Oral Answers to Questions — National Finance – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 17 Hydref 1991.
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what are the percentage changes in (a) the total value of shares quoted on the international stock exchange and (b) total investment in manufacturing industry since 1979.
The increase in the total value of shares quoted on the international stock exchange between March 1979 and June 1991 was 560 per cent. The value of the manufacturing capital stock at current prices doubled between 1979 and 1990.
Whatever gloss the Treasury seeks to put on those figures, manufacturing investment between 1979 and 1990 rose in real terms by a pitiful 10.6 per cent. whereas the market value of United Kingdom and Irish equities rose in real terms by 214 per cent.—20 times more. Surely that is eloquent testimony to the fact that market forces are not working and that capital markets and institutional investors are failing British industry abjectly. What do the Government intend to do about that?
I hope that the Labour Front Bench will listen to that critique of capitalism because they no longer believe what the hon. Gentleman believes. He cannot draw those conclusions. Stock market valuations are higher because companies are more profitable, better run and paying less in tax, and therefore worth more. A good deal of that—some £70 billion—is accounted for by privatisation. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is so unhappy about the level of manufacturing investment. It may interest him to know that the average annual level of manufacturing investment between 1979 and 1990 was £9,788 million a year and the average between 1974 and 1979 was slightly less, at £9.77 billion.
Can my hon. Friend confirm a change that has taken place which is of immense importance to our economy and nation—that for the first time in living memory the number of individual shareholders exceeds the membership of trade unions? Long may that continue.
My hon. Friend is right. We think that it is excellent that more and more people own shares in companies, but it seems that that opinion is not shared by Labour Members, who hate any form of private ownership.