HC Deb 20 March 1967 vol 743 cc1176-92

9.21 p.m.

Mr. Hector Monro (Dumfries)

While transport is of prime importance in southwest Scotland, I now turn to the problems of unemployment and industry in that area. For this debate I have alerted the Board of Trade and the Scottish Office, and I am pleased to see that they are represented tonight. I also mentioned that I would raise subjects within the sphere of the Ministries of Technology and Power. That indicates that one of the difficulties that faces us in Scotland is the complexity of Departments dealing with trade and industry. But, certainly, in Scotland, the Board of Trade and the Scottish Office have acted in close liaison.

I initiate this debate on south-west Scotland economic and unemployment problems because they are very real at the moment, and the Government must be jolted into early action. I shall concentrate on Dumfriesshire, and my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis) will look after his own area very well if he has the opportunity.

I want to start with the striking significance of the unemployment figures, which are the highest for March ever recorded by the Ministry of Labour. Within the past day or two the figure of 1,651 people unemployed has been recorded, which is 540 more than in last March. Following the mildest winter that anyone can remember, that means that there are about one-third more people unemployed than there were a year ago. It is also very significant that there has been only a marginal decrease since February, when the figure should normally be picking up in the early spring in Scotland.

To some hon. Members, those figures may not appear to be desperately high. But when they are looked at in percentages, running up to 10 per cent. in southwest of Scotland, the situation is seen as desperately serious. In the White Paper, "The Scottish Economy 1965 to 1970, a Plan for Expansion", the trends of employment set out on page 113 stress that movement has been from agriculture towards industry. It therefore follows that it is to industry that we must look for more jobs and to reduce the rapidly rising rate of emigration. We fully discussed emigration in a recent debate, and there is no doubt that south-west Scotland has its share of the 45,000 Scots leaving the home country every year.

Before coming to my main remarks about industry I wish to stress the importance of agriculture and forestry. They have been in a bad state of health for a number of years, and that has been accentuated by disappointing Price Reviews in 1965 and 1966 followed by a disastrous autumn a few months ago. While I welcome the Price Review of 1967 as a short step forward in the right direction, a great deal needs to be done before we get profitability in the hills in Scotland.

I mention this because a profitable agriculture is of such enormous benefit to the economy of a rural county like Dumfriesshire. It provides jobs for the ancillary services, merchants, agricultural engineers, shopkeepers and other service industries. I will not touch on agriculture again, but I hope that the Ministers realise that it has a very important place in the provision of jobs in south-west Scotland.

I turn to the most critical situation, which is in Upper Nithsdale, the Burgh of Sanquhar and the township of Kirkconnel. The Minister will know that the economy in this part of Dumfriesshire has centred on coal over many years, but, with pit closures, new sources of work must be found. The Conservative Government, rightly seeing the necessity of channelling jobs into areas of high unemployment, set up a development district there and built the first advance factory which employs about 30 people. The earnest hope is that one day soon it will expand. As a development district, the area has had available to it all the special grants set up under the employment Acts. As the whole county is now a development area, I hope the assistance will continue.

Following pressure, perhaps helped by the debate on the coal industry in November, 1965, the Government announced second and third advance factories which in the normal course of events would have seemed to be reasonable provision for the numbers of unemployed at the time. I accept that and I was glad when the Government made the announcement, although the real worth of an advance factory is not demonstrated until the tenant and labour force has been installed.

The picture will alter dramatically if the Fauldhead colliery at Kirkconnel should close. I brought out the effects of this in the debate on the coal industry 15 months ago. This is an old pit and it is not sound financially. This is nobody's fault. The workings are difficult and expensive. Only superhuman efforts by the management and miners have kept it open. The Minister of Power has set a reducing output of coal over the next year, but I ask him, in the name of the miners of Upper Nithsdale, to keep the pit open as long as possible. The financial effects on the country could be far worse if it were closed before alternative jobs were available than if it were run at a slight loss.

Having made that plea, I must say that I am afraid that, as night follows day, this pit will close, and that time is not so desperately far away. What then will be the future of the 800 miners who work at Fauldhead? The men are keen and ready to work. There is a strong community spirit and an absolute refusal to see Kirkconnel become a ghost town. This must not happen, and today is not too soon to start working on appropriate action. We cannot expect many men to transfer to the Barony or Killoch pits, in the constituency of the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes).

The South Ayrshire coalfield is contracting. Knockshinnoch will, I believe, close in the not too distant future. It might be that not all that many jobs would be available if miners wanted to transfer from Kirkconnel. It involves a journey of 20 or 25 miles over a particularly difficult road in winter. It is too far to expect miners to travel there daily.

The enormity of the situation is illustrated by the fact that over 50 per cent. of the working population of the district is at the Fauldhead pit. Some may retire and some may transfer, but, looking at the basic facts, we need at least 600 new jobs should that pit close in the near future. The two advance factories, when they are operating, will perhaps employ 50 or 100 men each. But I am sure that the Minister of State will agree that that is only scratching the surface of what will be a critical situation. We want a male-employing industry with about 600 jobs. I know that it is a tall order, but that must be faced, and faced now. I know that the same position is prevalent in other parts of Scotland, but nowhere is it more urgent.

Sometimes ill-advised people try to drive a wedge between Sanguhar and Kirkconnel. This is unfair. There is unity of purpose between the two authorities to provide jobs in the district, and much credit is due to the two councils for all the work that they are doing in attracting industry.

Before the site of a major new development, if it comes, is decided upon, I hope that Kirkconnel will be given very serious consideration. The reasons that the Board of Trade gave to Kirkconnel last year for rejecting its industrial sites were not very convincing, particularly to the people who live in Kirkconnel. The provision of a factory in Kirkconnel would be an enormous boost to morale through people seeing a factory going up in their midst.

I hope that the Minister will realise that there is room for new factories in Sanquhar and Kirkconnel. All the necessary services are available, and I can assure any industrialist of a most warm welcome. A fine new school is on the stocks. In Sanquhar, recently, we had a meeting of the new economic consultative group. The Secretary of State himself spoke to the group. I must say that he did not leave the area feeling that there was enormous hope in the near future. I hope that the Minister of State has something more buoyant and enthusiastic to say than the Secretary of State had when he was there early this month.

I want to know whether the Scottish Office and the Board of Trade are aware of the impending jobs crisis and what steps they are taking now. We cannot wait for lengthy deliberations of policy groups and planning councils. All this ground has been covered before. The problem is known; it is quite straightforward. An industry for 600 men is required. I hope that the Minister of State will not place too much weight on the provision of the two new advance factories, because they are simply not big enough for the problem ahead of us. I am sure that the Board of Trade will make the maximum effort. It could be a catastrophic situation if the mine closed before the jobs were ready. The Minister will know that if he said "Yes" today it would take two years to get a large new factory built and a tenant in and engaging labour. I hope that I have expressed the urgency of the problem.

I want to touch on a few general aspects about south-west Scotland. I have explained the high rate of unemployment. There is no doubt that the quickest way to provide jobs is for private industry to expand. This can happen only in a flourishing financial situation. The Government must provide this; they have not done so. Indeed, many of their measures have had a serious detrimental effect on a rural community frequently relying on service industries—the Selective Employment Tax, the fuel tax, the motor car taxes, and the increasing costs of running rural buses. I hope that the Chancellor will do something about differential taxation with regard to the Selective Employment Tax in his Budget.

Dumfries is the geographical centre of Britain. Firms there can maintain their Scottish identity and yet be as near the English markets as they possibly can be. In the present situation we find the small burghs as well looking for employment. The large Burgh of Dumfries has a very large amount of unemployment at this very moment. It is true that the problems of south-west Scotland are well known. The local authorities know them. The Scottish Council (Development and Industry) knows them, and does a first-class job in my part of Scotland. In the old days the Dumfries and Galloway Development Association went over all this ground. As my hon. Friend knows, the Galloway Publicity Association has every known fact about the tourist industry.

We have welcomed the fact that the Government have set up these new planning consultative groups, which I hope will do well, but I hope that they will not rely in every case on these deliberations, because time is now of prime importance. I have not forgotten Langholm and the Borders consultative group and that the needs there are different from the industrial problems of the South-West.

The Aerodrome Industrial Site at Dumfries is first-class and I welcome the development which has taken place there including recently the new gas plant. But what a wonderful new site this would be for another advance factory. Yet from a Question a fortnight ago it seems that the Government have decided that it is not time for a factory there or at Annan, or at Lockerbie. I am glad that we have agreed that the new technical college should go there. Let us see it expand both in knowledge and in prestige, and perhaps into a university college and maybe one day into a university.

I see from the newspapers that the Government are to manufacture new telephone equipment. Would not this be the sort of factory to set up in this part of Scotland to manufacture telephones? I know that every hon. Member is shouting for it, but would it not be an excellent site for the new Royal Mint in the same way as we took the Post Office Savings Bank to Glasgow? I see that during the last few years the Government have taken on 40,000 new civil servants. Could we not have more Government offices in south-west Scotland to house and use the skills of these civil servants? Why have we not been able to have the new Construction Industry Training Board at Dumfries?

We read in the Scottish plan that Dumfries is an excellent growth point, and we accept that. There are others who feel that the exceptional rail marshalling yard and the M6 to Scotland mean that perhaps the eastern end of the county, near Gretna, would be even better. But in view of the extreme problems in Galloway I feel that we should have concentrated any major expansion in the area on the Burgh of Dumfries.

If we are talking of Government aid in relation to attracting industry and stemming emigration, why cannot the south-west of Scotland be given more priority? Why do we always assume that industry must go to the central belt or the south of England? We are to have colour television in England while in the south-west of Scotland we cannot even get B.B.C.2. This is the sort of thing which often influences a manufacturer. Why cannot we have a new indoor sports centre in the south-west of Scotland, to keep the young people in that area? Why have all these facilities to go to the highly-populated areas of Glasgow and the South? This is the kind of constructive idea which the Government could channel to my part of Scotland.

I turn briefly to two specific criticisms of the Government. The first concerns Chapelcross. I informed the Ministry of Technology that I would raise this matter tonight. Here is our great technological industry, built near Annan in 1955, to produce plutonium and electricity. It provided work for over 1,000 employees and added greatly to the development of the district, with houses and social clubs and excellent apprenticeship schemes. The apprenticeships at the craneworks and boiler works are a wonderfully skilled environment for the young people.

That is why it was so very disappointing that we have not had the technological expansion that there should have been. The Government's promises to the nation about technology before the last two elections are well known, but we have not seen such development at this important site. There has been a steady rundown. As the generation of electricity becomes more and more efficient, fewer employees are needed and the rest have drifted away to the atomic energy stations further afield, and the labour force is steadily running down.

There was a ray of hope at the time of the prototype fast reactor and, while we were glad that it came to Scotland, it was a great disappointment that it did not come to Chapelcross. That disappointment could have been removed if the Government had offered an alternative development at Chapelcross, but a year ago, the then Minister of Technology, Mr. Frank Cousins, sank all hope by saying that it could look forward to no further development and would settle down as an electricity power station. Could not the Government look at this again? Could they not increase the generating capacity and perhaps set up a desalination plant and provide increased laboratory space and try to hold the labour force by some further developments? The decision was a terrible letdown for the area, and the Government owe some opportunity to this most important industry.

Then there is the case of the Solway barrage. Many years ago, residents of the county came to realise how important this could be to the area, both from the point of view of power and for the provision of a road across into Cumberland. In the early 1960s, it was dramatically developed by Dr. Drew, with his concept of using water and atomic power to produce electricity. But others thought of it as a tidal flow barrage. This was not accepted by the Minister of Power. The present Government saw it solely as a possible water reserve for Manchester and the north of England. Reluctantly and parsimoniously, they carried out a feasibility study and, after much prodding, the report was published recently at the same time as the report on Morecambe. Although the project would have been economically viable and possibly of great value to the south of Scotland, the Government decided against Solway and in favour of Morecambe.

This was another blow to Scotland and to the prospective employment on the construction of the barrage and afterwards. Thus, the only new major Government enterprise in the south of Scotland has been at Chapelcross. I am sure that the Minister could make a more determined effort now to channel development there and not, as stated in the National Plan, in the late 1990s.

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman will, I know, acquit me of discourtesy, but I remind him that this is the third of 18 debates tonight. I hope that he will give some consideration to that fact.

Mr. Monro

Yes, Mr. Speaker. But I also appreciate the very grave problems facing my constituency. I shall not be more than three minutes now.

In conclusion, I want to draw attention to the diminishing rate of road construction in the area. A great deal of employment has been provided in recent years on the Glasgow-Carlisle road. The Minister will understand how important it is to build a road from Lancashire to Scotland, because I am sure that tourists and industry will flow along it to the South of Scotland.

I do not think that the Government have any right to be complacent over the problems in Sanquhar and Kirkconnel at the moment. What do they intend to do in this area, particularly about the possible pit closure? I want him to say that every effort will be made to encourage private industry as well as Government Departments to come there. I hope, too, that he will say that more advance factories will be built in the area.

I repeat that the highest March figure of unemployment ever recorded is most serious in my constituency. I hope that I have impressed upon the Minister the seriousness of it and how vital it is to take action at once.

Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker

Order. May I say that if every hon. Gentleman who is called speaks at length on the Consolidated Fund Bill, other hon. Members who have an equal right will not be able to speak.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. John Brewis (Galloway)

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) on his excellent speech. He has mentioned many matters which also affect my constituency, which will enable me to make my remarks shorter, as I shall not have to raise those matters again.

I do not suppose that any section of the Labour Party's election promises has brought more disillusionment to the unemployed in Scotland than their regional development policies, particularly to those in my constituency. During the last month or two, unemployment in the entire County of Wigtownshire has been knocking up towards 10 per cent. I do not suppose that any county in the whole of Great Britain has an unemployment rate which approaches that, although I am aware that there are pockets like Sanquhar and Kirkconnel which have slightly higher rates. We have also to bear in mind that this winter has been a very mild one, and that employees in the building and construction industry will hardly have been laid off at all. If it had been a really bad winter like that of 1963, I tremble to think what the unemployment rate would have been.

I want to call attention to one or two of the figures in the plan which has been produced by the Government, and particularly to the figures for net migration from Galloway, which are set out on page 107 of the Scottish Plan. We hear a lot about the depopulation of the Borders, but it will be seen from this that, between 1951 and 1961, the Borders lost 7.2 per cent. in net migration compared with a figure of 12.5 per cent. in Galloway. We know that between 1961 and 1964, migration went down somewhat, but it has resumed an upward spiral since, and it is now at a very high rate.

Had that migration not taken place, one shudders to think what the rate of unemployment would have been. Probably it would have been something in the region of the pre-war figures.

The problem is largely that of the rundown in agricultural employment over the last few years. Again, I find the Scottish Plan interesting, because it points out that, over the next 10 years, 2,200 jobs in the South-West will be lost in agriculture. These will be jobs for men mostly, so that every year in the South-West we shall need 220 new jobs simply to replace those which have been lost in agriculture. We have heard from my hon. Friend that, in the case of the Fauldhead Colliery, there is liable to be a loss of 600 jobs, and that underlines to the Minister of State how serious is the need for male employment in the area.

It may also interest him to know that, between 1951 and 1964, the Government of the day produced 3,500 new jobs in manufacturing in the South-West. In spite of that, we have this enormous net migration rate to which I have just alluded. I hope this will give him an idea of the problem which we face. There were then one or two big developments like the I.C.I. factory, just outside Dumfries and Chapelcross. We can see no sign of similar developments at the moment.

The highest unemployment rate in Galloway remains at Stranraer. We have had some success with the establishment of the American shoe factory called Baby Deer and a textile factory called Sunchild. Both factories are getting on well. I remember how sceptical the Board of Trade was that any industry could settle at Stranraer, but it has done so, and the labour there has proved to be extremely good. What is more important, the Baby Deer company, with its headquarters in the Midlands, has decided that production at Stranraer is so efficient that it is closing down its headquarters in the Midlands and is moving it to Stranraer. Therefore we can explode any idea that Stranraer is not a suitable site for industry.

We have at the moment an advance factory standing empty. It has been empty for about two months. It is absolutely vital that we should get a new tenant for it. I appeal to the Minister of State to give this high priority. Many of us feel that the Board of Trade has a secret list of priorities, in which the Highlands no doubt come first, then Dundee, and then the new towns in Scotland. We feel that for too long we have been at the wrong end of the list of priorities at the Board of Trade.

I wish also to make a criticism of the Government about the position at Stranraer. In the old days Stranraer was a development district and we received a preferential grant accordingly. Now the whole of Scotland and the north-east of England is a development district, and we are in the same position as big cities such as Newcastle or Liverpool for grants. We are much less likely to get industry. It is more likely to go to one of these big cities.

This is a criticism of Government policy. There should have been two tiers of development districts, one for the more critical areas like the Highlands and one for the rest of the country. I want also to mention the area of the Machars of Wigtownshire. This is largely an agricultural area and a very critical one. The unemployment figure has gone up to 9.1 per cent., which is absolutely enormous by English standards. Over half the unemployment in the area is south of Wigtown which is an agricultural area. There is no other employment apart from agriculture and creameries. It is urgent that we should have some help in this area.

I would suggest that in the next programme we need at least two advance factories, one at Wigtown and one at Withorn. If we are not careful the depopulation will grow and the area will become like the Highlands area, and there will not be enough people left to start an industry if an industrialist chose to come to that area. I regard this as being particularly vital.

Much the same can be said for the Stewartry and particularly the Kirkcudbright area, although the unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent. is not quite so high.

Cheaper electricity is being offered in the Highlands. We are just as capable of offering cheap electricity from the Galloway power scheme as they are from the Hydro Board Scheme in the Highlands. I hope this will be kept in mind. If new developments at Invergordon can get cheap electricity, I see no reason why developments at Kirkcudbright should not have the same. I should like to make two quick points.

First, the Government should stop discriminating against service industries such as transport, construction, and the hotel and tourist industry. They have been doing so in many ways. There has been an increase in licence fees, and in petrol duty, which have affected the transport industry. Investment incentives have been withdrawn from the hotel and building industries, and no grants have been put in their place. This particularly hits the rural areas.

In the South-West, for every ten persons engaged in manufacturing, there are about 36 engaged in service industries, so 36 people are being hit pretty hard when we talk about the S.E.T., while ten persons are getting a small premium out of it. This is really affecting the rural areas and it is essential that the S.E.T. should be recast so that development areas are either excluded or given some premium so that they can attract industry.

Secondly, we need better communications in my area. I think that this really is a priority. All industrialists, quite often unnecessarily, are scared of high transport costs. Recently the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland, who I am glad to see in his place, came to Dumfries and told us that we would be a boom area by 1990. We are rather tired of people, and particularly the right hon. Gentleman, telling us that we are to be a boom area, because it was the right hon. Gentleman who told Scotland that she was going to be sheltered from the squeeze and we have rather stopped believing him.

But if we are to become a boom area, what an extraordinary time this is for the Government to decide to pull up the Dumfries-Stranraer railway track, because even if the reopening cannot be justified now, surely it will be justified by the time it becomes a boom area. It is ridiculous to pull up this track.

A great deal of work needs to be done on our main Stranraer-Dumfries road, and also on the main road from Stranraer to Ayr, but I shall not go further into the details of that this evening.

I think that the priorities should be, first, better communications, then attracting industry, and after that no doubt we would need a crash programme for housing.

There are other things which I should like to have mentioned, but, bearing in mind what you said, Mr. Speaker, I conclude my speech, and I shall listen with great interest to what the right hon. Gentleman has to say in reply.

9.58 p.m.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. George Darling)

I shall try to deal with all the matters which have been raised which come within the purview of the Board of Trade. I think that I can make my speech shorter than it otherwise would have been if I say—and I hope that the hon. Members who have raised these important topics will accept this—that the views which have been expressed about the S.E.T., about the need for new or better transport arrangements, and about power development, will be brought to the attention of my right hon. Friends who are concerned with these things.

I want, first, to get clear the boundaries of the area with which the Board of Trade is concerned. I take it that we are covering the counties of Wigtown, Kirkcudbright and Dumfries, excluding perhaps the Langholm district, and we would include in the area called the south-west of Scotland those parts of the County of Ayr which are covered by the Ministry of Labour exchange areas of Girvan and Cumnock. Within this wide area of southwest Scotland we agree that there is a substantial unemployment problem, and I assure hon. Members that we are very much concerned about it. Although, as the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) said, the number of work people who are without jobs is not large, we recognise the difficulty which is created in these rural and semi-rural areas by a high percentage of unemployment.

I do not want to go into detail about specific small areas, but if, in such an area, we can place one factory which would provide employment for 300 people the area would be suffering almost from over-full employment. That is the size of the problem. All the way through, therefore, we are concerned to see to what extent we can get either an expansion of industries already established or the introduction of new industries.

It is quite proper for hon. Members opposite to complain that the Government have not done enough for south-west Scotland in the provision of industrial development, but I want to get the record straight. Taking the period from the beginning of the Local Employment Act—April 1960—to the end of last year, Government financial assistance in the southwest of Scotland for the provision of industrial development amounted to £1½ million. But 60 per cent. of that assistance was provided in the last 20 months, under this Government. Hon. Members may want the figures that apply to their own areas. Let us take Stranraer. In the five years of the previous Administration the amount of money spent on industrial development there was £80,000 whereas under this Government, it has been £276,000.

Mr. Brewis

Can the right hon. Gentleman mention a single factory which his Government brought to Stranraer?

Mr. Darling

I am going on to explain the factory development in Stranraer. I am giving the figures of Government expenditure on industrial development. In Sanquhar £55,000 was spent under the previous Government, whereas £195,000 has been spent under this Government. I want to get the record straight in order to show that we are aware of the problems and are doing what we can to help.

I have taken note of the fact that the hon. Member for Dumfries wants the Royal Mint, the manufacture of telephones by the Post Office, and many Government offices to be established in his area. I agree that it is an excellent growth point, and I will see that the propositions he has put forward are brought to the attention of my hon. Friends. I assure the hon. Member for Galloway (Mr. Brew is) that there is no secret list of priorities inside the Board of Trade. We are concerned to find employment for an additional 2,000 or more people through factory development and in other ways, and we shall do what we can to see that industrial expansion goes on. The hon. Member raised the question of providing a differential two-tier system to help development areas. This is an extremely interesting suggestion, but it would be difficult to carry out. The hon. Member can appreciate how it would operate in his own area, but circumstances in development areas differ considerably, and it would be impracticable to introduce a scale of inducements which was dependent on somebody's assessment of the needs of each separate area within the development areas.

Mr. Brewis

This system operates in Italy.

Mr. Darling

We have taken note of the Italian example. I do not want to go into too much detail, but I am willing to discuss the question with the hon. Member at any time he likes.

We have deliberately moved from a system of designating certain localities for assistance on the basis of the single criterion of unemployment and are now designating wider areas within which clear-cut benefits are available and on the basis of which industrialists will be able to make their plans with confidence. I am certain that this will encourage greater industrial investment in these areas. This is the only way to tackle their deep-seated problems of unemployment. In the long run, the whole area will benefit from our steps to deal with its problems.

Since this Government took office, six advance factories have been announced for south-west Scotland. There are difficulties about acquiring land after one has announced that the factories are to be built. We have had a great deal of help from the hon. Member for Dumfries, which I freely acknowledge, in finding the Blackaddie Farm Site, where construction of the advance factory will go ahead as quickly as possible.

We have also taken note of his points about the difficulties of Kirkconnel. The remaining two factories at Girvan and Stranraer are virtually completed and every effort is being made to find suitable tenants. We are convinced that the way to provide industrial development in these areas, which have difficulties because of transport, because they are away from the general industrial stream and because of the rundown of agriculture and, in part of the area, of coal mining, is to acquire industrial sites and get advance factories going, because they are the magnets for industrialists.

My right hon. Friend is here, but if he has not heard the appropriate part of the debate, I will see that his attention is drawn to the requests for more advance factories in south-west Scotland. The hon. Member for Dumfries raised the question of the closure of the Fauldhead Pit and I will see that his views are drawn to the Minister of Power's attention. I express no opinion about whether it is possible to keep the pit going, but the real answer is to provide alternative work and start industrial development. We shall watch the situation carefully and press ahead vigorously with the advance factories which have been announced and seek suitable tenants. We hope that these will prove the magnets for further industrial development.

I was pleased at the reference by the hon. Member for Galloway to the success of the Baby Deer shoes factory in Stranraer. When he said that the Board of Trade was sceptical about its success, I think he was referring to a previous Administration. Having visited not these outlying parts but the far west of Wales and one or two other outlying places and seen advance factories established and operating, I would never be sceptical about their success anywhere. At one factory—I am not sure whether it started as an advance factory—in the north-west of Scotland, I was told by the industrialist who operates it as a branch of a very big concern that it is the only place in the country where he has no problems of absenteeism or production. There is a great deal to be said for advising industrialists that these somewhat isolated places are very good for industrial de- velopment and we will see that these views are made known.

All I can say about Chapelcross is that its primary rôle is as a nuclear power station and the Atomic Energy Authority have no plans at present to place any major additional projects there. I will see that the views that have been expressed are brought to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power. I do not think that the Solway barrage is at present a problem for the Board of Trade, but the views that have been expressed on this topic will also be brought to the attention of those concerned.

I have taken note of the remarks that have been made about forestry development and so on in the area. I cannot discuss this matter now, particularly since I cannot speak for the Minister responsible for forestry. This is one of the subjects being discussed by the South-West Economic Planning Consultative Group, and when the views of that body have been made known and its ideas about forestry projects in the area are available, these matters can be discussed with hon. Members and, at that time, we can see to what extent the suggestions put forward can be implemented. If I have not replied to other questions that have been asked during the debate, I will write to the hon. Members concerned.

I assure the House that we are not complacent about the situation in southwest of Scotland. We do all we possibly can to improve industrial development, which is already going on there. We also do all we can to bring new industrial projects to the area. I am hoping—although the percentage of unemployment is high in certain parts of the area, the total number of jobs to be provided is not as great as in some development areas—that we may be able to solve the unemployment problems of the area within a reasonable time.