Mr Stanley Crowther: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Could not this private dispute between the hon. Members for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) and for Stafford (Mr. Cash) be carried out in the privacy of their room?
Mr Stanley Crowther: Does the hon. Gentleman, being a lawyer, agree that it is disgraceful that an employee claiming unfair dismissal and wishing to appear before a tribunal cannot even get legal aid, whereas the employer who is defending the case can offset his costs against tax and thus have part of his costs paid by the taxpayer?
Mr Stanley Crowther: Unlike a number of hon. Members who have spoken tonight, I intend to make a short contribution. The hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) referred to small firms. That matter is not strictly relevant to the order. Apparently, the order wipes out the difference between those employed by small firms and those employed by larger firms and subjects them all to the same injustice. I have never...
Mr Stanley Crowther: Is the Leader of the House aware that his non-committal answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Duffy) will be found unsatisfactory by the south Yorkshire steelworkers, whose jobs have been disappearing at a fantastic rate ever since the Government came to power? Does he understand that the terrible news this morning about the Tinsley park works is a direct product...
Mr Stanley Crowther: Will the Minster bear in mind that a large percentage—probably more than 50 per cent.—of all the textile and clothing imports to this country come from developed countries, not from the MFA countries? What are the Government proposing to do about assisting the textile industry to compete with those countries?
Mr Stanley Crowther: Would it not be the mark of an honest man for the Secretary of State to admit that all the terrible consequences that have flowed from the dispute could have been avoided if the Government had not deliberately provoked the strike a year ago, through the National Coal Board, in the mistaken belief that miners would be brought to their knees in a matter of months? Before the right hon....
Mr Stanley Crowther: Does the Secretary of State agree that the establishment of Sheffield Forgemasters, which, if I remember rightly, was code named Phoenix III, has been a near disaster, not just for the British Steel Corporation but for the private sector company involved? In connection with the Phoenix II scheme involving a merger of BSC Special Steels with the GKN Brimbo works, is the right hon. Gentleman...
Mr Stanley Crowther: Bearing in mind what the right hon. Gentleman has said about the need to halt the decline, does he agree that, far from there being a decline in south Yorkshire, during the past 10 years there has been a constant expansion of the bus service with the benefit of subsidies? Does that not destroy the right hon. Gentleman's argument that subsidies do not prevent decline? In south Yorkshire those...
Mr Stanley Crowther: Will the Secretary of State urge on the Leader of the House the need for a debate, in Government time, on the report of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, which has demonstrated dramatically the seriousness of the problem? Despite what the right hon. Gentleman said about the need to balance one thing against another, does he agree that manufacturing is at the heart of wealth creation...
Mr Stanley Crowther: The hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) will understand if I do not comment on his speech. The Secretary of State, in opening the debate, proved conclusively that he had not the slightest inkling of the real nature of the problem. In view of that, I suppose that we cannot really expect him to come up with a solution. To be fair, it has to be said that his predecessors have not come up...
Mr Stanley Crowther: There is indeed a restricted list, as the hon. Gentleman points out. There must be no doubt, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, that the sole object of the changes announced on 28 November is not to make the policy more effective, but only to make it cheaper. I cannot understand why the Government should think that it is so desperately important to save £300 million in two or three years'...
Mr Stanley Crowther: Does the Minister accept that the rate of productivity in many British manufacturing industries is now very high and that the real problem about competitiveness is in areas that are within the scope of the Government's own policies; for example, energy prices and the alarmingly imbalanced exchange rates between sterling and European currencies?
Mr Stanley Crowther: rose—
Mr Stanley Crowther: As the High Court, rightly or wrongly, has decided that the miners' strike is unofficial, it would clearly be unlawful for the union to pay strike pay. It would clearly be in contempt of court. Is the hon. lady asking the NUM to break the law by paying strike pay to its members when the strike has been said to be unofficial?
Mr Stanley Crowther: I hope that the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Morrison) will forgive me if, in the interests of brevity, I do not respond directly to his speech. However, I agreed with almost everything that he said, and that will become obvious from my short contribution. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) graphically drew our attention to the two most alarming...
Mr Stanley Crowther: I do not wish to discuss the dispute at British Leyland. It does not have much to do with the number of imported cars. An act of God did not create the enormous increase in imports but an act of Ford Motors and General Motors. The Government should take that up. Huge numbers of motor cars are being imported. It is disgraceful that Ford, a company which has received so much Government...
Mr Stanley Crowther: Does the Secretary of State agree that as discussions about denationalisation of BSC special steels have been going on for more than four and a half years this long uncertainty has caused great damage in both the public and the private sectors of the industry? Will he now announce that he accepts the strongly held and expressed view of the Select Committee and drop the whole idea, especially...
Mr Stanley Crowther: The civil and criminal law does not place any restriction on the number of pickets. There is merely a code of practice suggesting that six is a reasonable number, but it is not an offence for more than six pickets to be on duty at any one time.
Mr Stanley Crowther: Before the Minister——
Mr Stanley Crowther: My hon. Friend is making an extremely important point. Does he agree that the cuts that have taken place in both the public and private sectors of the steel industry have reduced it to a level at which it might well prove impossible for the British steel industry to take advantage of any significant increase in demand, should the economic situation change? It may well be that any future...
