§ Mr. Gwynfor Evansasked the Secretary of State for Wales in view of the threatened redundancies in forestry employment in Wales, if he will take steps to set up suitable Government-owned timber-using manufacturing plants, to prevent further unemployment or depopulation in the parts of rural Wales affected by these redundancies.
§ Mr. George ThomasThe hon. Member's Question suggests that he overestimates the fall in employment in forestry (which will entail relatively few actual redundancies) and under-estimates the scale on which timber-using factories have to operate to be economic. But, in any case, existing timber-using industries are capable of expanding to absorb all the production from Welsh forests in the foreseeable future.