In your industry, and particularly in this section, you have reason to know of the high price paid for two months good trading figures. A record period of squeeze at unprecedented interest rates.
When the present Government were in Opposition, Harold Lever, who has just left the Treasury, used to speak several times a year in economic debates. I do not say that he made different speeches each time! His theme was usually the same—the iniquity of high interest rates!
I cannot leave “the economy” without mentioning two other factors.
First, the Selective Employment Tax. I was “No.2 Shadow” against the Treasury when that was introduced. I roundly condemned it then. Everything I have seen since has confirmed me in this view. In your particular sphere it has become a tax on safety.
The overheads due to this and other taxes are now so high that people are economising on car maintenance and attempting to do themselves work that should never be done by an amateur. [end p1] In one direction Governments are tightening up on safety regulations—and in my view rightly—in another they are pursuing policies which may jeopardise safety.
Second. There is the heavy weight of taxation on the motorist which has increased enormously in the last 5 years. Never in the history of peacetime taxation has so much more been raised in such a short time. This is due to the few. The Socialist few.
Again, if I may refer to 10 years ago, 4s.6d. could buy a gallon-of petrol. Now it buys no petrol at all—only the tax on petrol!
You are all familiar with the point, but may I make another one too. I wish that we in this country were prepared to praise personal success and to make it worthwhile taxwise.
More and more people are quoting net take home pay as their salary or wage. And this is what matters, in all walks of life.
It is not where a person comes from that counts, but where he can get to. At least let us keep those people here.
Perhaps I can enter one other plea before this distinguished audience. Fewer top managers and executives are entering politics. This is a loss to the political system. The position could be remedied if some of you would retain on a part-time basis those who enter Parliament.
It is important that their industrial careers should not be terminated by becoming an M.P. and also that they should be kept in touch with trading circumstances.
The motor industry has been bedevilled by unofficial strikes, the majority of them unconstitutional and in breach of agreement. [end p2] It is fashionable to quote the number of days lost through strikes but even more important is the number of stoppages and their suddenness which can disrupt the work of many factories and ruin the carefully controlled production timetables.
It must mean too that your Association has to stock a larger number of spares if customers are not to be dissatisfied. This week in Parliament we had yet another example of the damage such strikes do, both to trade and to the convenience of the travelling public.
We had two private notice questions yesterday. One about the coal miners' strike, one about the London Transport strike, and we also had a statement about a printers' strike which stopped the House of Commons order paper and Hansard from being printed. As usual, the Government was sorry—very sorry—but not sorry enough to take the requisite legislative action.
We shall provide for the enforcement of freely negotiated agreements through collective bargaining. We should have done this before but, to give us credit, it was at least in our 1966 Manifesto and will be in our next one.
What valid objections can there be to a policy which insists that bargains should be kept?