Hailsham Wants To Rebuild Britain

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30062, 21 February 1963, Page 15

Hailsham Wants To Rebuild Britain

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, February 20. The British Government would in future have to make employment in Britain a conscious part of its policy, Lord Hailshain, a Cabinet Minister, told the House of Lords last night.

Britain, he said, was at the end of an epoch which began in 1945 and ended with her abortive attempt to enter the Common Market. In 1944, Sir Winston Churchill's coalition Government had accepted a policy of a high and stable level of employment. That policy, with more than 800,000 unemployed, was going to be put to the test for the first time, he said.

Alarmed by the rising unemployment figures, the Government recently asked Lord Hailsham, the Minister for Science, to investigate one of the unemployment blackspots, north-east England and suggest remedies. He has just returned to make his report. Lord Hailsham said Britain had the industrial capacity to

rebuild and remodel th* country on lines the Government would like to see in the next 30 years.

“What we do now will determine the physical and moral shape of Britain which exists at the beginning of the twenty-first Century—roads, railways, airports, docks, ports, houses, new towns, hospitals and schools.” This was the first time since the war that she had enough apare labour and time to take a thorough took at her citie* and rebuild them on modern lines.

This was no system of relief works, he said. "It is something which I have been longing for year* to say and do. It may be the answer or part of the answer to th* recession in our heavy industry."