DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRY (Hansard, 8 May 1975)

§ Q5. Mr. Tebbit
asked the Prime Minister if he will now appoint a Minister of State for Industry.

§ Q7. Mr. Rost
asked the Prime Minister if he can now say when he proposes to appoint a Minister for Industry.

§ Mr. Edward Short
I have been asked to reply.
I refer the hon. Members to the reply which my right hon. Friend gave to the hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington (Mr. Adley) on 24th April.

§ Mr. Tebbit
If the Prime Minister has not got time to appoint a new Minister of State for Industry, will he consider, instead, taking the time to sack the Secretary of State for Trade? May I draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the remarks of the Secretary of State for Trade, recorded in Hansardat column 999 on Monday of this week—it was, of course, a distress call—in which he said that sometimes at the Dispatch Box he represented the policy of the Government as a whole and sometimes his own policy as Secretary of State for Trade? Is it not a constitutional oddity that two different policies should be expressed at the Dispatch Box by the right hon. Gentleman?

§ Mr. Short
No. I have looked carefully at this matter. My right hon. Friend was distinguishing between those occasions at the Dispatch Box when he puts the Government's policy on the Community and those occasions outside when, as a dissenting Minister, he expresses his own point of view. That was clearly the intention of my right hon. Friend's words.

§ Mr. Roy Hughes
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the unjustified attacks on the Secretary of State are due to his zeal in exposing the fact that the real problem in British industry has been the failure of industrialists to invest in it and that unemployment solves nothing? Will he assure the House that the Secretary of State has the full backing of the Cabinet at the present time, particularly in his attempt to save steel jobs?

§ Mr. Short
I rather think that my hon. Friend is talking about the wrong Secretary of State. As I said a few minutes ago, hysteria in the Press and in the Opposition about the two Secretaries of State does not help to have an objective debate on the Market issue.

§ Mr. Rost
Should not the Prime Minister, on his next visit to this country —before he abandons it again to his quarrelsome and marauding Ministers—have a sort-out in the Department of Industry while there is some industry left and before the Secretary of State sorts out the Prime Minister?

§ Mr. Short
I think that there are other areas where a sort-out is needed.

§ Mr. Skinner
Does my right hon. Friend agree that one reason why the media generally and the Tory Opposition both in this place and in the other want to remove the Secretary of State for Industry is that it is part of a carefully orchestrated campaign, particularly after the referendum, to get the Labour Government, in a non-structural but quasi-official way, to carry out a coalition policy of measures which they would like carried out? Does he also agree that the attempt made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection at the NEDC meeting yesterday was wrong and that if we are to conduct our affairs in a Socialist fashion we shall not do so with the help of the Opposition or of a Government composed of both parties?

§ Mr. Short
I think that it is a lot simpler than that. There is an anthropological explanation. The Conservative Party is very primitive. It must have a bogyman, and the present bogyman is the Secretary of State for Industry.