom is one of the highest in Europe, and the hon. Gentleman would do well to reflect on the reason for that. Of course, it is because our non-wage labour costs are much lower and much more competitive. Instead of focusing on the subject that he mentioned, he would do better to abdicate from the socialist charter, which the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) has signed, to impose a compulsory 35-hour week and a compulsory four-day week, which would be grievously damaging to British industry. It is about time the Labour party dropped that sort of socialist nonsense.

PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Q1. Mr. Mark Robinson: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 30 November.

The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.

Mr. Mark Robinson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that contacts have played an initial part in bringing about the process in the middle east and in bringing people together in South Africa; but contacts have always played an important part in bringing an end to violence? Hon. Members want my right hon. Friend to continue his courageous search to bring an end to bloodshed in Northern Ireland.

The Prime Minister: My right hon. and learned Friend and I welcome the strong support yesterday given by hon. Members on all sides of the House to the efforts to promote peace and political settlement in Northern Ireland. I believe that contacts can play a useful part, for the reasons set out yesterday by my right hon. and learned Friend. I hope that those contacts will have helped the IRA to understand that violence must stop before those who justify it can enter negotiations with the Government, and that the Government stand firmly by their public position. I regret very much that there has not yet been a permanent cessation of violence, as events in Northern Ireland over the past day have sadly demonstrated yet again. But if our present efforts do not succeed, we shall not cease to explore opportunities for peace.

Oral Answers

912

Mr. John Smith: As a former Chief Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as Prime Minister for the past three years, does the Prime Minister accept responsibility for the £50 billion Budget deficit?

The Prime Minister: During the recession-[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer"] I shall answer in my own way. During the recession, the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues were keen to see us increase spending to protect people who are vulnerable. It was the protection of people who were vulnerable and the collapse of income during that period that increased the size of the borrowing requirement. What is presently odious about the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that his party objects now to spending reductions, having previously asked for spending increases. They complain about the size of the borrowing requirement, they complain about tax increases and they still promise extra expenditure.

Mr. John Smith: I will not bandy cheap insults with the Prime Minister. The House will notice that he did not answer the question as to responsibility. If he seeks to blame it all on the world recession, can he explain why Britain's Budget deficit is significantly worse than that of Japan, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal?

The Prime Minister: Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman can explain why our inflation position is better than that of all those countries, why our unemployment position is better, why our exports position is better, why we have unemployment falling and they have unemployment growing, and why we have the largest growth rate in the European Community this year and projected next year. Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman could reflect on that.

Mr. John Smith: Perhaps the Prime Minister will reflect on why, if everything in the garden is growing as well as he suggests, we have a £50 billion deficit? Is not economic mismanagement the fundamental reason for that? And is not that the fundamental reason why, quite apart from anything the Chancellor does today, the British taxpayer faces a major tax hike next April?

If

The Prime Minister: I answered the right hon. and learned Gentleman's third question in my first answer. he cares to look at it again, he will see that that is the case. Once again, he is trying to face both ways at the same time and attacks us both on the level of the deficit and the level of taxation. If he thinks that taxes are too high and the deficit is also too high, what spending would he cut? He cannot go on living in an Alice in Wonderland world where taxes fall, the deficit drops and spending rises effortlessly upwards. Whenever the right hon. and learned Gentleman speaks, the natural laws of economics are suspended.

Q2. Mr. Stephen: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 30 November.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Stephen: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the most significant result of the survey of manufacturing industry published yesterday is that our consumer-led recovery is providing a significant and sustained boost to manufacturing industry right across the country?