Industrial Expansion Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 1 February 1968.

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Photo of Sir Keith Joseph Sir Keith Joseph , Leeds North East 12:00, 1 February 1968

If the Government continue, by attacking profits, raising taxes and eroding the capital market, to reduce the response and the volume by which the market can respond to the needs of private enterprise, I suppose that they will be able to claim that private finance is not as available as it was, or even as it is now, for adventurous projects. As I have said, the Government are schizophrenic about risk taking in investment, and it is no good, on the one hand, introducing Bills meant to encourage investment and, on the other hand, reducing the funds available for investment by many times the amount by their fiscal policy.

I wish to remind the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs of some questions which I have asked already and to put one additional question. Will he tell us about the publication of the advisory committee's reports? Will he tell us whether there is any more to the ground rules than we can find in the Bill? Will he tell us—and this is a point in which my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mr. David Price) is particularly interested—how the Bill fits into the assurance given by the Government in the Letter of Intent to M. Schweitzer that the borrowing requirement will be limited to £1,000 million? After all, we know of a number of calls on that borrowing requirement now. Would the Secretary of State tell us how the money to be spent under the Bill fits into, as we hope it does, the assurance of £1,000 million as the ceiling given to M. Schweitzer in the Letter of Intent?

Apart from the individual projects—Cunard, Concorde, N.R.D.C., Beagle and shipbuilding on which I am not pretending to make detailed comments—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]This is not the Committee stage. We are discussing the principles of the Bill. The Bill will probably do some good somewhere—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—wait for it—but the potential for harm of this enabling measure far exceeds its scope for public benefit. Any benefits which may conceivably emerge on the most optimistic assumptions will be trivial compared with the vast release of energy and enterprise which a real incentives and competition policy would secure.

There are constructive activities for a Government to take towards industry by its procurement policy, by its R. & D. contracts as a client, by all its existing powers, through all its existing agencies and, above all, by the general economic climate of incentives and competition. These will be our methods, and, in the exceptional case of any scheme or support outside Government powers and outside the market which we, when we are the Government, consider desirable, we shall introduce a proper Bill devoted to that project, as we did when we were in office.

This Measure has all the evils of an enabling Bill. It reinforces the fears of all but the most naiveïthe fears of the taxpayer of backing white elephants and lame ducks, the fears of industry of creeping nationalisation and of unfair competition from the subsidised and expanding public sector. These are not likely to produce industrial expansion. We on this side heartily say "Yes" to industrial expansion, but not industrial expansion by a Bill, not industrial expansion by more government and more intervention. We shall rather get industrial expansion by less and better government doing its own job properly and leaving the market and industry to do theirs.

We shall vote against the Bill. We shall probe it in Committee. If it passes, we shall repeal it when we return to power in view of the excessive powers which it gives ministers for waste and misuse of the taxpayers' money.