§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Prime Minister what is the warship and merchant ship capacity of the British shipping industry; and how this compares with capacity in West Germany, France and Italy, respectively.
§ The Prime MinisterShipbuilding capacity is a difficult concept to measure as it depends, inter alia, upon manning levels and labour productivity. The level of output (completions) may be considered partly indicative of capacity. For merchant shipbuilding, recent information for the countries required is shown in the following table.
Annual naval output for the United Kingdom has fluctuated considerably in recent years, peaking at about 40,000 standard displacement tons in 1982. Data on output of naval vessels for Germany, France and Italy are not readily available.
Merchant shipbuilding completions '000 compensated gross registered tons 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 United Kingdom 584 513 254 418 349 Germany 617 618 922 764 926 France 474 302 394 310 376 Italy 232 320 284 177 143