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6.5 pm
Mr. William Ross (East Londonderry): A number of hon. Members have begun their speeches by expressing thanks to members of the Ulster Unionist party for tabling the motion on this half Supply day that falls to us
each year. I express my thanks to the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) for covering the fishing industry. It certainly saves me any trouble in that direction. He referred to some very important issues to which I hope we shall return before we are very much older. The industry is of concern to many people in Northern Ireland as well as far further afield. The number of fish in the sea, what harvests we can reap, and the number of people who can make a living from the industry are problems that will not be easily resolved or simply go away.
I express my thanks to the hon. Member for Foyle(Mr. Hume), who has left the Chamber, for raising the ceasefire, or the possible re-ceasefire of the IRA. I must confess that anyone who watched Jonathan Dimbleby interview one of Sinn Fein-IRA's leading members yesterday will not have been terribly encouraged by the responses that Mr. Dimbleby received. One of my friends said that they wished that the pair were put on again, which was an interesting departure from the point of view one normally hears whenever such spokesmen appear on our screens.
I say to those who will be speaking to the hon. Member for Foyle that I hope that he and the IRA-Sinn Fein understand that the sort of ceasefire that we had is not good enough to attract anyone. It must go far beyond that; there must be a real ceasefire and a real cessation of violence against those who oppose the gunman in any shape or form. We have seen what has happened over the past 20 months or more and it is just not acceptable that such behaviour continued--even after a ceasefire was announced. It must be for real.
I should like to turn to the Northern Ireland meat industry, which is of course bound up in the destiny of the United Kingdom beef industry at the moment. As has already been pointed out, the situation is comparatively more serious in Northern Ireland than elsewhere in the United Kingdom because Northern Ireland exports a much greater proportion of its beef production than England or Wales. I shall leave Scotland out of this discussion for the moment--it also exports a large amount of beef and it has its own peculiar problems.
I shall illustrate the importance of the beef industry to Northern Ireland by pointing out that the United Kingdom exported some 246,000 tonnes of beef in 1994. It is difficult to quantify the number of cattle that were exported because some of it was on the bone and some was boned beef. Of that 246,000 tonnes, 57,400 tonnes came from Northern Ireland alone--that is approximately 28 per cent. of the United Kingdom's beef exports. That puts the importance of Northern Ireland's beef industry into perspective. When one combines Scotland's beef exports with Northern Ireland's beef exports, one sees that about half the exports come from those two areas of the United Kingdom.
A few days after the beef export ban was imposed,I attended a meeting of farmers at the Balmoral centre in Belfast. A spokesman for the transport organisations informed the meeting that 104 specialised lorries have nothing to do. That is a critical situation: the lorries are important economic assets that are doing nothing and that is costing a lot of money. Jobs will be lost if the lorries sit idle. This is only one tiny facet of the problems of the beef industry with which the Government have to grapple.
The lack of confidence in that sector was exposed by a report of the PA Consulting Group dated 7 May. The report pointed out that investment in the beef industry has reduced by exactly 100 per cent. compared with one year ago. In other words, people have decided not to invest in the beef industry in Northern Ireland. This is a serious situation and there are all sorts of nuances. We shall have ample opportunity to discuss and explore this entire issue in Committee this week and on the Floor of the House.
I recognise that the whole of the United Kingdom's beef industry sinks or swims together, but I contend that with the traceability capacity that we have in Northern Ireland, with the quality assurance that we have in Northern Ireland and with the improving situation in Scotland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom regarding traceability, we can guarantee the beef. We should supply this beef and use it as a crowbar to reopen the overseas market and to break the ban. We could begin this process with the Northern Ireland product.
I understand all the arguments about treating everyone the same, but the situation is not the same everywhere. We could use this key to unlock the door to Europe once more.
There is a problem in relation to bull beef and what we will do about it. We cannot open the door and put those animals out to grass--and everyone knows that. That is part and parcel of the economic difficulty facing the whole farming industry. It is like a row of dominoes--when one is pushed, they all fall. The key is the European market; the key is opening up the world market for our beef. We need to get our population--20 million to30 million people--to have their Sunday roast again, which would be a great help.
The report of the PA Consulting Group showed that, compared with a year ago, orders are down, output is expected to rise slightly over the next 12 months and investment overall is up by 13 per cent. Given that there was no investment in meat processing, other sectors in Northern Ireland have had an increased level of investment, which is to be welcomed. The figures should be viewed in a positive light in the medium to long term so far as the Northern Ireland economy is concerned. However, there are some worries in the manufacturing sector.
I am sure that over the weekend hon. Members listened, with a fair degree of jealousy, to the possibility of a large investment going to south Wales--we all hoped that it would come to our areas. The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow is smiling--no doubt he would have been happy to have had that investment in Port Glasgow. Any part of the United Kingdom would be happy to have that sort of investment. We welcome the fact that investment is coming into the United Kingdom, and we hope that similar investments will be made in the future.
We hope that when investors come here they will be encouraged to increase their uptake of local graduates and that they will to do more research and development in the United Kingdom, particularly in Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Walker) agreed with me when I pointed out that electronics firms are employing a large number of graduates--and we want to see more of that. We want our young people to stay at home, and we want to see research and development structures at home. That is how we will get more home-grown firms. They will provide a lot of employment
in the future and we need to grab a piece of the action. We have to get our best trained young people to work at home, rather than export them to America and elsewhere.
I refer to factories in my constituency--Benelux, which appears to be experiencing some job losses; and AVX in Coleraine which laid off 78 people last weekend. In relation to AVX, I hope that there will be further reinvestment, that there will be retooling, that it will get back its market share, and that the jobs will be restored. These are areas of high unemployment and we need to keep all the jobs that currently exist.
Interesting figures are starting to emerge about the general unemployment rate in Northern Ireland, in that there is a big difference between the level of male and female unemployment. The female unemployment rate is currently 6 per cent. or less and the male unemployment rate is three times that figure. This is worrying. We would like the male unemployment rate to drop. One firm that is engaged in textiles had to put its factory in Newry rather than Strabane because it could not get workers in Strabane--which has more than 30 per cent. unemployment, so there is something wrong somewhere. Perhaps it is the wrong sort of work; perhaps there are not enough people unemployed as opposed to the high percentage. It is worrying that factories are saying that they cannot get enough workers in areas of high unemployment. There were 800 jobs involved in that case.
If the Government have not done research as to why this is so, it is long overdue. We need to find out why female unemployment is down to a reasonable level when compared with the rest of the United Kingdom--and could become lower with a bit of hard work--and why male unemployment is at an atrociously high level. I hope that the Minister will carefully consider the reasons for that and target the problem of male unemployment, as opposed to that of female unemployment, which is largely resolved.
The Minister will recall that Baroness Denton visited the Coleraine area on Friday 3 May. I accompanied her on visits that I had arranged to three manufacturing firms.
The first firm was a very small, high-precision engineering concern, operating from a farmyard. The second manufactured heavy truck bodies, fitted them into trucks and exported them. Interestingly, we had some Danish visitors with us, and when we went into that works the first truck body that they saw was labelled "Denmark", so the exports had got that far. The Danish visitors were even more pleased to discover that the brochures were printed in their own language--a detail that so many people never seem to think about. The third firm was a very small organisation in one of our enterprise parks in Coleraine, which manufactured a range of medical equipment, now being exported far and wide.
The interesting thing about all those small, healthy organisations was that each was home grown. All were started by local people. One of those people had started the business more than 60 years ago and built up a fairly large organisation by Northern Ireland standards. The other two firms are much more recent, and tiny, and do high-quality work very well.
What more do the Government propose to do to encourage such enterprises? They are home grown. These folks will not uproot and leave at the first chill wind of economic change. There may be a fluctuation in the number of employees if things get really difficult, but they
will remain there and will not go away. Those small firms need more encouragement, and more overseas investment, because many of them operate by supplying larger organisations, some of which are created by overseas investment and some of which are home grown.
What positive results have emerged from the visit of our American friends to Belfast and the visit of so many people from Northern Ireland to Washington? It was a great jamboree. We all enjoyed it, but we did not go for the beer; we went for jobs. I should like to think that some good investment had begun to appear as a result. I have not been told of very much yet. It is time that we saw some results.
As has been said, inward investment will not be encouraged by energy prices in Northern Ireland. You will recall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that Ulster Unionist Members were not at all happy about the way in which Northern Ireland Electricity was privatised. It was sold off with long-term high profits built into the scheme. There is little hope of an early review of that long-term payment system, which will force prices up and up.
The fuel used for generation--oil and so on--is cheaper than it was at the start of the privatisation period, yet the people of Northern Ireland find the cost of electricity still increasing. They are not happy, we are not happy, and the large industrial users, who find that about 80 per cent. of the final cost of electricity consumed is taken up by generation, are very unhappy, to put it mildly.
Those generation costs will increase considerably as a result of the long-term agreements entered into when Northern Ireland Electricity was privatised. I wonder whether the Government support package of about£60 million will solve the problem. Perhaps we should seek a way to revamp those agreements, for conditions have changed so much in even the short time since our electricity was privatised. Whatever money there is must be used to control generating costs. Will the Government give a commitment in that regard?
Several other measures could and should be considered in that regard. We still have the problem of the cost of heavy oil and the VAT charged on it. We still have the problem of the gas pipeline, which is tied to British Gas purchasing the Ballylumford station. I understand that the price of that gas is likely to be roughly double the current price of gas in Great Britain. We also want to know how much of that gas will go for domestic consumption and for consumption by industry other than electricity generation.
The subject is all the more topical because we all woke up this morning to hear on the radio that the gas industry over here was being lambasted right, left and centre for unconscionably high profits, and that massive reductions--I believe up to 20 per cent.--are demanded.
If the gas price charged to people in Great Britain steadily decreases, will the gas price charged to people in Northern Ireland remain at its existing unrealistically, scandalously high level for the generation of electricity? If so, British Gas would add to its profits, not only from the gas, but from the electricity that it produces and sells from that gas. That would not be tenable.
I understand that British Gas is involved in explorations for gas in the Irish sea. If it finds gas there, what will be the price regime in relation to that, and what will the
Government do about it? If the cost of electricity and gas for all industrial, commercial and household purposes in Northern Ireland is twice that in Great Britain, not many users of energy or gas will build factories in Northern Ireland. Right hon. and hon. Members who represent constituencies in south and west Scotland may be happy about that, because if those people want to remain close to the island of Ireland, that is where they will build a factory.
We must do something on a large scale and for the longer term about energy generation in Northern Ireland. That must be reflected, not only in this first contract period for gas and electricity prices, but in all succeeding contracts in succeeding years.
The Conservative party is always willing to push competition, and I am all in favour of competition, but we must get away from the present position. We seem to have replaced a public monopoly in energy with private ownership that is concentrated in so few hands that there is no real competition. We still have a managed market, in that the only person who is able to put pressure on companies to force down prices, to make them appear more realistic, is the regulator.
We must go beyond that. We must open up the market if we are to receive the benefits that we expect to flow from privatisation--greater efficiency and lower prices. That includes, in the medium term, moves toward generation in Northern Ireland from our native lignite sources. I know that there are all sorts of connected problems, but the lignite is there--a home-grown source of electricity--and we should push on with it, not hang back.
If we are building a conductor across the north channel to import electricity, we can use it to export electricity. We should be in the happy position where we could import and export electricity from and to the British and the European grid, and eventually from and to the Irish Republic. That should bring down the cost of the spinning reserve in electricity--I put the same arguments in the early 1970s--and, in turn, reduce electricity overheads. If those points had been considered when Northern Ireland Electricity was being sold off, we would not be in such a mess today. I hope that the Government will address them now.
Reference was made to transportation to and from Northern Ireland--the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow has always been very supportive of Northern Ireland in that regard. I hope not only that there will be an extra link to Campbeltown from Ballycastle but that something will be done about the roads in Scotland. Northern Ireland's economic problems do not begin and end at Larne--some extend far beyond that. I urge the Minister to speak to his right hon. Friend in the Scottish Office about improving those roads. Another problem is the fact that grant aid to ports differs according to whether they are in private or public ownership. I hope that the Minister recognises that anomaly and will ensure that the grants are equalised so that all ports are on a level playing field.
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