Inmos And Asset-Stripping

EDM number 561 in 1991-92, proposed by Paul Flynn on 24/01/1992.

That this House insists that the Prime Minister, the Welsh Office and the Welsh Development Agency end their silence and inactivity on the stripping of assets from Inmos Ltd. by their French/Italian parent company Thomson SGS; notes that job cuts have reduced the workforce by half, many of the jobs having been exported overseas, and millions of pounds worth of production equipment has been shipped by Grenoble and Singapore; is alarmed that the British Government has failed to recognise the importance of the British high technology industry and refused to invest in British firms on the scale of French and Italian Governments; and believes that British technology and national trading strength would be seriously and irretrievably damaged if the British-invented and produced 'superchip', the transputer, now poised for mass use in colour fax machines and high definition computers, is asset-stripped from Britain by a French-Italian multi-national company, losing for Britain a rare and valuable lead in technology originally paid for by the British taxpayers.

This motion has been signed by a total of 42 MPs.