§ Mr. Hanleyasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he has now received British Shipbuilders' corporate plan; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Peter MorrisonBritish Shipbuilders submitted its plan in late July. I am placing in the Library a version with commercially confidential information deleted. As last year, the Government accept the broad thrust of the proposed strategy, which is to continue to concentrate resources on a stable cost-effective mainstream merchant shipbuilding business. The pursuit of this strategy in 1984–85 enabled the corporation to reduce its trading loss on activities administered by BS during the year to £25 million and to achieve its new order target for merchant ships of some 200,000 compensated gross tonnes.
The corporation accepts the importance of continuing to improve its performance in the marketplace which will determine its ability to win new orders and to operate effectively within the framework of tight and degressive levels of Government financial support. Within that framework, British Shipbuilders' original forecast contained in the plan was that its level of new orders this financial year would be similar to last year's. But conditions in the shipbuilding market have recently deteriorated and British Shipbuilders now believes that it is unlikely to be able to win this level of orders. I have asked the corporation to keep the situation under review.
British Shipbuilders is continuing to privatise the warship building yards with the aim of completing all the sales by 31 March 1986.