To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether, in view of the response of ICI to the Government's rejection of the proposed sale of its fertiliser business to Kemira Oy, the Government will review the priority that they give to maintaining employment in arriving at such decisions.

My right hon. Friend will continue to regard competition as the essential matter when deciding his policy on references to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. As the hon. Gentleman is aware, in its report on the Kemira case, the MMC went into the issue of employment, among several others. When considering that matter, my right hon. Friend looked at the whole report before coming to his conclusion.

Yes, but when hardly a day goes past without a major announcement of an industrial closure somewhere in the country, are the Government really prepared to shut down their productive capacity and destroy the hundreds of jobs that go with it for the sake of their dogma and Opposition to state enterprise? Will the Minister confirm that ICI is going ahead with its plan to close down the plants and that in Edinburgh, for example, 140 direct jobs will be lost, not to mention the indirect jobs? What message has the Minister for the employees? Surely the Government must think again when the only alternative is the dole.

If hon. Members read the report, they will see that the market share of the merged company was predicted to fall to 35 per cent. in a falling market. We are talking about a market with over-capacity and with considerable problems resulting from that. I find it difficult to reconcile that forecast of the market and the market share with the idea that all those jobs and all that plant could have been sustained had the merger gone ahead. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had to weigh many difficult matters in coming to his conclusion on the judgment of the MMC, but he decided that the MMC was right in its report, and that is where the matter rests.