Orders of the Day — Industrial Organisation Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 13 February 1947.

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Photo of Mr Frederick Cobb Mr Frederick Cobb , Elland 12:00, 13 February 1947

I do not think I am making imputations. Let us leave what the right hon. Gentleman said, and examine the operations of some trade associations in this country, of which the Electric Lamp Manufacturers' Association is one. Let us see why this particular association might object to independent members on the new body which might be set up for that section of the electrical industry. The Electric Lamp Manufacturers' Association, if it is not a cartel, is almost a cartel. They have not done a great deal of research in this country. They meet together and decide the selling prices of lamps. They fix the discount to the retailers and to the wholesalers, and they have never disclosed the manufacturing costs. In fact they never disclosed them to the Ministry during the war. They rejected any effort at costing. It will not have escaped the House that the question of costing is mentioned here. I have no doubt that it has not escaped the attention of the right hon. Member for Aldershot. The Electric Lamp Manufacturers' Association rejected costing. It is rather significant that they maintained their prices throughout the war, and that instead of increasing them when costs began to go up at the end of the war, for some mysterious reason—which may have been due to pressure from the Ministry of Supply—they reduced their prices to the public by 20 per cent. It is on the cards that an association like this might be very reluctant to have independent members poking their noses into operations of this description. I can well understand it.

For instance, they might not like it at the moment if the glass supplies for the lamp industry were to be investigated. I wonder whether an independent member would not. start asking questions why some of the independent lamp manufacturers who are not in the ring, find it difficult to get glass bulbs when the only manufacturers who make them are in the ring. Why is it that these independent manufacturers are not getting all the glass bulbs they want?