HC Deb 01 July 1974 vol 876 cc1-3
1. Mr. Rooker

asked the Secretary of State for Industry what is his latest estimate of the amount of public funds being directed into private manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom.

The Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn)

About £700 million, net of repayments, in 1974–75.

Mr. Rooker

Will my right hon. Friend press this policy of opening up the books of British industry with the utmost vigour and not be put off by the more mediocre sections of British management, as typified by the Chairman of Dorman Smith Holdings, who has probably taken from the State everything he thinks he is entitled to, anyway?

Mr. Benn

I share my hon. Friend's feeling. The Trade and Industry Sub-Committee recommended that the Government should be open in publishing the figures, and that I intend to be.

Mr. Tom Boardman

Will the right hon. Gentleman also give the converse—the amount of public funds provided by private manufacturing industry in the form of taxation, direct and indirect, and so on?

Mr. Benn

I share the right hon. Gentleman's view that the wealth of the community is created by working people and not solely by the boards of private companies in manufacturing industry. The wealth is created by those who work in industry, and those people must know the facts.

Mr. Skinner

Does my right hon. Friend not find the argument about companies paying tax and being subsidised, as put by the right hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Boardman), more than a little cock-eyed? Surely most working people have to pay tax, and it is part of their tax which goes to help these private companies. Where is the right hon. Gentleman's argument, therefore?

Mr. Benn

My hon. Friend is right. We shall make sense of these industrial decisions only if more light is thrown on the extent to which we are interdependent, and that is what I intend to do.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths

I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman is anxious, for ideological reasons, to pursue this vendetta against private industry. Is it not a fact, however, that during the past five years public sector industries have received £5.3 billion by way of aid from the State? We do not need to begrudge that, but would not the right hon. Gentleman do more for national unity if he refrained from a vendetta against one sector of industry and concentrated on making both the private and the public sectors more confident about the future?

Mr. Benn

The hon. Gentleman knows that one of the arguments I have already used is that the decision by the previous Government to force the public sector to run at a loss was yet another form of subsidy for private manufacturing industry. The hon. Member would do better to admit candidly that there are figures which should be published, because the public are entitled to them. He should accept that as the basis of the recommendation of the Trade and Industry Sub-Committee, and he should not pretend that this constitutes a statement of Government policy about the firms concerned, which he knows quite well is not the case.

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