§ Mr. George Robertsonasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will state the total amounts offered to firms in the Hamilton constituency under regional and industrial grants policy for each year of the last 10 years.
§ Mr. Peter MorrisonI regret the information is not available for all regional and industrial grants because it would be too costly to transfer the historic records to the computer data base. For the same reason a manual search to match addresses is also ruled out. However, the new regional development grants are being recorded and regional selective assistance under section 7 of the Industrial Development Act is available for past years. The details for RSA in the Hamilton constituency are:
Value of offers £'000 1975–76 86 1976–77 40 1977–78 21 1978–79 122 1979–80 81 1980–81 1,499 1981–82 767 1982–83 1,205 1983–84 1,322 1984–85 225 1985–86* 1,144 * 1 April-30 November 1985.
§ Mr. George Robertsonasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will give details of the number of firms to whom offers of grants and loans have been made under the regional industrial policy referred to in his letter of 27 November to the hon. Member for Hamilton.
§ Mr. Peter MorrisonIt is not the practice to disclose details of financial assistance given to individual companies other than in accordance with the arrangements announced by the then Secretary of State for Industry on 31 July 1974. Details are also withheld where it is thought that an individual company could be identified prior to publication inBritish Business. However, the number and value of offers of regional selective assistance and the number of approvals and amount of new regional development grant in the Hamilton constituency were as follows in the period 29 November 1984 to 31 October 1985:
Number Value £'000 RDG II 40 1,781 RSA 4 644