Mr John Jones: It serves my purpose.
Mr John Jones: And the subsidy.
Mr John Jones: The lion has to be stamped on the eggs.
Mr John Jones: As I see it, the issue is simple. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) is seeking to appoint an assessor. He has in mind a simple thing. I do not suggest that my hon. Friend is a simple fellow. He happens to know more about the intricacies of high finance than most of us. But simple people like myself, brought up in the steel industry, can understand what my hon. Friend...
Mr John Jones: The Minister is usually extremely fair to the House. Will he be fair to the House today and, through the House, to the country, by saying, here and now, how eminently successful Richard Thomas and Baldwin's has been since being publicly owned in the national interest?
Mr John Jones: Before the election 60 per cent. of the industry was on short time.
Mr John Jones: About twenty years overdue.
Mr John Jones: All the money is taxpayers' money.
Mr John Jones: And no control at all.
Mr John Jones: The highest in the world.
Mr John Jones: rose—
Mr John Jones: Would the hon. Gentleman, whose discourse I have followed with great interest, when referring to all these millions of shareholders tell me of one who has any controlling shareholding in the industry?
Mr John Jones: One thing that can be said for the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) is that he never pulls his punches, and is always prepared to pronounce to the House the plain, unvarnished truth as he sees it. In the process, however, he apparently fails to recognise that he is now proving once and for all that State-owned industry is successful, that it has been proved to be successful and...
Mr John Jones: It will be £110 million more than it was at the time it was to be sold out, provided the Bill is passed. The hon. Gentleman may rest assured that the Bill will be passed, because he will not be in the Lobby tonight to say that it should not.
Mr John Jones: One must admire the hon. Member for Kidderminster. Whatever else we may think about him, he comes down to the basic facts and he pursues them in language which we are all getting used to hearing and understanding. It has been said today that the siting of the new strip mills was a matter of social importance and that the strip mill has been sent to Scotland, or pressure has been exerted to...
Mr John Jones: Yes. What I have said is true. But the Tories did not get their power from the steel industry constituencies.
Mr John Jones: I did not say that the hon. Gentleman did not have support from some steel workers. I said that he had had support from those who now regretted it.
Mr John Jones: The hon. Gentleman may have had support from people who at that time thought that everything would be all right. Let us come down to what the Bill is designed to do. Why do we need the new mills? Why did we need to spend an enormous amount of money, millions of pounds, just after the war, on this industry which was supposed to be perfect, this industry which everyone in Britain has been told...
Mr John Jones: Because of the success of public ownership.
Mr John Jones: It was the only company in Britain which, during last year, worked complete full time to full capacity, when the recession was on.
