HC Deb 23 May 1979 vol 967 cc1042-3
15. Mr. Buchan

asked the Secretary of State for Scotland when he intends to meet the chairman of the Scottish Development Agency.

Mr. Alexander Fletcher

My right hon. Friend has already met the chairman informally, and both he and I shall be having further discussions with the chairman and chief executive shortly.

Mr. Buchan

When the Secretary of State met the chairman of the SDA, did he assure him of the Government's abiding desire to maintain the public enterprise aspects of the agency, or did he revert to the Conservatives' previous vomit during the discussions on the Bill, which one of them regarded as a bit of a Marxist nightmare? Would not an opportunity be given to the Secretary of State to get himself off a personal hook, in relation to Monsanto, if he called in the Scottish Development Agency to help him and the people of Scotland on that question?

Mr. Fletcher

I said that the meeting was informal. When we have formal meetings with the chairman and the chief executive, we shall make it clear to them, if there is any doubt, that we intend to retain the SDA as such.

My right hon. Friend and I had meetings with the chief executive of Monsanto, and we pressed him to say whether there was any way in which Government help could be given to maintain the factory in Ayrshire if the company wished to keep it as a viable proposition. No proposition was put forward by the company, and therefore the Government were unable to help.

Mr. Henderson

Will my hon. Friend, when he meets the chairman of the SDA, invite the agency to consider more sensitively requests for help for very small projects rather than for the expenditure of very substantial sums of money?

Mr. Fletcher

My hon. Friend will know that in the SDA there is a small business section which is supposed to be doing that. Certainly, in our consultations with the chairman and the chief executive, we shall ask questions about that.

Mr. Millan

Now that the hon. Gentleman has had a chance to look at the actual activities of the SDA, and the Government's pledge to give new guidelines seems to be whittled down to saying that the SDA will no longer be able to invest for political rather than commercial purposes, can he give one or two examples of such investments over the past two or three years which would have been caught by these new guidelines and which will not be allowed?

Mr. Fletcher

That is a very hypothetical question. The new guidelines for the SDA are still under consideration. As my hon. Friend said, our object is to make the SDA even more efficient—if I can put it that way—in the very difficult task it carries out in Scotland.

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