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Mr. Jim Sillars (Glasgow, Govan) : When the hon. Member for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid), who sat down to great cheers from his supporters, reads what he said tomorrow in the cold light of day, I do not believe that he will feel as happy as he did a few moments ago. What we got from him, tragically, was a comprehensive rubbishing of the Dalzell plant. [Interruption.] Hon. Members are unhappy, but they will have to listen. I intend to continue until I have finished my speech.
Although the hon. Gentleman's supporters clapped and cheered, one of the things that they have to understand is that his argument against the Ravenscraig-Dalzell link up
Dr. Reid : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Dr. Reid rose--
Mr. Sillars : Sit down. The hon. Gentleman made fun of steel passing backwards and forwards-- [Interruption.]
Dr. Reid : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd) : Order. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Sillars) does not intend to give way, so he has the Floor.Dr. Reid : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker : I hope that it is a point of order that the Chair can deal with.
Dr. Reid : When I went to give my notes to Hansard, as requested, I understand that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Sillars) referred to me. In those circumstances, is it not the convention and would it not be courteous for the hon. Gentleman to give way to me so that I can correct what was a lie? I did not refer to the steel workers at Dalzell--
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. First, I will ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his phrase "a lie." Then I can deal with his point of order.
Dr. Reid : I meant, of course, that it was an untruth.
Madam Deputy Speaker : It is up to the hon. Member for Govan, who has the Floor, to decide whether to give way. He appears not to be doing so. He must therefore be allowed to continue with his speech.
Mr. Sillars : That was the first of the Freudian slips that were made by the hon. Member for Motherwell, North. I never mentioned the workers or the shop stewards at Dalzell. I said that he had rubbished the plant at Dalzell.
Mr. George Foulkes (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley) : Oh, no.
Mr. Sillars : Does not the stupid Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) understand
Mr. Foulkes : Why does not the hon. Gentleman stand against me and have a go at the next election?
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. This has been a very well conducted debate so far. We are now coming towards the end of the debate and we want a proper winding up. Let us listen to all those hon. Members who want to speak.
Mr. Sillars : As I was saying, and as I intend to say, this stupid man here does not understand that, if we rubbish a plant, we damage its future standing in the minds of the policy makers who have to decide its future.
One of the tragedies of the first phase of the Ravenscraig closure was the comprehensive rubbishing of the Ravenscraig plant-- [Interruption.] Then they said
Mr. Sillars : Opposition Members who have been--
Dr. Reid : You are the paymaster.
Mr. Sillars : You people who have been--
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. I can hear only one hon. Member at a time-- [Interruption.] Order. I cannot hear myself think this evening. Will hon. Members please come to order? Mr. Sillars.
Mr. Sillars : We are taking no lectures from folk who, for a long time, were in political bed with that crook, Bob Maxwell.
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The great tragedy of the first phase was the rubbishing of the Ravenscraig plant. How is it possible to say thereafter, "We should like somebody to come along and buy a plant that we have just rubbished"? Every speech that I have heard tonight from a Labour Member has been towards the compelling logic of the public ownership of the steel industry.Mr. Sillars : Oh yes. Opposition Members have kept saying, "We could press British Steel, but everybody knows that that is a waste of time." The hon. Member for Motherwell, North said, "Let someone take Scottish assets into private ownership and we will join in a joint venture" ; but why not take Scottish assets into public ownership and then be open to a joint venture with a private organisation later? Their compelling logic is certain. We all know that what we have had from British Steel has been the malevolent exercise of monopolistic power in the private sector. The standard socialist answer to such power is to take it into public ownership --not to allow that malevolent power to dominate strategic industries and communities.
The hon. Member for Motherwell, North said, "We don't like to make promises that we canna keep." So let me ask him about the promise that was made on 23 February 1988, when his hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) said :
"for the reasons that I have yet to develop fully, Opposition Members and the trade union movement strongly believe that the steel industry is most appropriately owned in a form of public ownership. We shall decide that form and the order of priorities by which it is to be secured when we return to power"--[ Official Report, 23 February 1988 ; Vol. 128, c. 184.]
What about the priorities now in Lanarkshire? The hon. Gentleman's priorities now are to take British Steel's assets in Scotland out of the grip of the board of British Steel, that being the only guarantee of preserving jobs and the Scottish steel industry in Lanarkshire. The hon. Members for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) and for Motherwell, North have said, "Look at the nonsense of the £1.7 billion compared to the price of the shares on the stock exchange today." Do they not understand that, if I say to somebody, "I should like you to spend £1.7 billion buying our plant", that person is likely to reply, "I would buy your plant only if I wanted access to certain markets, but I can get the whole of British Steel, including the assets of your plant, wholly and totally for only £1.3 billion and, as a matter of fact, if I want control, I do not need to spend £1.3 billion, I need to spend only £700 million"--
Dr. Reid : Let us suppose that that mythical chap did come along and that the share value stayed at its current level--because it was known that there was a buyer, it might double or even treble--but let us suppose that, against all the evidence from the history of the market, the share value remained static. The buyer would still have to spend £1.7 billion on top of the share value simply to make it productive.
Mr. Sillars : As I understand the hon. Gentleman's account, the strip mill is still there. He included it in the £1.7 billion. He has the same economic adviser and calculator as Alf Young of the Glasgow Herald.
I want to argue that the best way to save the Scottish steel industry is to take all British Steel's assets in Scotland
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into public ownership. The thing to do is to captialise on the reprieve for Dalzell because Dalzell is the key to the retention of the base of the Scottish steel industry, on which base we could rebuild the industry.If folk say to me, "Where did you invent that 1 million tonnes stuff?", I will tell them that it is from a report produced for Labour Strathclyde region by the department of political economy at Glasgow university in February 1990. It said :
"The Dalzell plant currently takes about 25 per cent. of Ravenscraig's production."
Later, on page 23, it makes a good point. This is endorsed by Labour Strathclyde region. The report says :
"Ravenscraig's product range is ideal for supplying a large plate mill."
We are talking about a 1-million-tonne mill.
"It has developed special techniques for ingot production for thick plate applications and has a casting capacity of 1.9 million tonnes per annum which can be flexibly switched between slab and strip production to suit market sentiment."
It went on to argue that the configuration between Ravenscriag and Dalzell was suited to the market that is now developing. It described the market as a fragmented, demand-led market, where people might demand a smaller tonnage of steel but wanted highly specialised steel and special products. The report argued eloquently that that configuration would meet market circumstances in the years that lay ahead. So that is the argument on which we have founded our case--an argument produced by Glasgow university and endorsed by Strathclyde regional council.
At the root of the matter lies this issue. There will be a 100-million- tonne plate mill with a pipe mill attached thereto, with a steel supplier up front. The question is whether it goes to Teesside or Lanarkshire, because the potential of the Scottish steel industry as we conceive it is exactly the same as British Steel conceives it. It would do what we ask today if the cash position was better than it is. That is the key factor. The only way to guarantee that the mill goes to Lanarkshire is to take the assets into public ownership. If the Labour party was worth its socialist salt, it would agree with me 100 per cent. of the way.
It is remarkable to hear Labour Member after Labour Member complain about the misapplication of private power but not follow the ideological guidance system and say that that private power must be curbed by the application of public power to take those assets into public control. They remind me of the ditty : "The people's flag is now mauve in hue. No longer red, it is turning a contemptible blue". 9.33 pm
Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton) : I am grateful for the chance to speak briefly at the end of this extremely important debate for my constituents and for people in many other parts of Scotland. I begin by quoting the Financial Times . The Secretary of State for Scotland chose to give a quotation from it earlier. I shall come to that in a moment. First, I should like to quote a section of an editorial which appeared in that prestigious newspaper on 9 January. It is quoted in the document given to me and to many other hon. Members by my friend and constituent Rev. John Potter, the industrial chaplain to Lanarkshire who has done so much during the period of the rundown of the great steel
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industry to comfort the people that he serves and to campaign on their behalf. The words that he quoted are worth listening to because the Financial Times played such a marginal part in the Secretary of State's speech.The editorial stated :
"The only other thing to be written in the Ravenscraig epitaph is that there was never a community more deserving of EC and UK Government help in rebuilding its local economy. Ravenscraig's work force has been loyal, hardworking and as efficient as the plant permitted. It has every right to expect politicians to move whatever bureaucratic obstacles stand in the way of measures to stimulate the creation of jobs in industries more suited to the periphery of Europe."
I hope that the Secretary of State will pay as much attention to that as he did to his selective quotation. So much was made of that quotation that I wish to direct the House's attention to the rest of it, which the Secretary of State did not choose to point out. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said, in response to a question put by the Financial Times about sectoral intervention, taking steel as an example :
"it isn't intervention that the steel industry needs. What the steel industry needs is a more vibrant domestic market, specially in the manufacturing sector and a chance therefore to make even further increases in their productivity and be more competitive in difficult international markets."
If the Secretary of State agreed with the part that he quoted, does he agree that the Government have supervised a Scottish and a British economy which has created the conditions in which the steel plants of Scotland and of Britain are in such trouble?
Mr. Lang : The hon. Gentleman's attention must have wandered. Had he been in the Chamber throughout my speech, he would have heard me read precisely that part of the quotation which he has just quoted and which I endorsed.
Mr. Robertson : It was a selective quotation, underscored, missing out the key component that the people of Lanarkshire and Scotland understand--that it is not intervention at this stage which matters, but the fact that the economy is in such deep trouble that we are at the bottom of all the European leagues. That is why Ravenscraig has been picked out at this point.
In this debate, as my hon. Friends and those who represent the rest of industrial Lanarkshire have rightly pointed out, it would be easy to be critical of a Government who have done so little and yet protest so much when the final decision has been taken. One cannot complain if a butterfly cannot get into the air when its wings have been taken off. The Government stood back when the steel industry got into that plight.
British Steel is a public limited company which does not even have the guts to come to Scotland and explain the reasons why a controversial decision was necessary. Sir Bob Scholey may well believe in his heart of hearts that it is the right decision, but if that is so, as the steward of the private steel industry in this country, why did he not have the courage and decency to face those people who rose to every exhortation to deal with the challenge put before them?
I shall briefly outline some of the arguments put by Rev. John Potter to hon. Members. He did not do so in a spirit of looking back or of recrimination. Practical issues concern him and should concern all Members of the House. He mentioned the number of small companies which will be dramatically affected as a result of the
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premature closure of Ravenscraig and which cannot expect to get headlines in the way that major companies have. Both he and I ask the Minister whether it is possible to survey the impact on such small companies and study what can be done for them. What about employees of the contractors' firms, who will not be able to share in the benefits of the redundancy terms offered by British Steel? What will be done in the way of retraining and re-employment for the people affected?Rev. John Potter asks about the possibility of a "brainstorming" meeting at which ideas, many of which were raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray), for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid) and for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke), could be put forward to help the future regeneration of an area which has been so hard hit. He asks about the enterprise zone. I shall not go over the ground covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) about the unacceptable and unforgivable delay in moving between the recommendation of the Lanarkshire working party and the application for enterprise zone status. What about the delay and uncertainty that will be created in the meantime before the small enterprise zones get off the ground? Those few questions are relevant, reasonable and deserve serious and sober answers from a Government who have an obligation and a responsibility.
The decision to close Ravenscraig has been a blow to the industrial heartlands of Scotland and to the thousands of people and their families whose livelihoods depend upon those works. The workers of Ravenscraig have done so much, not just in terms of campaigning, but in delivering productivity and production records. The communities that will be affected are linked together in their sadness--but although they are sad, they are far from beaten.
9.40 pm
Mr. Tony Worthington (Clydebank and Milngavie) : I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), who has brought dignity back to the debate. He reminded us that 400 miles away many people are sad and have been deeply damaged by what has occurred. We must keep that memory constant.
My hon. Friend was also right to remind us that when Scholey promised that steel would continue to be made at Ravenscraig until 1994, Labour Members knew that that was not a reprieve, but a stay of execution. Sir Robert Scholey--never kind and gentle to
Scotland--thought that that was how long he would need in Lanarkshire. That was his pessimistic estimate because he wanted out of Lanarkshire. The Government's principal fault lies in their running of the economy, which was such as to surpass even the pessimism of Sir Robert. The economy was run down to the extent that Sir Robert felt that he could move out two years before his pessimistic promise.
The Government must come to terms with their guilt. The decision has been put down to market conditions, but a market does not just occur. A market is constructed mainly by Government policies. The recession that the Government have created is the reason, above all, why we are here on this sad night.
We must look ahead at what we can do. We would not start from here. It is a tragic point from which to start. We would certainly not give any promises that we cannot deliver.
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My memory of tonight is of the quiet dignity of my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray). Motherwell has been served well by its Members of Parliament. I shall remember the quiet dignity with which my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell, South has pursued this issue for a decade or more. He is constantly seeking solutions.A strange absence from the debate has been talk about private sector leadership and the enterprise culture, of which we heard so much in 1988 and 1989. What has happened to them? Why are they not mentioned now? Now we are thrown back, as we always knew that we would be, on the need for public sector intervention.
We must obviously carry on seeking a buyer, and we must give every encouragement to that buyer if one can be found. Another striking thing about my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell, South--and all good wishes to him--is that he has more ideas than are produced from all the resources of the Government.
The enterprise zone concept must be pursued with all energy, not picked up again whenever bad news appears. The Government are jerked into activity only when there is bad news. There is no zeal about them. We must stop all dishonesty about capital involvement, an issue to which the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) referred. There must be nothing tricky about the resources that will be put in. We must be told clearly just what are the new resources.
We must examine the capital infrastructure that is needed, and let it be clear that there is no political game playing between regional councils and the Government over roads. We must demand an environmental clean-up from British Steel. That is the least we should have. British Steel must go beyond the legal minimum, and I hope that the Minister will assure us that he is persuading, even forcing, the company to do that.
We must get the full educational and training resources of the country into Lanarkshire. There must be a full analysis of the job and investment prospects. Let us abandon the pretence that the local enterprise companies can cope with education and training. In their employment training and youth training programmes, they are concerned with 2 to 3 per cent. of the work force and the available-to-work force. The local enterprise companies are involved with only 20 per cent. of 16 and 17-year-olds who are on YT schemes. That is not the way forward with education and training in the context of which we are speaking. Reference has been made to the possibility of upgrading the education institutions of Lanarkshire and making sure that the universities and colleges in the area are fully involved. We must review the rundown of the East Kilbride development corporation. It is extraordinary that the Government are not prepared to look at that issue. What dogma is behind that? What difficulties are there between Scottish Enterprise, the local development agency and East Kilbride development corporation?
It is sheer folly for the message to be sent out in respect of the East Kilbride development corporation, "We are winding down." It is extraordinary that that should be happening now in Lanarkshire, which has the most successful job development agency in the country. The message now going out reads, "We are winding down and shutting up," even though that body last year, in the dire conditions of the time, attracted 1,100 jobs and £34 million
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of capital to Lanarkshire. Yet the Government will not even address the question whether the East Kilbride development corporation can be kept going.The Scottish Office must take full responsibility for that state of affairs, for it has acted with truly Thatcherite zeal. Even the present Government could not have done more. The contrast, on the issue of public expenditure, between the Scottish Office and the Welsh Office is truly remarkable. The Welsh Development Agency budget went up 98 per cent. between 1979 and 1990. The Scottish Development Agency budget, in the same 11-year period, stagnated ; it increased by only 2.4 per cent. That happened at the choice of the Government. When the Welsh had steel closures in the early 1980s, at present-day prices an additional £187 million went to the Welsh areas, and good luck to them for that. When Scottish Enterprise was set up--we knew that it would happen--there was a cut of nearly £200 million in its budget. Its budget in Lanarkshire, until there was a protest, was cut from £7 million to £4.2 million, a reduction of 42 per cent. The original allocation to the Lanarkshire development agency went down from £7.3 million to £4.2 million. There was then a protest and the Government realised--again, in embarrassment--that the figure should be adjusted, and so it was. Unless the Government are constantly brought to face the problems, they will back away from and neglect Lanarkshire.
The Government have failed Lanarkshire. Last Monday, the Secretary of State pretended that the closure of Ravenscraig would add just 1 per cent. to Lanarkshire's unemployment rate. Over a period of 11 years, Motherwell lost 60 per cent. of its manufacturing jobs, and Lanarkshire as a whole lost 40 per cent. of its manufacturing jobs before the closure of Ravenscraig. In the Lanarkshire travel-to-work area in 1979, male unemployment was 10 per cent. It is now 20 per cent. That is a measure of the Government's derelict position on training in Lanarkshire. The Government should go, and they should take their guilt with them.
9.51 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart) : This is an important debate. In one sense, it has been twdebates. In the first debate, hon. Members on both sides of the House made constructive and reasoned suggestions about the future of Lanarkshire. Those hon. Members included my hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro), for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) and for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall), who rightly pointed to the dangers of intervention. I do not think that he was arguing about whether it was wrong for a Conservative Government to have been instrumental in setting up Ravenscraig in the first place. Speeches of Opposition Members also contained constructive and reasoned suggestions. The comments of the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) about the Ravenscraig site and the enterprise zone were correct. I shall come to the points raised by the hon. Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray) if I have sufficient time. The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) referred to the points made by the Rev. John Potter. I was glad to meet the Rev. John Potter this
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morning. He has made a major contribution and I agree substantially with the points which he made to me and which the hon. Member for Hamilton made to the House.The second debate has been political. I have seldom seen the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) under such pressure. He is normally the most courteous of Members in giving way, but he would not give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown), who not only represented a steelworks but was on the Committee that considered the British Steel Bill, to which the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Sillars) so effectively referred in his speech. That saves me from repeating exactly the same in mine. The Labour Members who made the political arguments in this debate were bowled middle stump. Either they are socialists, in which case they must agree with the thoughts and philosophy of the hon. Member for Govan, or they are loyal followers of the Leader of the Opposition. The right hon. Gentleman seems to be having all sorts of meetings tonight because each time Labour Members were challenged about the quotation in this morning's Financial Times they said that they had had a meeting with the Leader of the Opposition and had checked the policies. There will be a U-turn tomorrow, so we shall see the right hon. Gentleman's next argument.
Opposition Members cannot tell the House that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State should have intervened in some undefined way given that the Leader of the Opposition said--I remind them of the quotation--that the steel industry did not need
"some civil servant or minister sitting on their shoulder saying to them well, strategically this is what we think you should do." That is what the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition said, and the hon. Member for Garscadden has been bowled middle stump, not by Conservative Members but by the Leader of the Opposition.
Mr. Dewar : The hon. Gentleman seems to have the rather odd view that either one is in favour of total intervention and state control in every situation, despite the practicalities, or one does nothing at all. That is the choice that he is presenting. Does it not occur to him that there are some politicians who, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition advocates in that article, look at intervention where it is justified and act in the way that the circumstances demand? That is what we have been advocating throughout and that is what we want to do now. We do not believe in going down the public ownership road when there clearly is a market problem and there clearly is no case for it, but we do not believe in sitting on our backsides and doing nothing, as the bewhiskered Under- Secretary is advocating.
Mr. Stewart : I should like to be a fly on the wall at the forthcoming meeting between the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. Member for Garscadden when they try to sort out what the Labour party's policy actually is.
Mr. Tom Clarke rose --
Mr. Stewart : I will give way, but it will have to be for the last time.
Mr. Clarke : The Minister will recall that I gave way in a five- minute speech, so he is not over-generous. Does he accept that the fundamental issue of the Secretary of
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State's role between 20 December and 9 January was what he did or did not do? Why did he not remind British Steel that we were given not a letter, not a promise, not a meeting, but a guarantee? What happened to the guarantee?Mr. Stewart : My right hon. Friend of course asked for and was given a meeting with the chairman of British Steel and his colleagues. We went through the guarantee, which was always subject, of course, to market conditions. But I will tell the hon. Member what would have been the case if the Labour Government had been elected last October. The Labour Secretary of State for Scotland would not have been told anything by British Steel, because it would not have trusted a Labour Government to keep the matters confidential. Mr. Dewar rose--
Mr. Stewart : No, I will not give way. The hon. Gentleman would not give way more than once.
I turn to the constructive points that have been made from both sides of the House. My hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries and for Tayside, North, the hon. Member for Gordon and, of course, the constituency Members and others have rightly paid tribute to the Ravenscraig work force for their hard work, effort and endeavour. I, too, pay tribute to them, and I hope that when the furore has died down British Steel will lose no opportunity to pay the same tribute-- [Interruption.] It is not a matter for laughter. It is crucial for the future of Lanarkshire that firms are encouraged to come into Lanarkshire and that the message that the work force are skilled and dedicated and that this closure was no fault of theirs gets across to the whole industrial community.
The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) and other hon. Members talked about the future. I entirely accept that we must look at mechanisms that will follow up the success of the Lanarkshire working party. I am discussing that with Lanarkshire development agency. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Hamilton that not just economic consultants and economists have expertise and that we must involve the whole community.
What have we had from the Opposition? We have had from the Scottish National party a policy that is unworkable and, from the Labour party, no policy at all. The Labour party gave not £1-worth of extra commitment to Lanarkshire tonight. I urge the House to support the Government's amendment.
Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question :--
The House divided : Ayes 212, Noes 242.
Division No.l 54] [10 pm
AYES
Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley, N.)
Allen, Graham
Alton, David
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