The Significance of the So-called Social Contract Queried

My Lords, I am bound to confess that in the abstract the prospect of the operations of the Pay Board in the past have never filled me with great enthusiasm. I used to listen to a great many of my friends—and I have many of them in the Labour Movement—assuring me that the policy of full employment would not work if there were not some statutory control of prices and incomes. How often have I sat in this Chamber and heard the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, expatiating in terms to that effect. I myself have always been sceptical. I have looked at the verdict of history—and after all there is a good deal of history in the background of attempts of this sort in different countries, and so far as I can see they have always in the end broken down. Our own experience in that respect simply confirms that impression.