PUBLIC ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT AGENCY (Hansard, 28 March 1972)

§ Mr. John Smith (Lanarkshire, North)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the establishment of a Public Enterprise Development Agency to stimulate industrial development and investment. I am aware that the House is anxious to move to another important Bill, and I shall attempt to keep my remarks as short as possible.

The purpose of this Bill is to set up an agency which could initiate new industrial enterprises, particularly in the regions. It could be used to set up enterprises wholly owned by the public, or to co-operate with private interests in joint companies. Its aim would be to provide an arm of the Government with power to initiate economic developments where it is clear that they are required.

We have in recent days been discussing changes in development policies and we have seen a Government which in October, 1970, took the regional policy of their predecessors back about 20 steps being forced by the appalling level of unemployment to move it forward by about 11 steps and to travel along a road which they forswore all travel along. But I fear that the regional policies now being pursued, despite an aura of repentance which surrounds them, will not be sufficient and will not succeed in the economic regeneration of the regions.

Unfortunately, we have that situation in many areas of the country where factories which have been available often on extremely advantageous terms lie empty. We have areas where at considerable social cost an infrastructure of communications and social facilities has been built up, and we have a pool of unemployed, many of them skilled, available and hungry for work. But what is missing is the magic spark of investment. Whenever an industrialist, be he British or foreign, appears in sight, we have local authorities and local communities tripping over themselves to entice him to their area. I fear that in many areas, and for many years, the factories will continue to lie empty and the people will 236 remain unemployed, while the skilled people leave for more prosperous areas.

To overcome this appalling crisis we need new initiative to bring investment directly to those areas and conditions. If we just wait and hope for expansion it may never come. A community which is prepared to subsidise the attraction of investment and finds it not working must take the next necessary step and produce the investment itself through the medium of the agency I propose in the Bill.

Similar ventures have taken place in other countries, in particular in Italy where the Institute of Industrial Reconstruction, the I.R.I., has led much of the post-war regeneration, particularly in the shipbuilding and engineering industries. Perhaps more appropriately it has been given a major rôle in regenerating economic activity in the Mezzogiorno. I am sure that we would not choose to model it in every particular, but it cannot be denied that the I.R.I. has been succeeding in sponsoring successful State enterprise.

Why is it not possible for something similar to be done in this country? I recognise that there may be ideological objections from right hon. and hon. Members opposite, but the situation in some areas and in my constituency, where the level of unemployment is 17 per cent., is such that the time for doctrinaire objections of such a sort has long passed. If such an agency were started enthusiastically by the Government it would be a tool whereby we could see economic regeneration of the declining regions of Britain. We have accepted—it has been accepted on all sides—that we should create the conditions whereby there can be this economic regeneration. But surely if this policy is not succeeding the time has come to take another step forward and for the community to undertake investment and to promote industrial enterprise directly.