11.18 am
Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Ardwick)

I beg to move, That this House deplores the harmful effect on Greater Manchester of Conservative policies. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the problems of Manchester and to draw attention to the damaging effect on our area of the present Conservative Government. My right hon. and hon. Friends from Greater Manchester will amplify my case.

When the train from Euston thankfully pulls into Piccadilly station in Manchester, the traveller walking down the platform sees facing him large illuminated advertising signs. We in Manchester think that they should be replaced so that when the visitor comes into Manchester he can see instead one huge illuminated notice saying "Don't blame us. We voted Labour."

Manchester is a Labour city. Greater Manchester is a Labour area. Of the 32 constituencies which are located entirely within Greater Manchester, 26 had Labour Members of Parliament before the general election last May. After the general election, all 26 continued to have Labour Members of Parliament. We did not lose one seat. Some of the seats were exceptionally marginal, but my right hon. and hon. Friends all had excellent results.

We should take the opportunity today to thank all the people of our area who showed their faith in the Labour Government and to thank the members of the Labour Party in the area who worked for the return of a Labour Government. I know that my right hon. and hon. Friends will agree when I pay a special tribute to Mr. Paul Carmody, our regional organiser, who has enjoyed particular success in ensureng that Greater Manchester remains a faithful Labour area. We in Greater Manchester voted for a Labour Government. We are afflicted instead with this Conservative Administration.

I ask the House to come with me to visit a typical Manchester family and see how, in eight and a half months of Tory Government, their lives have been made far more difficult and their living standards have been reduced. We have not only a Tory Government but a Conservative-controlled Greater Manchester council. That, too, is playing its part in causing difficulty and hardship.

One or more members of our typical Manchester family will start their day by travelling to work. If they go by bus, they will pay the highest fares of any bus service in any of our great provincial areas. If they travel one mile, they will pay 3p more for their journey than is charged by their most expensive competitor, West Yorkshire. If they travel two miles, it will cost them 2p more; if they travel five miles it will cost them 5p more; and if they travel nine miles it will cost them 3p more.

Increases in fares by Greater Manchester Transport in the past two years have been among the highest in the country. Whilst all people in Greater Manchester suffer from this, the inner area residents—my constituents and those of a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends—suffer most. At the same time as the fares have been pushed higher and higher, evening and Sunday bus services have been reduced.

The reason for the high fares and for the reduced services is simple. The Greater Manchester council, Conservative-controlled, is not putting into the service the kind of financial support that other areas are making available to their bus services. At present the revenue support being made available to its transport service by Greater Manchester Transport is the lowest in the country. That is why our constituents are suffering from such high fares, which are taking a bigger and bigger chunk out of the workers' wages.

Mr. Robert Sheldon (Ashton-under-Lyne)

I agree with everything that my right hon. Friend has said so far, and am sure that I shall agree with everything that he has yet to say. Does he accept that whereas there are fewer buses nearer the centre of the city when the authority tries to achieve economies in services, further away from the city there are actually cuts and services do not operate at all? This is one of the big problems that my constituents, and, I am sure, many others, will face.

Mr. Kaufman

I totally accept my right hon. Friend's valid point. It is interesting that we in the inner cities have one kind of problem as a result of the activities of Greater Manchester Transport, while my right hon. Friend and others who represent other areas of Greater Manchester have the kind of problems that he has described.

When the worker gets to work after his expensive bus journey, he will face a situation in which this Conservative Government are, through the Employment Bill now before the House, seeking to reduce the protection that he enjoys at work. Yet it is extremely important that workers have not less protection but more.

I wish to draw to the attention of the House what seems to be a serious abuse in that regard. It stems from a case brought to me in October by a constituent who then worked for a company run by a Mr. J. Tabner, who appears to be the controller of Mantax Radio Taxis. My constituent told me that he and the other drivers employed by that person had been forbidden to ply for hire at Ring way airport. That meant, because of the very profitable service enjoyed there, that they were losing large parts of their income.

I therefore wrote to the Manchester town clerk to ask whether what was being done was lawful. I received from the town clerk a letter saying that he would inquire of the proprietor. Mr. Tabner wrote to the town clerk on 7 December saying: Re: Operation of Hackney Carriages at Manchester Airport. No instruction has been issued to any of the drivers not to operate the Manchester Airport, and, furthermore, we would agree that as the Airport is now within the City limits, a possible breach of Hackney Carriage Bye-Laws would ensure, if such an instruction were given. In forwarding a copy of that letter to me, the town clerk said: Whilst the Council is unable to intervene directly in any contractual arrangements entered into between hackney carriage owners and drivers, should such arrangements result in breaches of the Hackney Carriage Bye-Laws the Council would of course institute the necessary proceedings. In this connection I would point out that a driver would be in contravention of Bye-Law 20 of the 1957 Hackney Carriage Bye-Laws should he refuse to convey a passenger who wished to travel to the Airport or from there to any point within the City of Manchester. I had that satisfactory assurance from the town clerk, enclosing the letter with the assurance of Mr. Tabner, of Mantax Radio Taxis. But then I received a letter from my constituent saying: I feel now that I must acquaint you with what has taken place since our last meeting. After having seen you, I would point out that in order to comply with my proprietor's instructions and being under the threat of dismissal, I kept away from the airport and just worked the city ranks. However, during the fourth week, as I was plying for hire on Piccadilly station, a fare got in my cab and said 'Manchester airport, please'. Now then, sir, since the airport is now classed as being within the taxi boundary, I could not refuse to take them there, and so I complied. On arrival, I decided in my own mind that I was perfectly within my rights and also thereby not causing a breach of the Hackney Carriage Bye-Laws. I placed my cab on the rank, and some 20 minutes later got a passenger back to the Midland Hotel, and thereafter managed to stay in the city for the rest of my shift. On Monday evening, December 3rd, at 1645 hours, I received a telephone call from Mr. Tabner's fleet manager, to the effect that due to my cab having been seen on the airport rank plying for hire he was instructed to inform me that I was sacked as from that moment and that the day driver on my cab had been instructed not to bring the cab to me but to take it to the garage. I am happy to say that that constituent came to see me again on Saturday and now has another job. But it is very important that we have a statement from Mr. Tabner and Mantax Radio Taxis, and from the city authorities, as to what is to be done when an explicit assurance is given by a proprietor that he is not in breach of the hackney carriage byelaws but following that an employee of his is dismissed for insisting upon abiding by the law.

That is a personal case, and it is right that I should draw the attention of the House to it.

When a worker arrives at his place of work, he may well be told that he is about to be made redundant. In the first six months of this Government's period of office, 1,229 redundancies were notified in the city of Manchester and 5,825 in Greater Manchester. Another 241 were notified as due to occur in the city from December 1979 onwards and 2,158 in the county. That makes a total, since this Government came to office, of 1,470 notified redundancies for the city and 7,983 for the county.

Mr. Fergus Montgomery (Altrincham and Sale)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give the figures for the period of the Labour Government?

Mr. Kaufman

I tried to obtain those figures from the Government but without success. I would have been glad to give them to the House.

Mr. Montgomery

The right hon. Gentleman was a Minister.

Mr. Kaufman

I was a member of the Department of Industry. We did not possess all those figures. They are kept in the Department of Employment. I would be interested to know them myself.

Many of the redundancies will have been brought about by the record 17 per cent. minimum lending rate, introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is causing great difficulty, particularly to small businesses, in the Manchester area. What chance exists of the redundancies—those that have already been notified and those that are undoubtedly in prospect—being made up by newly created jobs? I am sorry to say that there is little chance.

This Government have removed from the Manchester area almost all the industrial incentives that it enjoyed when it received intermediate area status. That status was awarded to the area, on the basis of its needs, by the Conservative Government in 1972 and by the late Mr. John Davies, the Member of Parliament for Knutsford, who had considerable knowledge of the area. We shall lose that status in 1982. The regional development grants that go with it have already been abolished. Not only have we lost the grants, but, in addition, industrialists are already acting in anticipation of the loss of intermediate area status.

I should like to deal with the kinds of aid that the Manchester area is losing. We are losing regional selective assistance under section 7 of the Industry Act 1972. We are losing regional development grants. We are losing inclusion in the assisted area factory building programmes for the English Industrial Estates Corporation. We are losing assistance from the European regional development fund.

By a curious and satisfactory coincidence, hon. Members have received this morning from the European Communities Commission details of the kind of assistance we are losing. The figures show that between 1975 and 1979 the North-West received £50.68 million from the European Commission under the regional fund, £27.12 million for infrastructure and £23.56 million for industry and tourism. Additional information, enclosed with the communication, shows that Greater Manchester was helped by European regional aid to obtain advance factories in Bury, Lower Broughton, Manchester and Wigan.

We lose loans from the European Investment Bank. We lose the 100 per cent. Government grants for derelict land reclamation. I shall refer again to this matter in my speech, and I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry) wishes to deal with it in greater detail. We lose basic service grants under section 7 of the Local Employment Act 1972.

All of these losses of industrial incentives flow from the decision of the Secretary of State for Industry to deprive as of our intermediate area status. The loss of the regional development grant is an especially severe blow. In 1977–78, firms in Greater Manchester received £5½ million in such grants. Greater Manchester almost lost two important projects because of the loss of the grant.

One was the proposed rebuilding of the ICL, factory at West Gorton, in my constituency. It will be recalled that ICL, dissatisfed with the provision of facilities at West Gorton, considered leaving. A number of Labour Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) and for Stalybridge and Hyde, put great pressure on ICL to stay. We also received the active co-operation of the Labour-controlled Manchester city council.

From that stemmed the decision of ICL to build brand new factories both in Ardwick, at Upper Brook Street, in my constituency, and at Ashton-under-Lyne. Both factories were opened on 31 August last year. I have visited them. Conditions and facilities are unrivalled and a great credit to the company. Neither factory would have been possible without nearly £5 million worth of aid provided by the Labour Government. Thanks to the fruitful co-operation of the Labour Government and the Labour-controlled Manchester city council, there is a brand new ICL factory in Ardwick and another at Ashton-under-Lyne. They are assets to their neighbourhood and, in the case of the Ardwick factory, to the city of Manchester.

After that experience of co-operation from a Labour Government, ICL decided that instead of moving from West Gorton, as originally contemplated, it would rebuild its factory there. The factory was important for the retention of employment in the inner area of Manchester.

Then came the Tory Government and the announcement by the Secretary of State for 'industry of the withdrawal of regional development grants. That meant an outright loss of £1½ million for the West Gorton project in regional development grants and placed the project in jeopardy. Labour Members exerted great pressure on the Secretary of State. We consulted the company. As a result, after months of agonising delay, we learnt that the project had been saved. It was saved because the Government were persuaded to make half of the £1½-million loss of regional development grant with £750,000 worth of aid under section 7 of the Industry Act.

The project was saved. It should be recognised, however, that in two years' time that aid will not be available. We will lose access to section 7 aid. It will be impossible to save such projects. Another project, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Moss Side (Mr. Morton), was saved only by the same device, which will soon not be available.

Before leaving the question of ICL, I should like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the Conservative-controlled Greater Manchester council is at present contemplating placing a new computer order, not with the Manchester-based, British-owned ICL but with the American-owned IBM. My right hon. and hon. Friends who represent Manchester have sent a letter to the leader of the Conservative-controlled Greater Manchester council saying: We, as MPs for the City of Manchester, are writing to draw your attention to the extreme importance of the Greater Manchester Council Policy Committee, when it meets next week, deciding to place its computer order with ICL. It would be unthinkable for a Manchester local authority not to place its order with the only British-owned British computer company on which so many jobs depend in Greater Manchester. We therefore ask your Policy Committee to vote for ICL, for Manchester and for Britain. That call also goes out from the House

When we lose our industrial aid, how many potential jobs are we likely to lose and how many will we lose as a result of the loss of EEC grants? Two Manchester schemes are being considered in Brussels, and the latest news that we have of them is that they have not been approved but have been held over. I hope that they will be approved, but if we lose them it will be as a direct consequence of the Government's policy in denying us assisted area status.

Perhaps the most serious impact of the loss of intermediate area status is the effect of the loss of the 100 per cent. derelict land clearance grant which goes with it. In the city of Manchester we have 689 acres of derelict land—seven times the national proportion. In Greater Manchester there are 8,410 acres of derelict land—more than eight times the national proportion. Greater Manchester has the worst derelict land problem in the country, and since December 1975, as a result of action by the then Labour Government, derelict land clearance has been 100 per cent. grant-aided. From 1982 we shall have only a 50 per cent. derelict land clearance grant, even though we have the worst problem in the country.

In recent years the city of Manchester has cleared more derelict land than almost any other authority in the country.

Mr. Churchill (Stretford)

It has created derelict land.

Mr. Kaufman

The hon. Gentleman knows nothing about the city of Manchester, and I sometimes suspect that he knows little about Stretford.

The derelict land clearance programme is now threatened. Every council in Greater Manchester, even the Tory-controlled Greater Manchester council itself, has written to the Department of the Environment. The Greater Manchester council has told the Department: Any action which reduces the ability of the local authorities to make a major impact on the extent of derelict land is seen as having serious consequences for the future well-being of the area. That is what a Tory-controlled council says about the actions of the Tory Government. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment has a colleague from the Department of Industry sitting to him who can prime him. We want an unequivocal assurance from the Under-Secretary that Greater Manchester will be declared a derelict land clearance area and that we will have the 100 per cent. grant so that we can get on with the essential job of improving the environment for our citizens.

Another serious blow to the industrial life of the Greater Manchester area is the Government's policy towards the National Enterprise Board. We hoped that we would get one of the factories of Inmos, the silicon chip enterprise which was set up through the approval of the previous Labour Government. Manchester is particularly well qualified for such a factory, but our loss of intermediate area status was the last blow and it deprived us of any chance of getting an Inmos factory.

Our existing industries are also threatened. We know that ICL would not exist as it is today, as the world's biggest and most profitable computer company that is not American-owned, but for the help it received from both Labour and Conservative Governments. When Mr. Christopher Chat away was Minister for Industrial Development, he announced £40 million of aid for ICL.

Altogether £71 million of Government money has gone into ICL, first to rescue it and then to help make it prosperous. The taxpayers' shareholding has been sold at the compulsion of the Government for a bargain price of £38 million. We have dot back only half the money. In fact, it is a great deal less than that, since the money that was put in would be worth a great deal more at 1980 prices. The taxpayer has been cheated of his return on his investment and the workers of ICL have been cheated of the reward for the effort that they have put into making the company profitable. Many of our constituents were in that factory, and they are angry about what the Government have done.

There is now concern about Ferranti. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham) are particularly concerned because they have Ferranti factories in their constituencies. The workers are concerned because the NEB's 50 per cent. holding in the company is likely to be sold.

Let us be clear about the fact that there would be no Ferranti without the public money given by the previous Labour Government. A total of £15.8 million of taxpayers' money saved Ferranti from total collapse. Both management and workers fear that the company is to be the victim of corporate asset-stripping. They fear that it will be taken over, stripped of its technology by a larger company and thrown to the City wolves. My right hon. and hon. Friends will be able to speak with far greater authority than I on that matter.

I draw the attention of the House to another petty outrage by the Government, namely, the attack on the rehabilitation centre at Denton, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Gorton. One of my constituents who is an instructor at the centre visited me yesterday and told me that the Government sent an instruction, which arrived—brutally—on the Friday before Christmas, that every rehabilitation centre with 100 places will have to lose one class of between 12 and 16.

The Denton centre, like others, is of great value. All people with disabilities, except the blind, are helped, and the centre has been forced to lose one of its classes, which will mean the loss of 60 places a year. The centre gives white-collar and manual training. About 70 per cent. of its trainees have moved on to jobs or further training—55 per cent. to jobs. Now it is being maimed by the Government's petty vandalism—and all to save £25,000.

Mr. Kenenth Marks (Manchester, Gorton)

My right hon. Friend need not apologise for mentioning a centre in my constituency. The cut in the centre's work among people who are injured at work and cannot do their previous job or who have other handicaps is one example of the effects of Government policy, and there is another in my right hon. Friend's constituency where the centre for educational disadvantage is to be closed. That unit does good field work. It is staffed not by bureaucrats but by people who get out and work on behalf of the educationally disadvantaged. Those are examples of the Conservative attitude to the disabled, the handicapped, and the less well off.

Mr. Kaufman

My hon. Friend is right. What the Government are doing to that centre for educational disadvantage is absolutely scandalous.

While the worker travels on his expensive bus, his wife is out doing her best to make the family income stretch to meet today's high prices, and no doubt we shall learn on the tapes at any moment of a further twist in the inflationary spiral. Meanwhile, their children will have gone to school and may have used free school transport. They should value it while they can, because the Education (No. 2) Bill will abolish free school transport. As we know, the nature of Catholic educational provision means that their children are especially at risk.

Mr. Montgomery

The right hon. Gentleman is not being fair. The Bill is in Committee and will be discussed fully. Will he admit that during the period of the previous Labour Government the question of school transport was being looked at, that his Government were thinking of making a fixed charge for school transport, and that that possibility was taken back before the general election?

Mr. Kaufman

The hon. Gentleman is an amiable colleague, but he must not circulate that sort of fiction. I know that he is desperately clutching at any straw he can find, and I do not blame him for that. He is agreat admirer of theatrical entertainment, and I compliment him on making the effort.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Stockport, North)

Is my right hon. Friend aware that we have sat for about 60 hours in the Committee on the Education (No. 2) Bill and have continually pressed the Minister to tell us whether he intends to make a concession on the transport clause? So far he has given no indication that he is prepared to make a change. If the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Montgomery) is saying that there will be a revolt of Tory Back Benchers, we shall all be pleased. However, in the Committee there is certainly no indication that the Minister will give way.

Mr. Kaufman

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The very last adjective that I would use about the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Montgomery) is "revolting". Nevertheless, I very much hope that he will give us his support on this issue.

I have received a very disturbing letter from the schools commissioner of the Salford Roman Catholic diocesan trustees. He has given me some very worrying figures about the impact on Catholic educational provision in the area. He tells me that of their children in secondary schools, those at present in their area who qualify for free travel total some 10,300. In the city of Manchester, the figure is 2,900.

What the schools commissioner, Mr. V. N. Lewis, tells me is this: All maintained Catholic secondary education in the diocese with the exception of the three schools in Trafford is now reorganised on comprehensive lines from which it can be safely said that the vast majority of pupils go to the nearest denominational school and are not, therefore, unjustly using choice at the expense of the rest of the community. Many of those who presently receive free transport are pupils who obtained a grammar school place under a selective system and who are now working their way out of the education system in transitional arrangements as their grammar schools are absorbed into comprehensive schools. Diocesan officers estimate that the number of free transport users in the urban areas will decline as the pupils admitted under the selective system phase out but need for free or concessional transport will remain in rural and semi-rural areas and those urban areas with school systems which involve travel, i.e. middle school systems and systems with shared sixth form arrangements (colleges or units serving more than one school).

Mr. Charles R. Morris (Manchester, Openshaw)

My right hon. Friend has rightly emphasised the impact which clause 23 of the Education (No. 2) Bill will have on denominational schools, but I am sure that he is equally aware that, in the geographical area of my constituency, no secondary comprehensive school exists. Therefore, every youngster in my constituency who attends a secondary comprehensive school, irrespective of whether he is attending a denominational school, is obliged to travel by bus.

Mr. Kaufman

With his great knowledge of his own area, my right hon. Friend is making an important and additional point. I am sure that he will expand upon it if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I thought it right to draw attention to this matter, particularly since this very morning I have received a letter from one of my constituents. Mrs. McQuade, of 122 Birchfields Road. Fallowfield. who writes: Dear Mr. Kaufman, As a parishioner of St. Kentigerns in Fallowfield, Manchester, with a child at above school, I am concerned about the transport clause which will be harmful to Catholic schools. Catholic schools often draw pupils from a wide area, drawing pupils from many miles. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale says that the Bill is in Committee. I offer him amendments proposed by my constituent in her letter. The letter continues: I would like to see the Bill amended to take account of the Secretary of State's comment that the local authorities would treat Catholic pupils no less favourably than county schools. They should take into account number in family, charges by age and districts as guidelines, and to include within the Bill the present arrangement whereby the Secretary of State has the power to intervene where he believes an authority is using its powers unjustly. My constituent has proposed some changes. I hope that the Minister will take advantage of this debate to announce the abandonment of this pernicious provision in the Education (No. 2) Bill.

I have less hope that the Government will abandon their plan to end the statutory school meals service. Already they have raised the price of school meals twice. The latest available figures show that in the city of Manchester 34,075 schoolchildren have dinners paid for by their parents, and in Greater Manchester the number is 238,592. The increase of 40 per cent. in the charge under the present Government, from 25p to 35p, means a tax by the Government of £17,000 for every school week in the city of Manchester and £120,000 in Greater Manchester. Over the year, it is a tax on city of Manchester parents of nearly £750,000, and in Greater Manchester it is nearly £5 million.

I must also draw attention to the matter already raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gorton, the truly wicked decision by the Government to shut down the centre for educational disadvantage, in my constituency. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Gorton will get a chance of dealing with this with his own particular authority, but what I should like to say now is that the Secretary of State is closing down this valuable centre without ever having bothered to visit it. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor), as an Opposition spokesman on education, has been there, and she pays tribute to what the centre is doing. It is quite scandalous that the centre is being closed and that the acting chairman was notified by dispatch rider on the same day as the Minister's announcement and that neither the centre's director nor its governing body was consulted or even informed in advance of the decision to close it. All this is being done for an annual saving of £312.000—less than half of the money that the Government will be spending on their publicity campaign for the compulsory sale of council houses.

Before leaving the subject of education, I ought to give the House some figures that I have received from the Government this morning on the reduction of education and school building provision in our area. I have heard this morning that the reduction by the Government in this financial year in the county on primary and secondary building is 13 per cent. and in the city of Manchester it is 6 per cent. For the coming financial year, the cut in the county is 23 per cent. and in the city it is 25 per cent. The cut in nursery education provision this year by the present Government is 33 per cent. for the county and 37 per cent. for the city of Manchester.

When the wage earner has returned from his possibly threatened job, when the housewife has returned from her depressing shopping trip, and when the children have returned from their cut-ridden school, if they live in a council house in the city of Manchester they may live in a very new house, because the city of Manchester has the proud record of possessing the best house-building programme of any major city in Britain. Between the beginning of 1974 and September of last year, the city of Manchester started 9,285 houses—a far higher number than any other of England's large cities.

In relation to population, Manchester was 32 per cent. ahead of its nearest competitor, Birmingham. It was way ahead of Liverpool. It was more than twice as good as Leeds. The man responsible for that city's poor housing programme, Lord Bellwin, now holds office at the Department of the Environment. When Lord Bellwin was in charge at Leeds, the aim of his office was to dispose of public assets and not to create them. Our authority in Manchester has the objective—and it is successfully carrying it out—of creating public assets, and we have an unrivalled record of achievement.

Again, I should like to read an extract from a letter that I received only today from a lady in my constituency who suffers from multiple sclerosis and who, thanks to the enlightened house-building programme of Manchester city council and its particular provision for the disabled, has now been happily rehoused. She writes: Yes, we are rehoused in a beautifully adapted house in a lovely area. Just what we needed. That is thanks to Manchester's Labour council.

But that house-building record is now threatened by the Government's cuts in housing expenditure. They have sliced £598 million, 21 per cent., off the national housing investment programme, and they boast that they intend to build fewer houses.

For this financial year, the Government have already cut £600,000 from the city of Manchester's programme, and with only a couple of months to go before the new financial year the Government have still not announced the housing investment allocation for 1980–81. This is absolutely disgraceful.

Mr. Fred Silvester (Manchester, Withington)

Would the right hon. Gentleman care to quote all the figures from the answer to his question to the Minister on the housing investment programme? The figures which he received show that in 1978–79 the figure was £52.2 million. Even the revised figure for the forthcoming year is £59.9 million.

Mr. Kaufman

The hon. Gentleman knows that there is a cut of £600,000. Manchester city council has made that clear. I accept the figures given by the Minister. Will the Under-Secretary of State say when Manchester will get its housing investment programme allocation? When will Manchester be able to decide on its housing programme for the coming year?

Mr. Silvester

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would not wish to mislead the House. When he speaks of a cut in the housing investment programme, he is speaking of a cut in the provisional allocation of £600,000. There has been no cut in the previous year's allocation.

Mr. Kaufman

Allocations from the Labour Government for housing and education were chopped by the Tory Government on the basis of an overall under spend. The Government are now pretending that there have been no cuts. The city of Manchester is an outstanding house-building authority. The housing investment programme allocation does not only cover building; it includes municipalisation, which has been chopped completely by the Government, and improvements.

We do not yet know what the HIP allocation will be. However, we know that the Government are trying to force up rents for the city of Manchester's 110,000 tenants and the 306,000 council house tenants in Greater Manchester by an average of £1.50 a week. In the city of Manchester there are 33,700 tenants of private landlords, and at least 86,000 in the county. Under the Government's Housing Bill, controlled tenants will lose the protection of controls and will join the regulated tenants who, in future, will have to face rent increases every two years instead of every three as at present. That is a great blow to tenants of private landlords in my constituency.

The myth put about by the Government that landlords are miserable, put-upon people who long to improve their houses if they have the opportunity is not borne out by several landlords in my constituency, one group of whom is a gang of crooks and should be in gaol. [HON. MEMBERS: "Name them."] I shall readily name them. The group is called Halperns. It also runs the most disgraceful hire-purchase form of mortgage provision which makes people who are foolish enough to become involved with it prisoners of the most iniquitous form of hire purchase. It is a scandalous way to treat innocent people. The hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) agrees. I named that company because I was asked to do so by Conservative Members. I am glad to have been able to do so within the privilege of the House.

Manchester has inherited a miserable housing problem. Eighty per cent. of private accommodation was built before 1919. Manchester has pursued an admirable policy of municipalisation as the only way in which to help those tenants to obtain decent homes. The Government have now stopped that. They are hoping in vain that higher rents will persuade landlords to improve their properties.

Instead of public money being spent on improving properties, it will be spent on subsidising landlords through rent allowances. More than £1 million will be spent in the city of Manchester, and £3.6 million in the county, in order to pay landlords to increase their rents. How can we expect private landlords to behave decently to their tenants when the Tory-controlled Greater Manchester council refuses to do so?

I draw to the attention of the House the scandalous treatment of my constituent Miss Gutherson, of 29 Hopkins Street, Longsight. She lives in a house which has been blighted and purchased by the Greater Manchester council in pursuance of a road scheme which will be of no use to my constituents, is not wanted by them and may never be constructed. It is a road scheme for people using my constituency as a rat run. Nevertheless, the area is blighted. Miss Gutherson's house has neither a bath nor a shower.

While Manchester city council is by agreement managing the property for the Greater Manchester council and agrees to keep it in tenantable repair, it has not sufficient money to improve its own properties, let alone those belonging to the Greater Manchester council. Yet the mean-minded Greater Manchester council refuses to accept its responsibility as owner of the property and to spend on this and on other houses a fraction of the money that it is willing to squander on assisted places in independent schools. I hope, even at this late stage, that it will change its mind and do justice to Miss Gutherson and others who live in the city.

Mortgage payers are suffering grievously from the 15 per cent. mortgage rate. No doubt even in Manchester some of those people voted Conservative on the strength of the Conservative Party manifesto pledge to bring down mortgage rates. Now, in the North-West, owner-occupiers buying an average-size home are paying £4.56 a week more. They are paying nearly a quarter of their incomes on mortgage payments on 25-year mortgages. Such gain as they received in income tax cuts has been more than wiped out by that and other price increases since this Government came to office. At the end of his working week, the wage earner will have to pay a large chunk of his income in tax.

In his June Budget the Chancellor gave away £4,540 million in income tax concessions. Thirty-one per cent. of it—£1,400 million—went to the richest taxpayers. In Greater Manchester 31 per cent. went to the 4 per cent. of richest income taxpayers in our area. The other 96 per cent. had to make do with the rest. But the Manchester taxpayer is also a ratepayer. Because of the Government's policies, he will have to pay extra rates, too, following the Government's decision to cut rate aid to the cities in favour of the Tory shire counties.

Manchester has already lost £800,000 grant, in addition to the possibility of losing resources through the transitional provisions. It has also had £800,000 cut from its inner city provision.

This attack on our citizens is particularly grievous when a typical Manchester family may not have the head of its household in work, is paying off a mortgage with whatever difficulty, or is living in council accommodation, possibly of a high standard. Instead, it may be a family in povery, living in poor accommodation. The statistics of poverty in Manchester are depressing. In 1978, 10.3 per cent. of all households in the city were one-parent families. That is the highest figure outside London, and it is exceeded in London only in four boroughs.

In the city of Manchester, 17.1 per cent. of families were single-person households above the age of 60—well above the national average. One-third of the city's dwellings were built before 1919. Despite the city's excellent housing record, in 1978 8.8 per cent. of households were still lacking at least one basic amenity—far higher than the national average. The clamp-down on municipalisation will curb the city's attempts to put this right.

Since many of the householders are owner-occupiers with low resources, they are sometimes fearful of improving their properties, even with the grants available. They are especially fearful because they hear dreadful stories of what cowboy builders do to such property when they move in. Not only do they ruin respectably kept homes—I visited one such property in the Victoria Park area of my constituency last weekend—but they can also ruin householders financially. One of my constituents has lost all his savings due to the unscrupulous battening of criminal negligent builders who, when faced with retribution, go bankrupt to to avoid their responsibilities. Yet the Government's policy is to bolster the opportunities of such people by their attack on direct works departments, including Manchester's fine direct works department.

The Government should give direct works departments the power to carry out improvement work for private owners as well as on council property. I shall never forget the havoc caused in my constituency by Wimpey when that firm began the improvement programme on the Anson estate in my constituency, bringing great misery to my constituents, the council having launched an excellent programme which was carried out poorly by Wimpey.

Mr. Tom Arnold (Hazel Grove)

If the city of Manchester's housing department and direct works department are as well managed as the right hon. Gentleman makes them out to be, can he explain why the letters which I receive from constituents about housing problems are almost exclusively from tenants in the Manchester overspill estates, whereas the Stockport estates run by the local authority there are extremely well run in comparison? Every time I get a complaint, it is about one of the Manchester overspill estates.

Mr. Montgomery

And it takes a long time to get a reply.

Mr. Kaufman

When it comes to matters affecting Stockport, both my hon. Friends from Stockport are present and they will have their own comments. What is more, they are comments which I can confirm from my own experience as a Minister in the Department of the Environment. During that period, I had a meeting in this House with representatives of the Tory-controlled Stockport council because they had refused to build any houses of any kind and wanted to sell off their land to a private speculator. I had to speak to them fairly severely about that, and for a short time there was an improvement in their programme.

Mr. Tom McNally (Stockport, South)

If I may add to human knowledge, I can tell my right hon. Friend that Stockport council is one of the few to my knowledge to have been successfully prosecuted by a tenant for its deplorable standards of repair.

Mr. Kaufman

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for adding to the stock of knowledge of the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Arnold).

One of the reasons why Manchester's direct works department is criticised is that its standard is so high that if it falls below that standard people want to know why. That is quite right; and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland) has great experience of these matters.

Mr. Arnold

But why is it that, whenever I write to the Stockport council, at least I get a reply very quickly and at least the matter is looked into almost immediately? The problems which my hon. Friends and I have with Manchester's housing department are unending. It is difficult to get replies. We all have cases which run on for a long time, but I have one or two relating exclusively to the activities of Manchester's housing department which are deplorable beyond belief.

Mr. Kaufman

The reason why hon. Members get speedy replies from Stockport council is that it has so little to do. That being so, it is able to reply to hon. Members fairly quickly. But if Stockport council is so good, I wish that it would do something about the derelict land on the boundary with the Simon Freeman estate, in my constituency. My constituents in Simon Freeman Close have complained to me about the state in which the land just over the boundary has been left by the Stockport council

Mr. Montgomery

The right hon. Gentleman is making an attack on Stockport council and is telling us that apparently all the paragons of virtue exist in the Socialist group in the Manchester city council and how marvellous they are as landlords. Can he explain why the residents in the Turkey Lane flats were forced to take the city council to court to make it carry out essential repairs?

Mr. Kaufman

My hon. Friend who is the Member for that constituency is present and will be able to deal with that far more competently than I can. But I am not pretending that Manchester city council is a body of immaculate paragons. I have spent 10 years harassing Manchester city council to make sure that it does better. However, it starts from a very high base.

Mr. Robert Litherland (Manchester, Central)

Perhaps I may inform the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Montgomery) that the Turkey Lane estate is the epitome of system building and that this is what we have always fought against with the direct labour department. The people in the North-West want traditional-type housing of bricks and mortar. These people were the victims of a cheap package deal which was imposed on my constituency. It is a split-level French design, and it has been dumped in the middle of Manchester. But the tenants were quite right to take the council to court, and they were right to win their case. As I see it, the solution to this type of problem is the clearance of package deals which have been imposed on the city centre.

Mr. Kaufman

I think that that is an admirable lesson for the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale not to read out cases from a brief when we have an expert on the subject here to deal with these matters.

In Manchester, we have a great poverty problem. In two of the wards in my constituency, Ardwick and Longsight, between 40 and 49 per cent. of families are in poverty. In half a dozen wards represented by my right hon. and hon. Friends, the position is even worse. In Manchester, we have a model social services department which is a credit to a great city. It is seeking to contend with these problems. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe, with his great experience, will deal with these matters in more detail if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

What is depressing is that the new proposals for rate support grant will penalise Manchester's social services department just because it is better than those in most other places. That is the crazy way in which the grant is being structured. It is a crazy way to deal with a grave national problem.

One very mean-minded action of the Government is to fail to continue the Labour Government's electricity discount scheme and to replace it with a scheme which will help only one person out of every 13 helped by the Labour Government's scheme. This is happening at a time when this Government deliberately are driving up fuel prices for ideological reasons—not for any economic reason.

Wherever we look in Manchester, we see ourselves hit by the Government's policies. Every family will suffer in some way from the Government's demand that Manchester city council should reduce its expenditure by at least £15 million this year and next. This could affect not only children at school but evening play centres, youth clubs and holiday schemes. It could undermine essential public services.

Manchester has a proud record of helping its citizens. So far it has resisted the cuts that the Government are seeking to impose. To fight these policies a Campaign for Manchester has been sponsored by Manchester trades council, Manchester Labour Party, Manchester city council Labour group and Manchester Co-operative Party. Today this campaign has come to the House of Commons in the first major debate on Manchester that the House has seen. That campaign will continue until this Government are compelled to change their policies. But it will not be completed until this Government are driven from office.

I ask the House to support the motion.

12.17 pm
Mr. Churchill (Stretford)

This morning, the House has been treated to a speech by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) rich in humbug and hypocrisy, of which the right hon. Gentleman is a notorious past master. He tells us that he and his Socialist colleagues in the city of Manchester have launched some high-falutin' campaign for Manchester. Where was this campaign when he was in office? Where was the campaign when he was sitting on the Treasury Bench? He tells us about Labour's successes. How does he explain to his constituents and to the people of the city of Manchester that unemployment more than doubled during the Socialist Government's tenure of office? Where was he when unemployment was doubling? Most certainly he was not putting down motions on Friday mornings deploring this.

The right hon. Gentleman was a Minister. He was part and parcel of the shoddy, lame-duck Administration which imposed these Socialist policies on the people of Manchester that caused unemployment to double during that period. Where was the right hon. Gentleman when jobs in the defence industries up and down the country, but more particularly in the Greater Manchester area, were being slashed wholesale by his Government? Where was he when his hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun) was lecturing Hawker Siddeley workers at the aircraft factory at Chadderton who were shortly to become redundant and telling them in the true Marie Antoinette style that one has come to expect from Left-wing Socialists "Let them build caravans"? That is what he was telling men engaged in high industrial technology. The right hon. Gentleman should have come to this House today in sackcloth and ashes to make his apologies to the people of Manchester.

Mr. Kaufman

The hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) asks where I stood on defence matters at the time. I was having Cabinet discussions advocating that Nimrod should be built instead of the advance warning and control system. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman's attitude was to that, but as a result of what we proposed many jobs were created at Woodford. I was at British Aerospace in Preston announcing 385 orders for the Tornado, and those orders brought great prosperity to the workers of Preston. If the hon. Gentleman wants to know where I was during that time, I can tell him that I was working in my constituency, and when I explained the policies of the Labour Government to my constituents they increased my majority.

Mr. Churchill

How does the right hon. Gentleman explain the fact that his Government were responsible for the loss of 100,000 jobs in the defence industry? Why did his hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East need to propose to the workers of Chadderton that they should build caravans because there was so little work for them under the Labour Government?

The right hon. Gentleman asks where I stood on the Nimrod advance early warning system. My Conservative colleagues and I were largely instrumental in pressing the last Labour Government to abandon the idea of AWACS and make a firm decision in favour of the British-built Nimrod. As for British Aerospace at Preston and the Tornado order, why, if the right hon. Gentleman was so proud of his Government's record on that, was the slippage on the in-service date for Tornado allowed to be so great? Why was funding cut back, and why was more not done to make sure that this vital replacement aircraft for the Royal Air Force was produced on schedule?

The right hon. Gentleman spoke of Manchester as a Labour stronghold over the years. I do not dispute that. Since 1945—with the exception of the four years from 1967 to 1971—Manchester city has been under Socialist control. One need not walk far from the city centre to see the results of 10 years of Socialist control. One is faced with acres of derelict land. The city council sent in the bulldozers at the time that I was contesting the Manchester, Gorton seat. Square miles of houses were bulldozed. When one returns there today, one still sees vast derelict areas.

Such clearances by the Socialists are a denial of good planning. Instead of rebuilding those areas bit by bit, the Socialists bulldozed whole communities and moved them into overspill areas. That was the last thing that those people wanted. They were housed in high-rise blocks and taken away from their friends. Their shops and pubs were destroyed and they were made unhappy. That was the essence of Socialism and a denial of humanity.

Mr. Marks

It is obvious that when the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) failed to win the seat at Gorton he forgot it and hardly ever went there again. If he were to visit Gorton now, he would find that the acres of shocking nineteenth century houses have almost gone and that the remainder are being improved. In their place new houses have been built, none of which is higher than two storeys. They are surrounded by much pleasant landscaping and new industrial development. That is what the Labour Government helped Manchester city council to do in Gorton.

Mr. Churchill

I am glad to hear that there was such an improvement in the industrial situation in Gorton under the last Labour Government. If that is so, how is it that unemployment in Greater Manchester more than doubled under that Government? That hardly accords with the case which the hon. Gentleman seeks to advance.

The right hon. Member for Ardwick spoke with approval of comprehensive education in Manchester. Can he explain why the Socialist-controlled city council there has consistently refused to publish the numbers of GCE passes each year to parents and the general public so that they may compare those results with those obtained under other education systems? Examination results have been kept secret from the public because they have deteriorated from year to year. The 1979 GCE results for Manchester were the worst in England.

Mr. Ken Eastham (Manchester, Blackley)

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there are several leading Conservative-controlled authorities which do not publish their examination results? Is he further aware that the NUT and other teaching unions support such authorities?

Mr. Churchill

I note that the hon. Gentleman does not seek to defend the blanket of secrecy imposed on this very important matter by the Manchester city authorities. He argues that the same thing happens elsewhere. If that is so, I believe that it is wholly wrong.

Mr. Eastham rose—

Mr. Churchill

I have given way to the hon. Gentleman already. He can make his own speech. The public have a right to know about examination results. It is no part of the job of elected officials to keep the public in the dark. What has happened to education in Manchester—which is reflected in the declining standards—wholly justifies the Trafford and former Tameside councils in resisting the imposition of comprehensive education in their areas. Their stand was courageous in the face of a tide running strongly against them, particularly among education officers and officials up and down the country, and the children of Trafford and Tameside have been the beneficiaries of that stand.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke of housing. The administration of the Manchester city housing authority is truly appalling. Throughout 1979 staff relations have been bad and the department has experienced many unofficial strikes. The level of rent arrears is currently £3,350,000, and that figure is increasing. The charge to the rates of the housing revenue account has increased no less than ninety fold, from £200,000 in 1971 to its present level of £18,463,000

The housing waiting list stands at 31,000. The list is open to anybody, anywhere, irrespective of his housing need. The real scandal of Manchester city housing is that 6,000 to 7,000 council homes are kept vacant. That is more than enough to accommodate the 4,000 to 5,000 people who, according to the points system, are in real housing need.

It is time that the vast army of Socialist Members of Parliament who represent Manchester got off their backsides and went as a deputation to City Hall and the housing department to demand the resignation of those responsible for that most unsatisfactory situation, which is causing substantial hardship of the people of Manchester.

Mr. Kaufman

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for suggesting that I go with a deputation to the town hall. My hon. Friends who have been councillors know that I am rarely out of the town hall on deputations. I took a deputation of council house tenants there recently when Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw was the Lord Mayor. She knew so little about the area in which those constituents were living that in their presence she took out the A to Z guide for Manchester to look up their addresses.

Mr. Churchill

The righthon. Gentleman knows that the city of Manchester is Socialist-controlled and that his Socialist friends are responsible for the present scandalous state of affairs.

The Socialists are spendthrift in the extreme. They have plans for an international ice-skating centre, costing £14½ million at January 1981 prices. It is estimated that it will lose at least £250,000 a year, and possibly £500,000, once it is built. Are international ice-skating rinks the way to assist areas such as the right hon. Member for Ardwick's constituency, where, on his own admission, 40 per cent. of the people live in poverty? Would it not be better to help those people than to indulge in squandermania and civic pride?

Mr. Marks

Civic pride is not the reason for developing an ice-skating rink in Manchester. It will be a centre of excellence. The hon. Gentleman is active in winter sports—perhaps not in Manchester—and I should have thought that he would support such a centre.

Mr. Churchill

I am all in favour of ice-skating and other sporting facilities being established. However, we must recognise that at a time of severe economic constraint on the nation and individuals we should not squander taxpayers' and ratepayers' money. This is particularly so when, as all hon. Members who represent the Greater Manchester area know, squalor and misery exist within the bounds of the city.

Mr. Eastham rose—

Mr. Churchill

I have given way on numerous occasions, and I must press on with my speech.

The city of Manchester council held a dinner for the town clerk on 12 October last year. He was not even retiring but was moving to a more lucrative post north of the border. The cost of the dinner, including councillors' allowances and officers' time, was £5,000. Now the council proposes a jamboree to Mexico in October, at a cost of £4,000. Only this week the Socialist housing committee approved a visit to Jerusalem in November.

Since we are discussing the relative merits of Conservative and Socialist policies as they impinge upon the citizens of Greater Manchester, it is worth noting the record of Greater Manchester, which has had a Conservative-controlled council since May 1977. That council has decided to cut out what it was going to pay towards the ice-skating palace, the opera house and the Manchester art gallery extension, which would have cost about £25 million in capital expenditure. The council has shelved the Pic-Vic scheme, which was estimated to cost between £80million and £121 million, although £300 million would be a more realistic estimate.

Those decisions taken by the Conservative-controlled Greater Manchester council have put on to a sensible basis the finance of Greater Manchester within the Government's guidelines. Basically, the Conservatives have readjusted priorities. They have given a high priority to the maintenance of essential services such as the police, fire and transport, which have been fully maintained and, in some cases, strengthened. The Conservatives are giving maximum assistance to industry and trade so that they can expand, with a view to relieving the heavy unemployment created by the Socialist policies of recent years. That has been done by setting up an economic development association and an economic development corporation with £5 million capital. I am glad to say that that proposal has enjoyed the support even of the Labour group.

The burden of Socialist misery to which the people of Greater Manchester have been subjected recently is intolerable. In few homes is health not of paramount importance. Few things cause greater unhappiness to families than to be told that an operation that they know is needed cannot be performed for weeks or months, and sometimes even years. A couple of years ago a constituent was told by his doctor that he needed urgent treatment for a stomach problem and that he should go urgently for X-rays. Week after week he was told that that was not possible because the facilities were not available and that he was nowhere near the front of the queue. Eventually the notification arrived from the hospital that it was ready to receive him. It was opened by his widow on the day that he had died. All hon. Members will be determined to prevent such occurrences.

During the period of the last Labour Government, between June 1974 and March 1979 the waiting list for operations in Greater Manchester increased from 40,789 to 51,521—an increase of over 11,000. That means that 11,000 families have suffered unnecessarily as a result of policies for which the last Administration were responsible.

The right hon. Member for Ardwick spoke with passion about the number of people in Greater Manchester who are being made redundant. What standing does he have to talk of redundancies in Greater Manchester? Unemployment in Stretford, Urmston and Trafford Park increased from 1,276 to 2,843 between March 1974 and May 1979. So it increased two-and-a-half times under a Socialist Government. In the North-West, during the same period, unemployment increased from 97,323 to no less than 191,066. So let us have less of the humbug and sanctimonious hypocrisy to which we have been treated by the right hon. Member for Ardwick. No doubt his colleagues will seek to follow the same line.

The Government are determined to bring the legacy of inflation and the price rises that were kept back in the Socialist pipeline under control. That can only mean bringing excessive public expenditure within the bounds of reason and cutting out waste at all levels. It is no easy matter to turn back the tide of inflation at a time of increasing international energy costs, but we intend to achieve that during our period of office. We intend to create a basis for new expansion of British industry, of which the industry of Greater Manchester and Trafford Park in my constituency is so much part and parcel.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the handouts provided by the previous Conservative Administration. I was at the forefront of the campaign for Trafford Park and Greater Manchester to be put on an equal footing with the rest of the North-West, with the exception of the special development areas. I was glad when Tony Barber, in his Budget of 1972, announced that that was to be done.

It is important to us in Greater Manchester that there are no inducements just across the border with which we are unable to compete. We do not need lavish handouts from hard-pressed wage earners' tax contributions. We need to be put on an equal footing with the rest of the United Kingdom. We do not need to have liabilities imposed on us, as happened under the Labour Administration of 1964 to 1970. We remain on an equal footing with the rest of the North-West, with the exception of the special development areas on Merseyside, but that is something that we can live with in the months ahead. Above all, the prosperity of the industry in Manchester depends on the prosperity of British industry, and that is a high priority for the Conservative Government.

We intend to restore the maximum amount of freedom to our citizens. We intend to give every council tenant the right to own his or her own home. That commitment is warmly welcomed by the people of Britain, and I believe that it was largely instrumental in securing the Conservative victory at the recent general election. The electorate should take note of the reaffirmed commitment of the Opposition to strip council tenants of this right should the Labour Party ever, by mischance, be re-elected to govern this country. The Labour Party seeks to keep council tenants in a position of servile inferiority—a status equal to that suffered under the worst feudal landlords of 300 to 400 years ago. Therefore, it is with enthusiasm that I oppose the right hon. Gentleman's motion.

12.43 pm
Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe)

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) for having used his good fortune in the ballot to initiate this timely and important debate. He presented a most formidable indictment of the Government, and I entirely endorse his assessment of their policies.

As my right hon. Friend showed, the effect of the Government's policies on Manchester is deeply disturbing. He quite deliberately did not seek to deal with the whole of this subject in his speech. With his customary concern for others, he left the table, as it were, still feeling hungry. There is still a great deal for other right hon. and hon. Members to get their teeth into, and I hope that by the end of the day Ministers will see that the Government's policies are nowhere more ruinous than in their effect on Manchester.

My right hon. Friend kindly referred to my special interest in the public holding in Ferranti Ltd. The workpeople of that company have achieved a very great deal in recent years, both for the firm and for the taxpayer. I am deeply anxious that their view about the future of the public stake in the firm should be urgently and favourably considered by everyone concerned. In contact with Gruff Berry, the convener of the firm in Wythenshawe, I shall do everything possible to ensure that that happens. It is the merest requirement of justice that workpeople who have achieved so much should be fully and meaningfully consulted about the future of their firm.

My right hon. Friend referred to the Government's social priorities. Since taking office last May, they have pursued a policy of cuts for all. For the strong and the fortunate, they have cut taxes. For the sick and the disabled, the elderly and the poor, they have cut the social services. Tax cuts in the Budget gave an increase in take-home pay of 80 per cent. to those earning over £500 a week. Yet working people, in Manchester as elsewhere, are now to have their sick pay taxed when they are too ill to go to work. The richest 5 per cent. of taxpayers were treated to tax cuts of £1,400 million. Yet at the same time a health authority, faced with Government insistence on spending cuts, has had to contemplate the closure of a centre for the care of severely handicapped children.

In the city of Manchester we have led the country, over recent years, in the excellence of our social services for the old and the disabled, the lonely and the vulnerable. And this debate gives me the opportunity to pay warm tribute not only to successive chairmen of Manchester's social services committee for the leadership they have given but also to Mr. Clifford Hilditch, our director of social services, for the dedication and distinction with which he has, for so long, served disadvantaged people in our city.

Manchester is widely considered to be a "city with a heart" that puts humanity first and as one of high achievement in helping those most in need. This is a well-merited reputation that derives in no small measure from the fact that Labour's representatives at the town hall are unafraid to apply their principles.

There are clear differences between the political parties in Manchester, and they are about principles as well as policies. Like those who represent the city on the Opposition Benches in this House, our colleagues at the town hall utterly reject the Goverment's unprincipled attempt to throw the burden of economic recovery on to the weakest and poorest sections of the community. But the Government now seek to force Manchester council to cut vital services. In the process, the impression is given that the council is a big spender, whereas the truth is that the policies it pursues under Labour are not only humane but are also cost-effective and, indeed, a big saver for the taxpayer.

Let us take the example of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. Since 1970, when that Act became law, no fewer than 29,175 people have been registered as disabled under its provisions. Over 6,600 disabled people have been helped with the cost of a telephone. Almost 10,000 of Manchester's disabled people have had their homes adapted under the Act. My right hon. Friend referred to a disabled person in his constituency who has been helped to live an independent and dignified life. I am glad that he referred as warmly as he did to the humanity of the local authority that made that possible. Aids appropriate to their needs have been supplied to 23,288 disabled people in the city, and more than 4,500 holidays have been sponsored for them. These are only some of the items on which money is spent by Manchester city council under the Act, but they demonstrate very clearly the complete justification of Manchester's reputation for humanity.

By contrast, there are neighbouring authorities that have won very different reputations. Mr. Nigel Smith, the senior regional officer of the Spastics Society, said of neighbouring Trafford that it is leading in the stakes for the meanest authority in the land. He went on to say: There is now no social work support for physically and mentally handicapped people in Trafford, other than emergency treatment. Those are very strong and serious charges to come not from any political source but from an experienced and respected officer of a charity as important as the Spastics Society.