§ 6.41 p.m.
§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
§ THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD DERWENT)My Lords, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill I must say I get rather a "kick" out of it because this is the first time in fourteen years in your Lordships' House that. I have been allowed to speak on what is in essence a Scottish Bill. This Bill empowers the Board of Trade to make loans to Wiggins, Teape & Company Limited for the purpose of building and equipping a pulp mill and associated paper mills at Fort William, Inverness-shire, Scotland. The Bill places a limit 1258 on the total amount of such loans and the period during which they may be made and provides that interest shall be charged at 5½ per cent. per annum. The Bill further provides for grants to be made to the Company equivalent to the amount of interest payable in respect of the period ending December 31, 1966, and authorises the Board of Trade to make an agreement or agreements with the Company defining the other terms and conditions of the loan, including the repayment conditions. Copies of such agreements are to be laid before both Houses of Parliament.
The amount of the charge on public funds which the Bill authorises in respect of loans is £10 million. It is intended that not more than £8 million of this total will be advanced during the period ending December 31, 1966. The total of the grants which the Bill authorises the Board of Trade to make in respect of interest payments falling due during this period must not exceed £1.3 million. The Bill provides that all the sums required are to be paid out of monies voted by Parliament, and that any sums received by the Board as interest or repayment of loans are to be paid into the Exchequer.
May I say one word about the mill itself? The mill has a capacity of 80,000 tons of bleached chemical pulp a year, to produce which it will require 400,000 tons of timber, or 12 million hoppus feet. Of this, 8 million hoppus feet will be Scottish softwood, the smaller sized coniferous roundwood, mostly spruce, pine, larch and Douglas fir. The balance of the raw material will be hardwood, which will have to be imported, and is likely to come from South Africa. The Forestry Commission will supply the bulk of the softwood, up to 6 million hoppus feet per year, starting in 1965, from the supply area north and west of a line Huntly—Perth—Helensburgh. This includes some of the Commission's largest and best known forests in the Argyll and Queen Elizabeth National Forest Parks, the forest of Inverliever, and Speymouth Forest. Another 2 million hoppus feet of softwood is expected to come from other sources, private woodlands and sawmills.
A modern pulp and paper mill is not a large employer of labour in relation to the capital invested. The mill itself will employ about 750 people at the start, 1259 rising to some 1,200 by the completion of the second stage. In the forests the supply of softwood to the pulpmill will provide employment for over 1,000 additional men, engaged in felling, extracting, transport and ancillary work. In addition, a further 350 may be required to deal with the increased production of sawlogs. These numbers are in addition to the 700 men engaged in this work in the supply area.
There will, of course, be a general stimulus to employment in the district which cannot be calculated. Fort William itself, though in a Development District, is not an area where there is surplus labour. The people to fill these jobs will have to come from elsewhere. Principally, they will come from Development Districts elsewhere in Scotland and, of course, we hope that there will be an opportunity for people who have left Fort William to work elsewhere, because work was not available there for them, to come back to Fort William. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Derwent.)
§ 6.47 p.m.
§ LORD STONHAMMy Lords, I would congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, on his maiden speech on Scotland, and well realise that he got a "kick" out of it. I am not, unfortunately, making my maiden speech on Scotland, because the numbers of Scottish Peers on this side of your Lordships' House being somewhat depleted, I was long ago dragooned, quite willingly, into speaking about Scotland, a country and people that I know and admire tremendously. I must say at once that the "kick" that I get out of this Bill is the fact that it is going to find employment for some 3,000 people all told—that is my estimate of it—in an area where for far too long, almost for centuries, the labour has been drained away because there was not work for the men to do. It is for that reason that my noble friends on this side of the House and I give this Bill a very warm welcome indeed.
I do not propose to go into the financial details, except to say that, although they may be generous, nevertheless I would not cavil at that for one moment. It is a very fine conception, and I would say at once that I should wish there were 1260 many more of them. It could be argued, perhaps indeed it was argued in another place, that this is a private enterprise measure and we should have taken a share in the equity, and so on and so forth. But what I am concerned about is employment where it is most needed. I hope noble Lords opposite will not take it amiss if I point out that this venture would have been quite impossible and could not have started at all if it were not for a number of publicly owned enterprises: first of all, the great work of the Forestry Commission, which over the years has made it possible for the raw materials for this factory to be available. Indeed if the work had gone forward without check, and if in 1932, when my own Party was not in power, there had not been a most unfortunate check when millions of young trees were burned, we should have had a lot more timber in the Highlands for this new mill to use.
Then there will have to be—and I hope the noble Lord will say something about this—much better provision of roads, which will provide a lot of employment. There are in that area many single-track roads. They will have to be widened or strengthened. I hope, too, he will say something about a decision on the new bridge which will be needed at Fort William over the River Lochy. He mentioned that there is little or no unemployment in Fort William at present, and that the labour will have to be drawn from other parts of Scotland where there is unemployment. I hope he will say something about the Government's intentions to assist the local authority to provide the housing which will most obviously be necessary.
I mention those points because, really, although Wiggins, Teape are going to build and work the paper mill as a commercial enterprise—and good luck to them!—nevertheless, in essence the whole thing is really a public enterprise built round the private one. I have mentioned, too, the railways, not at any great length because my noble friend Lord Lindgren knows much more on this subject than I do, but because it is proper to mention that this factory would not have been possible, and indeed Wiggins, Teape would not have gone there, unless British Railways had changed a previous intention and agreed to carry on the line to Fort William. 1261 They have got a 20 year contract from Wiggins, Teape.
I mention this because it is so important to Scotland—I am delighted to see that tithe noble Earl, Lord Dundee, is here—and because if the Beeching Plan had come forward, say, even two years ago and had been implemented, there would have been no question now of a paper mill at Fort William because the railway would not have been there. There are other parts of Scotland where, although at present they badly need it, there is not yet a major project, and if the present plans in Dr. Beeching's Report go forward and the railway is taken away, then it means writing off those areas and making impossible the kind of project which we are warmly welcoming in this Bill.
I believe that it is as important to us who live in London that men and women should be profitably, happily and busily employed in the Highlands of Scotland, as it is to them. It is absolute madness if we permit our policies to be—I will not say so constructed, but so to deteriorate that from such areas people are drawn away until the United Kingdom consists of one continuous subtopia from the Mersey to the Straits of Dover. Then, the whole of this country would be much poorer in every possible way and would scarcely be worth living in. It certainly would not be the Britain that we have known and loved.
Therefore, warmly as I, on behalf of my noble friends, welcome this Bill and congratulate the Government on its introduction, I do say that, so far as Scotland is concerned, one swallow does not make a summer. Welcome and important as this venture is, it is not nearly enough. What we want is to see that this is the forerunner of many more such sound projects, which are going to use local labour and, so far as possible, local materials. I say again that we believe that in all circumstances, whether the venture is publicly or privately owned, it will in all such areas depend on, and only become possible through, other publicly owned services, which must be provided and continued. As I say, the railway is one of them. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to give us some hope that, because of this particular project and others like it, the Government are feeling that at least the North-Western railway 1262 up to The Kyles must continue. I think that is going to be absolutely essential to service this factory. This is the kind of occasion that we can all be happy about, and on which we join together in wishing this venture every possible success and hope that it is the forerunner of many more.
§ 6.55 p.m.
§ LORD LINDGRENMy Lords, it will not be necessary for me now to detain your Lordships for more than a second or two, because my noble friend Lord Stonham has covered the ground so ably and fully. My sole intention in intervening to-night is to call attention to the fact that, while we support this Bill absolutely and to the full, had this project come along twelve months later it could, as my noble friend has said, never have been sited where it is. The railway facilities in this area were under consideration for closure, and they would have been closed because the profitability was not there.
My noble friend Lord Stonham referred to roads. The roads in this area are completely inadequate. Had it not been for the railway facility which, of course, is only there now because of the gurantee arising from the placing of these mills at the spot, there would have been no possibility whatever of the mills being there, because the road system just could not have carried its traffic. My point in intervening is this. At Question Time this afternoon we were talking about Dr. Beeching's Report. During the discussion we had on that Report I tried to draw the attention of the House to the close association between transport and the planning of the distribution of industry and population. You cannot plan the distribution of industry and population without, at the same time, planning adequate facilities for a transport system—road, rail and the rest. Delighted as we are that this project has come forward now for this part of Scotland, we hope that many other areas in Scotland will not be so depleted of transport facilities that, should something come along, they will not be able to accept it, as Fort William has gladly been able to accept this project.
§ 6.57 p.m.
THE EARL OF HADDINGTONMy Lords, before the noble Lord replies, I should like in a few words to add my 1263 congratulations to the Government and to comment on this Bill. I congratulate the Government on bringing forward what is, even by modern standards, a most formidable undertaking, as it involves a great deal of public money. As a grower of timber myself, I appreciate the great encouragement and stimulus that this will give to forestry in Scotland, both to the Forestry Commission and to private growers as well, because it will give them an assured market for the disposal of their thinnings. That has been a great trouble in the growing of trees over the past few years. Our principal markets were the Coal Board and, to a certain extent, British Railways. These have largely closed down. The Coal Board are using far more steel than timber props, and I believe that the same applies to British Railways, who are using more steel than timber in their waggons. So this project is going to be a great thing, and, as the noble Lord has explained, the Mill will give a great deal of employment. It may well do more than that, because it seems to me that often when an industry gets established it attracts other industries. There are many by-products to timber, and subsidiaries may collect round this big pulp mill and may still further widen the area of employment. It is a great thing for Scotland. I wish it every success, and I am sure it is going to bring a real gleam of prosperity to the Highlands.
§ 6.59 p.m.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELDMy Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, said that he got a kick out of this Bill. I can assure him that any kick he may receive will be entirely self-administered, because so far as Scotland is concerned it is more likely to be a hearty pat on the back. With other speakers, I greatly welcome this Bill. We hope that it is going to renew prosperity over a large area of the Highlands. For many years past I have bored people both inside and outside your Lordships' House by reiterating that only the growing, the conversion and manufacture of timber can possibly maintain the population in the Highlands, let alone put it back. We have heard that this Bill is going to put a good many people back into the High- 1264 lands. As the noble Earl, Lord Haddington, has said, one of the most important things we now have to face is what we are going to do with our thinnings; and up to date a very large proportion of those thinnings, which could have been turned into pulp, have been destroyed simply because there has been no means of so doing.
This is a very worthy scheme, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, said, there are other parts too, and I very much hope that in my own area of Central Scotland we shall get a mill sooner or later, because it is not going to be economic for us to send up to Fort William. There too, although the unemployment problem is not so serious, it would be an excellent thing if we could get another factory going there and be given this amount of work. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, rather smugly attributed practically all of this achievement to the Forestry Commission. I would remind him, however, that an immense amount of ground has been planted by private owners, and that private forestry has got nearer to attaining the total area originally envisaged, proportionately, than has the Forestry Commission.
§ LORD STONHAMMy Lords, I am sorry. I hope the noble Earl will forgive me, but I was rather hurried and I did, as he says, fail to pay tribute to the private forestry owners.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELDThe noble Lord's apology is not really necessary. I thought it as well to point that fact out. Those of us who have been planting for many years, as I have been doing ever since the war, have been doing it very largely on faith, because we have not known whether we are going to get any market even for our large timber, let alone for our thinnings. This should do a great deal to restore confidence, but it is perfectly true that the Forestry Commission and the Government—any Government for that matter—are more involved than anyone else. They have planted, and are continuing to plant, a very large amount of ground, and it is not going to be in the national interest if the timber from those great areas cannot be profitably employed. Once more, while thanking the Government for making this development possible, 1265 I would urge them to look at the possibility of setting up some such factory in the centre of Scotland within a reasonable space of time.
§ 7.4 p.m.
LORD HAWKEMy Lords, I do not think it would be right to let this Bill go through without saying a word of thanks for the enterprise of Messrs. Wiggins, Teape, who are taking a very considerable risk. Not only are they committing themselves to interest on the Government loan, but if there is a running loss on this mill they will have to stand it. After all, they are in competition with the forestry industries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and the rest, who are very old professional hands at the game. I hope that their enterprise will be copied by other people because, if the Government Actuary is correct in his latest forecast that we shall have 72 million people in these islands before a great many years are out, we shall certainly need to have the Highlands repopulated.
§ 7.5 p.m.
§ LORD DERWENTMy Lords, I am extremely grateful to noble Lords for the response they have given to this Bill. They will not want me to-night to go into the question of industry in Scotland, because we have recently had a debate on the subject; but I am sympathetic with anybody who wants to grow trees, because I am a timber grower myself and do not see any chance of my getting a pulp mill at the moment in my part of Yorkshire. This matter, particularly when it applies to Scotland, is always being watched very carefully. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, for mentioning Messrs. Wiggins, Teape. I will not go into the history of the project, but it has not been easy. They have been very enterprising in this matter. They believe they are going to make it work; they are extremely efficient, and I hope they will make a very great success of it.
I am grateful to the noble Lords opposite, Lord Stonham and Lord Lindgren, for raising certain practical questions, because it will give me the opportunity of replying as I think people ought to know about them. Transport facilities are there, although the roads will need improving. What is also 1266 important is the necessary supply of fresh water and facilities for disposing of the effluent. What in fact may be as important as anything else when the mill is operating is that there is a good deep-water anchorage. This is going to be of the utmost importance. One word about roads. Only 30 per cent. of the timber will have to travel over roads with a weight limit of 10 tons or less—that is for the smaller roads. Plans are being made to reduce this proportion further. Plans are also being made—this is being done rather piecemeal, but that is the best method of handling it—to improve bottle-necks on the main road from Fort William to the pulp mill site.
As regards the railways, British Railways intend to retain their railway from Glasgow to Fort William and Mallaig. The section between Crianlarich (halfway from Glasgow) and Fort William will be used for conveying timber from Argyll and Perthshire to the mill. Crianlarich will be the collecting point. As regards housing, the Inverness County Council and the Fort William Burgh are putting up housing in the Fort William area for employees at the mill. We expect this work to start this summer. I hope that I have answered all the questions put to me by noble Lords. Once again I should like to thank noble Lords very much for their reception of this Bill.
§ On Question, Bill read 2a: Committee negatived.
§ Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been dispensed with (pursuant to Resolution), Bill read 3a, and passed.