Scotland (Hansard, 28 April 1960)

HC Deb 28 April 1960 vol 622 cc369-79 369

§ 17. Mr. Willis
asked the President of the Board of Trade how many new jobs were provided in Scotland in 1959; and how many it is expected to provide in 1960.

§ Mr. Maudling
Completed industrial buildings for which industrial developments certificates were granted were expected to provide approximately 6,000 new jobs in 1959 and, as far as at present can be estimated, over 7,000 new jobs will be provided in 1960.

§ Mr. Willis
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Scotland needs 12,500 jobs every year just to keep pace with England, never mind deal with the unemployment situation? Will the right hon. Gentleman deal with the matter much more urgently than the Government are dealing with it at present?

§ Mr. Maudling
I agree that we have a long way to go in Scotland. I am glad to say that the unemployment figures there have improved recently, but there is a great deal more to be done.

§ 18. Mr. Willis
asked the President of the Board of Trade what proposals he now has for seeking to relieve unemployment in Scotland by the establishment of State-sponsored industries.

§ Mr. Maudling
I am not sure what the hon. Member has in mind in referring to State-sponsored industries, but the Board of Trade will continue to use their powers under the Local Employment Act to encourage industrial development in Scotland.

§ Mr. Willis
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we mean public 370 industries? In view of the fact that Governments have been trying to induce industry to come to Scotland for 15 years and that his own Government have been trying to persuade industry to go there for almost 10 years and that at the end of all this we are worse off than we were at the beginning, would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that it is time that the Government really tried to apply a few new ideas? Is he aware that the unemployed in Scotland do not mind whether they work for public industry or for free enterprise?

§ Mr. Maudling
The fact is that nationalised industries are by and large basic services which are located naturally, for example, coal mining where there is coal and transport where there is the requirement. It is far more difficult to get basic industries and services to operate on a location policy than it is in the case of manufactures.

§ 24 and 25. Mr. Millan
asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) what proportion of the total output of Great Britain's chemical and allied industries was produced in Scotland in 1948 and in 1959;
(2) if he will state the percentage increase or decrease in output of the chemical and allied industries in Scotland between 1948 and 1959; and if he will compare Scottish growth or decline over this period with that of the rest of Great Britain.

§ 26 and 27. Mr. Lawson
asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) what proportion of the total output of Great Britain's engineering and electrical goods industries was produced in Scotland in 1948 and in 1959;
(2) if he will state the percentage increase or decrease in output of the engineering and electrical goods industries in Scotland between 1948 and 1959; and if he will compare Scottish growth or decline over this period with that of the rest of Great Britain.

§ 28 and 29. Mr. Bence
asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) if he will state the percentage increase or decrease in output of the shipbuilding and marine engineering industries in Scotland between 1948 and 1959; and if he will compare Scottish growth or decline over this period with that of the rest of the United Kingdom;
371 (2) what proportion of the total output of Great Britain's shipbuilding and marine engineering industries was produced in Scotland in 1948 and in 1959.

§ 30 and 31. Mr. Gourlay
asked the President of the Board of Trade what proportion of the total output of the vehicles industries was produced in Scotland in 1948 and in 1959;
(2) if he will state the percentage increase or decrease in output of the vehicles industries in Scotland between 1948 and 1959; and if he will compare Scottish growth or decline over this period with that of the rest of Great Britain.

§ 32. Mr. Steele
asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will state the percentage increase or decrease in output of the Scottish paper-making, printing and publishing industries between 1948 and 1959; and if he will compare Scottish growth or decline over this period with that of the rest of Great Britain.

§ 33 and 34. Mr. Woodburn
asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) if he will state the percentage increase or decrease in output of the Scottish manufacturing industries between 1948 and 1959; and if he will compare Scottish growth or decline over this period with that of the rest of Great Brtiain;
(2) what proportion of the output of Great Britain's manufacturing industries was produced in Scotland in 1948 and in 1959.

§ 35 and 36. Mr. T. Fraser
asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) what proportion of Great Britain's total industrial output was produced in Scotland in 1948 and in 1959;
(2) if he will state the percentage increase or decrease in total output of Scottish industry between 1948 and 1959; and if he will compare Scottish growth or decline over this period with that of the rest of Great Britain.

§ 37 and 38. Mr. Small
asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) what proportion of the total output of Great Britain's textile, clothing and footwear industries was produced in Scotland in 1948 and in 1959;
(2) if he will state the percentage increase or decrease in output of the Scottish textile, clothing and footwear indus- 372 tries between 1948 and 1959; and if he will compare Scottish growth or decline over this period with that of the rest of Great Britain.

§ 39. Mr. Hoy
asked the President of the Board of Trade what proportion of the total output of the paper-making, printing and publishing industries of Great Britain was produced in Scotland in 1948 and 1959.

§ Mr. Maudling
With permission, I propose to answer Questions Nos. 24 to 39 together.

§ Mr. Lawson
On a point of order. Is it in order for a whole group of Questions dealing with quite separate matters to be taken in this way?

§ Mr. Speaker
Being apprised of this intention, I had a look at the precedents this morning. I do not think we are in a position to stop it. [Interruption.] It is very interesting, but I believe that is right. I hope that, on any view, the hon. Gentleman would bear this in mind; I do not know at all what the Minister's intentions are, but it presumably means that he has prepared one answer to all these sixteen Questions. If we were to deal with them singly, I suppose he would be entitled to repeat the same answer sixteen times, which really is not very much help. [Interruption.] No. There is no question of hon. Members' rights being infringed if that were to happen, because if a comprehensive answer in these circumstances failed to answer properly or fully some points in any of the sixteen Questions, the matter would be open to further questioning by hon. Members. I think that is right.

Mr. H. Wilson
Could you, Mr. Speaker, clarify the use of this phrase "With permission"? Does it mean with your permission, Mr. Speaker, or that of the hon. Members who put the Questions down, or the permission of the House? If it is not just a question of the permission of the Chair, could we be told what steps have been taken to obtain the necessary permission?

§ Mr. Speaker
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman asked me that. I did not know, and I have looked at the precedent this morning. I find that my immediate predecessor declared that in this context it is merely a courtesy 373 phrase. It does not mean that there is a requirement of the permission of anybody.

§ Mr. T. Fraser
Further to the point of order that has been raised. I appreciate the difficulties that you are in at the present time, Mr. Speaker, but will you bear in mind the fact that we have put a series of very similar questions on other industries to other Ministers who are responsible for these other industries and that we have got individual replies to individual questions, so that we got a complete picture industry by industry, which has been helpful to hon. Members generally and helpful, I think, to students of the development of the economy of Scotland? If the President of the Board of Trade is now going to lump together some sixteen Questions raising the question of the development of many different industries, it may cloud the issue and frustrate the intentions of the hon. Members in putting those Questions down in the House?

§ Mr. Speaker
I quite follow the point which the hon. Gentleman is putting to me, and I hope I have made the position clear. I think that is strictly right. We do not know what is in the Minister's answer, if anything. Supposing the answer does not sufficiently cover any particular point in the sixteen Questions, that particular factor remains unanswered and is subject to further questioning hereafter. I do not think that I can help the House further.

§ Mr. Mitchison
On a question of principle, is not this a case where the power of the Crown has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished? What steps can we take to prevent Ministers answering a whole bunch of Questions about different industries in one reply?

§ Mr. Speaker
I am not going to rule on a hypothetical point like that, otherwise we might reach the point where it is said that the Order Paper was not being used for questioning but began to look like a campaign.

§ Mr. Jay
Further to that point of order. If this is really a courtesy phrase and not a discourtesy phrase, is it not probable, Mr. Speaker, that if you were to invite the President of the Board of Trade to do what my hon. Friends obviously desire he would meet your wishes?

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§ Mr. Speaker
I will not speculate about what any Minister might do. This does not mean that I accuse the Minister of discourtesy. I hope we can get on now.

§ Mr. Manuel
You indicated, Mr. Speaker, that we had no prior knowledge of what the answer would be to the various Questions, but we know that they cover a fairly wide range of industries and different aspects arising out of the economic weakness of those industries. You said that if the answer did not meet our point we could put down another Question, but the right hon. Gentleman will have departed to the bottom of the list of Questions and we shall not be able to get at him for another period of time —[HON. MEMBERS: "Sit down."]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Member is making a perfectly sensible point of order. Yes, I have the point. I do not think that the Chair is in a position to help the hon. Member about that. I appreciate that if the answer were to be inadequate some delay in catching up might be involved.

§ Mr. Lawson
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I suspect from the amused demeanour of the President of the Board of Trade that he is having a bit of a joke with us—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Proper points of order are all right at Question Time. Rather dubious ones just consume time. Can we now get to this answer?

§ Mr. Maudling
I regret that the detailed information needed to make these comparisons is not available. I am circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT the best information we have.
I might add that all the statistical information available to the Government is also available already to hon. Members in the "Census of Production", the "Digest of Scottish Statistics" and the "Monthly Digest and Annual Abstracts", which are in the Library of the House of Commons.

§ Mr. Millan
If the information is available, could we not have had some of it in the Answer of the right hon. Gentleman? Also, is it not a fact that the information which is available demonstrates that Scotland is failing to gain her corporate share of the expansion of 375 the United Kingdom economy, particularly in the new and expanding industries, such as the chemical industry, which were the subject of my Questions? Further, is it not particularly important that Scotland should get an increasing share of those new and expanding industries?

§ Mr. Maudling
I have endeavoured, in what I am circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT, to explain the rather complicated statistical background to these matters, which I thought was the best way I could assist the House. I do not know the appropriate share—that is a difficult phrase to understand—but it is true that the expansion in many industries in England has been much greater than in Scotland, and this is why the Government, through the Local Employment Act, are trying to help Scotland.

Mr. Gresham Cooke
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If the information in answer to these Questions is already available in the "Index of Production" and other documents, should it not be the duty of the Table Office to refuse to accept these Questions? As far as I know, the practice is that if an hon. Member takes a Question to the Table Office and the information is already available, the Question is not accepted for the Order Paper.

§ Mr. Speaker
That may be right. I do not claim infallibility for the Table Office, which cannot read every mortal publication.

Mr. H. Wilson
Further to that point of order. We on this side deplore such slurs on the working of the Table Office. Is it not a fact that it has always accepted Questions which involve the calculation of proportions? If it is a question of reading a figure out of a published table, that is different. Otherwise Questions are accepted, and that is the information for which these Questions ask.

§ Mr. Speaker
The right hon. Member may be right. I would prefer to look at the point, because I am anxious to make some progress with Questions.

§ Mr. T. Fraser
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many more statistics are available to the Government than are available to hon. Members in the published documents to which he referred? [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] Of course, because it is the Government who pre- 376 pare those documents on the basis of the fuller information which they have, and we could not get the information we have sought in these Questions from the published documents.
Further, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when these figures are given, whatever information he is able to give us in answer to Questions, they will show that there is a considerable relative decline in industrial activity in Scotland compared with south of the Border? Will he tell us who is to blame? Is it the Government? Is it the employers? Is it the employees? If, as I suspect, it is evidence of the failure of private enterprise in Scotland, will members of the Government now get together to promote some public enterprise in manufacturing industries in Scotland, so that we can maintain our relative position with the United Kingdom?

§ Mr. Maudling
The hon. Member is well aware that the main problem of Scotland is the relatively high reliance of Scottish industry on the basic industries of coal, shipbuilding and heavy engineering, which have not shared in the general boom as compared with the rest of the United Kingdom.

§ Mr. Lawson
Is the President of the Board of Trade aware that we are seeking here to find out whether those problems apply only to the basic industries? We have asked about the chemical, footwear and paper-making industries. It would seem to me that the President of the Board of Trade is simply avoiding making an effort to answer those questions. From what information we can get, which it seems to us is not accurate, it appears that in almost every respect Scotland emerges very badly indeed. Will he not look at those modern industries, as distinct from the old industries?

§ Mr. Maudling
I am always glad to answer questions, but I cannot answer questions for which the information is not available.

§ Mr. Bence
Would the right hon. Gentleman take into consideration the fact that there is a great possibility that within the next two or three years the advantages of creating new employment by Government action may be offset by a decline in employment and the loss of jobs in Scotland, due to contraction in 377 shipbuilding, the greatest industry of Scotland and England? Will he, therefore, impress upon his colleagues in the Government the necessity for immediate action to replace ships that have been serving the nation for a quarter of a century and get those ships laid down on the Clyde?

§ Mr. Maudling
I am well aware of the importance to the Scottish economy of Clydeside shipping. I have been glad to see recently that Clydeside has been securing good orders in competition with other European shipbuilders.

§ Mr. Gourlay
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the past five years, from 1954 to 1959, in the vehicle industry in Scotland there has been a reduction of 22 per cent. as against an increase of 31 per cent. in England? Does not this show that the Government are largely to blame for the present heavy unemployment in Scotland, and will the right hon. Gentleman admit that the much boosted Local Employment Act at the last General Election is completely ineffective in dealing with the unemployment position in Scotland?

§ Mr. Maudling
I am not sure offhand whether those figures are accurate, but they certainly do not show that the Government are to blame.

§ Mr. Steele
In an earlier answer, the President of the Board of Trade indicated that even in the modern industries in Scotland progress was much slower than it was south of the Border. It is exactly that problem with which we are faced to which we want to try to find the answer. Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether in his view the lack of initiative is due to the Scottish businessman or to the lack of Government support and the lack of co-operation? We are anxious to know the facts so that we can do something to remedy the position.

§ Mr. Maudling
I think the right way of looking at the situation is that there are considerable natural disadvantages suffered by Scottish industry, largely due to the distance from the main centres of consumption in this country, which must be and can only be overcome by the joint effort of industry, trade unions and Government, which is what we are trying to achieve.

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§ Mr. Woodburn
As in his answers so far the right hon. Gentleman has clearly shown himself to be aware of the difficulties of Scotland in this regard, would he make representations to his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer that in any restrictions he imposes to restrain inflation amongst the over-industrialised population of England, such restrictions will not affect Scotland's industries, and that he will introduce relaxations there to stimulate development?

§ Mr. Maudling
I think there is a relevant Question to my right hon. Friend on the Order Paper.

§ Mr. Small
The Minister has failed to answer the Question dealing with textiles, footwear and clothing. If the consumer population in Scotland is to have its purchasing power maintained, surely we are entitled to a reasonable distribution of the items that can be consumed in terms of providing some of the production units in Scotland. We have had a specific reference to Jackson the Tailor, four example. After all, we use shoes and clothes in Scotland.

§ Mr. Maudling
I am disappointed that the consumer industries are not stronger than they are in Scotland. I am sure that the market is there, and I believe that with an effort those industries could be expanded in Scotland.

§ Mr. Hoy
May I raise a question concerning Question No. 39? Can the President of the Board of Trade give the assurance that the statement which he circulates in the OFFICIAL REPORT will include comparison concerning the paper-making industry, which has to face new competition as a result of agreement with the Outer Seven? I should like to know the position of this industry relative to its capacity in England.

§ Mr. Maudling
When the hon. Member sees my answer, he will understand the reason why such information is not available.

§ Sir T. Moore
Is my right hon. Friend aware that some of us are getting rather tired of this "Gimme a dime, stranger" attitude, that we do not want to go cap-in-hand to the Government for everything and that we in Scotland are ready to stand on our own feet and make our 379 own way in the world without Government assistance or help except when it is needed?

§ Following is the information:

§ Figures of total output for Scotland are not available.

§ The net output of Scotland as a proportion of Great Britain in establishments employing more than 10 persons in manufacturing industry and in certain sectors of it can be derived from the results of the Census of Production for 1948 and 1954 as shown below: corresponding data of Scottish output for years subsequent to 1954 are not available.

—	1948	1954
Manufacturing industry	9.2	8.8
Chemicals and allied industries	7.4	7.1
Engineering and electrical goods	8.4	8.6^*
Shipbuilding and marine engineering	26.0	24.2^*
Vehicles (excluding locomotives)	4.2	4.5^*
Textiles (excluding rayon, nylon, etc. production and weaving), clothing and footwear	9.1	9.3^*
Paper, printing and publishing	9.9	9.5
^*Proportion of total United Kingdom net output; figures for Great Britain are not available.

§ The Scottish index of production, published in detail in the Digest of Scottish Statistics, gives figures for all industry in 1959 26 per cent. higher than in 1948; and for manufacturing industry 29 per cent. higher. This index is based on the pattern of production in Scotland in 1948 and is constructed in accordance with the 1948 edition of the Standard Industrial Classification. The Index of Production for the United Kingdom is not directly comparable with the Scottish index, being based upon the pattern of production in 1954 and constructed in accordance with the 1958 revised Standard Industrial Classification. The United Kingdom index shows the following percentage changes between 1948 and 1959.

All industry	+ 42 per cent.
Manufacturing industry	+ 47 per cent.
Chemical and allied industries	+ 88 per cent.
Engineering and electrical goods	+ 70 per cent.
Shipbuilding and marine engineering	- 13 per cent.
Vehicles	+113 per cent.
Textiles, clothing and footwear	+ 13 per cent.
Paper, printing and publishing	+ 78 per cent.

§ The extent of non-comparability precludes reliable comparison between the Scottish and United Kingdom figures for individual industries.