I rise to oppose the Bill.

I am not sure that the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. N. MacLean) made out an effective case for his Bill, but it requires some kind of answer. In the first place, the Bill is misconceived in principle. I do not believe that it is constitutionally sound for one Government to bind the actions of the next Government. Indeed, I do not think that that is possible. Even if the Bill were passed, I do not believe that it would be effective.

But I do not want to rest my case on that. The Labour Party's view on giving assistance to private enterprise has been repeated on a number of occasions. It is simple. Our view is that if large sums of public money are given in assistance to private industry, then the taxpayers, the Government, have the responsibility and, indeed, the duty to see that there is public accountability. If profits are made from this enterprise, then the whole of the profits should not go to private enterprise, but the taxpayer should get a reasonable return. That is what is said in "Signpost to the 'Sixties", and it was made clear in the debate on nationalisation, which we had last week. In fact, the hon. Member has not addressed his mind to that question at all.

In his Motion the hon. Member mentions three Acts of Parliament. I shall say something briefly about each in turn. First, the Cotton Industry Act, 1959, was debated at great length in the House, and all the HANSARD references to the debate are available. Yet the hon. Member did not attempt to prove at any time during the debate on that Act that any hon. Member from this side of the House said that the cotton industry should be taken into public ownership.

We did not say that. That was not a commitment that we made and we have not made the commitment since. Therefore, again, as to the cotton industry the Bill is misconceived. What we said on the Cotton Industry Act was that if it were taken by itself, without other measures by the Government, it would not have the effect of reorganising and re-equipping the industry in the manner that the Government said they intended.

We have had confirmation of that view in the conclusion of the Fourth Report of the Estimates Committee, which reported in May, 1962, which, in its last paragraph, mentioned the purpose of the Cotton Industry Act and said that large sums of money had been voted by Parliament. It went on to say that the Committee feel bound to record their conviction that, failing a speedy and satisfactory solution to the related problems of imports, marketing, and the fuller use of plant and machinery, much of the expenditure incurred will have been to no purpose. At the time when the Bill was going through, we said nothing about taking part of the cotton industry into public ownership.

As to the Shipbuilding Credit Act, again I challenge the hon. Member for Inverness to produce a quotation from HANSARD showing that we on this side at any time suggested that we were committed to taking part of the shipping industry into public ownership. We did not say that. Again, therefore, the Bill is misconceived.

What we did say was that the assistance under the Shipbuilding Credit Act, 1964, came far too late and, what was more, was far too restricted. I am glad to see the hon. Member's interest in the shipbuilding industry which is associated with the Bill. I am not sure that he has ever expressed an interest in it before. The number of people employed in shipbuilding in Scotland went down from 54,000 in 1957 to only 38,000 in 1963. During that period, hon. Members on this side were pressing the Government to do something for the shipbuilding industry.

It is, however, the Fort William Pulp and Paper Mill that I want specially to mention, because, as the hon. Member has said, this project is in his Constituency. The project is to cost £19 million and the Government are to provide about £10 million. What we on this side said, and I moved an Amendment to this effect in Committee on the Bill, was that the Government's participation in the project at Fort William should not be on a debenture basis at a fixed rate of interest, but that they should participate in the profits.

An Amendment to that effect was moved from this side of the House on the Report stage of the Bill. The hon. Member for Inverness, however, whose interest, again, I am glad to see in the project, was not present on that occasion. His interest was so intense that he was not present on Second Reading and he was not a member of the Committee which dealt with the Bill, even though the project was located in his constituency.

That whole project depends upon Government money. Who is supplying the timber? It is being supplied by the Forestry Commission, a State-owned enterprise. The water is being provided by the local authorities, by whom the roads are bring provided, also. The rail services, which Dr. Beeching was on the point of closing down just when the venture came forward, are also being provided by nationalised industry with public money.

I go further. It is an impertinence of the hon. Member for Inverness, of all people, to seek to introduce his Bill. If it were not for State enterprise and public money, his whole constituency would collapse into economic depression. Not only does the hon. Member's constituency depend upon the very public services which I have mentioned, but it depends also upon hydro-electricity. Some of us on this side of the House have been fighting for the Hydro-Electric Board against the Government's treatment of it which we have had over the last two years. I do not recollect one occasion on which the hon. Member for Inverness gave us any assistance, although his constituency is vitally interested in the development of hydro-electricity in Scotland.

As an example of the dependence of the Highlands on State enterprise, I ought finally to mention that one of the first Bills which the Government intro