Pre-Budget Report

We should not. We started then from a very different situation, with massive over-manning in both the public and private sectors. Because of changes in the economy and in trade union law, that situation was seen to change. That happened in other countries that moved from a very socialised economy to a more liberal one, as a result of being too socialised and too syndicated in the first place—of having that mass over-manning. My point was that the contraction in the deficit produced an expansion in output of activity. That surely meant that there was less unemployment than there would otherwise have been, unless the Financial Secretary is saying that we should—well, I cannot see any alternative.