§ Commander BELLAIRSasked the President of the Board of Trade what is the capacity of the existing plants in the iron and steel trade, and how much of this is, approximately, absorbed in the home trade, the foreign trade, and the Empire trade; and whether he has any figures to show how much plant has gone out of existence since 1920.
§ Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTERThe capacity of British blast furnaces is about 12,000,000 tons per annum, and that of steel furnaces is rather over 12,000,000 tons. The output of pig iron in the year 1927 was 7,294,000 tons, and in the first nine months of 1928 it was 4,983,000 tons. The output of steel ingots and castings in the same periods amounted to 9,099,000 tons and 6,324,000 tons respectively. A large proportion of the iron and steel exported goes in the form of semi-finished or finished goods, and in 1927 the total exports of iron and steel and manufactures thereof amounted to 4,196,000 tons, of which 2,462,000 tons were consigned to British countries and 233W 1,734,000 tons to Foreign countries. Some part of these exported goods was made from imported iron or steel worked up in this country. As regards the last part of the question, I am unable to say what proportion of the plant in existence in 1920 has been scrapped or reconstructed, but the output of pig iron in 1920 was 8,035,000 tons, and the output of steel ingots and castings 9,067,000 tons.