The state of health of the British Motor Industry is of paramount importance to everyone in this country. It plays a central role in the British economy, and your problems work through to affect all our people.
Employment in the industry is of the order of 1,300,000—or about 5%; of the national work force. Notwithstanding all your problems, last year your industry, with a surplus of £782 million, was a substantial net contributor to our balance of payments.
I do not know whether you regard me as an advertisement for British cars—that I leave you to judge, but the first car I had as an MP ran for nine years and had over 90,000 miles on the clock before I had to bid it a fond farewell. It was British made—a Ford Anglia in fact. I am one of your satisfied customers. We can make good cars that last.
Mr. President, you referred to “petty politics” . If I may say so, the real points at issue—those we have to deal with daily—are fundamental. They concern the very future of the mixed economy in this country.
The plain fact is that a mixed economy must survive. Without it, our political as well as our economic freedoms are in jeopardy.
It is no part of a politicians job to try to run industry for those who work in industry. [end p1]
All we have done in that direction so far does not lead me to conclude that either the gentlemen in Whitehall or the politicians in Westminster know better that the men actually doing the job. It is sufficient to say that if many more firms are taken over then soon there will not be enough private enterprise profit to pay the losses of the nationalised industries. It is surely one of the great paradoxes of modern times that as politicians have developed less and less competence in running the economy, we have given them more and more control over increasing areas of it.
It is the job of politicians to try to get the general economic and financial position of the country right. That's a big enough role in itself for any Government. We must have a stable currency. We must set standards. We must encourage profits.
Without profits, there can be no secure future for any industry. For the people who work in it, for those who have put their savings into it, or for those who rely on that industry for their pensions—and that is a large part of the population.
With good profits, you can get the investment to keep abreast of tomorrow, to produce the new industrial products that will sell tomorrow, to create the jobs that we need tomorrow and to get a rising standard of living tomorrow.
Too often have we sacrificed tomorrow for today. We have consumed too much and invested too little. And we have not always been able to get a good return from the investment we have made.
To spend a lot on new technology and then to retain the same work force required for the old machinery will only add to costs and therefore make the sale of the product less likely. That way puts even more jobs in jeopardy.
It is the Government's task to get its taxation right, and its level of spending. Bearing in mind that industry is a living structure of human beings, government will hinder and not help if it takes too large a chunk out of the employee's pay packet. [end p2]
Take too much, and employees—whether hourly, weekly or monthly paid—will want to recoup, and we shall simply get a return to the sort of inflation we now have.
To help, not hinder industry and all those who work in it should be the watchword of government.
Visiting factories up and down the country has brought home to me the undoubted fact that our people can turn out just as much, and often more, than any work force anywhere in the world when we put our minds to it and backs into it.