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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 20.11.94
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: The Queen has spoken so we know what the
government is planning for the next session of Parliament. But do we know how
the opposition will oppose ... or what IT would do in the government's place?
I'll be talking to John Prescott, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, that's
after the News read by Huw Edwards.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: Not even the Tories' best friends would
say that the Queen's speech was packed with exciting new legislation from
beginning to end. Pretty boring. Predictable. Didn't give the Labour Party a
lot to get its teeth into ... and if it hadn't been for Mr Major helping them
out by making the European Finance Bill a matter of confidence in his
government, heaven knows what they'd have all found to talk about. But they DO
have a problem. The one thing that influences voters most of all - the state
of the economy - is moving the government's way and the Labour Party must have
a strategy for dealing with that. In the old days, there'd have been no
problem: if we tax people a little more we'll have a little more to spend. They
don't say that any longer. They daren't. So how are they going to deal with this
dilemma?
Well, John Prescott has written more
policy pamphlets than the rest of the Labour Party put together - or so it
seems - and he is now the Deputy Leader.
Mr Prescott, good morning.
JOHN PRESCOTT: Good morning. Could I just correct one
point there John?
HUMPHRYS: Please do.
PRESCOTT: We would very much look forward to
debating the Queen's speech. We think it's irrelevant to the nature of our
problems, but I think the whole business of the Euro-finance was geared up to
show that this Queen's speech was absolutely irrelevant, having had the Post
Office privatisation torn out of it. The job-seekers allowance is really only
about reducing the unemployed figures by another hundred thousand, thousand,
another fiddle, and saving hundreds of millions. Privatisation of gas - I
thought that was going to be competition anyway. Now they're going to
re-introduce competition, and then the cuts in the psychiatric hospitals,
closing them down, putting them into community care - I mean what we're dealing
with is problems that have come out of their kind of policies which we were
against at that time, so we're looking forward to debating that particular
Queen's speech.
HUMPHRYS: Not so much a correction - more a small
party political broadcast, but never mind, anyway ..
PRESCOTT: That was a correction, I mean we do want
to debate the Queen's speech, it's the Prime Minister who wants to get away
from the Queen's speech, all this business about the Euro-revolt and
threatening a vote of confidence if we actually defeat his European finance
bill. That was to take the attention off a government that's run out of steam.
HUMPHRYS: Well, let's talk about something that
everybody's attention is on, including yours, and that's the economy, and the
fact is, it is doing well isn't it? We have growth, we have inflation under
control, we have jobs being created. Now that is going to give you a problem
over the next couple of years.
PRESCOTT: Yes, if the belief is that the economy
has one objective, namely to achieve full employment we happen to believe that.
If it's simply going to rely on growth, low inflation and reducing the public
sector borrowing requirement, cuts in taxes, that will not provide the full
employment that was creating many of the problems in Britain today.
HUMPHRYS: But it's going in the right direction
isn't it, another forty thousand jobs this last month?
PRESCOTT: Well, I mean, I could argue about the
fiddles if you want on that but there has been some reduction. The point is
those in work have not being going up, so something's happening. They're
vanishing from one end of the spectrum and actually appearing in another, so
want I want to say is that if you look at the nature of the problem in the
nineteen-nineties, it's so fundamentally different from the rest of the period
that we've gone through, and you've got to deal with this feel-good factor.
Feel-good, feeling insecure, it's all to do with mass unemployment, and this
government says, even on it's own fiddled unemployment that they're going to
see unemployment of two to three million into the next century. Now I think
that's quite disastrous, and governments have got to address their mind to
that. Growth won't provide all the jobs, and low inflation's not going to
provide it either, and the trickle down from tax cuts which they now seem to be
shaping up themselves up for is not going to solve it either.
HUMPHYRS: You say fiddled figures on unemployment,
but you can't knock the fact that they are coming, that the figures are coming
down. As I say another forty thousand the last time we've seen cut after cut
after cut, for month after month after month.
PRESCOTT: Yes, but John this is pretty well
planned. I mean some if comes from increasing...(interruption) ...no, no, no,
no, this government won't believe in planning anything would it, but I mean if
you'd look at what is happening to the job seekers allowance, even the
government admit it will reduce the unemployment figures by a hundred thousand,
because it's going to lay down now that you can't have the benefits beyond six
months. The National Insurance system to which we all contribute is entitled to
benefits. They've got the benefit from twelve months to six months, not only
have they saved hundreds of millions of pounds, but for the next two years
they're going to reduce the unemployed figures by a hundred thousand, not a
hundred thousand people getting more jobs, they're just driven off the
register.
HUMPHRYS: What do you reckon the real unemployment
rate is now? How many people do you reckon are out of work.
PRESCOTT: I don't really know. It's considerably
higher than it is at the moment, and if you used ....
HUMPHYRS: Well, half a million higher?
PRESCOTT: Well, if you use the criteria we had in
1979, instead of it being two-and-a-half million it would nearer to
three-and-a-half million. Everybody's agreed on that and the changes that have
taken place, but to my mind it's millions. What worries me, not so much the
exact definition at the moment, but are we going to enter the next century, the
next millenium with over two to three million unemployed? That's going to
create tremendous problems on feel-good, it's going to do - morally it's very
bad to have such high levels of unemployment, it's inefficient and it's
creating havoc with the public finances. Now the government have got to make
up their minds how do you order public finances to sustain a sufficient growth
and a development in jobs if government has a responsibility to provide
employment, because I happen to believe they do.
HUMPHYRS: Exactly the problem that you yourselves
are going to be faced with, because you're not going to be allowed a great loss
of money either.
PRESCOTT: I agree. That's a very important point
that we actually believe you can get more actual people at work and we've given
some of those ideas, and Gordon Brown will be saying some more this week, but
one I've given to you before and still stands the test though government attack
it, the six billion pounds that are in the housing capital receipt funds, and a
quarter of a million building workers on the dole costing us two-and-a-half
billion pounds - quite frankly you can bring those together, not only would it
put unemployed people back to work paying tax, but it would reduce the
something like ten billion pounds we've paid to the private hotel business to
take all those people who are homeless on bed and breakfast. Now, it's those
kind of collective decisions, those decisions that have to take into account
how much the state pays, how much we pay for the dole, how much in housing
benefit, how much it's costing us to keep people unemployed, if you've idle
resources and people are out of work why don't we put them together. There's a
lot more things you can do, but that's certainly one of them.
HUMPHRYS: You say there's a lot more things you
can do. I mean the government argues about that anyway, and they make the
point, the Treasury makes the point .....
PRESCOTT: Yes because they don't choose to do it.
HUMPHYRS: ...... that it adds to borrowing, but
alright, anyway let's ...
PRESCOTT: No, now that's a very important point
there John. It adds to borrowing because the British government is the only
one that defines the public sector borrowing requirement as it does and indeed
I see in the paper today there's a letter here on the - a letter from Mr Hunt
to the Prime Minister about Post Office privatisation. If you'll allow a
little bit of the personality cult, it says that the press....
HUMPHRYS: I'm not sure that I can stop it.
PRESCOTT: Well, the Precott option is not
acceptable. What was the Prescott option about the privatisation of Post
Office, was simply to allow them to borrow against their assets so they can
make the investments in their future and still be publicly owned. They make it
clear they don't want to do that for ideological reasons, even though Mr
Heseltine does believe that in fact they need the money to invest. Now it's
that kind.....
HUMPHRYS: It's not often that your name gets
involved in a letter .....
PRESCOTT: No, but it's that kind of nonsense
really. I you want the Post Office, the public sector to expand it'll give us
more jobs, it'll give us wealth, it'll give us the tax creation powers that
will enable us to use money to put people back to work. It just needs a bit of
common sense and not the ideological nonsense that this government's identified
with.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, how else are you going to
create those jobs? You've talked about using those capital receipts from
council houses.
PRESCOTT: Okay, I'll give you another one if you
... any more, for...interesting is the one on the railways. We talk about
Railtrack. Now the priority is not spending hundreds of millions and paying
accountants to devise a way to privatise Railtrack. It's actually to invest in
those industries and invest in the railway industries. Again I suggested you
could lease them, so the taxpayer doesn't have to pay the extra money. You
borrow against the assets, whether it's stations, railway lines, or trains or
whatever it might be, we then get people in work in York and Crewe building the
trains, so that we don't have twenty-five year old trains down in network
South-East - when I was stuck on one last week for two hours, fifty yards
outside Victoria Station. That is - that not only provides jobs, it rebuilds
our manufacturing base. If we don't rebuild our manufacturing base in this
country whose investment levels are no more than they really were in 1979, then
we're in deep deep trouble.
HUMPHRYS: What else, what else, because none of
this is adding up to the kinds of figures it has to add up to?
PRESCOTT: Well, we're not going to be actually say
to you, here's the two-and-a-half million jobs. What we can do, and this is
important John - this government rejects the view that governments can
influence the level of employment higher than that that is dictated by the
market. We say it can, and some of the measures i've just given you, give an
indication how you can do that. If we can establish in the beginning that
government is a force for good, that it can increase the level of employment,
that it can get people paying tax and contributing to the wealth in society and
giving resources that are so necessary for government to meet the kind of
requirements in our welfare system that any modern economy has. The other one
I should have given you was Europe. That's a controversial one. the
infrastructure funds that were agreed at Edinburgh, the resources that are
available would allow Europe to borrow, to invest in a channel Tunnel rail link
or invest in the North-west coast line with all the demands for the
manufacturing that comes from that, and curiously enough that money would not
be considered part of the public sector borrowing fund.
HUMPHRYS: But you've already conceded that you're
not going to create the jobs out of investment, purely investment in these
terms, in the infrastructure.
PRESCOTT: That's a very interesting point about
the definition of investment John. If it's investment in the training of our
people I think we can, and then in...
HUMPHRYS: Naturally, it takes a long time as
you've accepted, but there are jobs to be created over a long period of time.
PRESCOTT: But I think what we have to accept which
is a very important point, that we mustn't stifle investment in manufacturing
simply to keep people in work. It's important we have the efficiency, the
research and development and the investment in those industries, because many
other countries who've got more successful economies have done it by making
sure its manufacturing is very effective, very efficient and well invested in.
We haven't done that. That creates the wealth - wait a minute - that goes on
to investment in the community to meeting services. There are a whole range of
things that we need to do in education, in the health services, in meeting
community care. There are all sorts of things that are still real jobs,
meeting real needs. We need to redefine the social productivity concepts in
the economy.
HUMPHRYS: But we are still talking about a very
samll percentage of what you say is three-and-a-half million people who are
unemployed.
PRESCOTT: Why don't you .........let's have a go
at that. I mean I noticed in the paper today....
HUMPHRYS: Well, by your own definition, I mean you
said we're not going to create all the jobs that we need.
PRESCOTT: Well, then let's just be a bit more
specific again. What I said, in the first term of a Labour government you
couldn't create three and four million jobs, and that's absolutely right and
nobody would believe us. I need to establish the fact though that governments
can make a difference. I notice in the paper that the environmental groups
following on the international reports, show they believe you could get seven
hundred thousand jobs in about the next ten-fifteen years.
HUMPHRYS: You're going to adopt the Green policy
then. You're going to take that ...
PRESCOTT: Well, we have one. Gordon Brown's been
puttng the environmental, don't let's knock it, it's a very important area.
HUMPHRYS: I'm not knocking anything, I'm...
PRESCOTT: No, no, but you knwo what I mean John.
There are important areas that we have to look around, because if the market
could create its level of investment and jobs that it creates, and government
have to do more than the market, it has to look to those areas that for one
reason or another the market has not sought to invest in that could create work
and meet real needs and that's the challenge for government
HUMPHRYS: But there are other ways that you can
create jobs, are there not?
PRESCOTT: Yes, I think there are - I've given you
quite a few of them to get started with.
HUMPHRYS: It's just that what you haven't given me
is the suggestion, and you made it in an important speech recently that society
should tolerate relative inefficiency in labour intensive sectors - I quote
from your speech.
PRESCOTT: I think I was quoting what the Japanese
economy had done. I've looked at a number of economies and said to them, why
are some more successful in retaining high levels of growth, wealth creation
and also creating an awful lot of jobs. When you look at Japan, it was very
noticeable that they have higher levels of productivity than we have in our
manufacturing, a lot less lower productivity in the community care and
community facilities. Now what I was suggesting in that , it seems sometimes,
-take education as a good example. We tend to feel that economic productivity
in this country is that less teachers involved and bigger sized classes, you've
achieved your economic productivity, you're getting it for less, but we know
that smaller classes as private schools all too often show us, smaller classes
with more teachers has a greater productivity for the child. It's their
education, it's their investment, and we're all agreed that's a critical area
for us, intelligence and investment in it.
HUMPHRYS: So more teachers?
PRESCOTT: Well, you could well say that. Yes, you
could get better response from education if we could have smaller classes. Now
how you organise that, whether that means more teachers or the organisation of
education is quite important...
HUMPHRYS: But that doesn't fit into this category
of inefficiency does it, relative inefficiency, and that is your phrase isn't
it, not mine.
PRESCOTT: Well, let me just tell you. I just used
the teachers as one example. I mean you could use it for nurses for example
in hospitals. It's said for example ....
HUMPHRYS: Or porters maybe?
PRESCOTT: Well, you can go through a number of
areas but take hospitals - we now know there are twenty five thousand nurses
less but twenty five thousand managers more because we've simply chosen in the
Health Service to go for layers of bureaucracy in order to meet a market
ideological requirement that there should be some competition. I'm sure people
in this country would prefer to have more nurses on the wards than more
accountants doing the job to meet the market system.
HUMPHRYS: And what about local authorities? More
road sweepers on the streets, maybe? More people cutting the verges instead of
spending fifty thousand quid on a high powered mower, or something?
PRESCOTT: Or somebody looking for reducing police
on the beat so we get less crime. But if you look at the...
HUMPHRYS: But that's the kind of thing you're
looking at, is it?
PRESCOTT: But, no, I mean, I think governments
must open their minds to all the possibilities. But the Queen's Speech says,
doesn't it? It says that we're going to do more in community care to deal with
those people who have been discharged from psychiatric hospitals because the
Government are saving money on closing down hospitals, discharging them into
the community - and there's something to be said for the argument - but if you
don't give the resources to the people in the community then you have those
terrible incidents that we've found of people who shouldn't be released into
the community - in some cases have been involved in murder and rape, just the
odd cases but enough to cause us concern; the Queen's Speech now is suggesting
more resources should be found in the community to deal with this problem. Now
they're doing it themselves. Let me give you ...
HUMPHRYS: Is that what Tony Benn means when he
talks about 'the community'?
PRESCOTT: Well, it's very much identifiable as a
community, whether it means in this he's identifying a collective provision,
whether by the state or by the community. But let me give you another one.
The local authorities now are producing what they call city challenges and
regeneration schemes. The Government has actually gone to local authorities
and said: Can you put packages together with the public and private sector -
something Labour authorities were doing ten/fifteen years ago - put them
together and create work, meet real needs? Now the Government's actually doing
that. The only problem is they get a hundred local authorities to produce
schemes which are effected and only pinch ten of them because they are not
prepared to put the resources into it. But they don't doubt that local
authorities can contribute to develop the economic prosperity, developing
(phon) partnership between the public and the private sector and meeting real
needs and jobs in communities.
HUMPHRYS: So you would take another look at
competitive tendering, for instance?
PRESCOTT: Yes, I think there is a lot to be said
for that. I mean, that's the same case as the minimum wage argument. If you
look...I want efficiencies, let me make clear about that and that's what the
Audit Commission can do and can go in and say, if you're producing a service,
for example rubbish, collecting rubbish, or some services which is less
efficient than others, then we're entitled to say we want the maximum
efficiency for public money.
HUMPHRYS: But you don't create the maximum
employment though, do you.
PRESCOTT: Well, let me just ask you, let me just
give you the point. And if you look at the minimum wage one, because what has
happened with competitive tendering is they've done it at the expense by
replacing full-time by part-time labour, cutting out the kind of employment
conditions that are involved. Now we believe that's wrong and the consequence
is you begin to pay more for it, either in the quality of the service or indeed
with minimum wages. If you look at the wage councils that have been reduced by
this Government believing it would produce more jobs, it hasn't produced more
jobs, it's forced the wage levels down from two to three pounds down to a
pound, and lo and behold what has happened? The taxpayer is now paying
something getting on to two billion pounds - which has doubled in a number of
years - to actually pay for low pay - in industries which used to pay higher
level till they deregulated it! Why should the taxpayer find up to two billion
pounds in family credit when that money could be used to get people back to
work instead of subsidising poverty pay?
HUMPHRYS: All right, but what you're talking about
- and let's be quite clear about this - is using local authority revenue, for
instance, to create jobs. And you are unashamed about that. You are saying
that if you have to tolerate certain inefficiencies to do that that is
absolutely fine.
PRESCOTT: No, no, I say that in meeting real needs
the manufacturer's got to create the wealth, right. In all areas. How do you
measure the productivity of a nurse? How do you do somebody in community care?
How do you do it in teaching?
HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but you've given me some
examples..
PRESCOTT: But we already do that at the moment.
We don't measure it totally by that narrow criteria of economics. What we do
say: it's the service the community wants that we need to provide and we should
do it efficiently. Nobody's suggesting that we can live without them.
HUMPHRYS: Now, this is where I'm puzzled because
you say we should do it efficiently and yet you use this phrase 'relative
inefficiency' in this speech.
PRESCOTT: Well let me have a go at some of them.
If you look at the competitive tendering business in some cases where it's gone
to part-time labour, that means they avoid paying the National Insurance
payments, right, they use people who are going to take it as a second job which
is often the case, or forced to live on poverty pay, which the taxpayer has to
make the difference up on. If that was full-time work, meeting the employment
conditions and the proper wage, there would be less burden on the taxpayer.
Now I don't think that's a very efficient way of producing work.
HUMPHRYS: All right, and if those full-time
workers ended up not working a full forty hour week - maybe they only had
enough work to do thirty hours a week or something - that would be relative
inefficiency but they would be in employment and that would be okay from your
point of view because that would be...
PRESCOTT: Well it's also expensive from the
taxpayer's point of view because if you make a judgement that income shouldn't
fall below a certain level - as happened in some of these industries - the
taxpayer comes along with a family credit and it's now doubling. It's the
stupidity of the Government's view about what it does with public finances. If
you look at the housing at the moment, which is a similar case: local
authorities used to provide it - they've stopped them building it, pass it over
to the actual private sector, believe in a market rented theory. We're now
paying billions of pounds to make the difference up to pay for housing
accommodation far more expensive than could have been provided by the public
sector.
HUMPHRYS: So you would use public finances to
create jobs? Let's be quite clear about that.
PRESCOTT: It's already using public finances.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Alright. You would use
more of it?
PRESCOTT: Well, I mean, it's a judgement
governments have to make between the balance. The Housing Programme is public
money. It's public money. Local Authorities don't generate their own money,
they raise it from people, either from governments centrally giving it to them
as their contribution to local authority financing or by a council tax, so
public money is used by both local governments and governments. What I am
saying is, we shouldn't be indifferent to the consequence of having a narrow
pursuit of costs.
HUMPHRYS: Yeah.
PRESCOTT: Give you an example. Let me give you
one: The Treasury - the Treasury wanted to save two hundred million pounds on
the bus industry, on transport subsidies. So they privatised it and they
deregulated it. What happened? You get a lot of buses at the peak time,
nothing on the Saturday and Sunday, a breakdown in public transport system -
which they are now trying to reverse. But what happens? The Treasury save two
hundred million pounds but it wiped out the whole manufacturing bus industry -
which is an important area for us - because nobody could afford to buy buses
because they'd introduced deregulation and competition.
HUMPHRYS: Right.
PRESCOTT: Whatever you do has a consequence for
jobs and public expenditure.
HUMPHRYS: And you would redress the balance by
using public money to create jobs? That's-
PRESCOTT: Well if we put employment at the top of
the list, as we do,
HUMPHRYS: Which you said you do - yes.
PRESCOTT: and if we say that government can effect
a higher level of employment than the private sector can, then in the provision
of those services it becomes quite important...
HUMPHRYS: There's no escaping it, is there?
PRESCOTT: Well, in the provision of services,
public money is used in housing, in post offices. In the post office we raise
a certain amount and they take taxation from the public services. Transport -
we already are going to agree that a billion pounds, whether it's publicly or
private, will be pumped into the railway system whoever owns it. So we have to
ask ourselves: "Why do we give/put public money in? Is it good value? And
does it contribute to increasing employment?"
HUMPHRYS: But you've got to get - and it is your
absolute number one priority, you've made it clear time and time again that
full employment is your priority and you told me there are three and a half
million people out of work in this country. Therefore, a lot of jobs have got
to be created. You are quite prepared to say on behalf of the Labour Party, if
it means spending more money to create those jobs - and you put the word
'inefficient'...
PRESCOTT: ......... Using it differently than
we've got at the moment. This Government has wasted billions on all sorts of
things. I will leave aside the tax cuts because you and Gordon Brown have had
exchanges about that. If I take the point ... or tax avoidance ... If I take
the way they've spent money on the poll tax where ten billion is lost, hundreds
of billions on the preparing for the privatisation of railways. I could show
you that we could use money much more effectively, first point. Secondly, if
these industries want to borrow to invest and create jobs I've told you, if we
change the Treasury rules the Prescott Option in the letter that's here for the
Cabinet creates work and at no cost to the taxpayer.
HUMPHRYS: So it wouldn't cost an extra penny?
None of this (break in tape). Well you're talking about a specific case -
dealing with the post office - I'm talking about three and a half million
people out of work in Britain today and you're saying...
PRESCOTT: And, how much does that cost us?
HUMPHRYS: Well, that isn't the point because
sooner or later you may be able to create the jobs long-term but in the
short-term...
PRESCOTT: No, no, no, John, you know it costs us -
under Government's own admission - something like twenty five billion pounds to
keep this level of unemployment we've got at the moment. It's just absolutely
stupid to pay to keep them idle when you can possibly pay to put them back to
work, paying tax and National Insurance.
HUMPHRYS: But it costs money to...
PRESCOTT: It's just sound common sense.
HUMPHRYS: In the long run, of course, but it costs
money...it is going to cost money to get them back into work.
PRESCOTT: Yes, but money that's being wasted can
be translated into effective use of putting them back to work.
HUMPHRYS: And that's going to deal with this three
and a half million. It isn't credible, is it?
PRESCOTT: No I don't. I wanted to establish the
one simple point that government can make a difference to the level of
employment.
HUMPHRYS: Make a difference, but you're not
talking about making a difference,
PRESCOTT: No.
HUMPHRYS: Mr Prescott, you're talking about
restoring-
PRESCOTT: Yes, I know.
HUMPHRYS: -full employment to this country - 'my
number one priority', not as 'an objective of government policy',
PRESCOTT: No, no.
HUMPHRYS: -as 'our number one priority' 'THE
number one priority'.
PRESCOTT: Well a high priority, but a government
policy.
HUMPHRYS: Oh, no, no, no. You've not said a high
priority-
PRESCOTT: I'm not going to play around with the
priority and I'm not trying to indicate it's any less of a priority.
HUMPHRYS: Well, OK. Fine. But, you say-
PRESCOTT: I am not playing around with words here.
HUMPHRYS: -'a priority' and in the past you've
said 'the priority'.
PRESCOTT: I know, but what I did make clear - well
'the priority' I'm not going to quibble about that, but I said also you can't
get it in five years. I seek to achieve and the Labour Party would want to
achieve in a Labour Government that a government can make a difference to the
level of employment. This government rejects that view. In its evidence to
the Commission it says: "Governments can't influence the level". We dispute
that.
HUMPHRYS: Right.
PRESCOTT: If we establish that more people can get
back to work, paying tax and National Insurance, which in some cases won't cost
us money, but the reorder of priorities and policies and different forms of
expenditure which doesn't cost us a penny more, then I think we will have said
to the people in this country: Governments can do it. Now it's much more
difficult, get onto the next stage so everybody can get back to work.
HUMPHRYS: And, as an earnest of your intent you do
want there to be a target set by an incoming Labour Government?
PRESCOTT: Well a target in the sense that I don't
think you could say it would be one million/two million or whatever it is.
HUMPHRYS: But, you want a target?
PRESCOTT: I want to establish the principle. I
want to look at the areas of housing. For example, if I say we are going to do
housing and it's our Party's policy at the moment, we've got a quarter of a
million building workers, that amount of money buys you a proportion of houses
and it requires so many of building workers. We will look at those blocks to
see just how we can contribute to that. Gordon Brown this week will be setting
out some of these figures and some of these ideas, for example, of the way
forward within government expenditure at the present time is how you can get
people back to work.
HUMPHRYS: So you will add up all those figures and
you will say, before the next election, this is the target. I know you are not
prepared to give me a target now because if you were I'd ask you, but you
won't, so...
PRESCOTT: No, I am not the Labour Party, I may be
a Deputy...
HUMPHRYS: Well, Deputy Leader...
PRESCOTT: Well, I'm fine but we are the party that
make our decisions through policy decisions and we are going to be ... No, I've
always said this, John. We have to go through...
HUMPHRYS: You said you want a target. Clearly.
PRESCOTT: I believe there's an argument for
targets, yes, but let me tell you the process of which we are embarked upon to
do. We agreed that we would take our economic policies through our commission
for a statement next year. These arguments will take place. I'm committed,
the Party's committed, to reducing mass unemployment and giving it as an
objective to government to say to this country, governments can make a
difference to the level of employment and by God we intend to do it.
HUMPHRYS: John Prescott, thank you very much.
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