LORDS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 16 November 1976)

§ Lord WINTERBOTTOM

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 41, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 42. Amendment No. 41 seeks to put into the Bill a statutory requirement that the Secretary of State should provide, in effect, a prospectus to Parliament when he lays an order to increase a Corporation's financing limits under the clause. The Government are, of course, entirely sympathetic to the principle that Parliament should have full and useful information against which to judge an application by the Secretary of State for an increase in financing powers. But the Government consider that the Secretary of State, being answerable to Parliament, would provide this anyway in the normal course of events. We do not however, consider that the appropriate way of securing this aim is by Statute. For one thing, it is very difficult to lay down in Statute the matters which need 1197 covering. Certainly this Amendment does it inadequately and only in broad outline.

I should like to give just a single example, in the case of British Aerospace. One of the key items on which an order would need to be judged would be the Corporation's plans for development, or participation in development, of new civil aircraft. This is not classed as capital investment, in the terms of item (a) of the Amendment. The bare figures of "application of funds" (mentioned in item (c) of the Amendment) without some narrative explanation would be of little value to the House. In short, what is needed is not the answers to a kind of pro-forma, but a reasoned statement, according to the circumstances of the industry and its situation at a particular time, and supported by estimates of the relevant production and financial figures.

My Lords, there is also the question of commercial confidentiality—and this is important. The Amendment certainly makes an exception for this, but we believe that a statutory requirement not fulfilled for this reason could in some circumstances in itself draw the attention of competitors to factors of which it might be advantageous for them to know. Noble Lords opposite may not agree with this, but it is they who have been so resistant to the provisions of the Industry Act, for example, on disclosure of information for this very reason; and they have moved a number of Amendments to this Bill on the same point, one of which we accepted in the other place.

As I have said, the Government are sympathetic to this suggestion, but they think that it would be wrong to lay down the procedure in industrial Statutes on an industry basis. It would be better to try to co-ordinate the Government's practice in relation to all the nationalised industries which from time to time may need increases in their borrowing limits. The Government are already exploring ways in which this might best be done. In the meantime, at least one of the major public corporations, the British Steel Corporation, has undertaken to provide the fullest information against which to judge the case for increased borrowing wherever future orders for borrowing Bills are due to come before Parliament; and I give an assurance that my right honourable friend will write to the two chairmen asking them 1198 to follow the same practice. I beg to move.