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Inward Investment

5. Lady Olga Maitland: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the major inward investment projects in Scotland in the last six months. [8135]

Mr. Kynoch: We have attracted 45 inward investment projects to Scotland over the past six months. It would be

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impossible to list them all, but I shall mention some. They include projects by: Allied Precision, Appryl, Bermo, CWW Logistics, Hyundai, IBM, Instrument Specialities, Level Nine, Lite-On Technology, PM Support Services, Polaroid, Quintiles, Roche, Rohr, Smart Modular Technologies and Techdrill.

Lady Olga Maitland: I congratulate my hon. Friend on a massive vote of confidence in the Conservatives' management of Scotland. Does he agree that it would be a cruel trick to follow Labour's proposals to saddle such successful industry with a tartan tax, a social chapter and a minimum wage? Those measures would destroy jobs and deter future investment. Surely the people of Scotland will vote the right way and ensure that Labour never has a chance there or in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Kynoch: My hon. Friend is right. We have been successful with inward investment because investors recognise the possibility of locating in Scotland and being competitive in world markets. The seasonally adjusted unemployment figures for Scotland released this morning show a reduction of 7,900 people, down to 7.4 per cent. That has happened because Scottish business is competitive.

Saddling Scottish business with increased taxation, through the tartan tax or the trade tax--taking the uniform business rate away and giving control back to Labour local authorities that appear intent on putting costs up--would be counter-productive. Those measures, together with the social chapter and the minimum wage, would be disastrous for Scottish companies. If we want unemployment to continue falling and inward investment to continue flowing into the country, we must provide the right economic conditions for business to succeed. Only this Government can provide that.

Mr. Dalyell: How much taxpayers' money went on those 45 projects?

Mr. Kynoch: The hon. Gentleman is aware that the figures for the regional selective assistance offered to each project are given in the Edinburgh Gazette the quarter after the grant is taken up. The figures are not disclosed at the time of granting, because projects put forward for regional selective assistance have commercial sensitivity. It would be wrong to disclose--

Mr. Connarty: The Minister obviously does not know.

Mr. Kynoch: The hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) is prattling from a sedentary position about my not--

Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) has been constantly prattling from a sedentary position since we started. If he expects to be called to put a question, he might contain himself now.

Mr. Kynoch: The hon. Gentleman's prattling from a sedentary position shows his ignorance about how inward investment is attracted to Scotland and how jobs are created in Scotland. If he spent a little more time

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considering his party's policies, he might get a little further in succeeding in keeping people in Scotland and keeping investment flowing in.

Mr. Gallie: I welcome the fall in unemployment in Scotland--from 7.8 per cent. to 7.4 per cent.--that has been announced today. What proportion of that fall could be attributed to inward investment, and how much to the uniform business rate and its beneficial effects on small businesses? Does my hon. Friend agree that changing the uniform business rate--as the Labour party wants--would be a disaster for those who want to be employed in Scotland?

Mr. Kynoch: My hon. Friend is right to concentrate on the uniform business rate, because businesses, particularly small businesses, in Scotland have been crying out for it and are pleased to see it. They now have a level playing field throughout Scotland and England.

The Opposition's policy of returning the uniform business rate to local government control and linking it to an increase in band D council tax--the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) does not seem to have decided on the speed with which he will implement it should he ever be able to do so--would have increased business rates for small businesses in Glasgow by 20 per cent. last year. I doubt whether such a policy is good for unemployment. Small businesses would suffer severely under the Labour party's policies.

Mr. Kirkwood: I acknowledge that Locate in Scotland has been very successful in the past six months or so, but does the Minister accept that there is concern that the financial arrangements that it has put in place to achieve that success have been at the expense of some of the other budgets available to local enterprise companies? Will he give an assurance that there will be no top slicing, which would result in other parts of Scotland paying the price for the recipients of Locate in Scotland's excellent work?

Mr. Kynoch: The hon. Gentleman knows that regional selective assistance, for example, is equally available to indigenous companies. He has drawn the situation in the borders to my attention on numerous occasions. As he knows, I visited the borders in August and talked to Borders Enterprise, which will be putting its case to Scottish Enterprise. Scottish Enterprise is responsible for looking after inward investment and, more important, indigenous companies.

Mr. McFall: The Government have our support in attracting inward investment. The Minister knows that neither added value nor technology ventures have been very successful. What is he doing to convert inward investment into indigenous growth in Scotland? He will be aware that only 21 per cent. of the supplies of inward investors are secured in Scotland. If that figure rose by just 5 per cent., we could produce a Chungwha every year, creating 2,000 jobs. What are the Government doing in those two crucial areas?

Mr. Kynoch: The hon. Gentleman has double standards. I recognise his point about attracting research and development--he should welcome the fact that some inward investors are moving research and development activities into Scotland, and we shall obviously try for

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more--but the Opposition's taxation proposals would be far more damaging to the prospects of a Chungwha coming to the country. Given his party's taxation regime, it is utter folly for him to talk about getting a Chungwha every year.

Local Authority Completions

6. Mrs. Fyfe: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many local authority new dwellings were completed in 1995. [8137]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson): Just under 400.

Mrs. Fyfe: Does the Minister realise that, in Glasgow alone, the number of homeless applicants on the waiting list is more than 2,000? Is not that just one of the many scandalous aspects of the Government's housing policy? Does he agree with today's leader in The Herald in Glasgow, which describes our housing system as rotten to the core and in urgent need of reform?

Mr. Robertson: I agree that our housing system is in urgent need of reform. That is why I have spent the past year and a half encouraging local authorities, such as the one in her constituency, to remove themselves from being direct providers of housing and to transfer their housing stock to housing associations and housing companies.

I hope that the hon. Lady's council, like all others in Scotland, will address the number of vacant properties they have, which amount to 2.5 per cent. of Scotland's entire council housing stock.

Mr. Menzies Campbell: Does the Minister accept that the problem of homelessness is not confined to urban areas? Rural homelessness is an increasing problem. The former Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and North East Fife district council sold 40 per cent. of its local authority stock and performed the best in Scotland, yet it was not allowed to apply the proceeds from that sale to the problem of homelessness in its area. Why will the Government not adopt a much more flexible approach to the use of council house sales receipts?

Mr. Robertson: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that £4 billion-worth of housing debt has to be repaid? That has gone up by 6 per cent. in the past year alone. If he and his hon. Friends are not willing to protect council tenants, I assure him that we most definitely are.

Mr. Chisholm: Does the Minister accept that the dreadful new build figure that he gave will be even worse next year with the 30 per cent. cut in council housing budgets and that the number of housing association starts next year will be slashed from 4,000 to 1,500 due to the 25 per cent. cut in their budgets? Does he realise that renovation of cold, damp houses will be similarly curtailed, at great cost to people's health and NHS budgets? How can the Government seriously claim that they make health a priority when they promote ill health in that way and waste more and more money each year on NHS bureaucracy, as today's annual health statistics make abundantly clear?

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Mr. Robertson: Despite all the rumblings and mutterings from Opposition spokesmen on housing since my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made his statement, no one has ever said that, if Labour were in our position, it would not require local authorities to make the debt repayments that we require. Perhaps one of them would like to indicate, by nodding or shaking his head, whether Labour would go along with that policy.

As always on such matters, they see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil; they will not say anything at all. The Opposition criticise us for doing something, but they will not even say whether they would go along with it or cancel it. I hope that every council tenant in Scotland appreciates the fact that, although the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) comes to the Dispatch Box and says one thing, he apparently has not a clue what he would do if he were ever given the privilege of being a Minister.

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