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Unemployment in the UK

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen). Although I did not agree with everything he said, I certainly agreed with him on the subject of the closure of jobcentres. It seems to be a strange time to be closing jobcentres when it looks as though there will unfortunately be a lot more unemployment. I noted that unemployment in Ynys Môn increased by 7.8 per cent. last year, so the trend is going up. I also want to refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests. I thought that the debate was generally most interesting and that it tried to be constructive where possible. The most important issue to come out of the debate was the fact that the shadow Secretary of State pledged the Conservative party to a chapter 11 proposal, but I do not think that the Secretary of State understood the situation. Chapter 11 gives companies the time to reconstruct, to go to court, to get the whole thing on a level playing field, to get their business in order and to continue to trade. That does not happen in this country when companies go into administration. As my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) said, the banks come along and close the company down, and there is no method to save that company. That, of course, leads to increased unemployment. I thought that those on the Government Front Bench were very complacent about the situation. We clearly have a boom-and-bust situation. I know that the Prime Minister kept saying that that would never happen, but if we are not careful, we will have the worst bust for more than 100 years. Unless a Government recognise a problem, they will never put it right. Now I have said that, I hope that I can be more constructive in my comments. I have heard time and again how the wicked Tories left the country in a terrible mess last century, in 1997, how everything was evil and how it was terrible for people, so I thought that I had better look up the unemployment figures for Wellingborough in August 1997. Unemployment then was at 1,678. That must have been terrible, because we have heard time and again that it was the pits and that the whole world was going down at that time. Unfortunately, unemployment in Wellingborough today is at 1,710, an increase since 1997. Instead of there being a wonderful economic miracle up until now, the economy in Wellingborough has gone backwards. If it has gone backwards when there have been good times, what on earth will happen during the bad times that are just around the corner? Let me make a point on a serious note, which I hope will worry the whole House. We have in Wellingborough a good multicultural society. We have people from all races in the town and we have had for a long time. I run a ““Listening to Wellingborough and Rushden”” survey, which tracks people's concerns. Until a few months ago, immigration never appeared in that survey as a problem. It is now coming out as the first or second issue. I could not understand how that could have changed, but it is actually to do with unemployment. If we look behind the headline subject of immigration as the No. 1 issue, unemployment is the problem. Let me give an example. A new supermarket opened in the town and needed to take people on. Let us imagine that we were the manager of that store. A Polish worker might come along, smartly dressed, and say, ““I used to work in a store in Poland. Please give me as much overtime as possible. I don't mind working nights; please give me as much work as possible.”” On the other hand, someone from the jobcentre might first ask, ““How much holiday will I have?”” and say, ““I can't possibly work weekends.”” It would not be unreasonable as store manager to give the job to the Polish worker. The problem is that the person from the jobcentre, who is British, would get offended. It takes only a few evil people from the British National party to come along and exploit that situation. We never had any problem with the BNP until a few months ago. A BNP candidate stood in a safe Conservative ward, which we won quite securely. However, the Labour party, the traditional party that came second, was pushed into third place. So we have gone from being a town that did not have a problem to being one that does. I am sure that that problem is being repeated across the country. I do not know the solution, but it is a real problem. Unemployment is going up, while migrant workers are coming in, and the BNP says that they are stealing British jobs. That is not true, but that is what the BNP makes out, and the worse the recession and unemployment become, the greater is the danger that those evil extremists will come into our society. I hope that we can work together to address that problem. A particular additional problem in Wellingborough is that we are part of a growth area. The existence of lots of new houses and new migrant workers means that people can see the change that is taking place, and I have to tell the Minister and other colleagues that we must look at the problem. We must not be scared to address it, as we must find some solution to it.