Interdicts and Injunctions (Amendment) (Hansard, 25 April 1990)

§ Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Fair Trading Act 1973 to allow the courts further powers of interdict and injunction to prevent purchasers of assets of firms which are the subject of a potential enquiry by the Office of Fair Trading or the Monopolies and Mergers Commission from pre-empting possible decisions of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry arising from recommendations of the Commission. In moving this ten-minute Bill on the seemingly dry subject of interdicts and injunctions in the name of my parliamentary colleagues who are members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union group, may I say that, although the matter seems as dry as dust, it concerns the industrial base of our country and jobs.

The Atlas steel foundry in Armadale in west Lothian supplied the high integrity steel from which many of the Dreadnoughts were made. I am grateful for the presence not only of my senior colleagues and my party leader but of that of the Leader of the House. In Westminster Abbey today he may have been thinking about the ships at Gallipoli. The heavy steel for those ships was probably forged, if they were Clyde-built, in the Atlas steel works in Armadale. The steel foundry is unique in that it has extremely heavy cranes and kilns/furnaces which are not found anywhere else in Britain. If certain work—not all of it—were not done in Armadale, it would have to be done at Schaffhausen in Switzerland, Linz in Austria, by Thyssen at Gelsenkirchen in Germany or, arguably, in Turin. We are dealing with a unique facility.

William Cook plc of Penistone acquired that foundry. I hasten to add that in this Bill I seek to criticise no one, least of all William Cook. It acquired the foundry and, according to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn), Andrew Cook is a go-ahead and progressive force in industry. However, it bought the foundry in order to close it and take away certain key assets. I referred the matter to the Office of Fair Trading, which has taken the case seriously and, for three weeks, has been working hard on it, with the possibility of referring it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

However, the nub of the issue, which forms the genesis of my Bill, was that when it became clear that the Office of Fair Trading was looking seriously at the case, it seemed as if William Cook plc was taking away some of the key components of the electric furnace. That would present the Office of Fair Trading and, if a referral were to be made, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission with a fait accompli. Therefore, the Amalgamated Engineering Union decided to try to get an interdict or an injunction in the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

I am in no way criticising the court or the judge because he gave us a perfectly good hearing, but we could not prove our case because there was a geological flaw. We could not show, albeit that there were other bidders, that William Cook plc had done anything wrong in law. I do not think that I misrepresent the judge by saying of Lord Marnoch that when it came to the judgment his line was that he wished he could have helped, but he could not in law.

§ Mr. Dalyell

For that reason, as my hon. Friend says, I believe that we should consider introducing new laws or changing the law. This Bill is about giving the courts flexibility and discretion that they do not have at present so that they can say that people should wait and see, and prevent a fait accompli from being presented to other bidders in industry until the Office of Fair Trading and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission have had time to look at the matter. Such a problem could come to all of us.

I said that my ten-minute Bill would be succinct, and so it will be. I know from last Friday that such Bills often have a difficult passage in the House. Sometimes people speak for 90 minutes in order that a Bill should not be heard. On this occasion, I hope that if my ten-minute Bill, in that form, does not see the light of parliamentary day, at least my senior colleagues, the deputy Prime Minister, and those Conservative Members who have done me the courtesy of being present and of giving me a good hearing, will reflect that what happened to the steel foundry in Armadale could happen to them.

There is an understandable reason for giving the courts the discretion not to alter events in finality—that is a matter for different laws—but to say that the Office of Fair Trading and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission should not be presented with a fait accompli.