§ Q1. Mr. Wyn Robertsasked the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for 17th January.
§ The Prime Minister (Mr. James Callaghan)In addition to my duties in this House, I shall be holding meetings with ministerial colleagues and others.
§ Mr. RobertsNo doubt the Prime Minister will be devoting more thought to the steel situation. Does he agree that the 244 refusal of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry to supply all the available information to the Select Committee was not in accord with the Prime Minister's policy speech, made on 6th April 1976, when he talked about trusting the people?
§ The Prime MinisterI heard the exchanges in the House yesterday and I thought that my right hon. Friend put his point very fairly. He has offered to go back to the Select Committee and answer such questions as it may wish to put to him. That appears to be a perfectly proper thing to do.
§ Mr. Ron ThomasWill my right hon. Friend, on a very busy day, spare a thought for the massive sums of money that the Government are doling out to private industry—almost £11 million per day—and arrange for the House to have an early debate to show how, without public enterprise and public support, the capitalist system in Britain would have collapsed long ago?
§ The Prime MinisterI think that it is pretty generally accepted, except when party passions are roused, that a mixed economy demands public support for private industry and that there is a growing number of areas in which, unless Government support is given and Government initiative is taken, the nation State is incapable of doing certain things that used to be done in the nineteenth century. I can think of a number of illustrations of that sort. It is important that we should look at the issue along those lines.
§ Mr. GowWill the Prime Minister reconsider his attitude towards the steel industry? Is it not scandalous that that industry should be losing £520 million a year and that action which needs to be taken is being deferred because so many steel mills are situated in marginal Labour seats?
§ The Prime MinisterIt is, of course, true that the steel industry is losing a very large sum of money every year. So, indeed, are the steel companies in almost any country that the hon. Gentleman may care to enumerate—France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the United States. All of these are countries in which substantial losses are being made. It is interesting to note, and this should 245 be put down to the credit of the British Steel Corporation, that according to the figures that I have been given, the loss per ton of the British Steel Corporation is lower than the loss per ton in some of the steel industries in those other countries.
That is important, because it shows that in the midst of a world depression it is not inefficiency on the part of the British Steel Corporation that has led to these figures. I ask members of the Opposition: what is it they are striving to do with the steel industry? Do they want to destroy it?