SCOTLAND (INDUSTRY AND EMPLOYMENT)

HC Deb 20 June 1963 vol 679 cc667-777

4.26 p.m.

Mr. William Ross (Kilmarnock)

It was in 1952 that we on this side of the House started this annual inquiry into the state of Scotland's economy. Year after year since that time we have had varying Secretaries of State for Scotland, Presidents of the Board of Trade, Ministers of Labour, and Parliamentary Secretaries joining in the debate on occasion and all telling us the same thing, that we were far too pessimistic. I can assure the Committee that any Scot who tried today to paint the clouds with sunshine would be betraying the trust of the people whom he represents in Parliament. If right hon. and hon. Members opposite are not worried about the state of Scotland, I can assure them that the people of Scotland are.

As I say, this practice started in 1952, after the election in 1951 when the cry was, "The Right Road for Britain". We are now twelve years along that road. Now we find the Government in Scotland, apart from anything that is happening elsewhere, grappling enmeshed with problems to which they seem to have no solution. These problems arise throughout the life and industry of Scotland—in shipbuilding, in the coal industry, in electricity, in housing, and in roads. Here and there we get some things done. Here and there the pressures from Scotland result in some action being taken.

Whereas we had 46,000 unemployed in Scotland in June, 1951, today, according to the latest figure, we have 95,000. There was a time when we regarded 95,000 as a seriously high figure in the middle of winter. We are in the middle of summer. We will be told that it is less than it was last month. It would be amazing if was not. The seasonal decrease is about 5,000. The decrease this month is 1,000.

These problems mount. The Government show no indication of being able to do very much about them. My hon. Friends and I have been pointing out all along that the rate of unemployment in Scotland has been double that of the rest of the country and that something is deeply wrong with a situation in which Scotland is always lagging far behind. No matter how the rest of the country has boomed, Scotland has never got her fair share of that prosperity.

We read in the Evening News yesterday that Britain is booming, but what is Scotland's share of that boom? Our share is represented by the two middle letters of the word "boom"—nil. Some people complain that our voices have often been raised in anger. Can they blame us for being angry when, after twelve years, nothing has been done? However, we have been finding in the last couple of years that a great many others have joined us in raising our voices. People have been hammering at the door of the President of the Board of Trade and the Prime Minister in an effort to get something done to save Scotland from being left out of the new industrial revolution.

Scotland pioneered the first Industrial Revolution and should not be cast aside from the new one. We in Scotland have not yet finished groping with the aftermath of the last. The new industrial revolution, which is sweeping the world at an alarming rate, shows that Scotland is not participating in it to the extent it should. We are concerned now because we are looking ahead to a position we can already see. That position is even worse than it seems because the unemployment figures do not give a true picture. Many men in Scotland have retired earlier in life because they have been forced to do so. Many married women who would be at work if they were in England are unemployed in Scotland. More than ¼ million Scots have left Scotland in the last ten years.

These facts are not revealed in the unemployment figures; and they all add up to a loss of productive potential. Scotland does not only need confidence for the Scots in Scotland, but also the chance to participate in the economic growth of the rest of the country. The N.E.D.C. Report pointed out that during the last ten years the rate of the rise in employment was only 0.34 per cent. and that if Britain was to reach the target set by N.E.D.C. all the available resources in the North-East, Scotland and elsewhere would have to be harnessed.

The rest of the country, we are told, was progressing three times faster than the depressed areas, and to obtain a harnessing of the available resources, Scotland and the other depressed areas would need at least 200,000 new jobs in the next five years. What does the President of the Board of Trade think about that? How do the Government approach this problem? Their answer is the Local Employment Act.

Hon. Members who fought the last General Election—though some of them will not fight the next one—may be here on the basis of what they said they were going to do. Many of them promised a new approach for answering Scotland's demands that something should be done about unemployment. There was to be great, new legislation. What did we get? We got the Local Employment Act. We got it, but what has it produced and what was it in- tended to produce? It was to provide the framework for dealing with the whole local unemployment problems of certain areas. That was said by the latest contender for the leadership of the party opposite. He was the President of the Board of Trade when he said that. He is now the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Bill provides a new framework for dealing with the problem of local unemployment and will add success in this field to the many that the Government have had in many other fields.".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th November, 1959; Vol. 613, c. 47–8.] The right hon. Gentleman said that in 1960, just before the Act came into force. About that time 65,000 people were unemployed in the Scottish development districts. After three years in operation, what was to have been a bold, new Measure to tackle the unemployment problem has seen, in April, 1963, a rise from that figure of 65,000 to one of 92,600—not in Scotland as a whole, but just in the Scottish development districts.

The then President of the Board of Trade said: We intend to tackle this problem on a progressive basis by dealing, first, with the areas which are worst hit and then giving support to places which are less badly hit."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd February, 1960; Vol. 618, c. 219.] The areas which, in the judgment of the schedules, were worst hit in 1960 are still the worst hit. There is only one difference—they are in an even worse position.

In North Lanarkshire, in April, 1960, there were 8,000 unemployed. The figure has risen now to 12,000, an increase of 50 per cent. In Glasgow, it has risen during that time from 26,000 to 39,000. In Dunfermline, it has risen from 2,000 to 3,000. It has affected the small and large areas alike as the neglect has continued. In Kilburnie and Dalry—represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel)—the unemployment figure has risen from 362 to 775, a 100 per cent. increase. In Shotts, it has risen from 362 to 663.

We were told that the coming of B.M.C. to Bathgate would solve our unemployment problems. Every time we raised the matter we were told that we were being pessimistic, particularly by the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Maclay). "B.M.C. will cure all of Scotland's unemployment problems", we were told. Bathgate today has more unemployed than it had three years ago. The figure has risen from 1,633 to 1,962.

These remarks are true for the rest of the Scottish development districts. If this has been the fate of what were called the worst hit areas, what about the others? They have all been neglected. We have had the advantage not of our usual report on Scottish unemployment and industry, but the Seventh Report of the Estimates Committee on the administration of the Local Employment Act. If anything is clear, it is that all the talk we have had about jobs in the pipeline, millions of pounds being spent on this and that, millions of sq. ft. of space being made available here and there, has been so much nonsense.

It has been made clear that none of the estimates is reliable and it is equally clear from all the evidence to hand that those who must administer the Local Employment Act are despairing. An earnest of intention is spending and it is in this direction that one can see what is being done. This applies to Scotland as to other areas. It is obvious, generally speaking, that the most has been spent after General Elections.

Then there was a sudden interest in this in 1959–60, even as there is at this time. Here is the position that we have reached today in Scotland. If we take all the development districts of the country, Scotland has 50 per cent. of all the unemployment in those areas. But Scotland does not get 50 per cent. of the new jobs provided in those areas, inadequate as they are—it gets 38 per cent. of the jobs.

I asked the President of the Board of Trade a question the other day and I was answered by the Parliamentary Secretary. I hope that he does not repeat his performance to me. I asked for the number of new jobs provided in three years under this Act in the Scottish development districts. The answer was 34,000. If I had asked for the number of new jobs provided in the first two years, what would the answer have been?—31,000. In other words, during the last year of this Act, the number of new jobs—they are not here yet and there is no guarantee that they ever will be here, because the Minister made clear that there is always a certain amount of inflation concerning these jobs—provided in Scotland, at the time when Scotland is crying out for action, is 2,900.

The right hon. Gentleman asked us not to be pessimistic. How can we be other than pessimistic about the intentions and abilities of the Government to do anything about this problem when this is the kind of instrument to deal with a problem so deep-rooted and fundamental as this? It is disgraceful that hon. Members opposite have not done anything about it. Their attitude is "A brave new Scotland is on its way—do not worry. Go along to the Highlanders' Institute and listen to the Secretary of State for Scotland."

The Secretary of State said: In the next few months we shall put Scotland firmly on the right road to prosperity"— This the Government were going to do in October, 1951— with modern cities, schools, roads and transport, and with great new housing schemes. We will keep more of our able young Scotsmen at home with the promise of such a future, and begin to cure our unemployment blight. What have they been doing up to now? We have to wait for another couple of months before they start. Have they been creating it up to now? Certainly, by their performance that has been the effect of their policies. This is what the right hon. Gentleman said when addressing the Scottish Unionist Association: We shall then win—and deserve to win—the next election. Even during the year that he has been at the Scottish Office, we have had a very considerable increase in unemployment in Scotland. There is no sign of any comprehensive policy to provide us with a cure. The problems mount, but the solutions do not come. Urgent problems become more urgent.

We have been waiting for over a year for a decision not about the building of a new generating station, but about the method of generation, whether that generating station, which Scotland urgently requires, and which has been planned for a long time, should be coal-fired or oil-fired. We understand from the Press, as usual, that we are to be told something about that today, that a decision has been made. Let us be clear about this. The controversy was of the Government's making, but the delay has been the delay of the Secretary of State for Scotland. Those who will pay for that delay will be the Scottish people in their need for power in the late 'sixties and early 'seventies.

We now understand that the generating station is to be coal-fired. What we do not understand is why it should have taken so long to decide that. What the Secretary of State for Scotland has really decided is that he is not going to kill the mining industry itself. That is what was at stake. It is not a case of 10,000 new jobs for miners—there are no new jobs in this—it is a saving of 10,000 jobs. We would have lost 10,000 jobs, and the mining industry would have been down to about 30,000 miners. We would not have been able, even had we wanted to do so at that time, to build that kind of power station, because we would not then have had the miners, or the pits, in operation. [An HON. MEMBER: "The Barony pit."] I certainly hope that the Barony pit will be reopened.

So much is in the balance for Scotland over this that we wonder why the Secretary of State took so long. If he had the real interest of Scotland at heart, he would have told those who are bringing pressure to bear on him, the people who have hitherto shown very little interest in Scotland, and certainly no interest in the Highlands of Scotland, exactly what they had to do. We are glad that at least that decision has been made.

The same is true of shipbuilding. We have had some announcements from the Government about assistance for the shipbuilding industry. I saw a reference the other day to a film that Scotland has sent all over the world, "To Sea with the Great Ships". The trouble is that we are not building the great ships. The help that the Government have belatedly offered to the shipbuilding industry will not go anywhere near to meeting the needs of Scotland. They have not followed up the suggestions made from this side of the Committee about spare shipping capacity, to be sure that India and other Commonwealth countries which require shipping and which equally require considerable credits to get it, get their shipping from Scottish yards.

The Government have not looked at all at the question of replacing our shipping fleet and doing everything that they can to ensure that there is a speed-up in that respect. I know that the problem is not easy. But we do not seem to be making a start. How can the Government, concerned about shipping, allow a company with which it is not unconnected, the British Petroleum Company, to make a declaration of its intention to place orders abroad for tankers, in a shipbuilding country in which labour is very much more expensive than labour at home? This points to a shipbuilding problem which should be concerning the Ministry of Transport. I wonder why this company, so near to the ear of the Government, do not tackle it in that way.

This will not be helpful to the British shipbuilding industry. This will not be the only company to order tankers. When we remember that of the orders at the moment, although not nearly enough, 62 per cent. are for tankers, what is the implication of this? The shipbuilders on the Clyde had orders in hand of about 700,000 gross tons at the end of 1962, one-third of what it was five years ago. We have lost and are losing thousands of men from the shipbuilding industry. That affects immediately the steel industry. We are grateful to the Government for the Digest of Scottish Statistics and making it available to us yesterday in the Vote Office. In Table 13 we see the position of the Scottish steel industry, all of which is directly related to the under employment of our resources of our shipyards, civil engineering and all the rest of it. The Government have a tremendous responsibility, but their actions have not matched up to it.

Where have we gone wrong, and what should we do about it? We must, without doubt, get industry into the development districts, but we must also considerably change our outlook. We have to make sure that no opportunity is wasted. We have to compel expanding industries to expand in these areas. Will anybody object to that? He had better not, because it was not I who first said that, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 23rd February, 1960. With all due respect, the Government have been singularly unsuccessful in that respect. In fact, they have been hopelessly unsuccessful, and the reason is simple. They are frustrated by their own dogmas and beliefs.

Compulsion of this kind is quite beyond their ideas. They just letthings drift, and I think that here lies their greatest failure over the last twelve years. They had a wonderful chance—no one can deny it—but what they failed to appreciate was the nature of the change taking place in the world, and its rapidity. They failed to realise that what was required in Britain was the building up of a new relationship between Government and industry.

"Compulsion" is not a word that even I would use—I leave that to the Treasury Bench—but I am sure that we could have built up a new relationship that had full regard to the responsibilities that the Government accept and must carry out; and that industry in Britain would have accepted that the Government must have a major say in the location of industry.

There must be a change in the I.D.C. policy, but there is no indication of such a change. If we are to have expansion, the Government must ensure that we get it, ignoring purely selfish interests in the interests of the nation. We shall pay for their failure to do that. We have to inspire patriotic motives in these people. I am sure that if we did so, we would get the response. If there were difficulties involved by firms accepting one location when they would prefer another, the Government could, and should, have built up a long time ago a regularised system of dealing with problems of transport and labour, and all the other aspects that make industries prefer one place rather than another.

This new attitude should have been built into our relationships with industry, but the Government have ignored it. They have let things drift. It is just as Lord Hailsham said in 1961, when he told the Young Conservatives: The country deserved a bit of a spree, a holiday from austerity, a relaxation of taut nerves. He said that we must return to the virtues of honesty, service and morality. Then this histrionic humbug added that we should not take too serious a view of any momentary lapse from the traditional virtues, but that it was time …to recover a new sense of direction and social purpose… I believe that that spree of freedom ten years ago will cost this country dearly.

The attitude towards Scotland has been, "Stand aside and do nothing. Let things take their own shape," but on 28th March last there was held the Standing Conference of London Regional Planning, a conference representing all the areas in and about the London conurbation, including Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, the London County Council area, Middlesex and Surrey. It was stated that between 1951 and 1961 750,000 new jobs had been created in the conference area—450,000 of them within the built-up area of London and its suburbs. No wonder that about 1¼ million people travel into London every day.

The President of the Board of Trade knows now what is coming, I think. I am coming to the patronising speech he made to us in 1959 when he was Financial Secretary to the Treasury—

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. F. J. Erroll)

Economic Secretary.

Mr. Douglas Jay (Battersea, North)

Just as disastrous.

Mr. Ross

The right hon. Gentleman then said: While it is proper that we should concentrate on the provision of additional manufacturing industry, it is important to remember the increased amount of employment which is provided nowadays by service industries and offices. By using the telephone and other modern methods of transmitting information over long distances there is no reason why more office work…should not be done in Scotland rather than in the congested areas of London and the Midlands."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd July, 1959; Vol. 608, c. 635.] What has the right hon. Gentleman done about it? He knows. The answer lies in the figures I have quoted from the conference.

It may be too late to do anything about that. No fewer than 300,000 of those 750,000 new jobs were office jobs, and planning permission has now been given by local authority planning authorities for accommodation for another 400,000 jobs. The planning authorities are already committed—planning permission has been given and, in some cases, work has been started. The result is congestion of a nature undreamt of.

Those of us who, returning from our constituencies, travel, as we often do, from London Airport to the centre of London, have never seen the roads free of workmen, with thousands upon thousands of pounds' worth of equipment, widening them, making fly-overs, building great new highways—

Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, West)

No tolls.

Mr. Ross

No, tolls are limited to the Forth Road Bridge—and it is not Marples, Ridgway who are making that. We are now getting a great new elevated road. One has to stress the cost of this congestion to the nation and to individuals in frustration, in lives, in housing and in the costof land. All this is part of the cost of the spree which they started in 1951 and to the dangers of which the Government did not wake up until 1961.

Where are these workers coming from? They are coming, of course, from Scotland. From the population statistics, we discover that Scotland lost 174,000 of its younger workers, those between the ages of 18 and 49, between 1951 and 1962; and those 174,000 included men and women who had been expensively trained in Scottish universities, technical colleges and factories. These were in the main our skilled men. They are the men who will not wait. These are the ones who get out.

Under the policy of the Government, there is no end to that drift. It will take more than simply perorative promises of the Secretary of State to keep those people in Scotland. I want, therefore, to know from the President of the Board of Trade what he will do about this situation, since he realised four years ago that the problem existed. What has he done since then, and what will he do now, to ensure that Scotland and other places get their share of the new office building?

The failure to deal with the one problem of location of industry from 1951 onwards has left the Government with a handful of problems, none of which they seem to be able to solve. We have not even started to build up this new relation- ship. One expected that there would have been more action following the Toothill Report. It is certainly a bag of suggestions which did not add up to anything very much like radical changes, although that was obvious, because there was no intention in the first place to make any radical changes of policy.

One interesting thing in the Toothill Report, however, was that that Committee did not consider the question of regional planning in Scotland, for the simple reason that it states that we cannot have regional planning unless there is national planning. The Committee instanced that there was national planning in France. Practically every other country in Europe has discovered that planning is the only effective way of properly organising and getting growth in the economy.

After ten years of sneering at planning by the Government, we get a fumbling approach to it in Scotland. We get words about it, but we do not get a concrete plan. We get a catalogue of projects, simply because Scotland is regarded as a pocket of difficulty, some of which is forced upon it. Sooner or later, however, if the country wants to pull itself up and if Scotland is to have a chance, we must have national planning and regional planning. The Government must accept the responsibility which, they proclaim, they are prepared to accept at election times.

I still have the election address of my Member of Parliament—

Sir Thomas Moore (Ayr)

Very good, too.

Mr. Ross

It suffers from "I" strain.

The hon. Member uses the word "I" fifty-two times, which is more than the number of speeches he has made, certainly on Scottish employment. The hon. Member will remember his pledges about employment. All hon. Members opposite remember their pledges that the Government stood for full employment. A Government who stand for full employment must be prepared to take and use the power to achieve it.

That does not mean that everyone will be pleased, but it means that everyone will be confident that at long last the Government are prepared to carry out their pledges. This means national planning. It means planning in Scotland. It does not mean a few part-time people planning in Scotland or a shuffling of desks in St. Andrew's House, with departmental secretaries meeting, perhaps, once a week to have a talk about what they will do next or what can be done next. This is not the approach to it.

I know that the Secretary of State for Scotland does not have very much time, but let him read the Cairncross Report and all the other reports which have been produced about the state of Scotland's economy and he will come to the conclusion that something far more radical is needed than the Local Employment Act. Let him talk to Scottish industrialists and to the managers of the Scottish industrial estates. They will tell him the shortcomings of that Act, as they told the Estimates Committee, that even within their restricted field more could be done if they were given the right to buy land and prepare sites, to handle the question of rent and the rest.

All this could be part of a plan in Scotland, which is ready, anxious and willing to accept the expansion that a determined Government say must be done in the interests of the nation. But they do not have such a plan, and we are not likely to get it from hon. Members opposite.

Instead, we will get from the Secretary of State today a catalogue of all the things that we are supposed to smile about and say "Hip, hip". We will be told about Dounreay, about the Forth Road Bridge, about Chapelcross and about the coal-fired station, every one of which is not a private enterprise, but is a public enterprise. The Government will tell us about the B.M.C. Will the President of the Board of Trade tell us how much public money has been put into it?

There were two projects, the firms for which were not named, costing over £8 million in loan. I have no doubt that if the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland were making a speech, he would tell us about Fort William and the new pulp mill—£10 million of public money. According to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, success is not to be judged by money. It must be judged by events.

Here is one thing that is a touchstone. We are to have a new pulp mill at Fort William. Nothing is more logical than that we should have it, because we are reaching a point where we must find a market for our timber. It is the nation's timber. The power that will drive the pulp mill is the nation's electricity. We have managed to save a railway line from the devastating claws of Dr. Beeching simply because this pulp mill is going ahead. So it is nationalised transport. The money to build the mill is the nation's money. The only thing that will not be the nation's will be the profit that comes out of it.

Hon. Members opposite sneer at public enterprise. I reckon that the cost of this venture to the Government, to the local authorities and to Wiggins Teape is probably about £25 million and that it will provide very desirable employment for about 1,500 men. About a week after that was announced, an announcement was made in Kirkcaldy that Barrie & Staines was closing down its linoleum factory there and concentrating production at Staines, in England, and that the number of people who would lose their jobs would be about 1,000.

There is the task and there is the measure of the problem, that we leave to private enterprise the power and the right, without consulting the Board of Trade as to the difficulties, to decide whether it is desirable in the interests of the nation that private enterprise should do this, and in order to make virtually the same number of jobs in Scotland we have to spend as much money as that.

I think it is ludicrous that a Government should be prepared to accept that people should be the victims, whether it be in Scotland or elsewhere, of this private whim. I am perfectly sure that if there are difficulties they could be met by help from the Government. Has the President of the Board of Trade never thought of this problem, and does he not realise that this is the kind of thing that brings a cry of despair from his civil servants to the effect that the more they do the more they need to do? They cannot do more than keep up with the loss of employment and in the last year at any rate they have not been doing even that.

I do not think that there is any doubt about the gravity of the Scottish position. I hope people will realise that what we are concerned about are the fundamental aspects of the matter. I hope that people realise what is in this Report, what has happened in Scotland, and that we cannot deal with the situation on the basis of treating it as a little local difficulty. We have to be much more radical in our approach. We have certainly had no intimation from the Government that they are going to do it.

The position about growth points has been raised time and again in the House, from both sides, and certainly it has been raised by the Scottish T.U.C. and the Scottish Council. But we have still got no answer to the matter. Why is it that places like Grangemouth and Kilmarnock—I hope that the President of the Board of Trade will tell his chief official to give evidence and to make clear that Kilmarnock was not descheduled under the old Act but under the new Local Employment Act—areas like the Irvine Valley and areas which industrialists would prefer to choose are not just as justifiable to be helped and to use that help to every possible extent? Ayr is anotherplace. But they are outside all possibility of help. They are not within the scope of help from the Board of Trade. Far from being within the sphere of help, industries which go to those places are likely to be directed elsewhere.

Mr. John Maclay (Renfrew, West)

Ithank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I did not realise that he had passed from a certain part of his speech. I wanted to ask him about his general remarks. He described with considerable vividness the great approach which the party opposite would have to this very difficult problem. The transition from the old to the new economy is something which I think the horn. Gentleman will admit cannot be solved overnight. The hon. Gentleman went into an interesting description of the broad concept of national and regional planning, but he did not explain with any clarity at all what he meant. What does he mean? Does he mean direction of industry or inducement to industry? Does he mean a stronger prohibition? It would really be helpful if we could know. It sounded superb as he said it, but I would dearly like to know what the substance of it is.

Mr. Ross

This is one of the troubles with the right hon. Gentleman. He has no faith even in private industry to adopt new attitudes within a new situation and with a Government who have not faced reality.

The N.E.D.C. said that we required a 4 per cent. expansion, but all it did was to assess the need of the nation, although it conceded that it would require new policies and new attitudes. I am quite convinced that if we have the new policies we shall get the new attitudes and the co-operation. But if we do not get co-operation in particular cases where it is impossible to expect someone to embark upon a new project, then if any expansion in any industry is required it is still incumbent upon us to get that expansion. That can be done, as I say, in co-operation with private industry, or, failing that, by the Government themselves. After all, the Government could have started the pulp mill.

Mr. Thomas Fraser (Hamilton)

The Government did it with the shipping services.

Mr. Ross

Yes. The right hon. Gentleman opposite nationalised the shipping services in the Islands. He was able to do that.

If we take the Wiggins Teape business, this is not something of Wiggins Teape which is being applied in Fort William. That company had to go to Sweden and Canada to look at their pulp mills. The difficulty of Wiggins Teape is that quite clearly the company is in the business from the point of view of the use and sale of the product. The manufacture of the product is new to the company—as far as the process is concerned. I should have thought that the experience of the right hon. Gentleman over the last few years as Secretary of State for Scotland would have made him more tolerant of new ideas.

Mr. Maclay

The point I wish to make is that, if course, we have had a remarkable degree of co-operation from industry. What, apparently, the hon. Gentleman would not agree is that the structural change which must take place in Scotland is financially and economically extremely difficult. A very marked degree of co-operation has been emerging. Although I, of course, regret the present unemployment figures, there has been a remarkable degree of success in altering the structure of industry to make the future expansion possible.

Mr. Ross

Of course there has been some change. We have never denied that. But the right hon. Gentleman must appreciate that he and his party have been in office for 12 years. Of course it cannot be done overnight, but we could have made much more progress than we have made in the past 12 years and there could by now have been some improvement in the overall position rather than a worsening and a deepening of the difficulties in Scotland. Right hon. Gentlemen opposite certainly have to bear a tremendous burden of responsibility as far as the Scottish position is concerned.

I know that sooner or later someone is going to tell me that one cannot sell failure. We would not be so angry or so urgent about this problem if we had no confidence in the people of Scotland. It is because we have confidence in the industrialists in Scotland to rise to the occasion and to the challenges in this situation that we are so insistent that the Government should change their policies or get out. We do not attack Scotland. We attack those who have been in charge of Scotland politically for the past 12 years. Of course one cannot sell failure. It is the Government who have failed. They have failed Scotland, and I am not the only one who says it.

Councillor J. More Nisbett, speaking at the Scottish Unionist Conference and stunning those present to silence, said: Recently we have had a long and dismal succession of failures. I am not proud of the record of the Unionist Government, nor, I fear, can I be confident of its policies for the future. What he said was true and is what the people of Scotland feel about the Government. It has been one miserable failure after another, and the sooner they get out the better it will be for the people of Scotland.

5.21 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Noble)

For many years—I think that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) said that it has been since 1952—we have had an annual debate on the Scottish economy and employment in Scotland. It has certainly taken place in the last six years during which I have been a Member of Parliament with, I think, a real feeling of responsibility on both sides of the Committee.

It has been significant in another respect also. On one side of the Committee there has been a catalogue of the depressing things, with suitable quotations from speeches made on this side of the Committee, and on the other side the Secretary of State for Scotland of the day trying to balance the picture—it is a balanced picture in some respects—by telling the Committee and the country of some of the things in Scotland which have been going well. This is often met with the charge of complacency, but, none the less, some of these things have to be put on the record.

As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock said, the figures for unemployment in June were announced this afternoon. I think that we are all glad to see that they have come down by a good deal more than the seasonal average.

Mr. Ross

Two thousand more.

Mr. Noble

However, the same grim distinction of which I spoke last year in this debate between Scotland's figures and England's figures still exists and, as I think the hon. Member implied, there must be very considerable efforts on a united front if we are to get a permanent improvement. I know perfectly well, and I am sure that hon. Members opposite know perfectly well, that there is in fact a united effort, whatever may be said today, because every member for a constituency in Scotland agrees entirely with me that we must try to get this right.

I do not want to dwell on the history of this problem because, after all, we were late in starting the debate and it has been mentioned only too regularly in debate after debate, but may I just pick out one or two points in the last few years, because I believe that it is by looking at these that we may see some light for the future. In the three years up to May, 1962—I take that simply because it is the latest date for which we have analysedfigures—the momentum of change in Scotland has accelerated very fast. We lost 76,000 jobs, mainly in the older industries, partly because of contraction, partly because of reorganisation and partly because of a combination of both, leading to greater efficiency.

An outstanding example has been, perhaps, the coal industry, where there has been a reduction of 17,000 jobs but greatly increased efficiency. I am sure that hon. Members were pleased to see the figures given by Lord Robens showing that the deficiency in the Scottish field has come down from £15 million to £5 million, and we all share his hope that we may show a profit in future.

All concerned, and especially the Scottish mineworkers, are to be congratulated on the way in which they are facing the need to modernise and concentrate this industry. We know that in many ways it is a painful process, but I think that the benefits are becoming clear, and the whole operation is a valuable example to other industries of what can be achieved by courageous action carried through with the understanding and co-operation of the unions concerned.

One vital consequence of this new look for Scottish mining is that, following long negotiations with the National Coal Board, the South of Scotland Electricity Board was able to report to me yesterday the conclusion of a satisfactory agreement providing for the use of coal rather than oil in a big new power station close to the Hirst seam in West Fife. This agreement clears the way for the Electricity Board to seek formal authority under the Electricity Acts for the construction of this station. The procedure involves advertisement of the project and an inquiry into any objections, with which I may have to deal in a quasi-judicial capacity. Accordingly, it would be wrong for me to say anything more at this stage about the precise location of the new station.

What I can say is that, provided no insuperable objection emerges to constructing the station in the vicinity of this seam, the coal industry in Scotland is now assured of a continuing market which will carry it forward through the 1970s and after. While the prospect of further improvement in the industry's performance has played a major part in the Electricity Board's acceptance of the new agreement, this agreement reflects the Board's commercial judgment of what is in the best interests of Scottish electricity consumers and does not mean that these interests have been sacrificed for the benefit of any other section of the community. It thus underlines the great change which has taken place in the outlook for the coal industry in Scotland, and I am sure that all hon. Members and, indeed, everyone in Scotland will share my satisfaction at this result.

Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire)

Does that mean that we can look forward to the reopening of the Barony colliery?

Mr. Noble

The hon. Gentleman must wait for the Coal Board to decide these factors in relation to the economy of its own industry.

A good many of the 76,000 lost jobs about which I was speaking were lost in the manufacture of locomotives and rolling stock and many others in shipbuilding and marine engineering, to which the hon. Member for Kilmarnock rightly referred. It is, I think, significant that in the year for which the hon. Member was quoting figures, namely, 1951, shipbuilding was absolutely booming. The number of unemployed he quoted for that time was 46,000. Anyone who knows Scotland will realise how important a booming shipbuilding industry on the Clyde is, not only in that basin, but over a very much wider area. If one talks, as I have been doing fairly often in the last few months, to shipbuilding people, one realises that they are to some extent used to a sort of up and down pattern in shipbuilding. I do not think we should accept this as inevitable, even though we accept that it is historically accurate. I believe the Committee realises that at this moment in history the position may be more difficult than it has been in the past because of the enormous spare capacity in shipbuilding, not just in this country but in the world as a whole.

There has been, as I think the hon. Member for Kilmarnock probably knows, a good initial response to the Government's announcement of the loan of £30 million. I have heard from one or two shipyards that they have had more inquiries in the last week or two than they have had for some time, and I am sure that orders will follow. We will want more orders, and I feel certain that these will flow from this loan. The freight rates are moving up, and often this is a help to the shipowners in thinking about placing new orders.

We all realise that in these periods of change there is very considerable hardship to workers and families in the old industries whose jobs are declining. We realise how it affects perhaps whole communities which were based on a nineteenth century type of industry. But I think I gather from the speech of the hon. Gentleman that he, like myself, is quite determined to ensure that there are radical changes and that we move Scotland into a twentieth century, or, indeed, a twenty-first century, look. This must mean change.

We all know that it is essential, if we possibly can, to build up new industries with new jobs at the same rate as, or, if possible, at a faster rate than, the older industries are running down. But this is a difficult task. In the timing of these things, almost inevitably the rundown comes fastest when the economy of the country as a whole is declining, and this is the time, as we know, when it is most difficult to get new industries to move into Scotland. Indeed, it is difficult to get them to expand even in England.

Because I think the record ought to be put right in this respect, perhaps I may say that during the three years I mentioned we had some very considerable successes. During the period when we lost the 76,000 jobs we also gained 126,000, giving us a net gain of 50,000. These were mostly in the manufacturing industries, electronics, light engineering, machine tools, office machinery, plastics, and synthetics—industries which are new or were only very lightly represented in Scotland previously.

Mr. W. Hamilton

Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether all the 126,000 jobs are on the ground or whether they are in the mystical pipeline?

Mr. Noble

These were jobs created or gained, whichever way one likes to put it, between May, 1959, and May, 1962. But we also know—

Mr. Ross

Will the right hon. Gentleman say where he got the figures?

Mr. Noble

They come from analyses of the figures which have been prepared. The analyses cannot be prepared immediately the year is over but they are prepared as soon thereafter as possible.

Mr. T. Fraser

Whereas the right hon. Gentleman has shown that the new jobs have been coming along in the three-year period that he has mentioned, am I not right in thinking that in his analysis he will discover that in the immediately preceding year—May, 1958, to May, 1959—we lost 48,000 jobs?

Mr. Noble

Yes. The hon. Gentleman makes this point every year. I will give him that. When we come to an analysis of this year's figures, when this can be done, I am quite certain that the position will not be nearly as good as this.

Mr. Fraser

This is the real question.

Mr. Noble

However, I think the Committee will agree that if one is to try to assess accurately what is happening one has to work on some figures, and these are the best and latest available figures that I can give the Committee.

I think the whole Committee realises that the gains have not been enough. The hon. Gentleman suggested that the Government were taking no action whatever to speed up the growth. "No action at all" was what he said, if I heard him correctly. If that is so, the hon. Gentleman cannot have been here for the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget speech.

Mr. William Baxter (West Stirlingshire)

rose—

Mr. Noble

May I be allowed to continue? I know perfectly—

Mr. Baxter

rose—

The Temporary Chairman (Dr. Horace King)

If the Minister does not give way, the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. W. Baxter) must resume his seat.

Mr. Noble

I know that hon. Members are interested in the debate. I want to make my speech as quickly as I can.

Mr. Baxter

rose—

Mr. T. Fraser

Might I put one question to the right hon. Gentleman? We all want to be fair about this. The right hon. Gentleman has shown us that in the three years from May, 1959, to May, 1962, we lost 76,000 jobs but gained 126,000, giving a final gain of 50,000. Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that according to his own document, the Digest of Scottish Statistics, the number of people in civil employment between 1957 and 1962 fell by 5,000, and that that five-year period includes the three years for which he gave his figures?

Mr. Noble

rose—

Mr. Baxter

On a point of order, Dr. King. Is there a rule of the House whereby a Minister can give way to an Opposition Front Bench speaker but not to an Opposition back bench Member? A second before the right hon. Gentleman gave way to my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) he refused to give way to me. Is there a rule of the House which permits this shilly-shallying?

The Temporary Chairman

The hon. Gentleman has put that to me as a point of order. The simple answer on the point of order is that the Minister himself gives way or he does not give way as he chooses, and he also chooses to whom he gives way.

Mr. Noble

I would emphasise four points which are important to look at in respect of the three years. The first is that during the three years there was a considerable hastening of the essential changes and we became less dependent on our old industries. The second is that the growth industries are beginning to change the map in centres like East Kilbride, Cumbernauld, Bathgate, Linwood and Grangemouth. The third point which is significant is that where growth industry has settled in Scotland it has expanded at a rate as fast as anywhere else in the country, and this proves that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with Scotland as a place in which these new growth industries can thrive. Also, there has been during the years a very large increase in construction in both the private and the public sectors.

On these four points on the change in the structure in Scottish industry, some of the older firms—some of those whose names are household words—have been carrying out a complete internal reorganisation. This in itself often creates difficulties at present, but it is only by doing this that there is hope for them in the future, and benefits will certainly flow from it.

It is also true in the structure of industry in Scotland that the new firms which have come to us are settling in extremely well. Not very many weeks ago I did a tour of a few days, and during the tour I saw Skefco, Hughes International, and Starretts, and each of these new firms from outside Scotland is growing and expanding and is extremely satisfied with the conditions that it has found in Scotland.

We as a Government are determined to help in modernisation, diversification and expansion, and I think that the effect of the measures that we have devised is a good deal greater than the hon. Member for Kilmarnock would have the Committee believe. One of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's measures in the Budget was the provision of free depreciation. Without any doubt, this is of great value, in particular, to those firms—it is of great value over a wider field also—which are not yet ready to expand in the sense of taking over new factories but want to modernise their factories and make their goods more efficiently.

In addition, the new standard benefits have brought very substantial extra benefits for anybody who wishes to go to Scotland and set up there. I will leave my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade to speak about these because they come immediately within his responsibility.

There have been other efforts to stimulate expansion. In the first place, there is the part that can be played by the retraining of labour made redundant by the contraction of the older industries. This has a twin purpose. The first is to enable redundant workers to acquire new skills so that they can again fulfil themselves with self respect in modern society, and the second is to increase the supply of skilled labour of the types most required.

With these purposes in mind, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour is expanding the existing adult training capacity in Scotland from 130 to about 850 places, by expanding the facilities already provided at Hillington and by setting up six new centres, of which the hon. Member for Kilmarnock is aware. Altogether, this will enable about 1,600 persons to be trained annually, mainly in the engineering and building trades.

Then again, I am assisting with grant the main central technical institutions in Scotland, whose co-operation in this important field I am sure we would all gratefully acknowledge. They will provide a new technical information service for industry. There will now be six full time industrial liaison officers, stationed in the four Scottish cities and at Paisley, whose special task it will be not merely to keep industry and the central technical institutions in close contact, but also to go out to firms that have technical and scientific problems and give advice and help in finding a solution.

I want to say something in tribute to the Scottish Council—and I am sure that is shared by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. It has, through the years, devoted a very great deal of hard work and time to trying to help solve our industrial problems. This year, in particular, it has run an "opportunities week" in Scotland, at which officials from the N.R.D.C, the D.S.I.R. and the A.E.A. were present, to make available to any industrialists who wanted to come the sort of information which might help them to go in for today's type of industry. The response from the industrialists was very encouraging.

At the same time, the D.S.I.R. has been helping us with the selection and training of the industrial liaison officers I have referred to, and has also placed a map-making development contract in Scotland worth £58,000.

On the scientific side I am glad to be able also to announce that my noble Friend the Minister for Science has just approved a proposal that a further grant of £190,000 should be made to Glasgow University for the installation of equipment in support of the £750,000 linear accelerator now being constructed there.

Although this programme has, perhaps, no immediate industrial application, it is of the utmost importance in giving Scotland its share of fundamental research in the development of high voltage, energy techniques, Scotland is now, therefore, well in on the ground floor in this type of research, the ultimate econo- mic value of which will, we are sure, be demonstrated in the longer term.

It is, I believe, a recognition of the outstanding quality of the work being done by Professor Dee and his colleagues in the Physics Department of Glasgow University that the Government, on the highest scientific advice, have felt able to finance the linear accelerator itself and the provision of additional equipment on the scale which I have just announced.

Another move which I was very glad to note was the appointment of the Director and four of the senior staff of the National Engineering Laboratory at East Kilbride as visiting professors to the Royal College of Science and Technology. I am confident that a closer relationship between the two establishments can only result in an improved service to industry.

I am convinced that the services and, in some cases, the financial help which the Government provide for industry in science and research is extremely important. Only occasionally—as with the DennyHovercraft—does it hit the headlines, but it is an invaluable ingredient in the diversification and modernisation that we need.

I turn now to the new towns. Very largely, the people of Scotland think of them as places to mop up surplus population from Glasgow and other congested areas. That is true, but they are also the spearheads of a great deal of the new growth. I have been visiting some of them in the last months and have seen Standard Telephones at East Kilbride and Hughes International at Glenrothes. I have not yet visited Cumbernauld, but I know that it has attracted Rubery Owen and Taskers, and there are many others. Glenrothes seems to me particularly interesting, because it might be thought by many people that it is a little off the beaten track, away from the central industrial belt, and that it therefore might not attract industry as readily as some of the others. In fact, however, it is the fastest growing of all our new towns. Its latest recruit—a frozen food concern—willdouble the total number of jobs available there.

But it is not only at the new towns that growth is taking place. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock referred to Linwood and Bathgate, and there are other overspill areas playing their parts in changing the industrial map. I was extremely impressed by what I saw at Irvine when I was there. It has the Skefco concern outside the town, but inside, it is no less energetic. On the industrial estate, sponsored by the town council, it has five firms from Glasgow employing about 600 people and thirteen other firms employing another 600; and I understand that there are plans which the town council hopes will draw other firms to the town fairly soon.

Kirkintilloch is another area where a great deal of local effort is being made and it has attracted six factories for six firms. The jobs are in prospect there, but I think that the effort deserves mention. There is also the 65 acre development by William Grants at Girvan which will provide for 250 workers and cost about £1¼ million.

Now, in order not to disappoint the hon. Member, I shall say something about the pulp mill. Whatever his feelings, this is the key to a great development in the Highlands area. He said that it would employ about 1,500 people. That is true of Fort William. That is about the figure which will be employed directly there. But, in addition, there will also be a great deal of employment outside Fort William, and it is probably the biggest single project for development in the Highlands which we have seen. It may be that the hon. Gentleman would rather see the whole of it run by the Government, but in my view—a view I expressed at the time—I think that the Government are better consumers of paper than producers of it.

There is also the expansion of the construction industries as a result of expanding investment. Civil public investment in Scotland, which was almost unchanged between 1960–61 and 1961–62 rose in 1962–63 by nearly £20 million, or about 10 per cent. The hon. Gentleman says that the rise is because an election is coming, but I was asked to arrange last year that more money should be spent in these ways, and that has happened.

The sum is expected to rise by a further £34 million in 1963–64. Public investment on this scale, rising to £230 million a year—over £50 million more than the annual rate of three years ago—gives an indication of the effort the Government are making to lay down the firm base—I know that some hon. Members opposite dislike the word "infrastructure"—which expanding industry needs.

This rate of expansion gives substantial ground for confidence in the future and its immediate effect is to reduce unemployment in the construction industries themselves. This is already becoming very apparent in the craft trades and particularly in those involved in the initial stages of new building schemes. For instance, the number of unemployed bricklayers in Scotland fell last month to 109 against a total of 150 unfilled vacancies for bricklayers. There is still unemployment, too much of it, in the finishing trades, but this to some extent is due to the bad weather in the winter which disrupted housing programmes.

In this situation, the problem for the future is twofold. First, we must maintain and increase the present momentum of our development and without investment running into shortages or bringing an overload in the skilled craft trades. This opens up the question of training andretraining in a specially urgent form. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour has had discussions about this with both sides of the industry and training facilities for building craftsmen are now being provided as part of the programme for expanding adult training facilities in Scotland.

Secondly, we have to take up the slack, and this is still substantial in the semiskilled and unskilled sectors of the industry, both by pressing on with new building techniques, as my right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works is doing, and by committing more investment to the type of work where the skilled content of the labour required is low.

Mr. John Robertson (Paisley)

The right hon. Gentleman said that the Minister of Labour was having discussions with employers and trade unions on the question of training adult labour for the skilled building trades. Has the trade union agreed to employ this kind of labour?

Mr. Noble

I am informed that the trade unions have not yet agreed to the employment of this type of labour, but this is a type of co-operation to which we would hope both sides of the Committee will lend their aid, because it would be a great pity if we were to be held up in the building we need in Scotland for some reason of this sort.

It is for this reason that we are intensifying the programme for clearing derelict land and stimulating local authorities to put forward major proposals in this field. But I think one has to realise how much the use of these new great machines has come to the fore in this type of operation, so that a comparatively small amount of extra labour is often involved in this type of work. The real value of this, perhaps, is in modernising, giving a new look to, the areas which have become derelict and thereby making them more attractive to industry.

For these various reasons, in spite of the very distressing figures for unemployment which we had all through this winter, there are a few rosy patches in the sky, as the hon. Member for Kilmarnock suggested. Furthemore, today we can look forward a little with greater encouragement because during the last two years the British economy as a whole has been expanding pretty slowly. Today, the picture is improving a good deal, at least as I heard it during my tour of Scotland. Firm after firm told me that their order books were filling up and that things were beginning to look a great deal brighter. This is an impression which seems to be confirmed by something I read from the F.B.I. day or so ago, and if this is so in Britain as a whole, then we have a better chance in Scotland of getting our share of it.

In the last two months, the period since I made the speech in the Highlanders' Institute to which the hon. Member for Kilmarnock referred, Scotland has not been doing so badly. We have had the pulp mill and the opening of Rootes and the new processing plant at Glenrothes and we have had Ferrantis opening the world's first factory for producing electronic machine tool controls, and we have had three new firms coming to Donibristle. I do not think that that is a bad catalogue just because it happens to be true.

We all know perfectly well that new firms do not immediately create jobs—there is often construction to come first —but if they are settled on coming to Scotland, then at least that is some comfort to the areas which need them. We know that we have to get enough growth and enough new jobs not only to overhaul the rundown which has been developing, but to reduce the emigration, which is much too high. I should like to speak about this, but time is getting on.

What we have to do is to beat the 1959–62 figures to which I have referred. Scotland, I am quite certain, can do it and will do it. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock said that he had the greatest confidence in the Scottish industrialists. I am glad that he has, and I hope that they have the same in him. But we have to make certain that the activities of Government Departments concerned to stimulate economic development in Scotland are concerted in detail so as to have the maximum effect.

The hon. Member talked about changing around desks in St. Andrew's House. He can call it what he likes, but last January we set up the Scottish Development Group, which represents all the Departments whose co-operation in this is needed, working under my own general oversight. The Group has been concentrating for the first months on the problems of Central Scotland, where the problems are greatest, and it is seeking to work out an agreed pattern of physical and economic development to which the future activities of the various Departments in their respective fields will be directed.

In this connection, we are attempting to make as scientific an assessment as possible of the principles which should guide our work and we have sought to draw on the relevant professional knowledge of the Scottish universities in the economic field. I am glad to be able to take this opportunity of acknowledging the valuable co-operation which I have received from the universities in this matter and from the three professors of economics who have been acting as my economic consultants for the past six months. With the help which they have ungrudgingly given, the work has reached an advanced stage and is already being used to determine the resources which we must apply to get new industrial growth into Scotland and the areas where it is most likely to expand fast. I hope that the Committee will excuse me from going into details at this stage. Our studies are not yet complete, but I am quite clear that these new arrangements will prove a most useful and powerful instrument for co-ordinating these measures of re-invigoration which we all see to be necessary.

Mrs. Judith Hart (Lanark)

The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate how very keenly interested we on this side of the Committee are in the Scottish Development Group and the work which he has just described. Can he tell us how many additional expert staff have been taken on in the Scottish Office to do the immense amount of work involved? For example, how many economists and other technical experts are specifically attached to the Group?

Mr. Noble

I have mentioned that we have three university professors of economics as consultants. I will try to get the exact number of other experts and let the hon. Lady know. I do not have the figures with me.

There is no question of being satisfied with what has been achieved, and I want to make that perfectly clear. But it is also true that no one who travels around in Scotland, as I have been doing, can fail to see the very great new industries which have come under the Local Employment Act, which the hon. Member for Kilmarnock seemed to suggest to be of no importance.

Mr. Ross

Window dressing.

Mr. Noble

They are very impressive windows.

Equally well, none of those who attended yesterday's show by the Films of Scotland Committee could fail to be impressed by the signs of vigour and growth potential which are to be seen in the Scotland of today.

Miss Margaret Herbison (Lanarkshire, North)

Since one of the films yesterday was concerned with the strip mill, can the right hon. Gentleman say how many ancillary industries using the strip mill have been situated around the mill or anywhere near it while right hon. Gentlemen opposite have been in power?

Mr. Noble

I am sure that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will be able to give the hon. Lady this information.

The Government are determined to build on these foundations. The implications of the change which we all see are clear and they will affect us all—local authorities, both sides of industry, every organisation, and indeed probably every family in the country. It needs boldness. It needs vision, radical change, and co-operation from everybody, but I repeat that we are determined, and we are confident that the outcome will be the most prosperous Scottish economy that we have known since the beginning of the First World War.

6.0 p.m.

Mr. J. Hill (Midlothian)

When the Secretary of State for Scotland was recounting the industries that we had lost, he missed one, the shale industry. We lost this industry because the Government allowed it to run down, and while this was happening we were being given all sorts of promises about new jobs that were coming to the Calder area. Under the 1940 Act this area was scheduled for redevelopment and assistance. Immediately the B.M.C. factory was established at Bathgate the President of the Board of Trade descheduled the area. We were then promised ancillary industries. The Minister of Laboursaid that there were 6,000 to 8,000 potential jobs there, but unfortunately they never materialised. Because we have been told these things for so many years, hon. Gentlemen opposite call us moaners. I am still moaning. That is my job. I was sent here tomoan to get jobs for the people in my area.

When we got the B.M.C. factory and the area was descheduled, ancillary industries left when they learned that they would receive no assistance from the Board of Trade. The Midlothian County Council was prepared to build factories, and industrialists were showing some interest in the area until they learned that they would receive no assistance from the Board of Trade. Following on that state of affairs, the President of the Board of Trade rescheduled the area, but by then it was too late because industry had bypassed us and gone to Cumbernauld.

Unemployment in the area is as high as if not higher than it was when the B.M.C. factory was established, and the position will very shortly be further aggravated when the only remaining pit in the area is closed. This will lead to a further 400 men being unemployed, and we ought to be told what provision is being made to help these men when this pit closes.

I was glad to hear the Secretary of State say that we are to get a coal-fired power station, and here I follow the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) about the Barony Colliery. Will the right hon. Gentleman make the National Coal Board fulfil the promise it made when it was trying to get the contract for the power station? Lord Robens and the Scottish chairman are on record as saying that unless they got this power station Barony Colliery would not be reopened. Now that we are to have this power station, will this pit be reopened?

If I have any complaint at all to make about this power station, it is that eight months have been wasted in getting a decision which could have been taken last November because I do not think that anyone in Scotland doubted that we would get a coal-fired power station. In fact, I think there would have been another revolution if we had not got it, and perhaps I might mention that the miners' unions in Scotland intend to help the National Coal Board to keep its promise to redevelop Barony Colliery now that we are to have this power station.

It has been said that we now have a new pulp and paper mill, but, like many of my hon. Friends, I should like to see at least two members from the Government on the Board to control the public money which is to be provided for this mill. Will this mill use all the pulp that is produced in the area, or will some of it be available for some of the existing mills? I have a number of paper mills in my constituency. These received a severe knock when the President of the Board of Trade completed the E.F.T.A. deal whereby the preference on imported paper was to be reduced yearly until it completely disappeared. This knock set some mills back to such an extent that they are now working part-time, and there is no point in creating new jobs at Fort William if it results in people in Midlothian becoming unemployed.

We are getting one new pulp mill, so why not develop another? We have the necessary timber to supply them, and this would make it much easier for our people to face the competition of their competitors from Norway and Sweden. It would help our people greatly if they used home-produced pulp, because at the moment the imported pulp has to be converted from a liquid to a cardboard form and then reconverted into liquid form to be used in our mills. If we could produce the pulp in liquid form in Scotland, our paper manufacturers would be able to compete successfully with other manufacturers.

The right hon. Gentleman also referred to the new factory built by the Ferranti company. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is not claiming the credit for this, because the people responsible for this industry coming to the area were the Midlothian County Council and the Dalkeith Town Council who, in co-operation with the Ferranti company built the factory there. What the Government can do to help is to follow the advice given by Mr. Ferranti at the official opening of the factory when he said that instead of spending public money in America to purchase electronic and other equipment for the Navy, Army, and the Air Force, the Government should spend that money in Dalkeith. By doing so Ferranti's would be able to expand their factory and provide still more jobs in the area. I ask the Government carefully to consider Mr. Ferranti's statement, because at the moment they are spending money in America buying stuff that they could get in this country, and this has been proved on more than one occasion.

I want to see more light industries directed to our area. I want industries which will employ male labour, because many of the new jobs which have recently come to Scotland have been jobs for females. I want to see something coming there which will employ male rather than female labour.

The coal industry is to contract still further. The road to England that Scottish people have been told to take is now being closed, because the English people are finding that they have problems to deal with in many industries, and there are now no jobs for the Scottish boys. When these people become unemployed I hope that steps will be taken by the Government to provide other industries to absorb them.

I am glad to know that a training centre is to be set up to train these people, but there is no point in training them unless they have jobs to go to. The Secretary of State talked about new towns. One new town is to be developed next-door to my constituency, and we have been promised 40,000 people from Glasgow, and also that industry will follow them. I will believe that when I see the industry there. I cannot see the new town being any more successful in attracting industry than was the B.M.C. I hope that the Government will do something quickly, if they are really in earnest in their claim that they wish to help Scotland.

6.11 p.m.

Sir Thomas Moore (Ayr)

In the most interesting and encouraging speech of the Secretary of State probably the most welcome statement was that which referred to the new power station being coal-fired. This news will be received with tremendous satisfaction in Ayrshire, where many pits have been closing down. I understand from the National Coal Board that it will safeguard between 10,000 and 12,000 jobs in Scotland. That is a tremendous achievement, for which I am truly thankful.

I hope that the President of the Board of Trade will find time to deal with one local point. I have already raised the matter with his Department. It concerns the reduction in the amount of coal passing through Ayr harbour to Northern Ireland. Some years ago the harbour was considerably improved and enlarged, to enable 2 million tons of coal to be passed through it yearly, but the highest figure that we have had was 700,000 tons. That was fairly recently. It costs £20,000 a year to dredge the harbour, and unless we can be assured of a regular stream of traffic—and coal is our biggest traffic—Ayr will become just another unemployed centre.

I should like to reassure the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. J. Hill). Accord- ing to my information, the fact that the power station will be coal-fired means that Barony Pit will be reopened. I have raised with my right hon. Friend's Department the question whether the industrial estate that I have long asked for can be established at Prestwick, and also whether there can be a duty-free zone. The county council feels that there would be an enormous attraction for southern industrialists to come to the locality if they knew that these advantages were readily available.

Not many days ago I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he would agree to Prestwick and Ayr being made a development district. He was unwilling to give me any assurance on that point. I should like to know what degree of unemployment has to exist before a district can be declared a development district. If we could be given this information it would help us to form an opinion whether there is some chance of a development district being created there.

I have been in sympathetic correspondence with Lord Robens on this point, and I say at once that I have met with nothing but good will on his part, and his promise to help if he can. Scotland uses all the wooden pit props which she produces; in fact, the forestry department is producing more than is required. England, however, imports about 90 per cent. of her pit props. In view of the cost of transport and the availability of surplus pit props in Scotland, it would seem to be worth while enlarging that industry in Scotland.

I agree with my right hon. Friend that the degree of unemployment that exists in Scotland—which is about double that of England—is to some extent Scotland's own fault. For generation after generation Scotland has relied on the old traditional industries, such as coal, shipbuilding, steel and iron. Scotland did not visualise other nations, which we have taught how to build ships, being able one day to build good ships, and cheaper ships than we can build. Scotland did not visualise that one day coal might be challenged by some other form of power, such as electricity—although electricity uses a considerable amount of coal. I suppose, too, that Scotland did not foresee that diesel engines might one day become more popular than steam engines.

So the process went on. The older industries paid good dividends and kept Scotland well employed for generations, so that she came to rely upon them to an undue degree. Now, at last, she has seen the error of her ways and, with the help of Government Departments, hopes to attract a considerable number of new light industries. I am completely satisfied with the outline of the future given by the Secretary of State. It is more promising than it has been at any time since I have been a Member.

The Temporary Chairman (Dr. Horace King)

I am sorry that I did not notice that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) was trying to catch my eye when I called the last Opposition speaker. Mr. Grimond.

6.14 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland)

I am greatly obliged to you, Dr. King. I felt that the fact that you did not call a Privy Councillor might have raised the standing of that august body in the House of Commons in general. I am grateful to you for your kind words. Indirectly, you have done me a service.

In spite of that happy beginning to my speech, I cannot share the satisfaction expressed by the hon. Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore). I agree that it is nice to have this decision about the power station, but even now, as I understand it, it has to be advertised, and an inquiry has to be held. This decision is very late in being arrived at. The Secretary of State spoke about some rosy patches in the sky. My goodness!—they are in the sky, all right. I do not think that there are nearly enough rosy patches on the ground of Scotland.

This debate gives us an opportunity to look at the general health of our country. The report that we have had from the "doctor" has been uninspiring. We must have the whole-time attention of the doctor in charge. I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not here now. I understand that he is still also Chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party. I do not wish to make a personal point about this, but in my view that is entirely wrong. The chairmanship of the Scottish Conservative Party is now a full-time job.

In election year the right hon. Gentleman will have all the work on his hands that he can possibly manage to do. I do not think that we can have a part-time Secretary of State and I suggest that he hands his other job over to the hon. Baronet the Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour). He could do the job of running the party very well. He is already a baronet and therefore he would make no call on the Honours List. I put this forward seriously because with Scotland in its present state I think it wrong that the Secretary of State for Scotland should double these jobs.

There are three things which strike everyone about the situation in Scotland. One is the high rate of unemployment. This is an obvious and most striking factor which rightly hits the imagination of the public because it is concerned with human beings and is a serious human problem. To go about Scotland today and to find that there are people who left school a year or two years ago and have never had a job is an extremely distressing experience.

The second thing is the lack of growth in Scotland. The Secretary of State said that Scotland has kept up with the economic growth in the United Kingdom, or even surpassed it. But as there has been little growth in the United Kingdom that is not a very striking performance. Over the years there has been a shattering lack of growth in the Scottish economy. As we start from a position in which the economy is very much under-stretched, this failure to obtain growth in Scotland appears more striking than in England.

Thirdly, there is the continual drain of the best brains and skill from Scotland down to the South. To my mind this is at the root of the whole trouble. We shall never feel satisfied about employment and growth in Scotland until we have a country which is much better balanced and provides much more opportunity for enterprise and skill for the new engineering and scientific jobs. Possibly we are putting too much emphasis on science and not sufficient on engineering which, in many ways, is what we lack in Scotland today. As everyone knows this is not a temporary phenomenon. Even when the figure of unemployment in Scotland was down to 3.1 per cent., in the rest of the United Kingdom the figure was down to 1.6 per cent. so that even in the good times Scotland lagged behind.

One of the first points to which attention should be drawn is the situation in the south-east of England. It is to this area that we are losing so much of our ability. Every year 40,000 office jobs are created in the London area—40,000 office jobs alone. I still cannot make head or tail of the Government's statistics about jobs in Scotland. Whatever the statistics, the total number of jobs which have been created in Scotland is nothing like 40,000 a year. One hundred thousand extra dwellings will be needed in the London area, according to the Government statistics in their White Paper, and this the Government accept. It is reckoned that 250 extra square miles will be needed in London to accommodate the population likely to come there in the next 20 years. We cannot get away from it. If we wish permanently to redress the balance of the country and to give back to Scotland some of the employment in the higher type of job which it ought to have there must be decentralisation from London.

May we be told when we are to have the Fleming Report? May we know whether any Government Departments are to be sent out of London. I do not think that will be done. I think that the Report will prove to be based on the assumption that no one is to be inconvenienced. But London will be intolerably inconvenienced unless some jobs are moved out. There is a centralisation of power in London, and Scotland is losing her most skilful and enterprising people. That is because the financial, political and social power and influence is concentrated in the South-East. This should be rectified and more power handed back to Scotland and to the regions within Scotland. Corporations like the B.B.C. should be required to put on more programmes in Scotland, not only about Scotland but the world in general. The whole emphasis of the policy regarding roads, housing and education should be moved away from south-east England. I do not believe that the Government will do anything, I do not think that they are seized of this fateful situation and of the way in which we are beheading Scotland, the north-east of England and a great deal of Wales.

I, like the Secretary of State for Scotland, have visited some of the businesses in Scotland—the electrical and electronic businesses. What do these people say? They say, "It is a wonderful country in which to live. But we do not see any people in the same line of business. We have to come to London to get any fertilisation in our business". One might ask, "What about the universities?" But there has been no effort to concentrate the new sciences in the Scottish universities. Certainly one finds a few professors here and there. But there is no effort made to build in Scotland a broad enough base to fertilise these new industries—electronics, engineering and so forth. The Secretary of State talks about the number of jobs created by companies which have come from outside Scotland, but a great many of the American companies never bring their top people to Scotland. These people may come on a visit, but they do not stay. So this is no solution to the continual beheading of the country.

All this would make it necessary for there to be an all-round attack by the Government, with some form of comprehensive strategy, and I looked for that in the Report of the Scottish Development Department. We have had its first Report. It is a tragic document. It is no more a development report than my foot—or any other hon. Member's foot for that matter.

I say this in all seriousness. It is difficult to say much without appearing to make a personal attack upon the people engaged in it, and I certainly do not wish to do that. What I am attacking is the whole system. Hon. Members should look at the Report. It is simply a section of the ordinary statistics compiled by the Scottish Office and bound up in a different cover. It is not a development report. There is nothing in it about economics. Imagine development without economics. Air travel is not mentioned. I do not know whether the people who compiled this report have read the Toothill Report where tremendous emphasis is put on the need to move high level management round the country. But executive travel is not mentioned. I do not think that railways are mentioned. Somewhere in the background there is a picture of the old Forth Bridge. But, so far as I know, railways are not mentioned. We all know why. It is because the Scottish Office has no power over economics and finance, the railways or anything else. Therefore, a development report is produced which is about housing, local government, roads, etc.

It contains a miscellaneous section to which I must draw the attention of the House. On page 45 there is a reference to the Radioactive Substances Act, 1960. There is a section referring to Litter; another to The Public Cleansing and Scavenging Services, and another to Public Conveniences—34 public conveniences were re-erected by 27 local authorities. This is Scottish development. There is a section on Noise Abatement, another about Oil On Beaches and another on Silage Effluent. It is really intolerable.

The hon. Lady the Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) asked whether there were experts in the Scottish Office. Again I am not attacking the people concerned, but I do not believe that there are enough people in the Scottish Office who are trained in economics and in the social sciences for a development department. The Scottish Office people should go to Brussels and see how they get into their business people who are development-minded: not solely those who have been brought up in the old academic and humane disciplines—fine as they are—but who are development-minded. I should like more people of the sort who wrote the Toothill Report brought into the Scottish Office. I do not agree with all that is contained in that Report but it does bring a breath of fresh air. The reason why it is a breath of fresh air is that it does not absolutely reek of bureaucracy. It does not publish every statistic no matter whether it is relevant or not.

I should not in the least mind having Dr. Beeching in the Scottish Office for a time. I dare say that Lord Robens would do some good there, and Mr. Toothill, too, if Ferranti could spare him. How many aeroplanes are there in Scotland for the internal service? I strongly suspect that there are about three. I strongly suspect that there are more in the Queen's Flight than there are in B.E.A. services for Scotland.

Mr. W. Hamilton

Three times as many.

Mr. Grimond

I would not go so far as to say that, but the position is serious. What is happening about the hovercraft? We were told that it would be tested out in Orkney this summer. Is it coming, or is it there already? What about the railways? I asked the Secretary of State if the Development Department was consulted before the Beeching Report was published and I got the answer, "No, it was consulted afterwards". Surely the Council's views should have been taken into account. Which ports are to be developed? Most of the liner train services, which are the forward-looking part of the Beeching Report, are to run down to London. That is because Beeching assumes that is where the whole drive of trade will be.

Did not the Scottish Office tell the Ministry of Transport that it had some views in relation to the Beeching Report and that it had social implications? I see present the hon. Knight the Member for Ross and Cromarty (Sir John MacLeod). I am glad to congratulate him on his recent honour. He knows that it is useless to close railway services before there is some alternative means of transport. We have no adequate alternative to cover the situation in mind of Scotland. It was only a fluke that the line to Fort William was not closed and that therefore we can have the paper mill established.

On the question of education, I should like to see a very large increase in science and engineering and so forth at the universities. We are told that there is to be an extra grant for the Royal College but what about the D.S.I.R.? What about having an operational research section in Scotland and having new business schools centred in Scotland? Are we to hear of any plans—better still decisions—about the development of education, particularly technical education, in Scotland?

A great deal of this is tied up with urban renewal. The Report deal sat length with building and housing and has some important things to say about those matters. They are all bound up with the development of industry. It is vital now to have growth points in the different regions of Scotland. If we are to have them we must be able to undertake a very large programme both of urban renewal and of growth points outside the old rather run-down urban areas. I am told that for every three jobs created in Glasgow we have to bring in one or two extra people. This again is a sign of unbalance and ill-health. We have to bring in a whole class of skilled persons from outside and then there is nowhere to put them. By this we are making the problem of urban renewal more difficult. I hate to suggest another Royal Commission, but we have not had such a Report since this Barlow Report. Does the Scottish Office know the facts? I should like to think that the Scottish Office has a policy for attracting trade to Scottish ports, but I am not at all clear that this is so.

I should like to think that it had more encouraging news about vital industries such as shipbuilding. It was a serious blow to Scotland that we did not get an order for the building of the new submarines. Only three firms in the country build submarines and only one of them is in Scotland. It was a serious matter for that company that it should not be in on the new development. Why did the orders go to Vickers and Cammell Lairds? Does the Scottish Office know why the Navy is not building more replacements for its auxiliary vessels? Has the Scottish Office been in touch with the Admiralty? This would be extremely useful work for Scotland.

The Secretary of State said that £30 million had been set aside for loans as a valuable contribution to employment in the shipbuilding industry. If it is a valuable contribution to the shipbuilding industry why is B.P. seeking tenders from Sweden? The right hon. Gentleman said that there had been more inquiries since the loans were announced but have there been any orders? The situation on the Clyde is exceedingly alarming and it seems worse off than any district in England. I do not know if it is true, but figures were published in one of these papers saying that 86 per cent. of new work had gone to the north of England in the first months of this year.

Yesterday I went round a new yard in Sweden—Gotaverke. It is like looking at a different industry. I do not want to exaggerate. There is no doubt a place for smaller yards. We have spent a great deal on modernising our yards and the management and skill are first class but it is frightening to see the difference. The Secretary of State said that there was surplus capacity of shipyards in the world. Yet this Swedish yard, which has been opened for only three months, has work for two and a half years ahead. The company has orders for 650,000 tons of shipping. That is only one Swedish company. The yard is 1,100 yards deep. The raw material goes in—much of it shipped from this country, Germany and Belgium—and is pushed through enormous sheds with magnetic cranes, electronically controlled, straight down the yard. The ship is finally assembled in sections in a dry dock.

It is frightening to compare that situation with the situation on the Clyde. This yard is on a green field, or I should perhaps say grey rock site. The Clyde has modernised itself and John Brown's has spent a great deal of money, but this yard in Sweden can build two 150,000-ton tankers at the same time. In Scotland can any yard build 150,000-ton tankers? How many can hold 100,000-ton ships? There is a place, of course, for smaller yards—but ships are getting bigger each year. Even through the Suez Canal they take bigger ships. Think of the Clyde yards jammed between a tiny river and a network of roads. I see in the document a map of roads for Scotland.

One of the roads which is to be widened and improved is by the side of the Clyde. Is this to be a new road well back from the yards? Unless it is there we cannot get movement of material such as the Swedes are getting. I do not say that that is essential in every case, but it would be a great advantage. The Swedes say that they are slightly undercut by the Japanese but not enough to be significant. They admit that they are not taking orders at great profit, but they are undercutting our yards in a way that none of our shipowners can afford to ignore. They pay the highest wages outside America.

The only way in which I can see our succeeding is to have a great deal of new planning and new road building down the Clyde. There is talk of a Clyde barrage. Is anything known about this in the Scottish Office? How would it affect the shipyards? Would it enable us to build bigger ships? Another striking thing about the yard in Sweden is that it has one union. There are no demarcation disputes, because everyone is a member of the same union. The men are trained by the company right through. How do they get the money to do this? The yard cost £14 million. That is a lot of money, but when we see that £2½ million has been spent on Downing Street one sees that these things are relative.

They get this money because the Swedish Government allow them to put money to reserve with the Bank of Sweden, on which they get no interest and on which they pay no taxation. They can use this money for development only when the Government say so. When the Government feel that the economy needs stimulation, they say to them, "You may use the reserve which you have frozen in the Bank of Sweden". This sum of £14 million for the shipyard came out of the reserves of one company. I do not say that this is an ideal solution, but it is the kind of arrangement with which we have to compete. The loans and grants which we make in Britain do not compare in scope with these provisions. One of the difficulties in Scotland is that we have not brought ourselves on to the new world level either in size or equipment or, I must say, in the amount of money necessary.

I have two other comments to make on matters which have so farnot been mentioned. When shall we have an answer about a Highland Development Authority? It is vital that we should get rid of the amateur, piecemeal advisory approach for the Highlands and should have a development authority. Whenever I ask this question I am told either "Another day", or, "We will see what happens next year". Shall we ever be given an answer? When we have such an authority, will it be staffed and manned by experts, by people who know their job, by commercially-minded people, and will it have enough money? I have heard it said that it will have only £8 million. This one yard in Sweden cost £14 million.

May we be told something about the development at Glenrothes where I understand an American firm has undertaken freezing and packaging food? Is this tied up with development in the north-east of Scotland? I am certain that this type of "agri-business" will grow. It is impossible for fishermen, crofters and small farmers to compete with this as individual units, and one of the most valuable things which a development authority could do would be to assist them to compete in the new type of packaging and selling of foodstuffs. We all know that the housewife buys less and less of what used to be called wet fish. She buys fish in cardboard boxes—fish which can be cooked straight away.

It is a question how far the Highlands of Scotland can compete with this in the mass market at all. It may be that we shall have to go in more for specialised produce of the highest standard, branded and with a mark. I believe that there would be a considerable sale for Shetland lamb, Orkney beef, meat from the Northeast of Scotland and so on, but it would have to be properly marketed, branded, advertised and transported, and this is a job outside the capabilities of the Highlands at present.

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir D. Robertson) will bear me out when I say that one of the great difficulties is that these areas, above all, in Scotland have lost their skilled manpower. One cannot find people with the enterprise, the ability and the training to take on the running of such projects. This is, therefore, a social problem. We must get people back to these areas. Money in itself is not enough because there is no one there capable of using the money.

I hope that the Scottish Office are not as self-satisfied about the present position as appears. It is not simply a fact that Scotland is losing its population and is being drained of its blood; it is also the fact that the rest of the world is moving on to new industries and new skills, and on to a new scale of development. It is no good in Scotland trying to catch up with what was good enough 10 or 15 years ago. We must have a different and professional approach which will bring usup to what is required in the 15 or 20 years to come.

6.45 p.m.

Commander C. E. M. Donaldson (Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles)

This afternoon, from the presentation of the case from the Opposition Front Bench, from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), the Committee has had its ideas fixed on the necessity for forward-thinking, for development, for changes in industry and for the absorption of new ways and means of earning our national livelihood in Scotland.

I do not dissent greatly from much that has been said from both sides of the Committee, although I disagree with some of the points made by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross). In the main, however, this gathering of Scottish Members to consider our needs and requirements in Scottish industry is united in its desire to further the interests of Scotland and to see that we make such progress as will conduce to the full employment of our population and, in particular, will give relief as quickly as possible to those areas of Scotland in which the need for employment is greatest.

I do not propose to follow the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland in the detail of what he said. He remarked that he could see no rosy patches at all. I shall deploy an argument to show that in one part of Scotland, far remote from his area in the extreme North-East—in fact, my area in the extreme South-East—there are not only patches but good sunshine in the skies on the Borders.

He criticised my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for holding dual office in that he was also chairman of the Unionist Party in Scotland. Those who know my right hon. Friend realise that he has the capacity of direction and understanding. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour) might be a suitable gentleman to take over the office of chairman from the Secretary of State. He is perhaps not aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East, is already the deputy-chairman.

Mr. Grimond

That is why I made the suggestion.

Commander Donaldson

I suggest that the fact that my right hon. Friend is the chairman and that he is assisted by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East means that between them they make a very good job of understanding the needs of Scotland.

Mr. W. Baxter

I should be grateful if the hon. and gallant Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Commander Donaldson) and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) would have this little private argument outside as to who should lead the Conservative Party in Scotland. Let us devote some of our time to the problems not of the Conservative Party but of Scotland.

Commander Donaldson

The hon. Member is entitled to his opinion, but I am entitled to make my speech as I see fit, and that I intend to do.

The right hon. Gentleman made certain references to the Development Report. He said, "Development Report, my foot". I would point out that the Report had the stimulus of a corn on his foot in that it provoked him to a lot of thought and some constructive ideas about what the Development Report might be in future.

I propose to devote my own speech to affairs in the south-east of Scotland, in my area, where, fortunately for the Borders, things are very much better than they are in most parts of Scotland. In the three counties which I represent and in the burghs we have the great wool trade, tweed, knitwear and hosiery. We are very prosperous on the Borders. I want to make it clear, however, that we who live on the Borders in reasonable prosperity have every sympathy with and understanding for those in the areas of Scotland where there is unemployment or under-employment. Our difficulty, to some extent, is that we have not enough people to fill the jobs. The wool trade is growing in spite of the effect of the American ad valoremtax on our wool material and in spite of the worry and concern which was caused recently by the new trade agreement with Japan. We are doing very well.

I took the trouble yesterday to obtain the latest figures for employment in my area. This is the rosy spot to which I referred, and it illustrates that, fortunately, all Scotland is not in the same condition as some parts of it. On 10th June the male unemployment percentage in Galashiels was .08 and the female percentage was .4. In Hawick, my largest burgh, male unemployment was .12 per cent. and female unemployment .03 per cent. It is hard to think of .03 per cent. of a person unemployed, but it represents certain figures. The same general figures applied in Kelso, Jedburgh and Peebles. We have a total in the three counties of 50,000 people, but in the whole of this great area, over 1,600 sq. miles, with three counties, there was a total of only 332 people unemployed.

Mr. J. Robertson

Would the hon. Gentleman tell us the increase or decrease in the numbers employed this year as compared with 10 years ago?

Commander Donaldson

I could not give those figures without referring back, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate. I remember speaking in a similar debate six years ago when I was comparing the figure for Stornoway, which then had 39 per cent. unemployed, with the figure for Hawick, which I gave as 0.02 per cent. It is almost identical with the figure I have today. It turned out to be three unemployable persons and one man who happened to be changing his job on the day the count was taken.

I was about to say that the total in my area is 332 unemployed. That includes men, women, and boys and girls who have just left school. In the whole area there are only five boys and four girls who have not had a job since they left school. The unrequited applications for employees by firms total 512. Therefore, there are more people required by firms in my area than there are employees out of work.

I make this point because I wish to accentuate the peculiar situation in the Borders, where we have had over the last quarter of a century a steady form of depopulation. It has worked out at an average of about ½ per cent. per annum. One wonders why this has been happening. I believe that in more recent years, certainly since the war, a large proportion of it has been attributable to the increasing development of agricultural machines in the great farming areas, especially in Roxburghshire. Some of it may have been due up till fairly recently to the lack of amenities—for instance, the lack of electricity. I am fortunate in that the South of Scotland Electricity Board has now completed all its schemes in my area. There are now no places which do not enjoy the benefits that come from the availability of electricity.

Some of this depopulation may be of a sociological nature. Young people—both young men and young women—who earn very good pay in the mills go further in their travels on their holidays. They have more money to spend. They are attracted by travel. They go to larger built-up areas and cities. They are attracted by the amenities and social things there—dancing and all the other things that go on in big cities. I think this has something to do with it.

I am sure that the main reason for the depopulation in my area is that, where we have these traditional wool trade mills, which are in the main private enterprise, all except the S.C.W.S. mill in Selkirk, there is not sufficient employment in mills in the Borders to allow for the building up of new families so that there will be enough female labour available to run the mills. This creates a most unusual situation. There are mills with full order books but desperate for female employees. The female employees are not available because we have not been able to attract into the Borders of Scotland light industries to provide work of a reasonable nature for males.

It has been my privilege and pleasure to work together with provosts in the Border burghs, particularly the Provost of Hawick, to see what could be done. I should like in this Committee to thank my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, who is with us at the moment. The Provost of Hawick and his town clerk came here and we went thoroughly into the potentials which would apply to Hawick, if Hawick decided to make an overspill agreement with Glasgow. As as result of that conversation, Hawick has recently completed a full overspill agreement with Glasgow. It is happy that it has done so. The other burghs have agreements which are beginning to operate.

If the Border burghs, and indeed other burghs throughout Scotland, are to make overspill agreements with Scotland, it must be remembered that they cannot just absorb population. They will need jobs for the families that vacate Glasgow to live in the receiving areas. This is vital. This is what we want in the Borders. We in the Borders are not afraid that we shall be overrun by people from Glasgow. The Border people are in reasonable numbers. They have very great traditions of the "Common Ridings" in the past. They will gladly accept the overspill people who will come to them, but they need industry to go with it.

The firm of Starrett has been referred to. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said that there were few Americans who came to Scotland. The Starrett firm came from America and brought its principal employees to instruct our Scottish craftsmen in the use of their hands and intelligence so that they could apply their minds and hands to precision tools. This firm is a great success in the Burgh of Jedburgh. I am grateful that on the 5th of this month my right hon. Friend took the trouble to go to see this firm. He will have received a letter written by the firm on the 6th of this month thanking him for visiting it and pointing out certain difficulties the firm has, which I do not intend to go into now, regarding the possibility of further expansion so as to provide more employment in the Borders, which would help to absorb people from other parts of Scotland.

I come to the main point concerning my area and the people in my three Border counties. The suggestion is—I believe it at the moment to be a monstrous suggestion—that the entire railway line between Edinburgh, Galashiels, Hawick and on to Carlisle should be emasculated under the Beeching Report. It is a known fact that, in principle, I voted in favour of the Report, because, in principle, it is a sensible and good Report. However, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has stated that in certain areas in Scotland, including the area of my hon. Friend the Member for Ross and Cromarty(Sir John MacLeod) and the Highlands and perhaps in our area, if the suggested closure of a railway would have the impact of undue pressure and hardship on individuals and on the business life of the community there will have to be rethinking about such a closure. I raise this point this afternoon because of the vital importance of this railway to my area.

I know that this is not within the scope of the Votes under consideration, but in view of the number of Departments I could refer to if it is desired to bring it within the terms of order, perhaps it is better to let me continue. What inducement will there be to light industries to come to the Borders, where they are willing to take overspill from Glasgow and willing to provide housing site, houses and all the social and other facilities necessary, if we are not able to say that there is adequate passenger transport for the people who come to live there to go reasonably quickly by direct route to Edinburgh, or even to go south to Carlisle, or even take the night sleeper and go to St. Pancras? What about the American buyers who come to buy our valuable goods in Hawick? It has been recognised by the present President of the Board of Trade and by his predecessors that, with the exception of the whisky trade, Hawick has and has had a higher dollar earning capacity than any other place in Scotland. Will these Americans come if they cannot come direct to the Borders? Will they have to go up on the night sleeper to Edinburgh and be fetched out by a motor car at half-past seven in the morning and taken down to the Borders? They will take their orders elsewhere if we are not careful.

I can assure my right hon. Friend that Hawick does not accept the proposition of this railway closure, because it will affect the present trade and the industries which it hopes will come to Hawick. I should be grateful if my right hon. Friend would give me the same sort of assurances as he has given in other places. I should be grateful to him if the debate concludes with his saying something to show that there will be further consideration before this vitally important railway is closed.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. William Baxter (West Stirlingshire)

I had hoped that we would receive an inspiring speech, containing some new ideas for tackling Scotland's unemployment problem, from the Secretary of State today. Unfortunately, as has been pointed out in most of the speeches that have been made since his contribution, there was not very much new in his speech.

He said that there were some rosy paths ahead, that a new power station was likely to be built in the not too distant future and that it would be coal-burning. Unfortunately, they are the sort of things we have been told for many years. Whenever there is a debate of this sort Scotland is given a little enticement, but that is all. I am not saying that the unemployment problem is a new one or that it can be easily solved. It has been with Scotland for many years. It existed in my boyhood days. Long periods of depression faced men and, as a miner's son, I was unemployed for many months, even when I was 14 years of age. Perhaps that is why I can appreciate the degradation an unemployed person feels. He feels lost, unwanted and without a task in life.

I do not intend today to speak only about the past. I must, in fairness to Scotland generally and my constituents in particular, consider the present and the future. The problems facing my constituents are typical of those facing the rest of Scotland. At Kilsyth 600 men were made redundant by the closure of the Dumbreck pits Nos. 1 and 2. The pit at Denny was closed down a few years ago, putting 300 men out of work. The pit at Plean made 350 men redundant when it was closed down last year. Even the little village of Whins of Milton was badly hit when the Manor Powis mine was closed last year, causing another 200 people to become redundant. In the village of Fallin one of the few remaining pits remains open. There is a possibility that that will close in the near future.

The story by no means ends there. Three by-product works at Garnock, Plean and Kilsyth—the only three such works in Scotland—have nearly all gone. The first closed down about three years ago, the second two years ago and the third is likely to close soon. This means that the whole of the by-products industry of the National Coal Board will be vested in Coalville's in Lanarkshire. It means that this great by-products industry is being taken away from the N.C.B. and placed in the hands of private enterprise. This may be a good idea, or not. I will not argue the merits or otherwise of this aspect now, but I hope that the Secretary of State realises what is being lost to Scotland when he speaks about what Scotland is gaining.

At Bonny bridge about three years ago a cigarette factory closed down and in two months' time a mill owned by J. & P. Coates of Paisley will be out of existence in the village of Banton in which I was born. This is not a particularly encouraging picture. It is, in fact, a picture of depression and is descriptive of many other parts of Scotland.

The Secretary of State told us that he has brought or is bringing 140,000 new-jobs to Scotland. We know that about 40,000 jobs have gone out of existence. This means that we have 100,000 more jobs than we had two yeas ago, while the unemployment figure is also about 100,000. I do not see the logic in the right hon. Gentleman's argument and I hope that he will clarify the position, for his arithmetic just does not make sense.

My hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. J. Hill) rightly drew attention to another important problem facing the Secretary of State—the E.F.T.A. agreement. Unless great care and a good deal of action is taken soon the paper industry of Scotland will be in great difficulties. This industry does not possess the modern types of mill that are being built in the Scandinavian countries and Canada. I am worried about the people who work in this industry, for they have not known the pangs of unemployment for many years and it would be disastrous if they were made to feel them soon.

How will the E.F.T.A. agreement affect Scotland's agricultural industry? People may criticise Government grants and the methods being adopted to keep the industry in a stable condition, but the industry is of exceptional importance, not only for the agricultural well-being of Britain but also for industry generally. It would ill-become the Secretary of State not to have great concern for the effect of the E.F.T.A. agreement on it.

While I have so far drawn attention to the past and the present, I do not underestimate the magnitude of the problems which confront any Government in the future. Following the last war, and due to the then Labour Government, we saw the introduction of the Location of Industry Act, which did a good deal of excellent work. This was continued until the passing of the 1958 amending legislation and that, in its turn, did some good work. I would be the last to deny that the present legislation on the Statute Book has been of value. All these activities have contributed to the well-being of Scotland, but is the existing legislation sufficient?

In considering our own problems it is worth studying the standards that exist in the Scandinavian countries. We should do this from the point of view of agriculture, shipbuilding and other industries. In Sweden, Denmark and even in little Luxembourg there exists the production potential that would normally be associated with quite sizeable nations. We do not possess this sort of nationhood in Scotland. It would be well for us to study the question and to recognise that these small countries, with not as many natural assets as we have in our country, and even the newly emerging countries of Africa, are beginning to play an ever more important part not only in their own development but in the councils of the world which our country has lost through its laxity in the past.

I do not want to go into the details of this problem but I want to say one or two things which illustrate it very well. I must refer to the point made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond). It is true that in the new industries coming to Scotland, those in executive positions do not find the social and cultural life of a nation.

Mr. Noble

If the hon. Gentleman talks to the people who have come there he will find that just is not true.

Mr. Baxter

That is a matter of opinion. In my quest for truth and knowledge, I find that there are many people who would be averse to going to the Midlands or to Scotland if their wives were not willing to come with them. I say quite clearly that no one can deny that where the courts sits, where the ambassadors and embassies are there is a social life that many people desire. I do not think that the Secretary of State can deny that. I believe that when the court is in Edinburgh it gives an impetus to the social and cultural life of Edinburgh.

There is a problem not only concerning the cultural and social life. When one goes to Luxembourg and is entertained by the British Ambassador, one hears that the American Embassy staff is over 50 and that the Russian Embassy staff, not to be outdone, ranges over 50. I should not like to say what is the number of our staff. But these people are circulating among 500,000 people and all this interchange of ideas is good for this small nation.

I am mindful of another fact. How can we expect industrialists to come to Scotland with industries which consume considerable quantities of coal when they find that they have to pay £1 per ton extra for coal and have all the problems of transport to contend with. As the hon. and gallant Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Commander Donaldson) said extremely well, we must have adequate lines of communication in Scotland if we are to have a virile and developing society. Another point is that under the revaluation measures many factories in Scotland smaller than those in England are valued at a higher rate. These are problems that confront industrialists coming to Scotland. But I do not think that these are problems which need make us angry with each other.

I think that hon. Members opposite are as anxious to see Scotland revitalised as we are. Many have come to realise that a planned economy is desirable and necessary in this age and generation. However much some people may deplore it, I think that in the present state of world affairs it is necessary to have a planned economy. I feel that hon. Members on both sides have come to realise that there is a good deal of sense and goodness in nationalised undertakings properly run. The Government have conceded this by helping the establishment of a mill at Fort William. We have conceded that we have a good deal of good will and we would like good will in return from private enterprise. As men and women of good will we should try to reconcile these two conflicting points of view rather than score points in any derogatory fashion.

Something requires to be done for Scotland. Under the last Budget a different fiscal and taxation policy was introduced for areas of high unemployment. This is a concession for which I have worked for many years. I do not believe that we shall ever revitalise Scotland unless we have the whole of Scotland under a different fiscal or fax system from that which applies in England. That is the only way we shall get a natural growth of industry for Scotland.

The last industry of a basic nature to be established in Scotland was at the beginning of this century. We have to have regard to that simple fact. It is time that we had a Scottish research and development corporation on the same basis as the excellent organisation that exists in England but applies to the whole of Britain. I think that we should have one specifically for Scotland. It is our duty to demand it. When we read this excellent document and see the first-class work being done, we find that what has been done in Scotland is not sufficient to regenerate or rebuild our national economy. I think that this organisation should be based upon industry and upon the universities, and it should certainly be based upon the Government. Such a threefold organisation could, in my opinion, given the proper powers, not only develop new inventions, new ideas and new engineering techniques but could try to get those things now lacking in industry in our country.

It does not make any difference to me or to the wage earner whether he gets his wage packet from privately-owned industry or nationally-owned industry. The main thing is that he wants to get a decent wage packet, and it is our duty to see that he gets it. The only way to achieve that in Scotland is by doing some of the things that I have suggested.

The time has come for a complete review of the potentialities of our old industries. I have been reading the Elgood Committee's Report on the resources of Scotland. That we have the resources, no one will deny—but have we the ability to exploit them? I do not think that we have yet exploited our basic resources. In places like Denny, Bonnybridge and Falkirk some of the foundries are going out of existence, and factories remain empty. By developing new techniques and inventions, those factories could be fully used. I want to see special grants for that kind of development, or even for the building and re-equipping of new factories like that.

Our factories must be re-equipped as a first priority, because without a virile expanding industrial capacity we cannot have all our social services and all the other things we want. We should see that our industries, old and new, get the most up-to-date equipment money can buy, otherwise I cannot see us being able to compete with Sweden or with West Germany, where I have seen the modern factories we have helped to establish. Unless we put our factories on a comparable basis, we cannot expect to keep our people employed fully on reasonable wages.

Like many other hon. Members, I have had the opportunity to visit some of our embassies, and I have been astonished that I have never come across a trade attaché in any one of them who had ever been to Scotland, far less capable of representing its industrial well-being. It should be a prerequisite of the present Secretary of State and the present Government—or any Government—to ensure that a representative of Scottish trade and commerce is attached to each one of our embassies.

I would go further. I cannot see the proper development of trade in Scotland unless we have a complete encyclopaedia of the requirements of world trade and commerce. I run a little business, but if I wanted to develop it further with any spare capital that I might possess, there is nobody to whom I could go to tell me whether, say, Tanganyika needs chairs, tables or the like. I do not know where to get information about whether Brazil needs this or that. It is fantastic that a small nation like ours does not have such an encyclopaedia of world trade and commerce so that those wanting to expand business can get all possible help and encouragement.

It is time that we had a Scottish budget—simplified and easy to understand, with special emphasis on low rates of interest for industrial development, in the main. I do not mind creaming off the profits—I am all for it—but we cannot cream off the profits unless the profits are made. I am all for establishing nationalised industries, but we shall never be able to do so unless money is pumped in in the first place, and unless we have the vision and the will to make such enterprises work.

If Scotland is to revive, a different rating system is imperative. In that respect, we are almost a hundred years behind the times. Here we are, in the middle of this century, and nothing much is being done. It is not outwith the wit of man to devise a proper incentive scheme for people in the nationalised industries, whether officials or working men, in local government or in Government offices. Why should we have the old method of adding officials to officials—someone to keep their rubber stamp, or wasting time going for tea? We must devise a new approach even to our own office staff. I have to do it in my own office, and I cannot see why the same cannot be done in Government circles.

I agree with the Leader of the Liberal Party that it is imperative for the trade union movement to look at the past and the present, and to envisage a new future for trade unionism, but industrialists, too, must recognise that they cannot live in the past, but that new approaches must be made, that a virile, developing nation demands concessions from all sections of the community. If Scotland, as well as Sweden, Denmark, West Germany and the new emerging countries, is to live as it surely should, we must look at these things from a new angle.

Not only in Scotland but also in England I see the corroding of the nation's purpose in life. I see the vitals of the nation being destroyed. We are wasting time, day in and day out, on paltry scandal of no consequence while the great issues of the future of our nation are being cast aside and little heed paid to them. We have a great opportunity, but that great opportunity will not be seized by attention to the sordid things of life, and wallowing in the cesspools we have seen around us this wee while back.

Those who have had the privilege of public school and university education must realise that it is not on his accent that a man should be judged but on his ability to get things done. If we fail to realise that Scotland's greatness in the past came from the vigour and inspiration of ordinary men and women, if we fail to realise that such people are still with us and must be given encouragement and opportunities to develop our country, if we, who seek to represent the people, do not realise that we have a duty and responsibility for Scotland's survival in the years ahead, then her prospects will be poor indeed.

7.28 p.m.

Sir John MacLeod (Ross and Cromarty)

I do not think that the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. W. Baxter) was by any means lost for words, but I agree that the unemployment of which he spoke is soul-destroying. I want to deal with the continual drift of population from the north of Scotland. I agree with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) that we want a broad base for our education and for the development of our scientific, engineering and technical knowledge, but we want it throughout Scotland. The trouble in my area is that the people drift down to the areas round the Clyde—there are more Highlanders in Glasgow than in the Highlands—and then drift further south. I have always believed in the distribution of industry, but we have to tackle it much more sensibly than we have done, although I believe that something is now happening.

As the right hon. Gentleman said, it is absolute nonsense that another 400,000 office jobs are being created in London. Immediately there is any emergency of any kind, people drift out all over the country; immediately peace comes they flock back to London and the larger cities that are already far too overcrowded. We have the same situation in Scotland. Industry is not distributed sensibly enough. I know that the people in the industrial belt of Scotland welcome the new towns and overspill, but these things are over-emphasised and I should like to see a drift back to the north of Scotland.

That is why I agree with the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) in saying that the Secretary of State should look again at the Cairncross Report, which contains some suggestions. Where a nucleus of development exists in the burghs, it should be used and developed. Some people say that to do this means continuing the drift from the land, and this may be true, but surely it is far better to stop the drift of people from their home areas, because once they start to drift away it is very difficult to get them back.

I should like to say a word also about the new Development Department. I know that the development officers who have been established are encouraged in the Highland counties, for instance, to have the closest connection with the Development Department and they are educated and encouraged to help people in the area to present a good case to the Government for assistance under the Local Employment Act. That is one thing which can be done. We want all possible encouragement to be given for smaller light industries in a more balanced economy, not only throughout Scotland, but even in the Highland area itself. That is not too difficult to do if the development officers are encouraged by the Government to get on with the job.

We will not get the industries unless we have a proper transport system. It is ridiculous to think of closing the railway lines in the north Highlands. I have said for something like twenty years that we need adequate alternative facilities and that we should provide the chance for modernisation even of the railway system. I agree with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, who commented that the Report contains no mention of aircraft.

The hon. Member for West Stirlingshire was right to a certain extent, although my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State disagreed with him. It is true that executives are not too keen on coming to certain areas unless their wives go there and get amenities which are equal to those of the South. I agree, however, that a lot of people go into the area and appreciate the scenery, the fresh air and the beauty of the country. This has happened with the American firms which have gone, for example, into the Dundee area. They appreciate that the amenities of Scotland are attractive.

I should like the Local Employment Act to be made more flexible. It is having some effect in Scotland. Although indirectly it was used for bringing in the pulp mill, an industry which has been brought into Invergordon was very much encouraged by the Act. It is hoped for further development and assistance through the Act to make Invergordon into a growth area. It is terrible to think of the way that this wonderful port has been run down since the Navy used it. It is, of course, used as an oiling port for N.A.T.O. vessels, but it is disgraceful that we do not make full use of the port at Invergordon for further development. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will look into this. I cannot see why, through cheap electricity, for instance, it should not be possible to bring an electrochemical industry into the area. I hope that this possibility will be considered.

In my view, a great deal more could be done under the Local Employment Act to help the tourist industry. We do not have the industries which are spoken about in the industrial belt of Scotland, but we have a very good thriving and developing tourist industry. The Local Employment Act should be made more flexible to give encouragement to the development, for example, of hotels. In its recent Report, the Tourist Board suggests the building of Government hotels. That is a possibility that I should need to consider a little further. It would be all very well as long as things went well, but if the Government had a lot of big hotels which they could not keep going in the off-season they would find a tricky problem on their hands. I must declare that I have a small interest in this myself. Under the Budget, great help was given to industries and to anybody starting in developing areas. Unfortunately, however, the tourist industry was not helped, because the 10 per cent. allowance for plant and equipment does not apply in the hotel industry. This is a point to which consideration should be given.

I know that other hon. Members wish to speak, and I do not intend to detain the Committee long, but there are certain matters concerning the Hydro-Electric Board which need to be stressed. We all welcome the announcement that the new thermal station will be coal-fired. This will be appreciated by all mining areas. I should, however, like to make the point that the South Board and the North Board are complementary to each other and should be left as independent boards. At least, the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board should be left independent.

This is something about which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State must make up his mind. The uncertainty is causing much disturbance in the North and the embargo upon the promotion of new schemes is not helping the employment situation. The Hydro Board has done a wonderful job in that respect. It would not be right to mention individual firms in a debate of this kind, but I know of one firm which has built up its whole business from a tiny mason's yard to an enormous construction company, all because of the jobs which it got and through the drive and energy of the manager of the business. It was done through his determination. He had great difficulty in the first instance but he was helped considerably in the early stages by the Hydro Board, who got him out of some pretty rough messes at the beginning. He is now standing on his own feet.

That is merely an example of the good work which has been done. It is important, therefore, to get on with the schemes. Four or five of the schemes have been held up since the publication of the wretched Mackenzie Report, which has done nothing but damage in the North. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will get on with giving authority to go ahead with schemes and thus help employment and industry in the North.

It should not be forgotten that the Hydro Board, for example, started from scratch twenty years ago and has now serviced 92 per cent. of the people with electricity in its area. That is not some thing to be sniffed at. At least, the Board is solvent and its tariffs compare favourably with those of other boards. It is also free of debt—

Mr. Ross

And it is nationalised.

Sir J. Macleod

—I agree—and it has built up a surplus in reserve. It is a board which should be left to get on with the good job which it has been doing and it is against all public opinion to say that the board should be amalgamated with the board in the South. Certainly very doubtful economic advan- tage would accrue if the boards were amalgamated.

The Leader of the Liberal Party has come out wholeheartedly in favour of a Highland authority. I have not made up my mind about this. It is "filthy lucre" that we want really. There are plenty of people in the Highlands, such as the local authorities, to get on with the job provided they have the necessary finance.

The road system has been archaic for years. I admit that much is being done now, but a tremendous lot remains to be done. There will never be industrial development in the area unless the road system and the transport facilities are improved. The Hydro-Electric Board has played its part in this matter, too. I hope that we have got rid of this stupid idea that the board, when it floods an area, should provide roads similar to those which existed before, narrow roads with passing places. This is where we want more co-ordination and co-operation rather than a Highland authority.

As I say, my mind is still open on the question of a Highland authority. I am afraid that such an authority might take still more powers away from the local authorities, and we must be careful about doing that, because the local authorities are jealous of the powers which they have at present.

The Hydro-Electric Board can play a part in furthering the development of industry in the North. It has the power to do this under the Hydro-Electric Development (Scotland) Act, 1943. It has been doing a good job in trying to promote and to present the possibilities of industrial development in the North. It should be encouraged to do this. This is the authority which I should like to see developed further in the interests of industrial development in the North. It is a very stupid short-term policy of the Treasury to sacrifice the long-term benefits in cheap electricity which the Hydro-Electric Board will ultimately provide if it is left in being. After all, the board in the South is achieving the advantages of cheap electricity in the Galloway schemes. Why should not the Highlands, in years to come, get all the benefits which they can from cheap electricity which hydro development will ultimately provide? I think that the thermal stations are complementary one to the other through pump storage, and so on. I do not want to see, and I do not think we will see, a black country made out of the Highlands, but it is essential that we balance the economy in that area unless we want a completely unbalanced economy tthroughout the whole of Scotland.

I therefore say, leave the Hydro-Electric Board alone and let it get on with the job. The Secretary of State must announce now that it can get on with the schemes which it has prepared which will be of great benefit not only to the Highlands but to Scotland as a whole.

7.44 p.m.

Mrs. Judith Hart (Lanark)

I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Sir John MacLeod) has said. I particularly agree with what he said about the Mackenzie Committee, about the merger of the two Hydro-Electric Boards and about the need to consider some of the areas which are remote from the centres and industrial areas of Scotland. I also particularly agree with what he said about the need to preclude any rail closures which would seriously affect economic development.

What amazes me is that on two occasions in this debate namely, in the speeches of the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty and the hon. and gallant Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Commander Donaldson), we have had profound and ardent demonstrations of opposition to the Beeching Report and yet both of them voted for it in the House.

Sir John MacLeod

No, I did not vote for it. I deliberately abstained.

Mrs. Hart

I am glad to hear that, and I apologise for haying believed that the hon. Gentleman did vote for it. It is uterly illogical to be concerned about economic development in the remote areas of Scotland and not to accept the fact that there must not be rail closures if they would have a serious effect.

Sir John MacLeod

I have not voted absolutely against the Beeching Report.

Mrs. Hart

I was also amazed by the speech of the Secretary of State for Scotland. A great deal of water has flowed under the bridge in the past year, and I should have expected that on this occa- sion we would have had from the Secretary of State at least some indication that he is taking seriously the recommendations of the National Economic Development Council over the last few months. There was a fleeting reference to this in his speech, but I should have expected that the right hon. Gentleman would indicate how far he, as the Minister responsible for many aspects of social and economic development in Scotland, accepted the Council's conclusions, how far he was proposing to implement them and how far he regarded their implications as necessitating changes in policies for Scotland.

We have heard nothing about any of these things. All we had from the right hon. Gentleman was a recitation, as usual, of the number of jobs in Scotland and the balancing of lost jobs with new jobs and a vague indication that the Government are trying hard to do better and will do better and that more jobs will be provided. But—and this is the crucial point and what surprised me in view of what the National Economic Development Council has said—no attempt was made by the right hon. Gentleman to define his target, his own objective, for Scottish employment.

There was an article in the Glasgow Herald at the height of the winter unemployment when a great many people who are not normally vociferous in their criticism of the Government were expressing their concern and doubts about the methods which the Government had been using to meet the problem. It came from Sir Robert Urquhart, who rightly made the point that the first essential in Scotland's problems is to define the objective of Government activity. This means that a certain social judgment has to be made which we on this side make and assert quite freely but which the Secretary of State and his colleagues do not yet seem prepared to make. It is the simple social judgment that everyone who wishes to stay and work in Scotland must have the right to do so.

This is a fundamental question of judgment, because until that assertion has been made we cannot accurately measure the extent of the task which lies ahead. If we do not make this judgment, all that we can simply say is, "We should like a few more people to stay in Scotland. We want to cut down the rate of migration. We therefore want more jobs". But this Government have never been prepared to admit their own failures by stating clearly the target at which they should aim. If they were prepared to make the social judgment, they would have to admit that they have fallen vastly behind the number of jobs which should be created in order that this judgment can be made effectively in economic terms.

If one seeks to define the total number of jobs which is needed in Scotland, one must take into account many factors which the Secretary of State does not appear to have taken into account. We must take into account declining industry, which is what the right hon. Gentleman did today. We must also take into account population growth. The existing migration ought to be stopped because most of it represents the involuntary migration of people who would rather stay in Scotland. We must also eliminate existing unemployment.

If one takes these four matters into account, it seems to me that the Scottish Council under-estimates the total number of jobs that need to be provided. Taking all the factors into account, a reasonable assessment of the total number of jobs that need to be provided is 150,000 in the next seven years—new jobs, extra to the ones that we have at the moment.

That is a large number of jobs. This would mean a large amount of economic expansion and investment by the nation by offering subsidies or other inducements to firms to go to Scotland, or, where this does not provide enough jobs, by investment in State factories to meet the need. It means a further amount of social capital being provided for—to use a word which no one seems to like—the infrastructure.

The Report of the N.E.D.C. on Conditions Favourable to Faster Growth states that the level of public investment per head of population has been higher in Scotland and Northern Ireland than in England and Wales. It says that the tendency will go on. The Secretary of State will quote this and say that we are doing better in Scotland than elsewhere. Although a large amount of new social capital has been put into the less prosperous regions, they have a considerable legacy of poor social capital which needs replacing.

If any notice is to be taken of the N.E.D.C. Report and if the Government mean what they say about solving Scottish economic problems, there is a desperate need for increased Government investment in the social services as a whole in Scotland—housing, new amenities; all kinds of expenditure which at the moment have to be cut by local authorities because the Government will not give them enough money. Local authorities have been complaining bitterly about this for years, and they have been complaining even more this year than previously. Is this the way to pay serious regard to what the N.E.D.C. says? Of course not. The Secretary of State knows that in this respect the Government are failing to meet the needs of Scotland.

Mr. Noble

I do not quite understand what the hon. Lady means. There has never been a cut in local authority housing, and until this year no school building has been stopped.

Mrs. Hart

I made no specific reference to school building. The right hon. Gentleman seems to have a tender conscience on that point. What is clear is that more needs to be spent on these things. It is not enough to say that the Government have not cut expenditure. What is required is far more expenditure. To the extent that the Government failed to increase investment, they are failing.

The N.E.D.C. Report talks about identifying natural growth points, and this is something that the Secretary of State accepts. The Report talks about growth points, about new towns, about the social infrastructure. What are the Government doing about this? The new town of Livingstone is to be created. I hope that we shall have another new town in Lanarkshire, the one which the county council has proposed, for that will be in a part which urgently needs it. We have had the immense success story of East Kilbride in my constituency. That was a tremendous achievement. It has shown how effective a new town can be in providing a focal point for new firms to come in as well as in solving Scotland's acute housing problems.

Let us have more new towns. Why stop at Livingstone? This sort of thing should come out of Government expenditure. But the Government hesitate to spend. We know what the housing problem is in the west of Scotland and how much overspill and redevelopment is needed throughout the central borough. There is ample justification for providing three or four extra growth points in the form of new towns. To say "We have Livingstone" is not enough. The Government will not have done enough until they have solved the problem. Here again, there has been a failure to do what the N.E.D.C. thinks should be done.

To refer to a constituency matter, the N.E.D.C. says in Conditions Favourable to Faster Growth that: Any policy which adopted the concept of growth points would need to ensure that their location was, in so far as possible, in or near areas of high unemployment so that daily travel to work could be envisaged. It also says that there may be a need for: …special assistance for transfer or transport…for unemployed workers in remote pockets of high unemployment. The President of the Board of Trade and the Parliamentary Secretary know very well that it has been a matter of concern to my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) and myself that when growth points have been considered in relation to Lanarkshire, not enough attention has been paid to those areas outside the central belt and that the Government are not facing up to the difficulties of unemployment in the remoter areas. The Government are failing to face up to the difficulties for one reason. All that they have so far been prepared to admit is that more jobs are needed in Scotland as a whole. They have gone on to say that, where there is a very high level of unemployment, they will give special assistance to industry to go to the area.

What the Government have not recognised is that, just as it is immoral for a society to demand of its people that in order to have the right to work they should leave the country of their birth, the country in which they want to live, so, in my view—this is to some extent an individual view; it may not be wholly shared by some of my hon. Friends—one is entitled to say in respect of an area the size of Scotland that one should accept the obligation to provide jobs within areas. People should not have to go from, for example, Peterhead or Ross and Cromarty to Fife or Lanarkshire to find work, because that causes as much upheaval to them and destruction of community ties and family loyalties as having to move from Glasgow to London.

If the Government accept this view, there is an obligation on them to accept the corollary. They must accept that in large geographical areas such as the whole of Lanarkshire, the Border area or the western Highlands the only way to provide jobs is by finding growth points which have transport connections which can be used by people in the villages where there is unemployment. That is what has to be done. It means that railway lines cannot be closed, that one must consider the consumer needs of the areas and find new methods of transport, and increase the facilities which are provided in order to link up the villages to wherever one has decided to put the growth point.

I am not saying that one ought to provide a new factory in every village where there is a pit closure, for that would be absurd. But at the moment we have examples of men and women living in areas where there is desperate need and the Government are ignoring the need and doing nothing. There are such people living in the villages in Lanarkshire who cannot find work within reach of their homes and will, therefore, be faced with the prospect of having to leave their villages. This represents a failure by the Government to understand the essential needs of the Scottish people.

Some time ago, I asked the Secretary of State to ask the South of Scotland Electricity Board to pay special regard to the recommendations of the N.E.D.C. in so far as they concerned the supply of electrical power necessary for a higher rate of economic growth. I did not think that he could have failed to mention that today. I am amazed that he failed even to mention the implications for power of a higher rate of economic growth. I was delighted, however, to hear his announcement about the new power station, but that is part of the normal programme of the Board. I hope that we shall be given an answer tonight as to how far the 10-year programme of the Board has changed since the publication of the N.E.D.C. Report.

In the Mackenzie Report it is clearly stated how the Board comes to its decisions. It does not take account of what is happening nationally or of the fact that the Government are trying or failing to promote a certain level of economic growth. It says: We have looked into the procedures used by both Boards in arriving at their estimates of future demand. Briefly, what happens is that each of the Area Managers, of whom there are five in the North and eight in the South, is asked to furnish estimates, at the beginning of each year, of the prospective demand in his area for each of the ensuing seven years. The Committee considers that this procedure is quite adequate for the purpose. That means that estimates of future needs are based on what an area manager says is going to happen in his area. It cannot take account of any influx of new industry, for he cannot forecast such an influx coming from a new Government policy.

The amount of electric power which Scotland is to have represents a doubling of the present amount in the next 10 years, according to the Mackenzie Report. This is just about the same as the increase in the supply of electricity in England and Wales over the last 10 years. But what was the rate of economic growth in England and Wales in that period? It varied up to 3 per cent. With such a rate of growth, one can, of course, meet one's normal needs without difficulty by doubling the supply over 10 years.

Presumably, then, on the basis of these figures, which have been supported by the Secretary of State, the rate of economic growth in Scotland in the next 10 years will not be more than 3 per cent. per annum. If that is so, then all the right hon. Gentleman's protestations of meeting the need for jobs in Scotland are so much nonsense. Either the Board's estimates are being stepped up in order to meet what he says about bringing jobs in, or they are not being stepped up, in which case he is limiting himself more or less to the stagnation in England and Wales over the last 10 years and is taking no notice of the N.E.D.C. Reports.

I was very disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman did not seem to take seriously all the work that has been put in by N.E.D.C. experts and so many others who believe that, in order to plan, one has to know what one is doing, and that in order to know what one is doing one has to do work on methods and so on.

I believe it is correct that the Scottish Development Group which he has brought together in the Scottish Office does not have anything like the staff necessary to do an effective job of regional planning. It may be that he is using the universities, but that is not the same thing. We shall not gain real confidence in terms of men and women recruited to do the jobs in Scotland so long as regional planning is merely a phrase and has no reality to the Secretary of State.

8.5 p.m.

Sir Colin Thornton-Kemsley (North Angus and Mearns)

I feel that at the outset I must congratulate my right hon. Friend on the very welcome news about the agreement between the National Coal Board and the South of Scotland Electricity Board on the price and availability of coal. It is an announcement which has immense implications for the industry and well-being of Scotland for a long time ahead.

The hon. Lady the Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) wanted the Government to make what she called a "simple social judgment"—although I think that even she would realise that it is far from simple to make such a judgment—of how many people there are, some of them still at school, who will want to live and work in Scotland. She asked for this in order that policies might be pursued—I hope that I do not paraphase her speech unfairly—to enable them to do so. What are the basic facts?

Through the contraction of the old heavy industries we are losing on an average about 25,000 jobs a year. On the other hand, through the expansion largely of growth industries we are gaining about 30,000 jobs a year.

Mr. Archie Manuel (Central Ayrshire)

Promised.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

The hon. Gentleman will find that this is true. I will quote them again in case I did not do so correctly before. Owing to contraction, we are losing about 25,000 jobs a year but on average we are, through growth industries, gaining about 30,000 a year.

Mr. Ross

Where does the hon. Gentleman get these figures? If he is quoting the Secretary of State, then he may recall that the right hon. Gentleman only quoted a certain selected period.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

I was not quoting my right hon. Friend, but a great deal of the evidence assembled largely by the Scottish Council. Whether the hon. Member agrees with it or not, I believe it to be true.

I think that most informed opinion would agree that the target should be not less than 15,000 additional jobs a year, if the hon. Lady's desire is to be achieved. Already the additional jobs total 5,000 a year. That means that for some years we must do all we can to create another 10,000.

That is a tremendous task. You and I, Mr. Grant-Ferris, have been in the House of Commons for quite a long time. You and I go back to the days before the war, and in something like twenty-five years in the House of Commons I cannot remember a time when more was done to help the industries of Scotland, or when the long-term industrial outlook for Scotland—and I emphasise long-term—was better than it is today.

The process of diversification has gone a long way. The growth industries are being encouraged. Lord Polwarth was in Glasgow at the annual general meeting of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry last December—I think that everyone in this Committee would want to pay tribute, as my right hon. Friend did, not only to the Scottish Council as a whole, but to its officials and its able secretary, Mr. Robertson, and Lord Polwarth for all that they and their predecessors have done over so many years in establishing industry on a firm basis in Scotland.

Lord Polwarth pointed to the figures of growth of four newcomers to Scotland between 1959 and 1961. The four were: office machinery, where the expansion rate in Scotland has been 32 per cent. as against 21 per cent. for Great Britain as a whole; radio and electronics, where it has been 47 per cent. as against 11 per cent.; watches and clocks, where it has been 30 per cent. as against 10 per cent.; and electrical machinery, where it has been 13 per cent. as against 7 per cent.

It is the growth industries which we must somehow establish and encourage if we are to achieve this immensely difficult task of creating about 10,000 new jobs a year. One of the greatest growth points is the petro-chemical industry at Grange mouth, concentrated on the great oil refineries fed by pipelines from giant oil tankers in Loch Long. There is the motor industry, B.M.C. and Rootes, which in turn were established in Scotland largely because of the establishment by Government encouragement of the steel strip mill at Ravenscraig, and there is the pulp mill which my right hon. Friend rightly called "the key to a great development in the Highlands."

I warmly welcome what has been done, particularly the Budget measures which have a direct bearing upon Scottish prospects—the fixed rate grant of 25 per cent. of the cost of industrial building in development districts, 10 per cent. of the cost of plant and machinery, and the free depreciation of industrial plant and machinery in development districts, as a result of which no tax is payable until the whole cost of the investment in these things has been written off, plus the 30 per cent. investment allowance.

But I am not here this evening merely to congratulate the Government on what they have done in the past, although I most sincerely do that, but to urge them on to greater things. I make the plea that this Budget help should not be concentrated solely upon the somewhat narrowly drawn development districts. It would be much more effective if it were available generally throughout Scotland, as it is throughout Northern Ireland.

I do not believe that that would lead to a rush of industrialists to set up industries in undesirable parts of Scotland. By "undesirable parts" I mean those where the proper facilities for the establishment of industries are not present. First, industrialists would not go where labour was not available, so there is the great sanction of the availability of labour. Secondly, there is the sanction of the I.D.C., which could still be used to steer industry to those parts of Scotland where it is most needed.

When we consider the immense unbalance of industrial distribution in Great Britain, which the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) and other hon. Members have mentioned, this dreadful unbalance with all the pressure upon the south-eastern segment of England and the west Midlands while Scotland and Wales are left out in the cold, we are inclined to talk rather glibly and loosely about the need for a distribution of industry policy. But what we mean is the distribution of expanding industry, because the only industry which needs to be distributed is that which is expanding.

When industry generally is not expanding in this country at the rate we want, there is less footloose industry to find itself locations in places like Scotland. The number of genuinely footloose industries is limited. Those which are steered to Scoland by the I.D.C. procedure should be left the widest possible (choice of location without forfeiting Government help and untrammelled by such temporary inhibitions as the local incidence of unemployment at any particular time, or the need to go to this or that Ministry of Labour area when there might be a site just outside which might have greater advantages, in terms of access, water supply, public services and so on which, in these days of the mobility of labour and the ability of industrialists to send coaches to fetch workers quite long distances, should not weigh against allowing that flexibility in the present policy which it now lacks.

Mr. John Brewis (Galloway)

My hon. Friend will be aware that if people can travel to work to such a factory, some grants are allowable. He should make it quite clear that the whole of Scotland should be scheduled in order that these grants can be obtained everywhere.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

I am greatly indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis) for underlining what I was trying to say. I want to say with even greater emphasis that it is my plea that this new help should be made available throughout Scotland and not confined to development districts.

In conclusion, may I give the Committee a recent personal experience when I tried to establish in Northern Ireland a considerable organisation largely financed by American capital? I was acting professionally for this organisation and I am glad to say that, through subsidiaries, it is established in Scotland and that this was a fresh venture to try to get to Northern Ireland. Not long ago, I flew to Northern Ireland to make inquiries for this organisation. I had a tremendous reception. I was at once called to Stormont where I met the Minister of Commerce and the Minister of Agriculture—there were agricultural implications about this concern. I spent a very long time with senior officials of the Ministry of Commerce discussing the whole project, and everybody was most helpful. They have folders all ready with all the particulars about Northern Ireland. They have booklets ready to give to industrialists who are thinking of coming to the area. I shall not mention the firm in question, and I am not giving away any secrets, because the help which the Northern Ireland Government were prepared to give this concern would be given to any other concern which went there.

The cost of land and buildings plus agents' commissions, legal fees, the cost of technical investigations by outside experts, many of whom had to fly over more than once in order to make their reports, the cost of travelling by their staff—this was rather a difficult one to get over and it took quite a long time but in the end they were prepared to accept it—the expenses of the technical staff who were flying over to Northern Ireland to look over the location and all the other costs involved were accepted as a fair charge. The cost of adapting the premises, including architects' fees, and the value of fixed equipment were all added together, and an offer was made to advance the total cost to the company, which was required to repay only two-thirds of the total cost over a 20-year period with interest at 5¾ per cent.

The hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. W. Baxter) spoke about the cost of fuel for those industrialists who go to Scotland. Perhaps I might tell the Committee that the Northern Ireland Government give a fuel rebate after the first year to industrialists who establish themselves there, which was based in 1961—the latest year for which I have the figures—on 15.8 per cent. of the actual cost as ascertained in the previous year, of coal, gas, electricity or oil used for heating and power. In addition, the Ministry of Labour over there is prepared to give training grants for unemployed persons over 18, and grants for the transfer of key workers and their families, and so on. We have some of these provisions in Scotland, but not by any means all.

I have spoken this evening of many hopeful signs in the consideration which we have all been giving to the future of industry and employment in Scotland. Much has already been done by direct Government help and by the efforts of bodies like the Scottish Council for Development and Industry to improve matters and to encourage industrialists to come to our country, but more can, and must, be done.

I have suggested two ways in particular in which more help can be given to Scotland: first, by extending the scope of Budget help to the whole of Scotland instead of confining it to the development districts; secondly, by going much further than we have gone so far in equating the financial help which is made available in Scotland to that available in Northern Ireland. I beg my right hon. Friend, indeed my right hon. Friends, for I include not only my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, but the President of the Board of Trade and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to give the most urgent consideration to these two proposals.

8.25 p.m.

Mr. John Robertson (Paisley)

The Committee will be grateful to the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thorton-Kemsley) for giving us the benefit of his experience. I am pleased that he finally directed his remarks to his right hon. Friend, but it seems father strange that when in recent weeks there was a Division in the House on this question of the benefits to be given under the Local Employment Act he did not join the Opposition in recording his disagreement with the measures which had been put through by the Government.

The hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scot- land referred to the unemployment situation in Scotland. It was said that the old industries were losing 25,000 or 20,000 jobs per annum but that the new industries were creating new jobs at the rate of 30,000 per annum. The industries which were declaring people redundant last year—and I mention only a few—were Remington Rand, who make typewriters, electric razors and other modern goods; Rolls-Royce, who make aircraft engines; Stearns, who make refrigerators; and Sunbeam, who make a whole range of modern electrical equipment. One has also to remember that in the steel industry, because of the introduction of new plant, fewer men are required to produce a lot more steel than was the case hitherto, with the result that today fewer people are employed in the steel industry than was the case five years ago, and this would be true even if the industry were working at full capacity.

When I listened to the Secretary of State this afternoon, it seemed to me that it must have been a similar speech which led Mark Twain to make his famous remark about statistics and statisticians. I have rarely heard such a fanciful statistical analysis of our position. According to the right hon. Gentleman, the number of people employed should have been increasing in recent years, whereas in fact the reverse is the case. The right hon. Gentleman's analysis was almost as fanciful as the analysis of industrial growth given by the hon. Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore). The hon. Gentleman said that the Scottish people are responsible for the present situation. Does he mean that the unemployed miners are responsible for it? The people responsible are the Scottish industrialists who have refused to invest in Scotland. All that the Scottish people could do was to offer their skill, but this was never required.

I think that we ought to get down to considering some essential facts. For instance, while we all welcome the announcement today that we are to have a coal-fired power station, was it really necessary to wait for this debate to make that announcement? Would not it have been much better to have made the announcement several months ago so that both the electricity and the fuel industry could have got on with their respective jobs in preparation for it? Heaven help us if we have another winter like the last one. We shall be in a really bad way.

Mr. Brewis

The South of Scotland Electricity Board is a nationalised one, and it made its decision only this week.

Mr. Robertson

Surely the hon. Gentleman is not as naive as he pretends to be? We are all grown-up people here. We know how the decision was taken, and I am surprised at the hon. Gentleman making that comment.

The events of today indicate that one of the things we need is a good statistical department in the Scottish Office. Scottish Members are at a disadvantage compared with those who represent constituencies in England and Wales. Scottish Members are very poorly served with the statistics necessary to enable them to judge the progress made by all our industries and services.

The Secretary of State has been saying publicly, with the Ministry of Labour, that the decision to build training centres in Scotland has been taken in consultation with trade unions and employers. That is true, but the right hon. Gentleman should have added that it was not with the agreement of the trade unions or employers that he is doing this. His declaration that it is his intention to train 1,600 workers a year in new skills is a very cruel one, because he knows quite well that the men who receive six months' training in these training centres will not be able to work in the building trade doing skilled jobs; they will not be able to find skilled work in the building trade in any part of Britain. Yet he continues to tell the House and the public that he is going to do this.

One reason why trade unions have not agreed with his proposal is that they have unemployed members. The Ministry intends to retrain miners to become engineers, but what is to be done about the unemployed engineers? Will they be retrained as miners? We have unemployed engineering workers in Lanarkshire and Mother well. Where will they be put, if he is training railway men and miners to become engineers? This is a preposterous situation, which needs to be reconsidered. There is a complete lack of understanding of the existing training arrangements in industry. The Ministry has insisted on going its way in spite of the opinions of people in industry.

As one hon. Member has already said, the narrow definition of boundaries in the Local Employment Act creates many anomalies. In anticipation of increased employment due to the Rootes development the Board of Trade stop-listed the Paisley employment district, although the number of unemployed there had not decreased. It has been decided that the Rootes firm will provide employment for many workers. In spite of that, the number of unemployed in the Paisley employment area has increased, while the number of insured people in the same area has decreased, so that the percentage of unemployment is very much higher. This is too bad.

I know from inquiries that have been made that firms are willing to go to that area, which includes not only my constituency but Renfrew, Johnston, Linwood and the adjacent area, and Barrhead. I know that many firms have made inquiries about sites in the area, including firms who supply materials ancillary to the motor car industry, but they are not willing to go there unless the benefits of the Local Employment Act are available. Here we are, looking for growing points in order to build up industry, while the Government are doing the very thing that prevents this growth occurring. The Government must have another look at the matter.

Some smaller engineering firms have an opportunity to supply the car industry, but they need some assistance. That assistance is being denied. These factories, like the Rootes factory itself, will employ people not only in the area immediately surrounding the car factory but people from Glasgow and a much wider area. The operation of the Local Employment Act will have the effect of preventing firms coming to Scotland who otherwise would do so.

This is the third occasion on which I have listened to a debate on Scottish industry, and it is inevitable that there should have been some repetition. I suppose that these debates have taken place at least since 1945. There will inevitably have been a repetition of facts and figures each year. As the Secretary of State said, it is true that his job is to paint a rosy picture. But when the Government were in opposition—that was a long time ago, although we hope that they will be back in opposition pretty soon—they took a very different view. But we do not need facts and figures to prove the obvious, which is that Scotland, as an industrial nation, has not been keeping pace with the rest of the country. It has been in decline. There is no need to over-elaborate that one fact. It is not being gloomy to state what is the case.

Why, then, do we bother to argue, discuss and debate the Scottish economy? In the first place, there is no such thing. Scotland, from the point of view of industrial activity, is merely part of Great Britain and, as such, is no worse off than Merseyside or the North-East Coast. I have heard it argued as inevitable that industries will concentrate in the areas which are most favourable to industrial activity. This happens in every country—in Europe, America and everywhere else. It is even true in Scotland.

Taking Great Britain as a whole, nothing extraordinary is happening, and from this point of view we should not be unduly concerned. Our concern arises for a different reason. The point is that when discussing Scotland we are not discussing a county or a region. We are discussing a country and a nation. The future of that nation is terribly important. The Secretary of State has no reason to be complacent about the work of his Department in the last year, and I hope that in future years he will do more to benefit Scotland.

8.39 p.m.

Mr. John Brewis (Galloway)

The hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. J. Robertson) always makes a thoughtful speech. But sometimes I feel that his previous experience and trade union knowledge leads him astray. Surely it cannot be right to oppose the training of workers in Scotland in new skills from the point of view of the unions. I implore the hon. Member to take a more liberal view of the possibility of training people in new skills. In my part of the world we should love to have the possibility of being able to train people in the electronic industry and things of that sort. In Northern Ireland I have seen how people formerly employed in agricultural work are now wiring turbines and turbo alternators, and doing things of that sort, so this sort of training can be most beneficial. It is a good thing that such training is being carried on in Scotland.

I do not want to give a panegyric about what the Government have done. There is a lot of good news for Scotland. But there is also a certain amount which is not good. In Scotland we are faced with a transformation of the economy which has been going on for about 12 years. But it is surprising how little can be done in one year to introduce new industry. It is a long job and it will take a great deal longer before the economy in Scotland is really modern.

Recently the N.E.D.C. Report emphasised that in the next five years, taking Britain as a whole, over 100,000 men would be squeezed out of agriculture and 70,000 would be squeezed out of coal mining in the non-industrial areas. We have to face this in Scotland and I have seen it emphasised that in the next five years about 46,000 men will be made redundant in agriculture, fishing, quarrying and shipbuilding and jobs will somehow have to be found for them. I desire, therefore, to reinforce what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley) about the need for growth points. It is ridiculous that a company in Scotland which wishes to expand and does not happen to be in a development district is forced to go to Northern Ireland, because it is possible to obtain better grants there, and so it shuts down its factory in Scotland. That is something which ought not to happen in view of the situation of the Scottish economy.

I wish to commend what has been done this year in the Budget, especially the better building grants, the grants for plant and the 130 per cent. depreciation grant.

My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade knows that I am far from happy that the building grant for remote areas is now to be exactly the same percentage as for Merseyside. I ask my right hon. Friend to look at what is being done in some other countries. There is the Vannoni plan in South Italy where there are far better grants for what are called critical areas. I suggest that in Anglesey, in Cornwall and in the Highlands of Scotland there should be building grants of 40 per cent. to bring them into proportion and in order to get industries into these more remote areas where people are being squeezed out of the agriculture industry, coal mining, quarrying and the like. There industry must be brought in to provide employment.

The 130 per cent. depreciation allowance is a fine thing and a great improvement in the case of a company which has profits against which the allowance may be set. For a branch factory it would work out at slightly more than a 50 per cent. grant, and I commend the Government for giving it, although it will cost a lot of money. But a small man starting in business who is told he will get this grant will find that in the first two or three years he can hardly expect any profits at all. If he has been lucky enough to obtain a loan from B.O.T.A.C., in the third year he will start amortisation payments of his loan to B.O.T.A.C. Once again there is no profit against which to put the 130 per cent. depreciation grant.

I have a suggestion to make in this connection. It is that my right hon. Friend should anticipate this depreciation allowance and permit it before the profits have actually been earned. I see this seems to my right hon. Friend absolutely ridiculous from the tax point of view, but if he wanted to do it he could because exactly the same is done in Norway. There is no earthly reason why we should not do it here and encourage the small man to start a business in a remote area.

I ask the President of the Board of Trade to look at the whole B.O.T.A.C. set-up. It seems extraordinary that a local authority can offer better terms for building a factory than B.O.T.A.C. or the Board of Trade can. The best terms one can get from the Board of Trade is about 15 years'amortisation payment, at the end of which the factory belongs to the industrialist. If one can persuade a county council to do so, it will give something like thirty years to pay for the factory and the rate of interest is about the, same; it might be slightly less.

I do not want to criticise the B.O.T.A.C. Committee. It consists of a number of eminent men, many of whom are working for extremely small reward. I have no doubt that they do the best they can within the directions given to them by the Board of Trade, but, since the Local Employment Act came into being, three years ago, they have decided—my figures are up to 31st January, 1963—about 570 applications. They accepted 264 but the terms were not acceptable to 47 of the industrialists, so in fact they accepted 217 and rejected 306. That was a very large proportion because we have to remember that any application for B.O.T.A.C. assistance comes first before the Board of Trade, which has to certify that it is a suitable application to go to B.O.T.A.C.

One must not think of the "wide boys" in Glasgow putting in an application for £10,000 for frivolous reasons. All this is ironed out long before it gets to B.O.T.A.C. These are serious applications and well over 50 per cent. are rejected.

Mr. William Hannan (Glasgow, Maryhill)

I thought I heard the hon. Member say "the wide boys of Glasgow" Did he say Glasgow, or Galloway?

Mr. Brewis

Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to amend my statement to "the wide boys from Dumfries", which I do not have the good fortune to represent.

It is also true that B.O.T.A.C., as the recent very important Report shows, has very few bad debts. In a way we must commend the B.O.T.A.C. Committee for the excellent job it is doing. It is saving public money and making very few bad debts. At the same time, although I do not want to over-emphasise this, it ought to take much more of a chance. It goes into these applications extremely carefully and that takes a very long time. That is not entirely the fault of B.O.T.A.C. because some of the delay is due to the applicant taking time furnishing the necessary information. The real trouble is that B.O.T.A.C. asks for such extraordinarily complicated information, both on the technical side and on the accounts, that it takes a long time for the applicant to produce it.

It is time that the President of the Board of Trade gave new directions to B.O.T.A.C. He has not given it any directions since April, 1960. He should look at the position as a whole and give B.O.T.A.C. directions rather more on the lines of the Norwegian system. There they are very satisfied to have 50 per cent. success and 50per cent. bad debts. At the moment we have very few bad debts. For in Norway, as the recent visit of the Highland Development Committee showed, a man goes round the industrial centres of Europe scouring the patent offices looking for simple manufacturing projects which can be started in a country area, given the necessary finance to do so. That is the sort of way in which B.O.T.A.C. should be working.

I emphasise that year after year the Board of Trade is not keeping up with estimates of expenditure which it expects to come under the Act. For example, in 1961 the estimate was £9 million and £4.6 million was spent. In 1962 the estimate was £18 million and £13 million was spent. The whole of my contention is that B.O.T.A.C.should be prepared to take a little more of a chance, although at the same time I pay tribute to what the Committee is doing.

The Scottish Office is doing the best it can, as is the Scottish Council. At the end, the operation is going very well. But the President of the Board of Trade has the job of refusing I.D.C.s in the over-populated, over-industrialised southern section of the country. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) gave some figures earlier about the number of new jobs created in the Home Counties and London. If I may say so with respect, he over-estimated them. My figures are that 240,000 new jobs were created between 1951 and I960 in the Home Counties. The hon. Member gave figures three times as large. My figures come from the Ministry ofLabour.

Mr. Ross

I gave the official figure which came from the London Standing Committee of local authorities.

Mr. Brewis

My figures came from Appendix 31 of the Toothill Report and were derived from Ministry of Labour figures. But I do not want to quarrel with the hon. Member because the point is approximately the same.

The President of the Board of Trade refuses I.D.C.s for new building. We were told in the past that it was impossible to prevent the office building which was going on in the London area, and yet finally something was done about it. This time I want to draw attention to the number of second-hand factories which are available in the London area. For example, in The Times on Monday King and Co. advertised modern industrial premises of 79,000 sq. ft. at Walthamstow. Leopold Farmer advertised a 14,000 sq. ft. factory at Tottenham. There was an advertisement for a modern factory and offices of 285,000 sq. ft. on the North Circular Road at Cricklewood. Percy Bilton Ltd. advertised industrial development at Barry, Bletchley, Lutterworth and West Drayton. None of these, as far as I know, was in a development district. Yet Percy Bilton Ltd. has bought the premises and, as that company is not foolish, no doubt it will get somebody to provide a factory there. Someone will buy it.

If I add up the premises available as best I can, I calculate that about 2 million sq. ft. of second-hand factory space is available, mainly in the London area and all of it outwith the development districts. This is not an easy problem. If someone vacates a factory it is not easy to say, "You must not sell it." That would mean compensation. In any case, there are ways of getting round such an instruction. One could sell the company which is occupying the factory, change the articles of association from making sweets, or whatever it may be, to making men's clothing, and the same company could carry on.

Nevertheless, the Board of Trade must tackle this problem. In areas such as I have mentioned, such as Waltham stow, Tottenham, Barking and Bermondsey, where these factories are available, there is a great need for housing and for warehousing. Warehouses are outwith the I.D.C. procedure altogether. It seems to me that in suitable cases these factories should be used as warehouses and in other cases the Board of Trade should take power to condemn the factories and use the sites for housing.

As I have said, the estimates of what the Government are prepared to spend on industrial development in Scotland have not been reached, at any rate in the last few years. I think that the money ought to be spent in buying up these factories which are available, because at the moment they are a running drain on the entire local employment policy of the Government. We have to stop this not only in respect of offices but also in respect of secondhand factories. I hope that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will say something about this point when he replies to the debate.

8.55 p.m.

Mr. Neil Carmichael (Glasgow, Woodside)

The first time I spoke in this Chamber was last December. The subject then was unemployment. We discussed unemployment and industry in Scotland. We had many optimistic promises. That was only six months ago. Pipelines were talked about. I am surprised that we have had few references to pipelines tonight.

The Secretary of State for Scotland mentioned a number of figures. He must at some point clear up those figures. He said that 126,000 new jobs had been created in Scotland for the loss of 76,000. Over the last three years this would give us a net gain of 50,000 jobs. If, as I understand, we are losing population by emigration at the rate of 25,000 a year, there is something very wrong with that sum. Our birth rate must be rising enormously, or I just do not understand what is happening. We have had about 125,000 new jobs in the last three years, but to me this is incompatible with the fact that unemployment is nevertheless rising.

Unemployment is still absolutely chronic in Scotland. The figures are still rising. The figures have certainly risen over the last year. As quickly as new industries are cajoled or persuaded to come to Scotland, existing industries are taken away. My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. J. Robertson) mentioned a few of the light engineering and highly skilled engineering industries which have closed down or contracted considerably. In my own area one firm, a glass-making firm, was taken over by the big glass combine. A great deal of money was spent on modernisation, but before the plant could get to work the whole factory was closed. That happened last month. About 200 people lost their jobs, a con- siderable amount of money having been spent. If money were squandered in this way in a nationalised industry, there would be an outcry, especially from Tory Members. The attitude is, "It is their money. They are entitled to do it. The 200 people who are unemployed are of no consequence". It is a question of people not being of sufficient importance. The people of Scotland are beginning to realise that with the present Government the important thing is whether there is a profit in it. If there is a profit in it, it is good. If there is no profit in it, to blazes with it, and people can go there as well.

The most depressing thing about the whole debate is that we are more and more being treated as branch offices for London and Birmingham firms. This is wrong. The main criticism I have of the Government is their whole attitude to future planning in Scotland. We get it in all sorts of ways. It is considered that there is good in the national economy only when there is over-full employment in the South.

We in Scotland, particularly hon. Members on this side, are frequently regarded as being chauvinistic. I think we have every right to be, particularly considering the way we have been treated during the last three years. The feeling in Scotland is that the Government have written Scotland off and are treating her as expendable. There is something to be said for this analysis politically, because I believe that even if the sun were shining very bright for the Government they could still win only a couple of seats in Scotland. The attitude of the Government has been that the expenditure and work required to bring a decent state of economy to Scotland is not worth while, that it is better to send industries to the North-East and other parts and to let Scotland stew.

Every time a new development is thought of by the Government they put it forward in a piecemeal, dithery sort of way. An example of this is the roads in the Highlands. In this era of the motor car the Government decided that tourism was important to Scotland. Despite this, they ordered the building of 11-ft. wide roads, with passing places here and there. There followed a series of correspondence in the Scottish newspapers about this, particularly since there is only a 20 per cent. cost difference between the building of an 11-ft. wide road and an 18-ft. wide one. If we are to build up our tourist trade it is obviously a false economy to play about with narrow roads.

The Provost of Glasgow recently discussed a new development in Anderston, including the locating of industry in this urban area. While no final decision has yet been made, we seem to be up against the bureaucratic attitude of the Secretary of State towards this progressive type of development proposed for the area. When imaginative and progressive local authorities put forward a scheme that is obviously worth while—one which will maintain and introduce new industries—it is bureaucratic for the Secretary of State even to consider questioning it or worrying about the types of grant that may be attracted to it.

It is because of this bureaucratic attitude on the part of the Government that the people of Scotland, particularly the youngsters, are becoming more and more disillusioned and we are losing the best of our young and skilled workers. We must change our way of thinking and not think solely of attracting little factories. Scotland's problems must be looked at as a whole and the Government must bear in mind the type of country, its people and its history, particularly its industrial history. We are pre-eminently an engineering nation, not long ago unparalleled in the rest of the world. To play about, as we have been doing, with small consumer goods is a basic mistake. We built our economy on the basis of heavy industry, but not enough capital has been put into it in the last 50 years to keep it up to date with the rest of the world.

To re-equip our heavy industry now is a task too large for private enterprise. When anything like pulp mills, motor car factories and big new expansions are required, private enterprise either does not have the money or is not willing to expend it when it is known that the outlay will not be returned for perhaps 20 or more years. In such cases we must look to the State to undertake the responsibility. The only way to achieve real stability in Scotland's economy is for the State to set up its own industries, linked to the universities and their re- search departments, and so start Scotland off on a completely new industrial revolution.

9.5 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Fraser (Hamilton)

Today I heard hon. Members on both sides of the Committee say that they had listened to, or participated in, these discussions every year since 1959. I have been present at all these discussions which have taken place in the last 20 years. I have been in the Chamber and listened throughout the day to every one of the debates that has taken place in that time under the title of industry and unemployment in Scotland. The one that we have had today marks the end of an era.

Those that we had until 1951 were debates in which Ministers were putting before the House of Commons and the country great new ideas and schemes for the promotion of employment in particular parts of the country, and when speeches were being made from this side urging caution that this was probably going too far. In those days, there was no criticism from the Opposition that the Government were not doing enough. Then there was a change of Government in 1951, and things were very different. Then we had Ministers urging caution. A great many powers were given to the Government at the end of the war, and the Distribution of Industry Act was put on the Statute Book by the Coalition Government. But at the end of 1951 and the beginning of 1952, with the Tories back in power, this Act was put on one side.

Many of the provisions of that Act, which were repeated in the Act of 1960, are still not being operated. The President of the Board of Trade has all the power he needs to clear up these unsightly corners of our country to which it is difficult, if not impossible, to attract new industry. He was given the power. The power was in the 1945 Act and it was repeated in the 1960 Act. The right hon. Gentleman boasted the night before last that he was at the Board of Trade when this Bill was going through. He will know then that power was given to the President of the Board of Trade to clear up these derelict sites about the country. [An Hon. Member: "What have they done?"] Nothing. Now we have come to the end of an era. This is the last debate of this kind. Before another year has passed the electors will have been consulted. Democracy will have been given its opportunity—and it cannot be given it too soon. Then there will be other Ministers representing another party, another attitude of mind, another philosophy—

Mr. W. Hamilton

Another morality.

Mr. Fraser

—speaking from the Government Front Bench, and those hon. Members opposite who survive this great experience, which is only a few months ahead, will be able to speak their minds from this side of the Chamber and say how much they really care for Scotland.

Today the Secretary of State for Scotland told us about the wonderful organisational change in the creation of the Scottish Development Department and the building up of the Scottish Development Group. [Interruption.] Yes, he did. Perhaps he does not remember the speech that he made this afternoon.

No amount of organisational change will solve Scotland's problems. The Government's job is to mobilise our physical and human resources, and it is the job of Ministers to produce policies that will do just that. As policy changes, some change in the organisation may be necessary to bring about the desired results—I do not say that we must not have organisational change—but as long as the Government's attitude of mind remains as it is all the organisational change in the world will not solve our problems.

Today, the Secretary of State made his announcement about the power station. I cannot understand our present Ministers. I do not know why they ever started this controversy about whether a power station to be built in Scotland should be fuelled by oil or coal. One of the few material resources we have, and have in abundance, is coal. We have ample manpower resources for the winning of the coal. But the market for coal has been declining, and it is increasingly difficult to get the oil to fuel power stations. The demand for more refined products such as petrol, Derv, lubricants and the like is not going up at anything like the rate at which the market for fuel oil is rising.

Throughout the whole of Western Europe they are aware of this—except in Whitehall. There, they do not know.

Mr. W. Hamilton

And nobody told them.

Mr. Fraser

Nobody told them.

They now know that they have wasted 12 months in this argument. The Secretary of State's predecessor said that all this business would be determined by the South of Scotland Electricity Board after it had received the advice of some technical experts. I said at the time that the technical experts would know what it cost to generate electricity by the use of coal, oil and hydro-power only if the Board and others concerned told them—because only they had the information. We did not hear anything today about this team of experts. We were just told that the South of Scotland Board had, on its own responsibility, decided that the power station would be coal fired.

If the decision had been to oil-fire the power station, it would have murdered Scotland's coal mining industry. Everyone who knows anything at all about that industry knows that statement to be true. The present market for coal is between 15 million and 16 million tons, and I think that the Secretary of State will agree that from now on that market will decline. If in a few years' time, as a result of the use of oil at the power station the market for coal had gone down to about 10 million tons, nobody could have made the Scottish coal industry viable. The market would have continued to run down from then on, and there would never have been another coal-fired power station. There should, therefore, have been no discussion at all about whether the power station should be fuelled by coal or by oil. It should have been known from the beginning that it would have to be fuelled by coal.

The Secretary of State told us today of the great achievement in the three years from May, 1959, to May, 1962. First, I asked myself why his base date was May, 1959. Why was it convenient for him to start from there to show the improvement which has been made since? I discovered, of course, that 1959 was the year in which we had the lowest number of persons employed at any time since the war and that the month of May that year happened to be the May in which we had the highest unemployment since the end of the war. Therefore, if we are measuring improvement, the Secretary of State starts from the point at which the position was absolutely at rock bottom, the very worst position we have been in, so that the improvement since then looks to be all the better. That is what the Secretary of State did.

I have the unemployment figures for every month since the war. The Secretary of State chose the year in which the month of May had the lowest number of people in employment during all that period and the highest number of people out of employment. That was the base from which he started. [Interruption.] Whether he did it accidentally, whether someone put the paper in his hand and he did not ask "Why 1959?", I do not know, but that happens to be the fact.

The Secretary of State made the comparison between May, 1959, and May, 1962, but if he took it to May,1963, he would find that the number of unemployed went up by 28,000. Taking his own period, I find that according to the statistics in the Scottish Digest of Statistics, the number of insured male employees in 1959 was 1,393,000. By May, 1962, it was 1,396,000, an increase of 3,000. The number of females had increased from 752,000 to 787,000, an increase of 35,000, making an overall increase of 38,000. This is what one finds by studying the statistics in the Secretary of State's own publication. There is an increase of 38,000 over this period of three years, only 3,000 of whom were males.

Let us see what happened in Great Britain as a whole during that period when the right hon. Gentleman said that we did so well. The number of males in insurable employment increased by no less than 461,000. Out of 461,000, we in Scotland got 3,000, and the right hon. Gentleman boasts about it. He ought to be ashamed of himself. He should look at the figures and know what is happening in the country for which he is responsible before he comes to the House of Commons with a complacent speech about everything being well. This was one of the bright spots in the sky to which he said he should call our attention.

Mr. Noble

If the hon. Member reads my speech in Hansard, he will find that what he is saying is quite untrue. There was no boasting about it.

Dr. J. Dickson Mabon (Greenock)

It was not even accurate.

Mr. Fraser

I thought that the Secretary of State was getting up to give us some information. If it was not to boast that he said he would tell us about the bright spots, I do not know what it was. I have put into perspective one of the bright spots to which he called attention in his speech this afternoon.

Some of the figures in the Secretary of State's speech rather confused me. He told us that manpower in mining had run down by 17,000 in the last three years. What is stated in Table 29 does not quite square with what I find in the National Coal Board's Report, which came out last week, in which it is said that manpower in the Scottish Division at the end of 1962 amounted to 58,799, a reduction of 9,049, or 13.3 per cent., in the course of the year. According to the statistics in the right hon. Gentleman's document, there are 79,900 people employed in coal mining in Scotland. I take leave to assure the right hon. Gentleman that he is wrong and that there are less than 60,000 employed in coal mining in Scotland at present. The number has run down from 83,000 to 58,000, a reduction of 25,000, in the past five years.

Since we are taking stock for the last time with a Tory Government in power, let us have a look at what has happened over the past ten or twelve years. In that time every Secretary of State for Scotland told us at that Dispatch Box that the future looked bright and that the Government were on the eve of another advance. Even a year ago, apparently, the right hon. Gentleman was starting to build on the foundations laid by his predecessor, and then in the first 12 months unemployment rose by another 30,000. The foundations must have collapsed immediately the right hon. Gentleman started to build.

Mr. Maclay

That sort of statement is made too often. Does the hon. Member really believe for one minute that Scotland could have contracted out of the general recession over the rest of the country?

Mr. Fraser

It is no wonder that the right hon. Gentleman was such a failure in office; he does not even understand the position. He talks about a general recession. On 5th December last, the Minister of Labour stated in answering a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Hoy) about the number of males in employment between 1951 and 1961: It is estimated that between mid-1951 and mid-1961 the number of male employees in employment decreased by 16,000 in Scotland and increased by 839,000 in Great Britain."—[Official Report, 5th December, 1962; Vol. 668, c 188.] There was an increase of 839,000 in Great Britain, or an increase of 855,000 in England and Wales and, at the same time, a reduction of 16,000 in Scotland; and the right hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Maclay) says that Scotland could not contract out of a decline which affected the whole country. Scotland has only been affected by the decline which has resulted from her being governed by a Tory Government totally unwilling to plan the use of the resources of our nation.

I turn to the position concerning boys and girls. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), on 12th December last, asked the Minister of Labour about employment among boys of 18 years and under. In reply the Minister said: Separate figures are only available for boys under 18. Between May, 1951, and May, 1961, inclusive, the number of such boys in employment decreased by 6,600 in Scotland and increased by 53,500 in Great Britain."—[Official Report. 12th December, 1962; Vol. 669, c. 397.] Do not the occupants of the Government Front Bench realise that these figures show that Scotland, among all the industrial countries in Western Europe, if not in the world, is the only one which year by year gives employment to fewer people? After ten years of Tory Government we are giving employment to fewer people in Scotland than before the Tories started, and yet they tell us that things look well.

My hon. Friends and I appreciate that there are many good things in Scotland, and many able and competent people. They are not all Tories. My hon. Friends and I are very concerned about the well-being of our country. Most of us have come from working-class homes. Most of us have among our relatives and sometimes in our families young people who leave school at fifteen or sixteen, or continue through the senior secondary schools and leave at eighteen, or go through universities and emerge at 22 or 23 having won high qualifications, but only to find that there is no opportunity for them in their native Scotland. Some of them manage to make a success in the industries which they join, and we are proud of them and of the industries.

We are delighted with the new things which have happened. We had a reference to the linear accelerator as if it were a great new thing announced by the Tories. Is not the Secretary of State aware that last year we had a debate in the House on the refusal of the Government to concede a linear accelerator? Some of us went in deputation to Lord Hailsham, the Minister for Science, in 1961 to make the case for this. Some time later my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East raised the matter on the Adjournment, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Science replied. His last few words were: Having looked into the matter very thoroughly, and having had long discussions with my noble Friend I myself believe that we have reached a decision which, on scientific advice, is right. I also believe that it would be wrong for us to attempt to alter a decision on grounds other than scientific ones."—[Official Report, 7th February, 1962; Vol. 653, c. 584] But the decision has now been altered. A General Election is on the way.

Almost two-thirds of the science graduates leaving Glasgow University cannot find jobs in Scotland, and have not been able to do so for a number of years. They want to work in Scotland and we want to give them a chance in Scotland. The provision made in East Kilbride will give an opportunity for a few of them.

I think back to the debate six years ago about a strip mill. I made the case for a strip mill. The following day I was attacked in Scotland by Sir Andrew McCance, who said that I did not know what I was talking about and that there was no room in Scotland for a strip mill. Who built it eventually? Sir Andrew McCance. Who paid for it? The taxpayer. Who gets the profits from it? Sir Andrew McCance. Of course he wanted the strip mill; and we want all the industries for which the case for the strip mill was made. We were delighted to see the motor industries come to Scotland, but we are not satisfied—not by a long chalk—and we cannot be satisfied, and nobody representing a Scottish constituency has any right to be satisfied, so long as year by year we lose 30,000 people through migration.

I went to the Library to check the most recent quarterly return published last week by the Registrar-General of Scotland. It is for the last quarter of last year. In the introductory note there are some general statistics and remarks about population changes: The natural increase during the year ended 30th June, 1962, was 39,100 and the estimated net migration loss was 29,500, of which it is estimated that 20,500 went to other parts of the United Kingdom and 9,000 abroad. The right hon. Member for Renfrew, West has said that Scotland has merely shared in the economic decline of the rest of the country, but 20,500 of our people have left the less populated parts of our country to move into the most congested parts. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) quoted the position in the London region, where there has been this tremendous increase in employment over the years.

But Scotland has had this constant run-down, and if the President of the Board of Trade and the Secretary of State will take a look at the figures published in the Scottish Digest of Statistics they will see that the number of males in employment now is less than it was 12 years ago. They will also find that, in those parts of the country where there has been a tremendous run-down of the older basic industries which mostly employ men, the type of employment provided there in place of those industries has mainly catered for females. Thus, we in Scotland are depending on the earnings of womenfolk far more than ever before. The number of women in employment has gone up very substantially, while the number of men in employment has been going down all the time.

Let us resolve now to do something to get employment opportunities, particularly for our young people, those emerging from secondary schools and the universities. Let them play their part in building up a bigger, better, greater and happier Scotland. They will do that only when they are given the opportunity by a Government determined to mobilise the resources of the nation in the interests of the nation.

They will never get it from a crowd of Tories who could not possibly stand up to the subscribers to Aims of Industry and refuse them the industrial development certificates where they want them. They will not get it from a crowd of Tories who like to spend their leisure days and weeks in the parts of Scotland that have been so neglected by their party at any period in the last 200years when they have been responsible for the Government of the country.

I do not expect any change of policy from this Government—nor do I expect that we will ever have another debate on industry and employment in Scotland with a Tory Government in office.

9.33 p.m.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Frederick Erroll)

I am very glad to have this opportunity of being at the Dispatch Box once again for a Scottish debate on industry and employment. I was interested to be reminded of the speech I made when Economic Secretary. I regard it as a great compliment that my speeches of so long ago are quoted. Last year, we went over a great deal of ground and I do not believe that this will be the valedictory speech of the Conservative Government on this subject. [Interruption.] Certainly, I am very cheerful.

Mr. Ross

Conservative and Unionist Government.

Mr. Erroll

Conservative and Unionist Government—call it what you like.

I was rather shocked by the arrogant and boastful attitude of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser). It was very much on the line which he was taking in 1958 when he said that hon. Members opposite were about to form a new Labour Administration and make life happy for the people. What happened? We doubled our majority at the ensuing General Election. [Hon. Members: "Not in Scotland. You lost Scotland."] We doubled our majority in the United Kingdom, which is what matters in this Parliament. I would enjoin upon the hon. Member when he makes his wild political flourishes, which we all enjoy as we enjoy his political speeches, which are well argued, a little humility and a little less arrogance about the future. Events can change with remarkable rapidity.

Mr. T. Fraser

In both directions.

Mr. Erroll

In both directions. I will allow the hon. Member his bit of fun this evening. We have sparred together on many occasions across this Table, but now I wish to turn to the main theme of my winding-up speech.

Before I answer some of the specific points of the debate, there are one or two general remarks I want to make. I was particularly interested in the opening speech of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) by his vivid illustration of his driving from London Airport along the Great West Road to Westminster and how he found the road always up with great new developments going on. I have paid two visits to Scotland since I spoke in the debate on this subject a year ago and I have driven along the A.8 between Glasgow and Edinburgh and been held up by the same sort of road developments taking place on that thoroughfare. Furthermore—[Hon. Members: "Only six miles of it."] Six miles is a good deal greater mileage than has been altered on the A.4 between London Airport and Westminster. The more serious point—

Mr. Ross

Was not that serious?

Mr. Erroll

I said the more serious, not a serious.

What I noticed on the A.8 was the great deal of industrial development taking place on either side of the road, far more than is taking place on the A.4. There are practically no factory buildings or extensions taking place on the A.4 between London Airport and Westminster. What is clearly obvious along the A.8 is an immense amount of industrial development taking place visibly from the road, quite apart from the considerable measure of industrial development taking place in other parts of Scotland. [Hon. Members: "What development?"] I am talking about signs of factory development taking place and which can be seen from an ordinary drive along the A.8.

Mr. Ross

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell me how many jobs are pro- vided on the respective roads, irrespective of the different industrial and factory sites on them? If he has come along that road from the airport and failed to see the number of new office factories going up, he must be blind.

Miss Herbison

Will the right hon. Gentleman give us a list of the new developments on the A.8? Every weekend of my life I travel along the A.8 and the only new development, which has been completed, is the B.M.C. Will he give us a list of the others?

Mr. Erroll

I shall be very glad to provide the hon. Lady with a list of those developments.

Miss Herbison

Give me one.

Mr. Erroll

I will be glad to have one prepared.

I did not think that what was intended to be a reasonable introduction to my speech would arouse such strong passion. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock drives along a road in London and I drive along a road in Scotland and before I know where I am, I am in the middle of a row. However difficult things in Scotland may be, I ask hon. Members opposite please not to forget the sense of humour for which Scotland is well known and to which I hoped I was appealing.

Perhaps I might now refer to my second visit to Scotland at the beginning of May this year. When I was there for a couple of days I had discussions with the Scottish T.U.C., the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, the Scottish Council and the Scottish Tourist Board, and I had meetings with the Press. For what it is worth, I gained the impression that business circles were definitely more confident about the future than they had been at the time of my previous visit in September last. [Hon. Members: "No."] I am giving the Committee my impression as a Minister of the British Government who visited Scotland. I thought that the Committee would like to have it. Hon. Members can criticise it, but my impression is that there is sound reason for that confidence.

The economic well being of Scotland is intimately bound up with events in other parts of the United Kingdom, and prosperity or recession in one part reacts on the other. Looking at the economy of the United Kingdom as a whole, I am confident that we are now firmly set on a course of further expansion.

Mr. T. Fraser

The right hon. Gentleman said that last year.

Mr. Erroll

I looked up what I said last year, and I did not say that. I thought it was a wise precaution to check up on what I said last year.

I think that the further expansion which is taking place this year can be characterised as a rate of growth which can and should be maintained, and I am fortified in this view by the statistical returns which have been published in the last two days.

First, we have the Index of Production for April. This shows that with the effects of the atrocious winter weather out of the way output has risen by 2 per cent. as compared with the closing months of 1962. Secondly, there are the export figures for May, and it must be remembered that if export figures do not go up we cannot be prosperous at home. The seasonally adjusted figure of £341 million of exports for May is particularly high and has been exceeded only by the figure for March, which included shipments delayed by the earlier period of bad weather. I realise that shipments fluctuate from month to month, and I suppose commentators will express disappointment if the June figure shows a decline, but the really important thing is to look at the figures for the first five months of the year. These show exports running at a level of about 5 per cent. higher than in the first half of last year, and 3 per cent. higher than in the second.

Then we have the figures for unemployment at mid-June. These again show a reduction greater than that which can be attributed solely to the normal seasonal decline. The reduction in Scotland is particularly large, bringing the unemployment rate down to 4.3 per cent. as compared with 4.8 per cent. a month earlier. But a figure of 95,000 is far too high, as is a percentage of 4.3. I am not complacent about this, but the trend—and this is the important thing—is in the right direction.

Mr. W. Hamilton

Oh.

Mr. Erroll

It is a downward trend. Would the hon. Gentleman rather have an upward trend?

Mr. Hamilton

Compared with the same period last year the trend is in the wrong direction.

Mr. Erroll

The whole of our policy is directed towards accentuating that trend and bringing down the rate of unemployment.

The figures which I have given to the Committee encourage me in the belief that the economy is expanding again, and that expansion had been getting under way before the full effects of the Budget had been felt. The P.A.Y.E. changes to come into operation next month will also provide a powerful stimulus to consumer expenditure. The expansion which I have described is already benefiting Scotland, and I expect this to continue.

The new standard benefits and the system of free depreciation which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I announced at the beginning of April will also help to stimulate the economy. I appreciated the complimentary remarks of the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. W. Baxter) and also the reference to this by my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis). These are early days as yet, but the signs are very good. It is already clear that these announcements have been generally well received, and they have made an immediate impact on industry throughout the country. When I met the Scottish Council last month its members told me that they were particularly pleased with the new arrangements, and they thought that they could really exploit them fully and enthusiastically. They tell me that they are using these provisions in a very practical way in their current campaign to attract industry to Scotland both from south of the Border and from overseas. I wish them every success, as I am sure the whole Committee would like to do.

What about the effect on the Board of Trade, both at headquarters and at our office in Scotland? It is interesting and significant to see what is going on. At the Board of Trade headquarters the rate of inquiries from firms interested in obtaining assistance for projects in development districts as a whole—at headquarters we get them in respect of all development districts—has doubled since the new benefits were announced. At the Board of Trade office in Scotland the officials have already dealt with nearly 200 inquiries about the new provisions. Most of these have naturally been from Scottish firms, because they would naturally ring up the office in Scotland, just as a Birmingham firm would ring up the Birmingham office. It is particularly satisfying to find that firms already established in Scotland are showing so much interest in the new benefits and in the free depreciation provision, because it shows that they are expansion-minded, and that it is not only a matter of attracting new industries from elsewhere. A great deal of the expansion will be by firms already established in Scotland.

Mr. W. Baxter

Does it not show that if the fiscal policy were changed, as compared with that of England, we would get a natural growth of economy in Scotland?

Mr. Erroll

To a certain extent that is what we have done. By giving free depreciation in development districts, which are partly though not wholly situated in Scotland, we have given a great inducement to industry in the most needful parts of Scotland without wishing to favour Scotland exclusively, because we have given it also in respect of development districts south of the Border.

What is perhaps more revealing as an indication that things are on the move is the increase in the volume of the day-to-day work of officials of the Board of Trade. By this I mean the help that they are continually giving to firms who wish to select locations in the Scottish development districts, and who are preparing applications for financial assistance. In the last two months the volume of this kind of work has increased by rather more than one third, which is a very substantial rate of increase, and surely provides the answer to what the hon. Member for Kilmarnock said, namely, that nothing is being done. A great deal is being done and a great deal is going on. In general, while I am well aware of the real difficulties confronting some Scottish industries, I am sure that we shall be justified in taking a line of restrained optimism about the future of the industrial scene in Scotland.

I am sorry that I missed the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley) who made a number of interesting points which I look forward to studying in more detail. He referred to the benefits given to Ulster. As I am catching an early aeroplane in the morning in order to go to Ulster to lay the foundation stone for an important new factory there, which will ultimately employ nearly 2,000 workers, I must be careful what I say about the relative benefits for firms in Ulster and Scotland.

Mr. Manuel

R.I.P.

Mr. Erroll

It is a foundation stone, not a tombstone. [Hon. Members: "You never know."] I agree, but the last foundation stone that I laid was on the North-East, and I survived that. It was one of five factory extensions in the North-East. I shall be back in Scotland to open some more extensions there, and I shall get a very much better welcome from the Scottish people than I get from hon. Members opposite in these Scottish debates.

Mr. Ross

We know you better.

Mr. Erroll

I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns that the benefits for Ulster have been on a more substantial scale because the problem of Ulster has been a much greater one over the years, but with the new standard benefits and free depreciation the margin of additional benefit for Ulster has not been so great. At the Board of Trade my policy is impartial as between Scotland, the North-East Coast and Merseyside. I want to get firms moving into development districts as quickly as possible, and I do not give preference to any one area. I am anxious to make sure that Ulster gets its fair share of any footloose industry that I can steer in its direction.

Travel to work conditions are taken into account, and the possibility of giving a firm the benefits of the Local Employment Act if it is able to help unemployment within a travel to work area although not actually in a development district. I think that most hon. Members know that there are two sides to the policy which we have pursued in dealing with industry.

There is the negative aspect of the policy, namely, the refusal to grant industrial development certificates in prosperous areas. This is known colloquially as the "tough" I.D.C. policy. I am accused in the development districts of not being tough enough. In Birmingham and in London I am accused of being far too tough. In fact, I refuse to grant any industrial development certificates for projects which could be steered to a development district.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock referred to my "compelling" industry—

Mr. Ross

I never used that phrase. I quoted the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. Enroll

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me. That is exactly the policy which we do pursue—

Dr. Dickson Mabon

That is not what the right hon. Gentleman was going to say.

Mr. Erroll

Hon. Gentlemen should not think I am quite as simple as all that.

Compelling industry is exactly what we do. We say to industrialists, "If you want to expand, the only way is by going to a development district. Otherwise you will not be able to expand." Sometimes, of course, the industrialists say, "In that case we would rather not expand at all." Sometimes they say, "We will go to the Continent instead of expanding in our cosy little place in the Midlands." We say, "If you can go to the Continent, surely you can go to Scotland." I do not know of a single case where a firm has carried out its threat to go abroad. So I always believe in calling the bluff of somebody who says that they will do that and, in fact, our tough I.D.C. policy is proving extraordinarily effective in moving firms into development districts.

Mr. T. Fraser

Then why are less than 7 per cent. of the new factories going up?

Mr. Erroll

I was particularly interested in the reference to Signor Amalfi, the Italian Minister who is doing my job in Italy, as Italian schemes have been much praised in this House. He complained that he is not able to do as much as he would like because Italy has not the I.D.C. control which we have in this country. It is a negative control which is really a powerful weapon available for ensuring that industry, when it is expanding can be steered, compelled, directed—I do not care what word is used, it is the results that I am after—and it is a most powerful method of ensuring that firms go to development districts.

My hon. Friend the Member for Galloway referred to secondhand factories which are a problem. The cost of buying them out would be very substantial and I do not think it would be possible to carry through the policy he suggested. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock referred to offices and quoted what I said in 1959. One must remember that a great deal of office accommodation is developed in a locality. London is a great international centre and a great deal of office work must be done in London or nearby. I agree that some could be decanted out to office blocks on the A.4 between London Airport and Westminster, and some might go down as far as Reading. But it would be a difficult business to get a large block of office work moved as far away as Scotland. Nevertheless, a very large volume of office building is going on in Glasgow and a new block of offices will soon be completed in the new town of East Kilbride. In addition, the Government are taking the lead in moving office accommodation out of London and have already started to move the Post Office Savings Bank to Durham.

On the positive side, the inducements; now we have the system of standard benefits we are in a much stronger position to give real and predictable help to firms which are prepared to move. In the first three years and two months of the Local Employment Act we have offered financial assistance on the advice of B.O.T.A.C. amounting to £55 million in Great Britain, and £28 million has gone to Scotland. If that is "nothing", I do not know what "something" is. It is of great value to the firms concerned and some of it will come back because it is in the form of loan.

Here I mention the point made about the Fort William pulp mill project because we have been criticised for making that a loan by the Government instead of taking a share in the equity. The advantage of the loan is that the money will come back to us, whereas if we took up a share in the equity we should never get the capital repaid. We should be taking a share in the equity which could be a loss producer and not a profit maker. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] It is a marginal scheme and by no means definite that it would make a profit. Indeed, the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. J. Hill) expressed anxieties about E.F.T.A. arrangements which will result in greater competition in the domestic paper-making industry from the Scandinavian papermakers. That shows what a gamble of profitability or otherwise the venture would be. I am sure the right course of action was for the Government to lend the money to the firm and to have it repaid over a period of years.

Although I have mentioned the Fort William pulp mill scheme, we are not interested only in large schemes, but also in many small schemes, some in remote areas which help in particular to deal with the problems of the Highlands. We have assisted small projects in remote areas where the need for employment is equally urgent, though measured in smaller absolute terms. I have noted the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ross and Cromarty (Sir John MacLeod) about the need for help for the Highlands. The Highlands, of course, are eligible for assistance under the Local Employment Act to the extent to which they create employment in the locality.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and

Peebles (Commander Donaldson) referred to transport difficulties in the remote areas. Of these I am fully aware, although I do not think the matter can be dealt with entirely in the context of the Local Employment Act and the amending Bill going through Parliament.

I should have liked to have said a little about advance factories because so much has been done since I last spoke on that subject. I was criticised for opening a new estate at Donibristle last September. People said, "You'll never get anyone to come here." Then I opened the place and people said, "You will have no tenants." I am delighted to say that we have three tenants already, and I hope more will be coming. I should like to say much more to reinforce the excellent story of what we are doing in Scotland today. The hon. Member for West Stirlingshire said that a man is judged nowadays not by his accent but by the results he achieves. I want to be judged by results. I am confident that the Committee will give a favourable judgment on the Government tonight.

Mr. Ross

Since the result is a greatly increased number of unemployed in Scotland relatively and actually over the last three years, I beg to move, That Item Class III, Vote 2, Scottish Home and Health Department, be reduced by £5.

Question put: —

The Commit lee divided: Ayes 110, Noes 188.

Division No. 140.]	AYES	[10.0 p.m.
Albu, Austen	Edwards, Walter (Stepney)	Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)	Fitch, Alan	Janner, Sir Barnett
Baxter, William (Stirlingshire, W.)	Fletcher, Eric	Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas
Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.	Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)	Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Bence, Cyril	Galpern, Sir Myer	Jones, Rt. Hn. A. Creech(Wakefield)
Benson, Sir George	Gourlay, Harry	Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Blackburn, F.	Greenwood, Anthony	Jones, Elwyn (West Ham, S.)
Bowden, Rt. Hn. H. W.(Leics, S.W.)	Grey, Charles	Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Bray, Dr. Jeremy	Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)	Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Brockway, A. Fenner	Grimond, Rt. Hon. J.	Lubbock, Eric
Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)	Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)	Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)	Hamilton, William (West Fife)	MacColl James
Carmichael, Neil	Hannan, William	MacDermot, Niall
Chapman, Donald	Harper, Joseph	Mclnnes, James
Cliffe, Michael	Hart, Mrs. Judith	McKay, John (Wallsend)
Collick, Percy	Hayman, F. H.	McLeavy, Frank
Cronin, John	Henderson, Rt.Hn.Arthur(RwlyRegis)	MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Cullen, Mrs. Alice	Herbison, Miss Margaret	Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg.)
Dalyell, Tam	Hill, J. (Midlothian)	Manuel, Archie
Darling, George	Hilton, A. V.	Millan, Bruce
Diamond, John	Holman, Percy	Milne, Edward
Donnelly, Desmond	Houghton, Douglas	Mitchison, G. R,
Duffy, A. E. P.	Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)	Moody, A. S.
Ede, Rt. Hon. C.	Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)	Morris, John
Edelman, Maurice	Hunter, A. E.	Mulley, Frederick
Noel-Baker,Rt.Hn.Philip(Derby,S.)	Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)	Thompson, Dr. Alan (Dunfermline)
Oram, A. E.	Robertson, John (Paisley)	Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)
Oswald, Thomas	Rodgers, W. T. (Stockton)	Tomney, Frank
Owen, Will	Ross, William	Weitzman, David
Padley, W. E.	Short, Edward	Wells, William (Walsall, N.)
Parker, John	Small, William	Whitlock, William
Pavitt, Laurence	Sorensen, R. W.	Wigg, George
Peart, Frederick	Steele, Thomas	Woof, Robert
Proctor, W. T.	Stonehouse, John	Wyatt, Woodrow
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry	Stones, William
Redhead, E. C.	Strachey, Rt. Hon. John	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Reid, William	Swingler, Stephen	Mr. Charles A. Howell and
Reynolds, G. W.	Symonds, J. B.	Mr. Lawson
NOES
Agnew, Sir Peter	Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)	Nugent, Rt. Hon. Sir Richard
Aitken, Sir William	Grant-Ferris, R.	Page, Graham (Crosby)
Allason, James	Grosvenor, Lord Robert	Pannell,Norman (Kirkdale)
Amery, Rt. Hon. Julian	Hall, John (Wycombe)	Peel, John
Ashton, Sir Hubert	Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)	Percival, Ian
Atkins, Humphrey	Harris, Reader (Heston)	Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Awdry, Daniel (Chippenham)	Harrison, Brian (Maldon)	Pott, Percivall
Barter, John	Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)	Prior, J. M. L.
Batsford, Brian	Harvie Anderson, Miss	Pym, Francis
Bell, Ronald	Henderson, John (Cathcart)	Rawlinson, Sir Peter
Bidgood, John C.	Hendry, Forbes	Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin
Biffen, John	Hicks Beach, Maj. W.	Rees, Hugh
Biggs-Davison, John	Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)	Renton, Rt. Hon. David
Bingham, R. M.	Hirst, Geoffrey	Ridley, Hon. Nicholas
Bishop, F. P.	Hobson, Rt. Hon. Sir John	Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)
Black, Sir Cyril	Holland, Philip	Robinson, Rt. Hn. Sir R. (B'pool,S.)
Bossom, Hon. Clive	Hopkins, Alan	Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)
Boyle, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	Hornby, R. P.	Roots, William
Braine, Bernard	Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hon. Dame P.	Royle, Anthony (Richmond, Surrey)
Brooman-White, R.	Hughes-Young, Michael	Russell, Ronald
Brown, Alan (Tottenham)	Hulbert, Sir Norman	Scott-Hopkins, James
Bryan, Paul	Hutchison, Michael Clark	Sharples, Richard
Buck, Antony	Iremonger, T. L.	Shaw, M.
Bullus, Wing Commander Eric	Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)	Smithers, Peter
Burden, F. A.	James, David	Spearman, Sir Alexander
Carr, Compton (Barons Court)	Jennings, J. C.	Speir, Rupert
Carr, Robert (Mitcham)	Johnson Smith, Geoffrey	Stevens, Geoffrey
Channon, H. P. G.	Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)	Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Chataway, Christopher	Kaberry, Sir Donald	Stodart, J. A.
Chichester-Clark, R,	Kerans, Cdr. J. S.	Studholme, Sir Henry
Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)	Kershaw, Anthony	Tapsell, Peter
Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)	Langford-Holt, Sir John	Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Cole, Norman	Leburn, Gilmour	Taylor, Frank (M'ch'st'r, Moss Side)
Cooke, Robert	Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry	Thomas, Sir Leslie (Canterbury)
Cooper, A. E.	Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)	Thomas, Peter (Conway)
Cooper-Key, Sir Neill	Lindsay, Sir Martin	Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)
Corfield, F. V.	Linstead, Sir Hugh	Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin
Costain, A. P.	Litchfield, Capt. John	Touche, Rt. Hon. Sir Gordon
Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)	Lloyd,Rt.Hn.Geoffrey (Sut'nCdfield)	Turner, Colin
Critchley, Julian	Longbottom, Charles	Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.
Crowder, F. P.	Longden, Gilbert	Tweedsmuir, Lady
Dalkelth, Earl of	Loveys, Walter H.	van Straubenzee, W. R.
Dance, James	Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh	Vane, W. M. F.
Deedes, Rt. Hon. W. F.	McAdden, Sir Stephen	Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hon. Sir John
Digby, Simon Wingfield	McLaren, Martin	Vickers, Miss Joan
Doughty, Charles	McLaughlin, Mrs. Patricia	Vosper, Rt. Hon. Dennis
du Cann, Edward	Maclay, Rt. Hon. John	Walker, Peter
Duncan, Sir James	Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)	Wall, Patrick
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)	McMaster, Stanley R.	Ward, Dame Irene
Elliott,R. W.(Newc'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)	Macpherson,Rt.Hn.Niall(Dumfries)	Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold
Errington, Sir Eric	Maginnis, John E.	Webster, David
Erroll, Rt. Hon. F. J,	Maitland, Sir John	Wells, John (Maidstone)
Farey-Jones, F. W.	Mathew, Robert (Honiton)	Whitelaw, William
Fell, Anthony	Mawby, Ray	Williams, Dudley (Exeter)
Finlay, Graeme	Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.	Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles	Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.	Wise, A. R.
Foster, John	Mills, Stratton	Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick
Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)	Miscampbell, Norman	Woodhouse, C. M.
Freeth, Denzil	Montgomery, Fergus	Worsley, Marcus
Gammans, Lady	Moore, Sir Thomas (Ayr)	Yates, William (The Wrekin)
Gibson-Watt, David	Morgan, William
Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)	Neave, Airey	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Glover, Sir Douglas	Nicholson, Sir Godfrey	Mr. Gordon Campbell and
Glyn, Dr. Alan (Clapham)	Noble, Rt. Hon. Michael	Mr. MacArthur.

Original Question again proposed.

Sir Stephen McAdden (Southend, East)

rose—

It being after Ten o'clock, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report Progress and asked leave to sit again.

Committee report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.