§ Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will publish in the Official Report statistics of overall productivity per man employed in the Harland and Wolff shipyards in each of the last 10 years.
§ Mr. Giles Shaw[pursuant to his reply, 7 July 1980, c 83]: I regret it is not technically possible to comply with my hon. Friend's request in any meaningful way. Shipbuilding, is such a complex operation that the only fully objective productivity measurement which exists is man-hour per tonne in steelwork production, which itself offers a valid comparison only between vessels of the same type, and of course covers only part of the total work content. The wide variation between ships in steelwork content thus makes any year on year comparison very misleading, and not just in terms of sheer quantity—steelwork for a ferry can require more than three times the man-hours per tonne than steelwork for a tanker. One method of attempting to reconcile these differences is to use a measured performance index, and by this standard steelwork productivity had fallen by last year to about 72 per cent. of the relatively high level reached in 1977. So far this year it has risen to about 88 per cent. of the 1977 level.