§ 2.54 p.m.
§ LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTHMy Lords, I be leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ [The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any statement to make on the acquisition by the parent company of the whole of the shareholdings of the Ford Motor Company, Dagenham.]
§ THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (THE EARL OF DUNDEE)My Lords, I would refer the noble Lord to the statement made by my right honourable and learned friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place yesterday.
§ LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTHMy Lords, I quite appreciate the brevity of the noble Earl, but I would assure him that I have read the statement in detail, and it is not my purpose in putting down this Question to challenge at all the decision of Her Majesty's Government. There are, however, two questions that I should like to ask. First of all, does the noble Earl realise that the object of 737 this financial exercise is to put the company concerned in a position to pursue commercial and trading policies which they would find it difficult to justify before a 30 per cent, shareholding in this country and which could and would at the same time toe very detrimental to the exporting industry of this country? My second question is to ask the noble Earl whether he realises that this is the first instalment which British exporting industry has to pay, and the penalty which it must eventually suffer, so long as this country stays out of the European Common Market?
§ THE EARL OF DUNDEEMy Lords, in reply to the first question asked by the noble Lord, I should have said that the object of this, and its probable effect, would, be a great expansion in the work and, production of Ford's factory here, which will, I hope, be to the advantage of our economy, and particularly to our export trade. With regard to the noble Lords question about the Common Market, I am not quite sure that I followed his line of thought in the matter. But I believe it is a very good thing, and an encouraging sign, that, in spite of the fact that we have not so far managed to make an agreement with the Common Market, the Americans are making this large investment in Great Britain and not in some Continental country.
§ LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTHMy Lords, might I ask the noble Earl whether, in the conversation which the right honourable and learned gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had with the American Ford Company, that company gave the Government the assurance that in their stern and avowed fight to enter the European Common Market they were going to utilise the services of Ford, England?
§ THE EARL OF DUNDEEMy Lords, do not know anything about my right honourable and learned friend's conversation with the Ford Company except what he himself stated in another place yesterday, which I think was probably all that there was to be stated.