THE 'SPECTATOR' STEEL INQUIRY SIR,—As one of the Assessors to
the Speenuor Steel Commission, may 1 be allowed to .comment on Mr. Hughes's letter? The section headed 'The Case Against Nationalisa- tion' in the . Report represented the Commission's impression of what the British Iron and Steel Federa- tion's case was. The Commission understood the Federation's case to be that there had been no delays its development as a result of financial difficulties until the recent modifications of the target for 1962. The two statements which Mr. Hughes complains of as incompatible were therefore intended to relate to different periods, though this might have been made clearer in the text. It is true that the plan for the Fourth Strip Mill was not included in the 1957 development programme, but a plan for a fully inte- grated steel works at Newport with an ingot capacity. of one million tons and provision for the eventual addition of a Strip Mill was so included. The Com- Mission took the Federation to mean that work' on this' project had had to he suspended because of -the dispute regarding the timing and location of the Strip Mill, and it was in this sense that the 1962 target had been modified as a result of the dispute.
I should emphasise that this is my own interpreta- tion, as one of the Commisiion's servants, of whatthe Report meant. It does not follow, course,' that,the Federation would accent the Commission's reading of its case..But it scents to me that no one who had not approached the Report with Mr. Hughes's particular bias would have found much difficulty in under- standing what it meant to convey on the points he mentions.—Yours faithfully, 1. L. UILI'Y The Carlton Club
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