Jobs promised by Chancellor

Press, 11 October 1985, Page 6

Jobs promised by Chancellor

NZPA-Reuter Blackpool Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Nigel Lawson, has promised the governing Conservative Party that the country will have more jobs and lower inflation by next year. Responding yesterday to critics of the Government’s economic policy in a speech to the party’s annual conference in Blackpool, Mr Lawson said that the number of people working had risen 600,000 since the Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, began her second term in 1983. “That’s more than in the whole of the Common Market put together. And I expect the numbers in work to go on rising,” Mr Lawson said.

He also predicted that inflation would fall from around 6 per cent to 5 per cent by the end of this year and below 4 per cent next year. Mr Lawson’s upbeat speech coincided with a new opinion poll, which indicated

that Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives were losing ground to the opposition Labour Party. The poll, in the pro-Con-servative “Daily Mail” newspaper, showed Labour with a 5 per cent lead over the Conservatives. The Centrist Alliance parties were third.

The poll also noted that a majority of voters, 51 per cent, believed Mrs Thatcher should retire before the next election, in 1987 or 1988.

“The bad news is confirmation of the fears of some senior Ministers that Mrs Thatcher may be reaching the end of her shelf-life,” the “Mail” said. Mr Lawson was heckled when he said of unemployment: “It will come down.” A group of Young Conservatives shouted: “When, when?” "The Chancellor’s speech was far too bland. He didn’t tell us what he was going to. do about unemployment,” said one of the protesters, Charles Elliott.