§ Q3. Mr. Molloyasked the Prime Minister if he will now pay an official visit to the London borough of Ealing.
§ The Prime MinisterI have at present no plans to do so, Sir.
§ Mr. MolloyWhen my right hon. Friend does visit the borough, will he go to the northern part, where he will see the derelict site of Rock ware Glass, which made a valuable contribution to the British glass industry and is now a monument to the callousness of private industry and an example of the inefficiency of the previous Government? A good factory was closed by asset strippers and 900 British craftsmen lost their jobs.
§ The Prime MinisterAs I recall that case, it happened under blackmail because the owners of the factory, who were doing an important job in Ealing, feared that not only the Ealing factory but the whole of their group would be taken over by asset strippers. That was already in danger of happening. They feared that asset strippers would take over the whole firm and use the site for asset stripping. In the circumstances we all very much regret what happened. The group then owning the factory decided to close it to avoid that happening. I think that was the sort of thing the Leader of the Opposition meant by his phrase "the unacceptable face of capitalism", although he never did anything about it.
§ Mr. PeytonI hope that the Prime Minister will reconsider his original answer to this important Question. Does he not agree that the London borough of Ealing, neither too far from nor too near to this place, could offer him a superb opportunity and forum to clear up some of the mysteries that surround his Government's policies? In particular he might take the opportunity to explain the difference between what was a solemn and binding undertaking in 1969 and what is today described as a social compact
§ The Prime MinisterI have been to Ealing a number of times and I shall be glad to go there again. There is certainly a great deal I could learn from it. For example, there is the fact that when there was a Labour administration in Ealing 2,900 dwellings were put out to tender, whereas the Conservative administration put out a total of 30 dwellings to tender in 1969–70. Since the return of a Labour council in 1971 more than 2,100 dwellings have been put out to tender.
With regard to the right hon. Gentleman's question, which does not seem to have anything to do with Ealing, and with regard to the point he labored so hard to present to the House, the solemn and binding agreement referred to the matter of industrial disputes, where our record before and after that was four times better than that of the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member. As for the social contract, one might have thought that the right hon. Gentleman, with his well-known fairness in these matters, would welcome the fact that the TUC yesterday agreed on a voluntary policy, which his Government tried for two years to get but which they did not get because they would not will the means in terms of prices and other matters.