806
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(78) We feel it our duty to say that we regard the financial policy approved by Parliament with regard to this undertaking in 1913, as since applied, with serious misgivings. Its primary aim was not so much to develop the under- taking, nor to make provision on sound accountancy principles for renewal and replacement of wasting assets, as to salve as much as possible from the wreck of 1913 for the persons, or the successors of the persons, who invested the capital with which the port was provided. It seems plain that if the policy were pursued sufficiently long, it must inevitably end in yet another bankruptcy. If appropriate provision had been made during the last thirty years for maintenance renewals and depreciation, the £350,000 paid to the B Deferred Debentures could not have been paid (at least in full), and at least a part of the heavy expenditure recently incurred from public funds would probably have been unnecessary. But for that expenditure, it appears to us that the position of the undertaking would already have been precarious. (79) In expressing these views, to which we heard no real answer, we must in fairness point out that the statutes and the Trust's accounts have been accessible to the central departments and to the public; but, apart from periodic local criticism, no effective action has been taken in any quarter to review the policy of the 1913 settlement. This however we must say that, if there is to be a unification of authorities involving the absorption of the Greenock undertaking, special investigations will be required before the just and proper financial basis of such absorption can be ascertained, and that, if there is to be no unification and Greenock is to maintain an independent existence, it is high time that the statutes under which they operate, so far as bearing on their financial policy, were revised.
(80) Ardrossan Harbour Company. The amount expended on capital account is £492,496. The capital consists of:-
Ordinary shares
4 per cent. Preference shares 4 per cent. Debenture stock
£150,000
150,000
99,999
£399,999
After payment of the Debenture interest and Preference dividend, the ordinary shareholders have received 4 per cent for the last nine years and the Debenture interest has been paid in full for 56 years. The assets have been maintained, and depreciation has been written off, out of revenue. Replacements, Deferred Maintenance and Contingency Accounts stand at over £107,000. It is thus evident that the finances of the Company have been administered on a prudent basis.
(81) Irvine Harbour Company. The subscribed capital is £45,000. The fixed assets have been written down for absolescence and depreciation, and the Company holds substantial reserves.
(82) The approximate capital expenditure on the 6 Ports may be sum- marised thus:-
Glasgow Greenock
Ardrossan
Ayr
Troon Irvine
£12,959,445 1,901,019 492,496
Per cent. of
6 Ports
80-2
11.9
3.I
479,236
3.0
216,717
1.4
60,000 (?)
•4 (?)
Total
£16,108,913
100.0
*
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WORKS CONSTRUCTED BY THE GOVERNMENT OR UNDER GOVERNMENT GRANT DURING THE WAR.
(83) To meet the emergency demands on the Clyde ports which arose, or were apprehended, during the war, and to provide new deep-water accom- modation, new construction and improvements on a large scale were executed at many points and were financed wholly or in part from Government funds. Some of the works were executed by the Port Authorities who received grants varying from 50 per cent. to 85 per cent., and other works, including the two military ports at Faslane and Cairnryan, were undertaken and financed entirely by the Government. Much of this new work will possess a post-war value. Owing to the conditions under which the work was executed it is impracticable in some cases to put a figure upon the cost or present value of these works except to a very rough approximation. The main features were these:-
Emergency Military Port in the upper estuary
(Faslane)
Approximate
cost
?
Emergency Military Port in the lower estuary
(Cairnryan)
?
Works and equipment at Glasgow
2,000,000
Works and equipment at Greenock
750,000 40,000
Works and equipment at Ardrossan
The emergency ports represent entirely new construction for service purposes and their eventual fate has not been decided upon. Owing to their situations, surroundings and communications, it is improbable that they could be used as ordinary commercial seaports except by the deliberate creation of artificial and uneconomic conditions. We deal further with this matter in para. (140). The expenditure from public funds on the three existing undertakings has materially enhanced their value, and plainly entitles the central authorities to assert a new interest in their future, especially in the case of Greenock, where some of the expenditure had to be incurred for the purpose of effecting renewals and repairs long overdue.
DOCK LABOUR
(84) In March, 1941, there was brought into operation on the Clyde as a wartime measure a scheme for the decasualisation of dock labour under which, with certain exceptions, men employed at the port of Glasgow and Greenock became the employees of the Minister of War Transport on a guaranteed weekly basis, the normal operative employers of dock labour being appointed as con- tractors to the Minister. Schemes having the same general purpose and effect, though differing in administrative mechanism, were introduced at other ports. On the Clyde a certain amount of complexity is introduced into the labour problem by reason of the fact that the ordinary dock labourers at Glasgow belong to the Scottish Transport and General Workers' Union, while the ordinary dock labourers elsewhere, and also the Clyde Trust cranemen, are in the main members of the Transport and General Workers' Union.
f
If, as we hope, the decasualisation system is to be retained as a permanent feature, it is probable that the wartime expedient of making the Minister the legal employer of dock labour at Glasgow and Greenock will require to be replaced by some more permanent arrangement suitable to normal conditions when the Regional Port Directorate and the control by the Ministry of War Transport over ports and shipping ceases to operate.
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