§ Mr. Homewoodasked the Secretary of State for Industry if he will undertake that Her Majesty's Government will provide matching finance to the level required in the event of acceptance by the EEC Commissioners of the British Steel Corporation's proposal that the EEC should fund the retirement of steel workers at 50 years of age.
§ Mr. Michael MarshallI understand that BSC does not intend to put forward a formal proposal for retirement of steel workers at 50. Within the external financing provision for the corporation in 1980–81, BSC is allocating a substantial sum towards redundancies. We would expect this allocation of Government money to count as the matching finance towards any new Community assistance and the current discussions about further assistance from European Community funds have been on this basis.