Coss
The prospects for jobs featured at to-day's news conferences with Mr. Varley focussing on the 300,000 workers whose firms depend, to some extent, on money from the National Enterprize Board. Labour would give the N.E.B. extra money to disperse. The Conservatives, who would tail off all industrial grants, would restrict its activities or, according to Mr. Varley, cripple it and reduce it to a casualty clearance ward.
Varley
How can the National Enterprize Board companies, British Aerospace, British Shipbuilders, be expected to win new orders, plan future investment, maintain morale, when management and workforce and customers don't know who will own them or who will run them, and our international competitors must look at the Tory plans for industry and rub their hands with delight?
Coss
One major new N.E.B. initiative's been the firm of INMOS which it hopes will form the basis of a whole new industry in electronic micro-processors. Mr. Varley said the Conservatives had the silly and dangerous intention of killing off what he agreed was a very high risk venture. Well, Mrs. Thatcher at her conference said they'd look at it if they came to power, but she thought micro-chips should be developed by the exports in private industry where there was no shortage of capital, and as for the N.E.B. generally:
Thatcher
We are certainly not going to have the N.E.B. having the vast sums of extra money which Labour has provided which has to be provided from companies which are actually making profits out of the business they know. Isn't it better to leave some of that money in the companies who are making the profits so that they can expand and make more profits rather than take that money out and put it into the hands of people who, by definition, have not spent a great deal of time in that particular industry or commerce which they are purporting to support? [end p1]
(2) BBC Television Archive: OUP transcriptDavid Holmes, BBC
Mrs Thatcher had breezed into the news conference at party headquarters this morning and told us robustly that hers was the party of positive policies—policies to convert what she sees as a sick economy into a healthy one. But putting that emphasis on the positive side of things tended to show up the cautious nature of the answers any attacking leader has to give about the detail of their General Election appeal. Such an appeal is usually full on outline and political aim, not so full on detail. So it was today. Mrs Thatcher, questioned once again about how much VAT would need to go up to pay for income tax cuts, how much she saw her policies putting up prices, how much income tax would go down, gave skilful but not very informative answers. She concentrated instead on how uninformative, even misleading Mr Healey could be about such things. And he had access to the books:
MT
Now I haven't seen the books. We know our broad strategy and our broad policies. It's like a company taking over another one. No company managing director taking over another one in his sane senses would tell you exactly what he's going to do in each department. Of course he couldn't. He couldn't until he'd seen the books, but he could tell you when a company was being wrongly run. He could tell you what the strategy was to get it right. That's what we're doing.
David Holmes, BBC
She was non-committal about the fate of INMOS itself:
MT
We'll have a look at it, we'll have a look at it. But I myself believe, and I will tell you believe fervently, that if there was a very good future in that, then those firms who are involved in it, who have very considerable capital at their disposal, would have gone ahead and done it. And it does not help British industry if we have to drain out even more profits from the successful companies to add to the losses which we already have to finance, uh, in far too great an amount already. [end p2]
(3) Conservative Party Archive: BBC TV Campaign Report (2250–2330) 25 April 1979Dimbleby
With seven days to go—are there signs of a change in the campaign? Today's pollsshow the gap between the Parties is narrowing. The Tories are calling that picture more realistic—saying they never believed in the huge lead that some of the polls were showing. But Labour is encouraged and believes the constant questioning of the Tories over how they'll pay for their tax cuts is beginning to pay off. Certainly Mrs. Thatcher seemed to be less in control of the Conservative's press conference this morning. Where before she briskly dominated proceedings, today she seemed somewhat on the defensive—as journalists persisted with their questions in demanding more details of those promised Income Tax cuts. Couldn't she take up Mr. Callaghan 's suggestion and look at the Treasury books, she was asked?
Mrs. Thatcher
Do you know anything about Treasury books? Do you think that with the rest, do you think that with a few days' time?… .
Reporter
We're hoping you can tell us something about it … [end p3]
Mrs. Thatcher
Yeah, well, yes, well we haven't, as a matter of fact, got a person who's been with us in the Treasury—but we do, in fact, have quite a number of those. It was a ludicrous suggestion. The idea that you could just go in and pick up figures and do it. Do you know Mr. Healey has altered his mind fifteen times about budgets? He can't stick at one for more than three months. I'm so glad you have very much more faith in us. Very well placed. Yes— [someone tries to ask a question] Sorry—yes.
Reporter
Sir Geoffrey, Sir Geoffrey, you don't need to see the books to know that it will cost very nearly a billion pounds to implement the Rooker-Wise amendments on which you're pledged to improve. [end p4]
(4) BBC Television Archive: OUP transcript first extractQuestioner
Sir Geoffrey, you don't need to see the books to know that it will cost very nearly a billion pounds to implement the Rooker-Wise amendments on which you're pledged to improve. You don't need to see the books to know that it will cost £400 million for every penny that you want to knock off Income Tax.
MT
No.
Questioner
Surely you can give us some idea of where those sorts of sums of money are going to come from without seeing the books in detail at this stage?
Sir Geoffrey Howe
No, one needs more than that, does one not? One needs also to see the books in order to understand how much the present Government are planning to borrow, what the predictions are, how much there is room for manoeuvre on that during the year immediately ahead, quite apart from beyond that. One has got to look at the thing as a total, and if Denis Healey is unprepared, having been in the Treasury for the last five years, to vouchsafe any details of what he has in mind, I really don't see why we should be pressed to produce details before we've even arrived there at all.
But I may say this, that Denis Healey, with his first two budgets, achieved the characteristic Labour double, because he increased indirect taxes in his first two proper budgets—that's leaving aside the interim ones on the way—he increased indirect taxation, so as to put prices up by six and a half per cent, and at the same time, increased personal taxation through this income tax by five pence in the pound. That is the kind of catastrophic double we do not intend to follow.
We do intend to achieve the reductions in personal taxation, and you will have to await our first budget before the details are vouchsafed to you.
MT
Can I just add one thing, because I notice the questioning is all on what I call tramlines, with the idea that we're going to carry on exactly as we have been under Labour, with a cake of the exactly same size, which will be a smaller size compared with Europe as they go steadily forward and we stay the same or decline. With respect, the point is that unless you give some incentives, you will not get the increased output.
Now, so many of our Labour opponents try to avoid the real long period of Tory post-war government. The characteristic of that period, when we really got stuck in continuously for thirteen years, was a steadily increasing size of cake each and every year. It was achieved by having lower levels of personal tax than we've got now. The result of that was an increased output each year. Out of that increased output you could reduce taxation and spend more money on the social services. That was true Tory policy. Out of sound financial policies, you had a level of inflation where I remember Harold Macmillan one year got it down to absolutely no increase at all, but on average it was two and a half per cent, and you had a level of unemployment about two and a half per cent. That was true Tory policy and practice. My worry is that some people have got so [end p5] used to the tramlines of Socialism that they can't get off. But it never occurs to them that this country might actually do better if it has some incentives. And so, you think a penny off here means a penny on there. Just enlarge your ideas of what this country can do if it has a different change of policy.
second extractMT
… in a particular year, can in fact last more than two years. It breaks down after two years, because it's too rigid. All the people upon whom industry depends, which are your differentials, your differential … skilled people, they get a bad deal and it breaks down. Now that is a matter of observation. I have no intention of introducing a statutory incomes policy, because I think, myself, after the experience we've had, it's wrong to try to embody that kind of policy in law. And it brings people slap into conflict with the law whereas in fact they may sometimes have occasion to be in conflict with the policy. A freeze, I do not regard as an incomes policy. A freeze is a very very temporary measure during which you revise and look at your policies, financial policies, in the light of all the circumstances. A freeze I've never regarded as an incomes policy. It's a very short, temporary, emergency measure.
Questioner
But if you had a freeze, and you don't rule that out, you yourself have said that you would then have to come slowly out of a freeze. Aren't you then into an incomes policy?
MT
No, I don't think so. No, you're not. And I think this is … you have a freeze and you certainly have one gentle phase out. But what I'm trying to say, and have consistently said, is that all experience shows that if you … tape ends